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I think we're very much in a lost decade for QPR where we've just been the same middling nonsense for 10 years now and so people are getting very tired of it very quickly when we go on yet another bad run.
Although I don't want us to be relegated, and don't think we'd make a good fist of it if we did, I think if we'd yo-yo'd between League One and the Championship a couple of times over the past 5 years, but were in the league position we're in now, people would be happier.
But instead its just been the same drudgery in the same league with the same fixtures with the same teams for 10 years now and it is tiresome.
Thinking about it, every decade since the 1960s has had what are now memorable years for the club and its history.
- 1966 - 1968, probably to 1969 with the club's first taste of top flight football even if it did go very badly - 1972ish - 1977ish - pretty much *the* golden era - 1982 - 1986ish - 1993 - 1995 - granted the rest of the 90s were pretty ropey! Although 99-00 gave us a good year. - Post admin 2001-2005 was on the whole a great era for the club, certainly 2003 onwards although the 2001-02 recovery from oblivion had its good times. - 2010-11 & 2013-14 with two promotion campaigns, even if the Redknapp one was a bit with your fingers over your nose.
What has the 2020s given us? The best season we ended up having overall was the one where none of us were allowed to go, and even then only the second half of it was decent.
The amateur running world is awash with wannabe influencers (or runfluencers, if you will) that are all out there all the time inventing fake race results/paces, begging manufacturers for brand ambassadorships, and boasting to their followers, whilst doing absolutely nothing whatsoever to promote the actual sport, or help administer it, or help actually run anything or organise anything in any shape or form. Really grinds my gears!
Its obviously impossible for us to know for sure, and its all mate-of-a-mate-of-a-mate stuff but I was hearing whispers outside of LR on Saturday that the Obikwu absence has more to it than just an injury.
Friendlies in the Middle East will be out of the question whilst everyone's lobbing missiles at each other. No doubt lots of summer holidays to Dubai being cancelled right now too!
I wonder what contingencies are in place for the costs of running these facilities though if the first team dips out of the top two tiers of football.
Obviously no-one knows for sure, but there's lots of rumour and conjecture up here in Leicestershire that activity at LCFC's swanky new Cat 1 facility will have to be massively wound down if they end up going to League One because its costing £15m+ per year to run.
Bizarrely, they still have ownership of and are using the old training ground in the city too, which feels a bit unnecessary, and whether thats part of that £15m who knows...
Saturday was every bit as annoyingly disappointing as I felt it was going to be in advance, and this Sunday fills me with dread too.
I have a lot of sympathy for Stephan in the end, he knows the starting 11 as a whole is nowhere near Championship level but when he's got 10-12 of his stronger squad members sat in the stands every week what more can he do?
Boy Wonder is not a Board member and if the Board are doing their job properly they will over-rule come the summer and get things on the Exec/conditioning side. I have little faith in the Board doing their job properly however...
In September he looked like he might easily get to 15-20+ this year. Obviously not quite gone like that, but as a striker and a striking presence he is a million times better than anything we've had in recent seasons. Armstrong, Celar, Dykes, Frey, all of them nowhere near as good as Kone and Burrell have been.
The chip yesterday he'd have been better off smashing through like he did at Bristol City. Didn't get to him though and his eventual goal was a real fine finish.
Him & Burrell been real pluses this year.
Poor Marti must have been looking at them two when we tore Leicester a new one thinking "why the hell didn't I get to work with these two?!"
Disappointed Canada lost in the ice hockey today but it was a magnificent game. The US keeper deserves the Freedom Medal after that display, Canada only have themselves to blame really, they had so many shots and missed so many chances compared to the Americans.
Regarding profit on player disposals its always worth remembering accounting profit and cash profit are not one and the same thing.
To give a simple example:-
Robbie Clogger is signed for £6m on a 3 year deal. After 2 years of him clogging, the club realises he's crap and sells him for £3m.
On a cash level - £3m loss.
On an accounting level - £1m profit.
The £6m transfer fee is spread over 3 years for his contract - so £2m of cost is booked in year 1, £2m of cost booked in year 2, so his carrying asset value at the end of year 2 is £2m.
So when we sell him for £3m, we now have a £1m profit to recognise in year 3.
All standard accounting stuff but does trip people up.
Regarding wages and budgets - I would note I would expect us to always have a London-weighting factor to our wage bill which will inevitably cost us more than clubs in areas with much lower cost of living. London can be pricey even for footballers I am sure!
And I'm sure on an admin side, albeit much lower levels, our club shop manager earns more than the club shop manager for Preston etc, all because London is more expensive to operate in to start with.
Interesting note that Mrs Reuben now has a charge over our training ground, being paid at 8% per annum.
Not unusual to have a big asset like that mortgaged but an interesting tidbit nonetheless.
Also notes that including the Eze sell on, our cash outflow for post year-end player trading is still an outflow, not an inflow. The accounting treatment won't work like that though so it will be interesting to see in 12 months time how it did play out.
Tim Cahill had a very good career in the top flight.
Generally seem to be solid players in England in the second tier, Mass Luongo much maligned (and to be fair never was a solid national team starter) but he's done OK for himself in tiers 2/3 for most of his career.
None of us obviously have a clue about what players are and aren't paid, but this just highlights the madness of the footballing world.
If it were correct, another way to put it is Kealey Adamson is paid £156,000 a year to be a player in our development squad and occasionally turn up for a bench appearance in the first team.
Madness. I hope he is paid absolutely nowhere near that. That is more than executive directors will be paid, without their bonuses mind, in companies that are bigger than QPR FC when we take company size metrics into account. And we all wonder why football clubs are money blackholes?
It seemed because it was Valentine's Day Wham were getting a lot of plays, and I can only assume someone stuck Wham's Greatest Hits on then walked away. Bizarre.
And given other half time antics...many congratulations to the young couple getting engaged and I hope you have a long happy life together but...I really hate public proposals.
2pm stood outside SAR and the handful of people are all getting frisked going in. These people are probably the least likely to be rabble rousers.
At 2.30pm on Ellerslie when we went in it is of course impossible to frisk everyone because there's hundreds of people going in at once, but stewards were still pulling as many as they could aside.
Why?! It's annoying enough being treated like a criminal at away games, don't need it at home as well!
I've got a whole playlist on Spotify I fondly call my "Sporting Nerd" playlist - music heard from all sporting venues I've been to over the years, or takes me back to certain places, stuff from Olympic Games...there's all sorts. I like to play it on my way to games or when I'm off to a running race, helps get me the feels.
I'll go left field for now and go with this and explain why...
January 2011, freezing cold Saturday. Burnley v QPR. I've driven up from Northamptonshire as I still lived at home on my own, got there early, parked up in that cricket ground behind the goal, went in pretty much when the gates opened.
Stood in that away end behind the goal, no fkr there at that point, freezing cold, raining, this comes on over the tannoy. Couldn't get any further from California that day than cold, rainy Burnley on a January Saturday.
Whenever I hear it now it takes me back to Turf Moor in my little brain.
Anstey's ground is tiny and floods a lot so in the unlikely event we drew them away in a cup it would almost certainly be moved elsewhere. Leicester being the obvious option, or Hinckley for a more standard non-league ground.
Ex-Leicester goalkeeper Conrad Logan is manager there and I understand he has a lot of pull and contacts in the ex-pro scene so is able to pull senior players in on an ad-hoc basis when they need it. David Nugent is coaching there too and plays the odd game, they had Martyn Waghorn for a short period earlier in the year.
Beat Hartlepool United away in the FA Trophy too this year which was the biggest win in their history.
I think any club with a gambling sponsor has had it removed for the stickers.
I've been trying to collect, although I feel I'm quite behind and need to get a shift on before shops stop selling them toward the end of the year. Moving house in December with a 6 month old baby caused a bit of stress, to put it lightly...
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