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Reply | Dunne rescues QPR from more Boxing Day blues – Report
at 15:11 28 Dec 2025
And just as a footnote for the play-off mentality monsters here...
In the season QPR were promoted via the play-offs, we drew eleven games including away at such tough-places-to-go citadels as Huddersfield, Wigan and Reading. We lost at Doncaster, in amongst our 12 defeats. The culture of that team was in the bin, but still got over the line. You can be sht for months at a time in this league and still pull it off. |
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Reply | Dunne rescues QPR from more Boxing Day blues – Report
at 14:50 28 Dec 2025
Re 'player trading': we have seen the selling of good (ish) players - ie Armstrong and Kelman - and had them replaced with better, Kone and Burrell (let's put Celar down to experience). Two in two years is not bad. Kelman and Armstrong were not universally approved sales at the time but cannot be questioned now. A few more now can be sold for modest improved fees, and the club are on a good run of signings. It's gonna take a little time but it's definitely in place.
I am finding this discourse a little off, a bit too grumpy. It feels a bit like after Sheffield United, which I felt was a great point but everyone was down on. We're on a good run of form, one defeat in five (at second placed Boro), including three barnstorming home wins...had a ropey first half but got a point at Pompey. I don't see this as soft. I think it's the opposite. And I see coming back against Hull, Birmingham (and Pompey) as definite culture change from the first coupe of Stephan months.
I should caveat all this by saying I had zero expectation of being one point off the play-offs after Boxing Day, think the squad/manger are slightly over-achieving, so maybe my standards are lower than some. Feel 12th to 8th is where this team belongs. We will get hammered by some more teams, I think. I'm just going to enjoy the weeks we win or even draw away. |
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Reply | Pompey match thread
at 13:58 28 Dec 2025
It'll be Field and/or Kolli, maybe Smyth. Varane feels a bit integral to be a January sale. |
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Reply | Pompey match thread
at 12:11 28 Dec 2025
We are going to have to sell players. If everyone wants to sign Ronnie Edwards, an upgraded keeper, perhaps RND or his equivalent, QPR will need to sell players.
And they will be popular players, because nobody wants to pay money for QPR's unpopular players.
They'll be players many want to see more of, Kolli, Field, perhaps Smyth. I would be amazed if they're not being offered to clubs, along with other fringe first teamers. Of course they are.
I didn't want QPR to sell Sinclair Armstrong, nor Charlie Kelman. Thought it a mistake to sell homegrown players so early in their careers. I was wrong. They'd never match Kone or Burrell.
Kolli looked a good player in glimpses. But they're glimpses. Perhaps enough to make some money from. And maybe the club have someone else in mind, someone better.
I think the club's recent dealings have earned them some faith on this either way. It'll be a football decision, though. |
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Reply | Pompey match thread
at 12:11 27 Dec 2025
"Our away showings are really becoming shameful."
In fact, away from home this season:
P12 W4 D3 L5
Puts QPR 10th in the table away from home, above the likes of parachute clubs Ipswich, Southampton, Sheffield United. Only six clubs have won more.
Your posts are infinitely more shameful, for you (reasonable comedy for everyone else). |
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Reply | Chair
at 18:53 26 Dec 2025
Chair would've been a huge improvement on Saito or Dembele today, and as the 10 behind Burrell instead of Kone as well. Definitely fits into the best XI these days (or any days in the immediate future). Would've kept and used the ball better than any of the other forwards we have this afternoon. Can also commit to a tackle unlike Saito or Dembele, both of whom are lovely players but the garnish, not the substance. Chair is the ringleader. He and Poku will transform this team in the spring.
Shame he wasn't in the squad today. |
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Reply | Fantastic win but the Cifuentes Abuse
at 15:59 22 Dec 2025
Dunno. Find "out of order" pretty close to policing.
It's not exactly poetry, calling him a cnt, but if that's how they feel...
If we're giving opinions about chants, two that wind me up more than that one-off are:
1/ "We hate Cardiff City and Chelsea are shte..." We hate Cardiff? Really?! Because we lost a 2nd Div Play-Off in 2003 to them? Are we're still going on about it? If I was Cardiff I'd think it was tinpot. It's very Brentford, that.
2/ I also hate "everywhere we go, it's the Rangers boys making all the noise" sung when we are home. Away from home, fine. At home? Rinky dink, Reading-style song. |
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Reply | Fantastic win but the Cifuentes Abuse
at 12:19 22 Dec 2025
As long as it's not racist, disaster chanting, homophobic or whatever, you can't police chanting. If it's loud enough for you to hear - and in the R, we could hear it often - then it's how a sizeable number feel. Start your own song instead, see how that goes.
Anyway, so what? A load of young supporters think he's a cnt. So be it. I don't, I liked him, so I didn't sing anything about him. But he was only manager for 18 months, big deal, he has a nice golden handshake as compensation.
It's not nearly as embarrassing as singing "fck off Les Ferdinand" to a club legend because fans didn't like some of his hires, but again, it's what a sizeable number felt. Can't police that - can only counter with your own. |
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Reply | So Cifuentes ?
at 15:54 17 Dec 2025
"I find him mostly cliched and witless - but then I dislike/distrust all managers, allegedly. I suppose if it's wit you want, you go to Oscar Wilde."
How many languages do you speak? Any interviews you've conducted in English or another tongue we can watch on YouTube, just to compare? |
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Reply | Most despised Rs players
at 19:24 16 Dec 2025
Many QPR players of I've despaired of, hoped they wouldn't play, didn't like the cut of their jib...but never hated any of them.
Other than Joey Barton.
An absolutely despicable scumbag long before he played for QPR, and long after. Never dropped his level, really. Just a massively disturbed, psychopathic and narcissistic wrong 'un. *Before* we signed him, some highlights from Wiki:
*Barton sparked a ten-man brawl in a friendly match against Doncaster Rovers on 25 July 2004 after "hacking" at an opposition player
*December 2004 after an incident at their Christmas party. He stubbed out a lit cigar in youth player Jamie Tandy's eye
* In May 2005, Barton broke a 35-year-old pedestrian's leg while driving his car through Liverpool city centre at 2 am.[
* In the summer of 2005, Barton was sent home from a pre-season tournament in Thailand after assaulting a 15-year-old Everton supporter[3
* Barton was fined £100,000 and suspended by City until the end of the 2006–07 when he assaulted his teammate Ousmane Dabo. Dabo said that he had been hit several times, was left unconscious and had to go to hospital after suffering injuries to his head, including a suspected detached retina.
* 1 July 2008 was sentenced to a four-month suspended prison sentence plus 200 hours of community service and ordered to pay £3,000 compensation and Dabo's court
* On 27 December 2007, Barton was arrested on suspicion of assault in the Church Street area of Liverpool city centre. CCTV showed Barton punching a man twenty times, causing him to lose consciousness, and attacking a teenager, breaking some of his teeth.
* He served 74 days of his prison term
ETC
There was so much more. I remember thinking it was morally bankrupt for clubs to keep signing him...
And then we signed him. And then we made him club captain, making him sound like a cross between Pirlo and Silva in club communications.
And we know how well all that went. But actually, it didn't make me hate Joey Barton any more. But I did then know that Tony Fernandes was a clown and probably worthy of hatred for what he was dragging the club into.
Players, they're just doing their jobs - some better than others. Owners and administrators: much more worthy of hatred, and have hated a few. Hated Wright, hated Fernandes, wasn't keen on Ali Russell, Gianni...but all that that passes too: nothing really lingers beyond contempt. |
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Reply | January transfer rumours
at 10:49 15 Dec 2025
We often get fixated on the last great loan - 'if only we had him now!' Most recent example is Hayden, who was indeed a very important loan, but, actually, maybe we didn't need to splurge out on him: nearly 31, on a decent wedge and contract, can't get a game. I bet they wish they hadn't.
Ronnie Edwards was brilliant on loan. But let's face it, nobody was demanding his loan signature beforehand. Maybe there's better value out there? And do we need a CB in the Jan window? Not sure we need anyone unless we have departures. Recruitment department have been pretty good recently at locating players who fit but haven't been on the fans' radar previously so I'd rather they wait until the summer. Next season is the one we push on, realistically. |
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Reply | Footy pubs in Paris
at 11:43 14 Dec 2025
100% agree. Paris - like all the great European cities - once you know your way around, where to go and what to do is an absolutely magnificent city where you can eat, drink and be very merry on not very much. And it looks beautiful, too. I loved living there and go back regularly. Sorry if someone on this thread had a bad weekend there.
Likewise, people who don't or no longer live in London slagging it off can also go very far out to sea and then get in it. Leave London to us please: it's as good as it ever was, better in many ways. It's you. |
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Reply | What are people’s thoughts on the Club pulling out all the stops in January ?
at 11:11 12 Dec 2025
Last time we were in the PL, we came bottom, losing 24 games, winning eight. Not too many 96th minute winners in there. Getting promoted the year before incurred a world record fine, saddling the club with debt and player wages that we are only just now, eleven years later, emerging cautiously from.
A promotion season would be great. That summer of anticipation would be great. The actual season would probably be infuriating, expensive and, going on recent past experiences, mostly miserable.
I suppose you could have a Sunderland season, that looks good. But you could also have a Burnley season, which looks hard yards. Bearing how far ahead of us Burnley were last season when we played them, I think we need to build like Brentford did over a few seasons - and that probably means a few years bobbing around the upper midtable, flirting with the playoffs sometimes. Here for that, sounds better than the last decade.
This team got beaten by Coventry 7-1, by Ipswich 1-4, by Southampton 1-2...those are play-off/promotion teams. We're not there yet. |
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Reply | Julien Stephan - He is doing quite well !!!!
at 10:37 11 Dec 2025
Yes, obviously Venables.
Jim Smith also had big success with Derby.
But I was really pointing to managers this century! So...
Ian Holloway's success after leaving us has been notable (yes, Dave B, he was unsuccessful briefly at Millwall, Leicester, Grimsby - but two PL promotions mitigate that, as will Swindon if they go up having been bottom when he took over.)
Paulo Sousa has been very busy since leaving, but not a roaring success anywhere other than Switzerland.
Warncock got Palace promoted after us, but he's an outlier given how many he's managed.
QPR have a very good record for ending management careers, really. |
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Reply | Julien Stephan - He is doing quite well !!!!
at 08:53 11 Dec 2025
Ian Holloway didn't really struggle at other clubs after us overall, though - in fact he was probably more successful elsewhere. He took both Blackpool and Palace to the Premier League, incredible over-achievements (two Championship play-off finals with Blackpool is amazing work). He had a few misfires over a 25 year career but he's always come back more successfully elsewhere, eg Swindon now. Just a really, really good EFL manager. Less good at PR than Warnock, but just as successful in his own way.
Who are the other managers who've left QPR and then succeeded elsewhere? Struggling to think of them. Overall, I think it's more that QPR don't often appoint very good or suitable managers. In Cifuentes they got a good one and in Stephan they have another, one who looks to my eyes like a subtle upgrade. [Post edited 11 Dec 8:55]
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Reply | Julien Stephan - He is doing quite well !!!!
at 18:46 10 Dec 2025
"Er, anyone who doesn't want to watch Preston Knob End, Stoke, Blackburn, the list goes on and on."
Yes, much better watching Burnley, Sunderland, Bournemouth, the list goes on and on. But just for twice as much money.
£50 to watch QPR get pumped 6-0 at Stamford Bridge or Craven Cottage, remember those heady days? Going to Anfield and being filmed by Korean tourists throughout the game, which you lose without having a shot. And at the end of those 12, 24 months you get to come back down and start the trek up all over with a load of mercenary players you're can't shift. Magic.
Promotion to the PL doesn't look to have set Luton or Norwich up "for the next 100 years" (nor Burnley or Wolves for that matter), but I'm sure they enjoyed getting spanked every week then falling down the leagues.
I loved QPR in the top division in the 70s, 80s, 90s but I hated it in the PL last time round. Championship all day. Fck VAR, too. |
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Reply | Julien Stephan - He is doing quite well !!!!
at 17:48 10 Dec 2025
"Now we're in the top 6 though, is there any reason why we shouldn't stay there?"
If Stoke get a point at Ipswich tonight, or Bristol City beat Leicester and/or Hull beat Wrexham we'll be out of the top six by 10pm this evening. So, three good reasons right there and nothing we can do about it.
Doesn't really matter where you are in the table on December 10, though, as Southampton and probably Sheffield United will prove come May. Staying there until then is not really likely. Being there then is not impossible, though fairly improbable.
Who wants to go up anyway? |
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Reply | Kolli
at 14:42 10 Dec 2025
Did everyone notice that Kolli was on the pitch at the end of the game in club tracksuit, laughing with his team mates and applauding the fans, looking for all the world like an integral member of the squad who might be injured? |
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