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The "French football agent" whose dad he says played for Bulgaria, who won't reveal his name, or a website for his agency, and who only started posting about QPR in late 2023, always massively enthusiastic about the current plan (and always very down on Sam Field, funnily enough), was first on X straight after the match yesterday...
"Usual headloss from fans after a defeat".
Just amazing chutzpah. Shameless.
QPR have in the last ten days lost:
0-5 0-2 0-4
"Usual headloss from the fans after a defeat".
There's absolutely nothing usual about any of this, least of all the French-Bulgarian football agent who loves QPR's game model and its noble young prince CEO.
Every new detail about the Steve Gallen non-hire is damning. The guy who presided over that should be first out.
Agree with all your points except for the fans being apathetic. It's not 1987 anymore, the only time you will get fans physically mobilising is for an existential crisis, such as administration. And I think that's right. Bad appointments, playing issues, losing runs - not worth marching or banging the doors about, it lessens the impact should something that threatens the club's existence needs protesting.
The fanbase is pretty split anyway, mostly on age demographics. I don't think LFW is a fair reflection of the youth up in Q or R blocks really.
But the sight of the ground emptying on 82 minutes twice in a week (Christian, how about opening that nightclub for fans to stay and dance the night away under The Loft?!) will spell out a similar message loudly enough.
As will threads like these and some of the posts I've seen on X. Probably more potent and targeted than 50 people standing outside chanting about the CEO or some cringe banner.
Those were six very stressful and difficult years between Wright stepping down in 2001 and Briatore buying the club in 2007, often straying into real existential fear. And QPR had far smaller debts and was a much cheaper proposition then.I would not return to those days.
A Championship club will fold in the next decade when the football bubble bursts, and one with so much valuable West London land as its only assets but tens of millions of debt with more accumulated each month is a good bet.
Better off just hoping they hire a new CEO and DOF in the summer.
Nourry bots on X already firing off plenty of 'talk to me about possible Stephan replacements' posts, there's never any suggestion that management setup, squad assembly or, heaven forbid, Nourry may be at fault there...
Finney has just pointed out that Cook's changed his X profile to remove mention of QPR in his bio. Changed the photo from a QPR shot to one playing for Bournemouth.
The whole 'Steve Cook has been rested" official communication is exactly what's wrong with everything coming from the club. It's clearly bullsht. Now revealed as so to the fans, it must have been known as such by the players too.
So, in trying to pointlessly control a narrative, Nourry has hacked off the player and the fans, possibly the coach - who will ever know - and probably sown distrust amongst the squad, because if they treat a former captain and experienced pro like Steve Cook like this, how will they be treated?
Tell us what's happening with Steve Cook, tell us the severity of Madsen's injury, update on Chair's injury, on Burrell...there is clearly no sporting advantage being gained in not doing so, the GDPR bit was a lie as no other club toes that line. Please behave like a professional football club with tens of thousands of paying customers who were there before the current administrators and will be here long after too. Just grow up.
They could've handled this so much better, as with everything recently.
If I was the major shareholder, I'd be calling a meeting with each of my "performance" employees to find out how they explain these performances, ie these people the club list as full time staff:
Physical performance coach Performance scientist Head of Analysis Operation Analyst Performance Therapist Recruitment Analyst Head of Recruitment Director of Sporting Operations Performance Physiotherapist x 2 Analyst Head of Goalkeeping Performance Therapist Head of Methodology Nutritionist Performance logistics & Player Care Lead Individual Development Coach Head of Performance Services (ooh la la!) Head of Integrated Services
Head of Defensive Coaching Head Coach First Team Coach
+ Methodology Lead U17- U21 Academy Methodology Manager Player Pathways Manager
Then, I'd call in the CEO and Chairman to explain why this current set-up is better than that of Les Ferdinand and Chris Ramsey's of five years ago, which achieved better outcomes with significantly fewer staff members.
Then I'd probably commission a staffing and performance audit, ironically.
Because I reckon Nourry has probably learnt enough on a steep enough curve to make better future decisions, but he needs to have his workload halved and redefined as answerable to a genuine CEO, both of whom communicate regularly with fans as LF/LH used to, even in the toughest moments. At the moment, it's insulting and contemptible.
He signed after a trial, on recommendation of Beale who had worked with him at Liverpool. It was an 18 month contract, not "a four year deal that made him a millionaire".
He played 20+ games. Did well, though suffered a couple of injuries (he'd also been injured at Liverpool - these things stack up).
In July 24 he'd done well enough though to earn another contract. I doubt very much it made him a millionaire or runs for very long. The story is here:
Since then, two experienced, good managers in Cifuentes and Stephan have looked at him and said, 'no'. They've said 'yes' to other younger players. So it's probably on EDB.
Players fall short for all kinds of reasons. Maybe, yes, the club mismanaged him. As you say, wouldn't be the first. But maybe he just fell short of Championship standard and dealt badly with that, maybe his injuries took something away, maybe he's depressed, maybe he's had trouble, maybe he's not in love with the game...
If the club can take EDB from Liverpool and he's failing at Wealdstone, but take Morgan from Spurs and he's in the first team in the same position, I reckon it's up to the players, not the club.
Three long weeks without QPR, just as we sit proudly in first place, our promotion-form cruelly paused in full flow...
And just so England can play Nations League games. England playing a closed doors game away at Croatia in the Nations League is no substitute for a Saturday birthday QPR away day at, dunno, Lincoln or Forest is it.
Please. I'm old. Let's just leave things as they are.
It's three weekends without league football when the pitches are at their best, the weather is perfect for football, the players are at their fittest and, crucially, one of the Saturdays is my birthday. It's a shtshow.
Good young players benefit from a loan as it proves they can play professional men's football, either at their club or, if not quite of the level, then elsewhere.
By and large, we are not producing those young players. (I'd argue that we were actually slightly better at producing young professional footballers under the previous regime than we look to be currently, but time will tell.)
Issac Hayden is excellent on James Allcott's Ripple Effect this week in discussing his experience of this at Arsenal, having had a loan as young player at Hull and Wenger saying he needed to sign permanently elsewhere to make it. Wenger's mantra at Arsenal was if a young player wasn't going to make it at Arsenal, then the club's duty was to make sure they were able to make it elsewhere. We look a long, long way from that.
Our two most likely outfield loanees, Lloyd and Sutton, are getting less or similar minutes for Lincoln and Harrogate (Sutton not even making Harrogate's most recent squads) than they probably would at QPR at the moment. Which tells its own story about the real quality of what lies beneath the first-team at Dev graduate level.
This is a great post, agree with every word. Especially the bit about Stephan perhaps knowing a little bit about football, patterns of play, systems, game outcomes. As you say, former pro, comes from a high-level football family (including a father who's been coaching France for a decade), managed over 300 pro games, 40% win ratio, often taking teams well beyond their predicted outcomes...
When people stomp their feet and say 'why doesn't he play three at the back' or whatever...he's definitely considered every option and ruled it in/out for a reason you can't see. When he's slow to make a change, again, there's a reason you can't see.
I quite liked the depressing presser. I needed to see that he was hacked off with what he has at hand. I worry he may leave at the season's close, because I think as with Marti, he's better than the structure he's leaving and we may not be lucky three times in a row, but what he said about systems v players is true as it was when Redknapp used to say it.
Winning football matches is about having your best players hungry to win, organising them to do so. He can definitely do that, Marti could do that - we do not currently have the players available to do that, nor always the hunger.
I would love to ask someone like Dunne or Chair, who have been here throughout, whether standards among players and the club generally have improved post-Ferdinand/Ramsey and the famous audit...or not.
What do you think Chong, Hoever and Peck would've done to Esquerdinha the wing-back - a position he has never played in the Championship, in a formation we've never played with this team, currently filled with rookies who had two days training since losing on Tuesday?
They had enough fun enough with him as a LB. Imagine him swimming somewhere between full-back and winger, and all that lovely space off his shoulder for those three to run through Varane and JCS.
You say you want us to just be solid. Agree, it's a start. We were very solid against Sheffield United in November. Got a 0-0 (which everyone moaned about too). Took our best, most experienced players to earn it:
Hamer Mbengue Cook Dunne Field Madsen Varane Dembele Kone Chair (!) Burrell
Chair and Madsen linked up quite well, Dembele had one of his better games and Burrell was a good out ball. Field played solidly at LB. All might have got us closer to Sheff U at home too.
Stephan is a good coach. Give him a mostly fit squad and I think he could do well in year two. But he said it in post-match: it's not about formations, it's about players, those he's missing and those he has at this moment.
Ronnie Edwards is a right-footed centre-back, who's decent with his left. He can get away as an RB (though I don't think he's great there going forward) but I think it's a stretch to think it would've been better with him distributing the ball down the left or trying to show Chong - a player who loves coming inside - down the line with his wrong foot. They targeted our left and that wouldn't have changed with Edwards there.
There's no magic formation/line-up wand with the players we have out and the back-ups.
Esquerdinha has been presented to the coach as the back-up left back, so Stephan understandably plays him. The point has been made now (again). That's politics.
There's nothing wrong with having Dev squad grads as bit-part backups, finances dictate it. Ossie Kakay was a bit of a figure of fun, but he played dozens of games as a decent RB backup. Morgan is also good enough too for a backup, maybe more soon.
We have others who not ready, though, and far too many at once.
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