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Reply | And we never spoke of it again – Report
at 14:16 19 Jan 2026
I may be an idiot in your eyes. No problem with being called names by you.
However, you did write:
"Personally, I'd rather see us bummed in the gob 3-0 playing the game as it should be played."
And
"If we play anything like that at Oxford, we deserve to get obliterated - and, (not) sorry, I'll view it as a blessing."
Which reads very much like you do not in fact "want QPR to win every single time." It reads like you'd view it as "a blessing to get obliterated" tomorrow night if the terms of your conditions are not met.
How long have I been a supporter? You've asked this already. 50 years next month.
My support manifests itself by buying a season ticket, with money that the club can then use, going to matches, applauding, encouraging the team in song, abusing the away team, going away, mooning the opposition fans, etc. Generally offering tangible, unwavering, loyal support of the club, as per the description 'supporter'.
How does your support manifest? |
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Reply | And we never spoke of it again – Report
at 08:58 19 Jan 2026
Fair report. I do think it's a bigger achievement by management than we're collectively crediting them with, finding a way to get a point at a good Stoke in current circumstances.
We have a very competitive first 14 players for this league. If you strip out five of those, all starters, including our main source of goals, this is not a competitive squad for the league, not this season.
Previous managers - including Cifuentes, who I liked a lot - would have started a long losing run at The Britannia. They would not have found a way with that squad. That losing run may still be coming tomorrow - the games look very difficult for the duration of our injuries. But it hasn't started yet - surely that is better? Didn't we hate losing all the time?
The fact that Stephan can skin a cat more ways than one is very encouraging. He obviously prefers to play football. But sometimes a shthouse manager is what you need. |
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Reply | Stoke fans on QPR (whose side are you on?)
at 17:08 18 Jan 2026
Oh no, I will reply to "your" threads - it's a public messageboard. If you want to restrict access either a) start your own messageboard (good luck with that), b) don't start threads (best course of action), c) don't ask questions while banning answers. I will put you back on mute though, so don't worry.
Your question was this:
"why did you start supporting QPR in the first place? I did so because I loved the team, the style, the coaching, the ground, the underdog courage."
I support them because they were my local team, my dad took me as a 7-year-old. As such "the coaching and underdog courage" didn't make much impact. Being both football mad and loyal did though. Being top of the league did too.
In fact, it's the 50th anniversary of that first game next month, the night we play Charlton. I'm going with the group of friends I've been going with for decades, thick or mostly thin. It'll be nice to win but if we don't, so be it. We'll have a great night out anyway.
It's brilliant to win. It's great to play swashbuckling football. But I'd go to QPR if we fell through the leagues and ended up in the National League South.
Going to QPR is not for me like going to see a film, being disappointed by it, or a gig, or a gallery..."Yes, darling a valuable 0-0 away at Stoke, but the aesthetic quality of it - for someone reared on Bowles, Byrne, Wegerle...I could rip my eyes out!"
Take a point where we often surrender them and move on. And I don't worry much if the Stoke fans enjoyed it or not, really.
I've had a season ticket every year that I could afford one since 1976. Let me say, yes, the Sexton, Venables teams were beautiful (though probably less beautiful than you remember, judging by The Big Match Revisited), Since that first game in '76, I've remained loyal even while watching teams managed by:
Burtenshaw
Sibley
Mullery
Houston
Harford
Waddock
Hart
Hughes
McClaren
Critchley
Ainsworth
Some thin times there. Not much champagne football. Not much "style and underdog courage" under Redknapp. And Joel Stephan is better than all of them I think.
That is what I think being a football supporter, specifically of QPR, is since you suggest I don't know what it is. You think it's watching on a stream, coming on a messageboard and calling everyone else idiots for putting up with the ugliness of it.
Horses for courses. |
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Reply | Stoke fans on QPR (whose side are you on?)
at 12:17 18 Jan 2026
I care even less about what Stoke fans think than I care what you think. And we didn't lose 3-1. We drew 0-0. That's the whole point.
Question: if you're in an "aesthetic minority" of QPR supporters, why do you still persist in supporting them?
Why not support someone more to your "aesthetic" tastes, where you won't be in the minority? You don't go to games, you haven't for a very long time, so your affections are free to be lathered gloriously in awkward flowery adjectives upon, I dunno, Barcelona or Arsenal, teams who play more to your elevated taste - though Arsenal drew 0-0 last night too at relegation-haunted Forest, even with all those extravagant talents. And it wasn't pretty, I must say. Could you cope?
QPR meanwhile have spent a grand total of 23 seasons in the top division. Of those, I'd say they played truly aesthetically pleasing football for around 18 seasons. The last time they did that was, what, 1994-95? Thirty years ago.
Since then, one great second tier season in 2011, 15 years ago. Spent the last decade mostly in a slightly worse condition than now in the second tier of English football, where we've been for 36 seasons in total. Mostly, we've spent our history in the third tier: 46 seasons.
What are you hanging around for? What do you expect? Dave Sexton and Terry Venables are dead, along with Jim Gregory. They're not coming back. And neither are you. Just let us enjoy our simple pleasures, week by week, in the flesh, at the games, without you pompously acting out your anonymous Statler and Waldorf fantasy act on the Internet because 2026 QPR are not "aesthetic" enough for you. Who cares what opposition fans think?
Right, putting you back on mute you wee daftie. |
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Reply | St Oke Methodist Church Away Match Fred
at 08:55 18 Jan 2026
This is a week with the potential for total ruin, especially as we will lose more players than we have any return by time Wrexham turn up on Saturday. Then after this week it's only Coventry at home. Who will be back for that for potential bloodbath? Ronnie, maybe Chair or Vale? Morgan will definitely get a game in this run.
This is going to be a bumpy ride until players start returning. Think we toast that unexpected clean sheet at Stoke to start it off and brace ourselves for the next fortnight, take pleasures where we can - artistic merit be damned for now. |
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Reply | St Oke Methodist Church Away Match Fred
at 08:17 18 Jan 2026
What it does is it says to Joe Walsh, you can keep a clean sheet in the Championship away in a difficult game that's actually contested (unlike the beach football match at Sunderland or Coventry). That's as good as a three month loan to Macclesfield for him, and us.
It shows all those young players, like Bennie, Adamson, Esquerdinha, even Kolli, players who many QPR managers down to "bare bones" might have stuck on the bench only as a message but wouldn't dream of bringing on when Sam Field is unused, that if you train well you can play. It shows them the level required, the atmosphere you need to negotiate to get a clean sheet at Stoke. That's worth 100 PL Youth Cup wins in front 600 fans at Loftus Road.
Everyone wants a coach who is good at youth development. Well, unfortunately this is probably what it looks like at the start.
That this team, with these injuries to so many key creative and attacking players got a point at Stoke is plenty. You predicted a 2-0 defeat, let us not forget. Would that been better if we'd 20% more possession? Last year, we went there also with injuries but stuck to our style, got beat 3-1 and were lucky it wasn't heavier. Would that have been better?
This is not the season we get in the play-offs, nobody predicted that. Not you, not me. And yet, we still can. A point at Stoke in Jan when every first name attacker bar one is injured does not derail that. Bank this. See how the run-in in pans out when players return. But this puts plenty in the tank for seasons to come. |
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Reply | St Oke Methodist Church Away Match Fred
at 23:21 17 Jan 2026
At end of the game, away at Stoke, we collected a clean sheet and a point with six players on the pitch aged 23 or under (mostly under, including two teenagers):
Walsh - 23
Mbengue - 22
Esquerdinha - 19
Bennie - 19
Adamson - 22
Kone - 22
+
Kolli, 20, did 87 mins.
+
Dembele, 22, did 70 minutes too.
Eight players eligible for the Development squad got that point.
Only one player was over 30, Cook, and he won't be here next season.
I know over the years we've been used to sexy, attractive, free-flowing performances at the Britannia (maybe that Eze goal in '19 spoiled us forever, erasing every previous game) but maybe our youngest team in memory grinding out a hard-fought 0-0 at the most typical "tough place to go" Championship away ground is just as substantial.
I love kids getting a gritty 0-0 away like this. Big change for the club. [Post edited 17 Jan 23:37]
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Reply | Team for Stoke?
at 17:08 16 Jan 2026
1/ I can't believe he's blocked you. That's very snowflake of someone resolutely anti-snowflake. He's always seemed a good sort. Blocking is quite violent, really, it's a message. Muting is sufficient unless you're blocking actual personal abuse, racism, etc.
2/ I remember the Holloway post on the list! Ironically, Dave Mc wrote a very long piece then about how Holloway could turn out to be the equivalent of Martin O'Neil at Leicester for QPR (almost true, really). By the end, Dave Mc was pulling his hair about Olly, quite down on him (and vice versa!) and you were his biggest fan. You'd swapped positions.
That's why blocking someone over an opinion on QPR is mental.We all change our minds all the time based on...results. It's a fickle business. Get on with it. [Post edited 16 Jan 17:09]
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Reply | Team for Stoke?
at 11:47 16 Jan 2026
And Matt Winton will send you a detailed report why. |
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Reply | Cat 1. Academy Plans
at 14:02 14 Jan 2026
It was more often from Hoos than Ferdinand. Had strong echoes of Hoos' arguments against both safe standing in the Loft (digging out old stats and videos to try and say it was never that full or raucous, as if we weren't there when it was) and against the club renaming Ellerslie Road as Stanley Bowles Stand, then insisting the club couldn't fund it. Both turned out to be really good ideas, of course - the Loft is unrecognisable due entirely to safe standing, completely contradicting his argument.
He could be a really stubborn old goat about really odd points of principle. No doubt can still be so in his retirement as ever-present chairman. |
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Reply | January transfer rumours
at 10:22 14 Jan 2026
Well, we can agree that the strategy appears in some regards dubious - though we don't know any true figures - while perhaps also acknowledging that current injuries notwithstanding the squad is also currently as good as it's been in a good while. We need a full back or two. But it's nicely balanced, filed with youth and experience right now? Work in progress, but there is, to my eyes, progress.
I don't think Nourry could've got away with saying that they've extended Sam Field's contract in order to sell him in the next year. But that's what they did to all extents and purposes. Same I imagine with Smyth.
Players have to be sold. But they've done pretty well with the buying the last few windows, I think. |
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Reply | January transfer rumours
at 09:47 14 Jan 2026
Very conservative guess based on https://www.capology.com/playe which is in no way bona fide. Estimate that they're on at least £400-500k a year, but agree that Dunne in particular is probably on a lot more.
I was keen to point out to Numpty that having experienced squad players is expensive, is all. Also, unfair on such a capable Championship player as Field in his prime.
I imagine Hayden they see as an experienced squad player, great in the dressing room and for driving standards, who's better suited to understudy a Varane-type rather than Field who rightly wants to be a regular starter. A successful season for Hayden based on his history would be 20 Championship games - a number he's not managed in six years. 30 league games is a dream he's not realised in a decade.
*I am not saying I agree, just my reading* |
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Reply | January transfer rumours
at 09:02 14 Jan 2026
Field, Dunne and Smyth's combined wages come to around £1.2 million a year without bonuses.
Only Dunne out of those are regular starters. The club's ideal would be to move all three on this summer, I imagine, recoup around £5m in combined sales and allocate those wages elsewhere.
A "great squad player" in the current model is not a 27-year-old with hundreds of appearances to his name, being used sparingly often out of position in a system that doesn't suit his talents while being paid £400k pa to do so.
A great squad player in the current model is a 21, 22-year-old stepping up from L1 or 2 equivalent, on less than half as much money, to be developed over a number of seasons to be then sold in his prime.
Sam Field doesn't want to be a bit part player. He doesn't deserve to be, either. Be best for all if club can sell (wages may be an issue though). [Post edited 14 Jan 9:04]
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Reply | January transfer rumours
at 08:50 14 Jan 2026
It's nothing to do with the head coach. It's a club thing. The coach accepts the players he's given - that is the model. Stephan is open about that and it's one of the main reasons he replaced Cifuentes. They've been trying to sell Field since the summer, they failed to do so last window even though wished to. As Dave Mc says in the pod, injuries may muddy those waters this window, but they need to move players like Field on for the model to work. At 27, he can't be a squad player. |
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Reply | Dunne
at 17:10 12 Jan 2026
Agree. Quite hard to be to down on Dunne being turned out wide by £25m Summerville, the game's best attacker, 98 minutes into a game's he's been everywhere in. He's only out there because his RB can no longer run and will be off the pitch in the next minute, so Dunne ran over to cover as Mbengue tried to hop along...
Not sure Field defended the cross properly either, his body shape was wrong. But sometimes you just have to say it was a great bit of skill. Nobody was running that dynamically and hitting a cross like that. |
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Reply | Dunne
at 16:54 12 Jan 2026
Harsh. Cook's misses the header, Dunne is subsequently turned and then overloaded on our right - where have I heard that tune before? - and Walsh beaten near post.
I think if you add all together probably four QPR players at fault there, one of which is Dunne. Not sure his error the worst though. Goal is here...
https://www.tntsports.co.uk/fo |
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Thread | Dunne
at 16:35 12 Jan 2026
Was quite rightly mocked for suggesting Dunne to a parachute club or an idiot Championship big-spender for £7m+ this summer could happen now we've signed Edwards.
However, he was a stand-out yesterday, clearly our fittest player, a rock one end, a nuisance at the other. So I'm going to revise that and predict Jimmy Dunne to a parachute or idiot club in the summer for at least what we've spent on Edwards. I reckon it'll be West Ham.
There's a much-liked thread on X from a West Ham fan saying they should sign him - "proper CB" - and threads on their messageboards saying the same. They're not really coveting any other QPR player. 28, they could get four good years out of him, more maybe...go on!
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Reply | West hams ground....
at 10:36 12 Jan 2026
When they come down and have midweeks in winter against, say, Blackburn, Preston, Oxford, Stoke or pretty much anyone they'll be lucky to get 25k spaced around that massive echoey bowl. It will turn very very nasty with the hardcore quickly.
Be a lot easier to get to and from the ground, though! And tickets won't be an issue. |
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