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Sousa wasn't that fussed about Blackstock, he'd mostly had him on the bench anyway. Go back and look, he started four of the 12 games prior to his departure, mostly coming on 75mins or later.
Paladini hated Sousa, wasn't having him. Couldn't possibly speculate on the reasons why.
As Vine says, Paladini basically had his website chums kicking around on the side, pedalling his message in exchange for little bits and pieces on transfers that they could tease out as massive scoops. Lo and behold, straight after that Palace game, a post appears on WATRBs saying Sousa was outside the ground afterwards saying Cook and Helguson had bad knees and shouldn't have been signed if they'd been given proper medicals. That was the reason he got the sack, that was the "divulging confidential information", it was based on that message board post, nothing to do with the Blackstock guff, that was just a decent cover story.
When the guys who made Four Year Plan sold it to the BBC, the BBC lawyers pulled them on this bit. Said they weren't buying the Sousa departure line, wanted to make sure it was all legally sound before it could air on a public broadcaster. The makers had to go trawling back through old message board threads to make sure they were water tight on it before it could go on BBC2, because even how it plays out in the doc isn't how it played out. The key bit of that was Paladini sniping on the phone to Briatore about all these things Sousa had said, and turning the fans against them.
I called all this at the time. Paladini had tried it on with me, feeding me transfer stuff, and then a few weeks later asking whether I wouldn't mind putting a line or two out for him that he wanted to say but couldn't say himself or put on the offish. When we went on the pre-season in Sorrento I got to go up to the hotel, do interviews with the players and stuff, obviuously great for me and great for the site, but they were also pedalling this line that the players they'd left behind at home, including Bircham, weren't having Waddock or the new players and had been deliberately trying to injure Ward in training and stuff like that. I stuck it on the message board, what was I 19/20 at this time? Maybe. Just a kid. And Bircham saw it and, rightly, went apesht about it.
It was at that point that I sort of woke up a bit to what was happening - about six months after Wombat and Roley Birkin had quite forcefully warned me what was happening. And took a bit of a step back, interviews and access fine, but I'm not pedalling these dodgy off the record lines. Within a few months WATRBs started up, suddenly had all these transfer rumours, put it about that I was making a tonne of money off Rivals and they were real QPR fans running an independent message board. Everybody took it as a good laugh, all that "Ched's on the bus" and Danny Graham house in Sunbury guff, but it was sinister at times and fcking terrible for the club. As predicted, as soon as Paladini disappeared, these people evaporated too.
This post has been edited by an administrator
Would be interesting to try and get Delaney, Damion Stewart, Blackstock etc onto your interviews. I would also suggest Rowan but based on that podcast above it would be carnage
Although he seems to have been treated badly he does seem to say ' that's my story and someone else might say different'. Also there must be a reason most teams didn't want to keep him and he landed up playing for 27 different teams.
Pre-injury I thought Vine was a brilliant player for us, and then after that it all headed south for a number of reasons, some of which I've heard before and some are probably within this when I get to listen to it.
Clive, out of curiosity, and you're welcome to ignore this question if you wish, but have you ever spoken to Bircham or similar about those bits you put up when much younger since? I'd like to think they haven't held it against you, as Shaun Derry said on the Open All R's not too long back we all did stupid and naive stuff when we were much younger that we look back on and cringe.
Although he seems to have been treated badly he does seem to say ' that's my story and someone else might say different'. Also there must be a reason most teams didn't want to keep him and he landed up playing for 27 different teams.
Completely different player after his injury. Pre-injury was one of the best players in the Champ, no disrespect intended, but after his injury I thought he was rancid.
Completely different player after his injury. Pre-injury was one of the best players in the Champ, no disrespect intended, but after his injury I thought he was rancid.
Had a season at St Johnstone and was good, worked hard and very effective playing as a wide midfielder cutting in and joining the lone front man, Saints were a decent team with Michael Duberry and Jody Morris there at the time I think. Hibs signed him on a free but it was a bad time for us, with it seemed no good characters in the squad and players like Vine just didn't look as though they cared. He was a horrible player who just a year before was looking ready to step up and his move to Hibs should have given him the opportunity to go on higher but for whatever reason just didn't look as though he wanted it. I did give sympathy due to his injury history but by that time it was long in the past and he'd shown at St Johnstone if he was motivated he was capable of doing well at that level, doesn't strike me as a good professional. I have to agree with Brian and do wonder about all these pros spilling the dressing room secrets, it doesn't sit that well with me, I stopped listening to them after Clint Hill on Si Ferry's one, I want to hear professional footballers speak a bit more about football than getting apprentices running about naked and drinking cultures. Did go down in my estimation I have to admit but realise I'm being a bit precious too!
Found him to be a complete and utter bell end I’m not surprised Pickens did him in , imagine having to put up with Vines “Bantz” everyday Yeah he was a good player for us but everywhere he has been he has been a pain in the arse Complete and utter tool summed up by the limo story
And Bowles is onside, Swinburne has come rushing out of his goal , what can Bowles do here , onto the left foot no, on to the right foot
That’s there that’s two, and that’s Bowles
Brian Moore
Thought Vine was a great player for us when he signed but pretty much went down after injuries etc. Never ever liked Paladini but can’t deny he did help us survive by finding Falv and Bernie. Clive would you put your opinions to one side and interview him after all this time ? I bet it would be explosive!
Found him to be a complete and utter bell end I’m not surprised Pickens did him in , imagine having to put up with Vines “Bantz” everyday Yeah he was a good player for us but everywhere he has been he has been a pain in the arse Complete and utter tool summed up by the limo story
Found him to be a complete and utter bell end I’m not surprised Pickens did him in , imagine having to put up with Vines “Bantz” everyday Yeah he was a good player for us but everywhere he has been he has been a pain in the arse Complete and utter tool summed up by the limo story
Don't disagree that he is a bit of a prat much like a lot of footballers but he was treated really poorly by QPR and there really was no need. Thankfully the club seem very different now
Sousa wasn't that fussed about Blackstock, he'd mostly had him on the bench anyway. Go back and look, he started four of the 12 games prior to his departure, mostly coming on 75mins or later.
Paladini hated Sousa, wasn't having him. Couldn't possibly speculate on the reasons why.
As Vine says, Paladini basically had his website chums kicking around on the side, pedalling his message in exchange for little bits and pieces on transfers that they could tease out as massive scoops. Lo and behold, straight after that Palace game, a post appears on WATRBs saying Sousa was outside the ground afterwards saying Cook and Helguson had bad knees and shouldn't have been signed if they'd been given proper medicals. That was the reason he got the sack, that was the "divulging confidential information", it was based on that message board post, nothing to do with the Blackstock guff, that was just a decent cover story.
When the guys who made Four Year Plan sold it to the BBC, the BBC lawyers pulled them on this bit. Said they weren't buying the Sousa departure line, wanted to make sure it was all legally sound before it could air on a public broadcaster. The makers had to go trawling back through old message board threads to make sure they were water tight on it before it could go on BBC2, because even how it plays out in the doc isn't how it played out. The key bit of that was Paladini sniping on the phone to Briatore about all these things Sousa had said, and turning the fans against them.
I called all this at the time. Paladini had tried it on with me, feeding me transfer stuff, and then a few weeks later asking whether I wouldn't mind putting a line or two out for him that he wanted to say but couldn't say himself or put on the offish. When we went on the pre-season in Sorrento I got to go up to the hotel, do interviews with the players and stuff, obviuously great for me and great for the site, but they were also pedalling this line that the players they'd left behind at home, including Bircham, weren't having Waddock or the new players and had been deliberately trying to injure Ward in training and stuff like that. I stuck it on the message board, what was I 19/20 at this time? Maybe. Just a kid. And Bircham saw it and, rightly, went apesht about it.
It was at that point that I sort of woke up a bit to what was happening - about six months after Wombat and Roley Birkin had quite forcefully warned me what was happening. And took a bit of a step back, interviews and access fine, but I'm not pedalling these dodgy off the record lines. Within a few months WATRBs started up, suddenly had all these transfer rumours, put it about that I was making a tonne of money off Rivals and they were real QPR fans running an independent message board. Everybody took it as a good laugh, all that "Ched's on the bus" and Danny Graham house in Sunbury guff, but it was sinister at times and fcking terrible for the club. As predicted, as soon as Paladini disappeared, these people evaporated too.
This post has been edited by an administrator
As much as some of us like to moan about the current regime, the Paladini/Briatore era was extremely toxic even if it did, bizarrely, end in promotion.
Your right that was gross but at least that wasn’t on a general member of the public trying to earn a decent crust
And Bowles is onside, Swinburne has come rushing out of his goal , what can Bowles do here , onto the left foot no, on to the right foot
That’s there that’s two, and that’s Bowles
Brian Moore
Found him to be a complete and utter bell end I’m not surprised Pickens did him in , imagine having to put up with Vines “Bantz” everyday Yeah he was a good player for us but everywhere he has been he has been a pain in the arse Complete and utter tool summed up by the limo story
Have to say, thought Vine was a superb player before his injury, great for us and a great signing, and clearly treated appallingly by QPR both the treatement of his injury and everything since, but, yeh, not my sort of person at all and I can see why somebody eventually got the red mist and tried to do him.
Have to say, thought Vine was a superb player before his injury, great for us and a great signing, and clearly treated appallingly by QPR both the treatement of his injury and everything since, but, yeh, not my sort of person at all and I can see why somebody eventually got the red mist and tried to do him.
Don’t get me wrong he was great for us when he came in and linked up well with Hogan and big Dave , would have been interesting to see if we would have signed Adel if he had remained fit , we know the whole club was a mess with tango & cash running it but there’s a reason this bloke has had nearly 30 clubs and remains disliked in football
And Bowles is onside, Swinburne has come rushing out of his goal , what can Bowles do here , onto the left foot no, on to the right foot
That’s there that’s two, and that’s Bowles
Brian Moore
I liked Vine when he first signed and thought he was very good prior to the injury
As others have said he’s had more clubs than Tiger Woods and it seems he’s always wronged. I think being at Rangers at that time must have been a very strange environment for all but I do think there are two sides to every story
Interesting his take on Paladini and what Clive was saying earlier
I met Paladini once. Was a Friday afternoon and I’d been for a couple of lunchtime beers with work colleagues and decided to pop in the bookies to pick up a slip to study on the train home for my weekend Acca it was a Coral I think near Berkeley Square where I worked.
Walk in and there is maybe3-4 people and I see this bloke and think “ that’s Paladini” so as I’m sorting out what slip I’m picking up I make a throw away comment like “Come on you R’s Gianni”
He is very amiable asks if I’m a fan and I say yeah, season ticket holder etc. The week prior to this we’d lost 2-1 away at Sheffield United I think, would’ve been 2007/8 time and I think Lee Camp had maybe made a mistake or maybe got exposed on something.
Anyway conversation went something like
GP Did you see the game on Saturday PBlock I saw highlights didn’t go but yeah not the best disappointing GP The Goalkeeper is f*****g useless PBlock Well he might have made a mistake but he’s been decent I like Camp everyone has a bad game from time to time but he’ll be sound GP He’s a useless C@&t
Now bearing in mind I’d never met him had been speaking to him for two minutes and he’s slagging off the clubs goalkeeper I thought the guy was unprofessional at best
I liked Vine when he first signed and thought he was very good prior to the injury
As others have said he’s had more clubs than Tiger Woods and it seems he’s always wronged. I think being at Rangers at that time must have been a very strange environment for all but I do think there are two sides to every story
Interesting his take on Paladini and what Clive was saying earlier
I met Paladini once. Was a Friday afternoon and I’d been for a couple of lunchtime beers with work colleagues and decided to pop in the bookies to pick up a slip to study on the train home for my weekend Acca it was a Coral I think near Berkeley Square where I worked.
Walk in and there is maybe3-4 people and I see this bloke and think “ that’s Paladini” so as I’m sorting out what slip I’m picking up I make a throw away comment like “Come on you R’s Gianni”
He is very amiable asks if I’m a fan and I say yeah, season ticket holder etc. The week prior to this we’d lost 2-1 away at Sheffield United I think, would’ve been 2007/8 time and I think Lee Camp had maybe made a mistake or maybe got exposed on something.
Anyway conversation went something like
GP Did you see the game on Saturday PBlock I saw highlights didn’t go but yeah not the best disappointing GP The Goalkeeper is f*****g useless PBlock Well he might have made a mistake but he’s been decent I like Camp everyone has a bad game from time to time but he’ll be sound GP He’s a useless C@&t
Now bearing in mind I’d never met him had been speaking to him for two minutes and he’s slagging off the clubs goalkeeper I thought the guy was unprofessional at best
I still the Camp was alright for us too
There was a unconfirmed rumour that Camp slept with his daughter, and another unconfirmed rumour that the story was fabricated so they could force Camp out.
There was a unconfirmed rumour that Camp slept with his daughter, and another unconfirmed rumour that the story was fabricated so they could force Camp out.
Again, another story that suited the agenda.
They signed Cerny, they paid A LOT OF FCKING MONEY to sign Cerny, but we already had Camp. Dowie came in, told Camp he was the number one until he did something to change that, and Cerny would be number two. A week before the start of the season we play Chievo in a friendly, night before the game Briatore leans on Dowie (before he's even had a game as manager) and says we're not paying Cerny £20k+ a week to sit on the bench, you pick Cerny. We play Chievo, Cerny plays. At 5pm the previous day Camp was starting that game, by the time me and his old man get to Loftus Road Saturday morning he's benched. Camp comes on for the last ten minutes, Camp gives his dad a big shoulder shrug in the A block at full time.
Cerny then starts v Barnsley opening day, it doesn't go well, the crowd start chanting Lee Camp's name after ten minutes, pretty harsh and unforgiveable but the crowd knew what was going on there. A goalkeeper who'd done well for us and was well liked had been bombed out for a big name, big money player signed through favoured agents. Cerny did well, good goalkeeper, away at Man Utd one of the best GKing displays you'll see, but again it wasn't right how it was done and so stories needed to be concocted. And so these stories that Camp was copping off with Briatore's wife, Paladini's daughter, trying it on at the POTY dinner started doing the rounds. None of this true. Camp had a wife, very damaging, but it suited the rhetoric, so it was pedalled.
They signed Cerny, they paid A LOT OF FCKING MONEY to sign Cerny, but we already had Camp. Dowie came in, told Camp he was the number one until he did something to change that, and Cerny would be number two. A week before the start of the season we play Chievo in a friendly, night before the game Briatore leans on Dowie (before he's even had a game as manager) and says we're not paying Cerny £20k+ a week to sit on the bench, you pick Cerny. We play Chievo, Cerny plays. At 5pm the previous day Camp was starting that game, by the time me and his old man get to Loftus Road Saturday morning he's benched. Camp comes on for the last ten minutes, Camp gives his dad a big shoulder shrug in the A block at full time.
Cerny then starts v Barnsley opening day, it doesn't go well, the crowd start chanting Lee Camp's name after ten minutes, pretty harsh and unforgiveable but the crowd knew what was going on there. A goalkeeper who'd done well for us and was well liked had been bombed out for a big name, big money player signed through favoured agents. Cerny did well, good goalkeeper, away at Man Utd one of the best GKing displays you'll see, but again it wasn't right how it was done and so stories needed to be concocted. And so these stories that Camp was copping off with Briatore's wife, Paladini's daughter, trying it on at the POTY dinner started doing the rounds. None of this true. Camp had a wife, very damaging, but it suited the rhetoric, so it was pedalled.
This post has been edited by an administrator
f'ck me, I might stop reading this thread. Like many, I imagine, i maybe wouldn't want to spend any time with Vine, but his treatment by the club sounds terrible. And now that about Lee Camp, a player I always liked. Shit like that can stick, those flinging it need a slap. Horrible for him an his family. Embarrassed for my club, not often I can say that.
If you remember, they were sociopaths. They would come on here and say absolute shit and just get into it with everyone. It was like they weren't right in the head. I never went to their website coz they sickened me.
Met Jones once, he was pointed out to me outside the Adelaide, I managed a polite 'alright' and left it that, the bloke was an arse on this MB. QBP was pointed out to me outside Vicarage Road on the way to a Watford game he had a little gang of his weasels with him he was another arse and (IMO) a nasty piece of work. They were made for each other.
My Father had a profound influence on me, he was a lunatic.
went on holiday to scotland to coincide with our friendly games away at Falkirk & Kilmarnock.
Got to Killie early and hung around the players entrance as my yong boys wanted to get photos, autographs.
We are standing near the steps of the team bus getting photos shaking hands with the players, me standing back a bit so my boys can get to who they want to see. Paladini who I have never met sidles up to me and asks quite reasonably how come we were there etc quite normal then says to me, next week we are going to be signing a future superstar from Real Madrid, I'm quite surprised he's telling me this. So I asked who was this player, he says he cannot say then walks off.
Following weeks we sign Danny Pajero but why start to tell me and wind me up
They signed Cerny, they paid A LOT OF FCKING MONEY to sign Cerny, but we already had Camp. Dowie came in, told Camp he was the number one until he did something to change that, and Cerny would be number two. A week before the start of the season we play Chievo in a friendly, night before the game Briatore leans on Dowie (before he's even had a game as manager) and says we're not paying Cerny £20k+ a week to sit on the bench, you pick Cerny. We play Chievo, Cerny plays. At 5pm the previous day Camp was starting that game, by the time me and his old man get to Loftus Road Saturday morning he's benched. Camp comes on for the last ten minutes, Camp gives his dad a big shoulder shrug in the A block at full time.
Cerny then starts v Barnsley opening day, it doesn't go well, the crowd start chanting Lee Camp's name after ten minutes, pretty harsh and unforgiveable but the crowd knew what was going on there. A goalkeeper who'd done well for us and was well liked had been bombed out for a big name, big money player signed through favoured agents. Cerny did well, good goalkeeper, away at Man Utd one of the best GKing displays you'll see, but again it wasn't right how it was done and so stories needed to be concocted. And so these stories that Camp was copping off with Briatore's wife, Paladini's daughter, trying it on at the POTY dinner started doing the rounds. None of this true. Camp had a wife, very damaging, but it suited the rhetoric, so it was pedalled.
This post has been edited by an administrator
Paladini and his merry band of brown nosers were wrong ‘uns from the off. I remember at Cov away under Dowie (which I think Swiss gave me a lift up to) getting into an argument with someone in the away end about Paladini and Briatore. I cannot understand how anyone defended them at the time. It was clear there were narcissists, if not psychopaths, and not good for QPR.
We were promoted in spite of them, thanks to Warnock and Amit Bhatia.
Have absolutely no time for this narrative that Paladini was a well meaning fool. He wasn’t. He was a horrible, lying, manipulative, narcissist. As were some of those “fans” he had kneeling at his feet. Nowhere to be seen now are they...
went on holiday to scotland to coincide with our friendly games away at Falkirk & Kilmarnock.
Got to Killie early and hung around the players entrance as my yong boys wanted to get photos, autographs.
We are standing near the steps of the team bus getting photos shaking hands with the players, me standing back a bit so my boys can get to who they want to see. Paladini who I have never met sidles up to me and asks quite reasonably how come we were there etc quite normal then says to me, next week we are going to be signing a future superstar from Real Madrid, I'm quite surprised he's telling me this. So I asked who was this player, he says he cannot say then walks off.
Following weeks we sign Danny Pajero but why start to tell me and wind me up
"but why start to tell me and wind me up" - because, sadly, people get a kick out of that sort of stuff.
Surely he shouldn't even be siding up to people he doesn't know are start telling them internal company matters? It's unprofessional at best and probably contravening business policy at worst.
I wouldn't, for example, be allowed to tell anyone if my company has just made a big business decision. In fact, I knew last year (just a few days before it was publicly announced) that we had acquired the publishing rights to Bob Dylan's entire catalogue. had I put that on facebook before it was made public I would have been sacked. Simple as.
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