 | News
Comment | Anatomy of a season – Report
at 16:36:00
In terms of vibe reminded me of the 2-2 against Wolves in 97 (?). IIRC Alex Ferguson described the R's first the best he had seen that season. This wasn't quite that but given Derby were fighting for their lives wholly creditable. Whether Chair and Madsen need minutes or not the use of subs was completely ludicrous and a point being the most we could hope for once Kone was withdrawn.
The strange thing about Saturday is that the season seems to have passed in a relatively uneventful flash. Seems only five minutes ago that I was (once again) regretting spending time and money on pre season friendlies rather in a pub garden.
So I have got to May not really that bothered if the head coach stays or goes (though some continuity would be nice) and not bothered who we sell (I like this squad but don't feel especially committed to any individuals being held to contracts if the price is right).
So summer of 95 it very much isn't and there is a deadening impact to accepting one's station. That's what I am feeling I guess and I am still someone who still complains about "VJ Day" and Mark Kennedy not being offered all the tea in China to be John The Baptist to Taarabt 's Jesus. On one level it takes the pressure off the whole enterprise but without pressure where are we actually going with this? |
| News
Comment | 100 and out – Preview
at 12:10:58
Excellent piece of writing that. Sums it up for me. My favourite players over the years have on the whole been more the back-line True Grit types rather than the out and out entertainers. Pav being a classic example of a player I loved watching huff and puff up and down the wing with all the grace and ease of a heavily weighted, odds-on favourite in the later stages of a deep mid-winter Windsor handicap. Similarly, Marc Pugh was chronically under rated. Wasn't around long enough to have his own song but by goodness we missed him when he was allowed to leave. One of those engine room guys that set the rhythm. A Charlie Watts kind of a player at a club whose fan base often seems far happier with the Keith Moon types. Cook is definitely in the former category, one of those classic you don't know what you have got until it has gone players (I would put mid 90s Holloway in that category), and I dearly hope the rumour of a coaching gig comes together. If we are intent on developing talent and recruiting from within (we are, aren't we?) then on the face of it he's got real management potential. Carries himself like someone who gets people but can dish it out when needs must. Perfect for the most mid of mid table clubs. |
| News
Comment | QPR thrashed, Boro run riot, night follows day, bear seen heading for wood – Report
at 16:44:33
The blue sky optimist in me wants to believe they phoned that one in with an eye on taking a point on Wednesday (a stodgy, jammy 0-0 feels very likely though would feel more likely with Nardi in goal tbh) and as many as 3 at Leicester.
I suspect the (waning) powers that be figure that Bristol, Derby and Watford will all be out of contention by the time we play them and our 12 point cushion will get padded along the way. That's no way to run a sports-entertainment-franchise though apparently it kind of is. |
| News
Comment | Five-star Saints whitewash wretched Rangers – Report
at 00:17:47
That's a great report. Spot-on across the board.
I have been a season ticket holder since 1995-96. How many of the subsequent 30 seasons would you rate as being good to very good?
I am thinking half a dozen at a pinch. Two under Warbs (?), one under Francis, two (maybe three) under Holloway, one under Warnock.
However glorious the finale I simply can't count the Redknapp / Austin season as a good one. Other than the play-offs it was a horrible watch at the best of times and the end result was the sporting equivalent of a record company buying a single into the charts and it dropping out again the following week.
Even that 1996 relegation season qualifies for my top ten. Half a dozen narrow defeats and a bunch of unfortunate score draws at home combined with a scandalously negligent ownership who thought the answer to a misfiring attack was to sell Bradley Allen going into the run in and not replace him. Our general uselessness away from home could have been easily survived had the home form been just a smidge less deficient.
That 1996 team at least made a fist of it, despite the appalling transfer business, built around a solid, tenacious but creatively challenged fulcrum of Holloway and Barker (with occasionally useful input from Wilkins and Quashie) . Relegation was horrible but we went down with hope and I am not sure that team was ever truly embarrassed in the ways that you describe in your report. Even then fans stayed away. Sell outs and near sell outs against the bigger clubs generally relied on there being a lot of away fans sat in SA Road.
That was a club sold short by its own custodians knowing that Chris Wright was itching to give them his money regardless as to which division they were going to be in come August. To my mind we've never fully recovered. We would have done but two literally golden opportunities were thoroughly squandered, good players were sold on the cheap, terrible ones bought for serious money and bundles of cash thrown at big names at (or really beyond) the end of their careers. This was not the case in one or two years but multiple years under different owners and with enough managers / head coaches hired and fired along the way to fill a jury box twice over.
So the fact that I still think of that 95-96 season as being "good" tells its own tale. The rot set in right there and arguably the drastic surgery required is still ahead of us thirty years on. |
| News
Comment | Four minutes of madness – Report
at 10:08:48
That was indeed horrible and your report is far more balanced than my mood was over the weekend.
That was arguably the worst end to a home game since the Cantona equaliser. That was two vital points dropped and more the result of unconscionable officiating than individual stupidity. This was three, though, to be fair, while Mbengue was idiotic the ref had already laid the table so there is a parallel of sorts. The Fabregas winner was catastrophic (if expertly taken) and for the most part was entirely self-inflicted but this felt far worse.
Not that it will matter in the final analysis as we wont be joining the relegation scuffle for a change and the play offs remain something of a pipe dream but the manner of it says something about the mental and physical resilience of yet another QPR squad. And we've been saying that about more or less every squad since Holloway got the chop, if not before.
Anyway ..... I am assuming that, Lazarus-like recoveries not withstanding, the team for Saturday more or less picks itself along these lines Hamer, Dunne, Edwards, Cook , Norrington-Davies, Saito, Hayden (or Field), Madsen, Kolli , Vale and Kone. |
| News
Comment | Town’s four-star Halloween fright night leaves Rangers reeling – Report
at 08:21:31
I assume the aim is to pick up an average of around 1.6 points per game in order to be in contention for the shallow end of the top six.
Next block of 12 through to NYD? I am figuring a spread of 13 to 15 points. Which means we will read a lot more reports like this one where the journalism is immeasurably better than the performance.
To be sat somewhere between 10th to 14th on NYD and 10 points back from whoever is in 6 would give the board an interesting choice.
I really hope they don't spend more of the Eze money and we use the last half of the season as a long run up to 2025-26 with a lot of rotation and maybe giving 5-3-2 more of a go, I am happy to pay to watch that if the effort is there. |
| News
Comment | A few of my favourite things – Report
at 08:38:18
Great report, given that both teams seemed to have started off pretty happy with the idea of ending the game 1-1 and conspired to make it so. The Bannan section is spot-on.
There are two oppo outfield performances I witnessed that I would like to stand next to Bannan's. Both are from what is for most people of a certain age going to be their least favourite period of watching the Rs,
There were brief ten game stretches of very decent performances from what was in essence a group of broken toys that no one else would give house room to (autumn of 99 and spring of 00 spring to mind) but overall we were witnessing the kind of grim that makes more recent humiliations seem over-flowing with good omens.
If you can watch a football club embarrass itself through both laced fingers and gritted teeth then that pretty much sums up how those years felt. By the time we got to the Stockport humiliation I just wanted all concerned to be put out of their misery, myself included.
Anyway ..... the clear winner for me by a country mile is Lomana Lua Lua's cup hat trick for Colchester in 2000. The problem with that performance is that there were hardly any of us there to actually witness it. If it wasn't the lowest home turn-out for a competitive game in the modern era then it must be down there.
I also remember a game from the spring of 1999 when Bradford City came to Loftus Road and won 3-1. Stuart McCall ran that game, in true Barry B fashion, without either breaking into more than a trot or, as it seemed at the time, without actually ever leaving the centre circle. Never laid a glove on him. |
| News
Comment | Familiar learnings and fresh frustrations as QPR lose at Watford – Report
at 09:55:49
Excellent report, as always.
As 2-1 losses on the road go not the worst but the travelling fan reaction reminded me of another, robustly attended 2-1 defeat at Watford back in the Harford, VInnie, Sheron era. So many of us went up for that one I am not sure I got in the ground until 20 minutes into the first half. That was a core fan base far more primed for revolt and while it was no surprise when the "one Gerry Francis" chant went up that was about as helpful as "lino you're a a chorus or two of ****" when it comes to giving the team a gee-up.
That was 1998 and game 17 of a winless run in the league stretching back IIRC to the 5-0 'Boro game the previous March (pre "VJ Day", Mark Kennedy playing his last game yet still potentially sign-able etc). This under an at-best semi-detached management team whose public face makes Neil Critchley look like Bill Shankley at his more fearsome. Still, the vibe was not dissimilar.
Anyway, point being we might be getting ahead of ourselves here and in danger of an uncharacteristic collective head-loss given that we sat / stood through months of the Ainsworth debacle without barely raising an eyebrow.
Speaking of detachment and raised eyebrows the manager's tone is perhaps a bit too emotionally disengaged and ironical in tone for his own good. I get not wanting to scare the passengers (the cabin crew aren't crying so all's well, probably) but those pre and post match interviews remind of the ironic detachment of serial podcasters Julien Laurens and Philippe Auclair. Maybe something gets lost / added in translation but I am in no hurry to find out what the French equivalent of "shit but local" might be. |
| News
Comment | Sun sets on QPR’s winning run as Rohl triumphs once more – Report
at 01:02:14
There are days when the visitors have your number (for whatever reason) and you should just take the point and live to fight another day. Dark arts or no dark arts I would have gone home pretty happy had we choked the game to death and bagged a 0-0 with a clear week to prepare for MIllwall. Love Marti but I wonder sometimes if he is too keen to please us.
That said looking down the subs list he only had Colback available as someone reliable to help shut-up shop in midfield and that was with as many three players looking in need of being subbed off (though none of those three were named Varane in my book).
Perhaps going for a win after 70 minutes was the only logical option available. Makes the enigma that is Madsen even more frustrating. I still think we miss the Marc Pugh type all-rounder who could reliably play any of the midfield positions and look pretty comfortable. There was a Wilkins like quality to him that I really liked. He wasn't a player easily replaced in the aggregate and never has been.
And, speaking of enigmas, what on earth has happened to Dixon-Bonner if he is fit and can't make the bench ahead of Madsen and Ashby? |
| News
Comment | Bonfire of the vanities – Report
at 00:13:35
The string of Seny saves and the injury list masked that performance for a fair few sat around us In NU but I can't get beyond the idea that Marti wants out and is putting teams on the park to get himself back out the door and on the market asap.
This perhaps with one eye on the Swedish league having just one game to go until their close season and presumably soon to be not short of fresh managerial job opportunities.
We'll get a better idea tomorrow.
Either he will put out a side emboldened by a bunch willing young uns and they come away from Leeds with an unlikely point or three (or at least a degree of credit for the effort in a close run defeat) OR there is a lot more of what ever this was and we will be on the wrong end of something monumentally embarrassing more akin to an existential threat than three points dropped on the road. The sort of game where every opposing player discovers their inner Lua Lua and they collectively send us spiralling into the EFL equivalent of a black hole.
Solutions are neither obvious nor plentiful but we need some people making decisions who maybe want to be an Art Howe or even a Grady more than they want to be Billy or Pete beating the odds with a fluky run of games while laughing at the grown ups and their old fashioned ways.
How about Warburton (who definitely has Art Howe vibes) back as DOF and caretaker by December with Hayden and a couple of other Championship stalwarts in tow to stiffen the spine?
Much as I like Marti's suave Euro sheen and its promise (if not the actuality) of football that actually meets the club's self-image, that wouldn't be the worst thing. Should probably have been the first thing, |
| News
Comment | Right man. Right time? – Column
at 08:17:05
This latest change has to break that mould. Has to. We have to be able to wave this bloke off to Brighton or Palace or where ever in two or three years time and feel really good about it. We need a manager to be what Eze was and is .
When was the last time was that a manager left here, used the experience with Rangers as a springboard and truly improved both himself and his subsequent clubs?
Warnock has saved a few in that Red Adair role since he left us but is he a better manager? Are the clubs he saved for one season actually better in the long term? No, our last graduate who went on to shine is El Tel isn't it? 40 years. That has to change. Almost everyone else is a cautionary tale. We broke them or they broke us.
One other thing that occurred to me listening once again to that long interview with CIfuentes from a couple of years back is that with his system Dozzell wouldn't have needed or even felt the need to run 80 yards to win the ball back. Players know what the chatter around them is like and there was a man with a good goal under his belt who wanted to prove that also he has some dog in him. That is never going to be his strong point.
Per Clive's acute comment that Dozzell (and Field) should be scoring 5 or 6 of those goals a year, Dozzell is what he is and if what he is is a C list Juan Riquelme than that is what needs building on. What is the point of encouraging him or Chair to behave like a pound shop David Batty? Running around a lot of the time is about stats and pleasing the fans who sit near the pitch, have a poor view in terms of the wider context of the game and really like to see people chasing lost causes.
I certainly think Andre can be helped to bring that C rating up to a B- at least. What has happened with him the last nine months kind of reminds me of how Gerry treated Paul Murray. Another upright elegant player who arguably deserved better and whose career went sideways as a result. Dozzell is a long way from being the Paul Murray that was a bright spot in 96-97 but he could be that player for sure.
I also loved the comment about successful strikers being all about where to arrive and when to arrive in the penalty box. Easy to blame the quality of our crossing but Dykes' movement is chronic. Being a penalty box striker isn't really Dykes' role with Scotland which is more about winning and holding the ball between half way and the opposition penalty area and bringing other players into the game. He currently looks a better player when not burdened with the responsibility to be the main goal scorer. That has to change too.
Me, I am banking on this chap being a teacher, on him getting the most out of Field and our wing backs and on Dykes, Willock, Chair and Dozzell all learning a lot and learning it fast. |
| News
Comment | How Ainsworth’s dream job turned into his, and our, worst nightmare – Column
at 09:22:18
That pretty much sums it up doesn't it.
Ainsworth was like an NCO in Zulu trying to get his men through a difficult day in the face of superior forces on guts and a fairly shonky defensive plan. His side were occasionally resolute but largely either useless, moronic or, on a rare good day, simply dead lucky.
I used to think that McLaren's one decent spell in change was like watching a series of 3rd Round FA Cup ties with Rangers cast as the Southern or Isthmian League underdog. A likeable club riding their luck all the way to a feature on Grandstand, tabloid pictures of a bunch of middle aged semi-fit cloggers drinking beer in the bath and a 4th round game against an old money First Division giant complete with Motty perched in the scaffolding gantry. 15 minutes of fame with some nice photos and a big name pennant in the club house the most lasting reward.
Ainsworth's side was essentially akin to the self same Southern League side - not the one who claimed a brief glimmer of limelight with a rare giant-killing but the same rabble playing on the Tuesday night after their big day out, inevitably going down without a fight 2-0 at home to a Waterlooville or a Margate in front of their 1300 regulars and not a tv camera in sight.
In the end guts, will, determination, blue-sky thinking will not get where you want to be week in week out. It might get you close from time to time but even if you think xG is twaddle you are going to suffer most afternoons if your opponents know a lot more about your own team than you do. That is the thing about data, there are no secrets if you know where to look. In effect the only metric that has really mattered the past year has been the degree to which the other side has taken our rabble just a shade too lightly.
The only mystery is why it took so long for the board to see the blindingly obvious and take the necessary action. No idea exactly how many shirking, gun-shy Hookys there are in this squad but we all have our favourite candidates for that role. Will be very interesting what develops in the January window if Eustace rocks up on Thursday as the new man in the hot seat.
Zulu is in a way a cautionary tale about what happens when a culture is mired in visions of past glories and yet is over-taken by adversaries that both the powers-that-be and the rank-and-file were largely too complacent to take seriously. Feels kind of familiar. |
| News
Comment | Innnnn one - Report
at 14:51:08
Great writing. If only the team was half this enjoyable.
Much as I loved Bobby Charlton as a kid if there is a minute's silence for anything or anyone on Saturday it should be for this club. |
| News
Comment | You’re going to need a bigger boat – Report
at 19:11:29
Great piece. Perhaps a little too forgiving in the circumstances.
Ainsworth has been hired as a human sandbag. nothing more and nothing less and that is a role with a pretty short life-span even at nostalgia-addicted QPR. To extend Clive's Simpsons analogy, our manager right now is Maggie sat next to Marge in the front seat happy as Larry behind a fake steering wheel and horn. She thinks she is driving the car but someone else is determining the direction of travel.
Meanwhile, according to an e mail this weekend from Cherry Red records, Ainsworth's band have their debut album out right now. Which is really good to know. Successful head coaches are of course well-known for having time for their hobbies and not in any way needing to be monomaniacal obsessives. For those distracted by the distant glow of events of 67, 76 and 82 the album is available on vinyl |
| News
Comment | End of Term Report 22/23 — Attack
at 09:24:55
These articles have been quite brilliant.
I don't really have any fears about going down or losing 12 games at home or scoring a pitiful number of goals at the Loft End. It was awful but a lot of clubs thriving today had to suffer a great deal worse than that in order to rebuild (and before over-taking the likes of us).
There is a very strong argument that throwing the kind money the owners are currently haemorrhaging to maintain the footballing equivalent of a failed state is doing us no favours medium or long term.
The entire model has been proven to be wrong-headed and doomed both commercially and on the field. You can fiddle with the economy of that system all you like and sell off as many assets as you can to maintain respectability on the balance sheet but in the end this government has to go. If that means dropping a level or two then that is the price that needs to be paid eventually in any case. Why delay?
I think I am right in saying that, based on the last set of accounts, in order for the club to have broken even it would need to have no paid players or staff. How does a business with the turnover of a club like ours get itself into that position?
The worst thing in a way is the group-think. It's not like one evil bastard has decided to gut the club for personal gain as we have seen down the leagues in recent years. This has been a team effort managed by a group of apparently plausible individuals (many of whom are the proverbial football men) who have got it spectacularly wrong over and over again.
The club's administrators should have an assessment category of their own. Fs all around. Including Ainsworth though at least he proved to be a lucky general when we needed one.
Their solution to every problem is to break the piggy bank and to pay off the fans with increasingly tawdry exercises in nostalgia. The sporting equivalent of empty calories. We are endlessly encouraged to look back at a very rose tinted past because we are too gun-shy to look ahead.
Coming back to the forwards, short term my worry in terms of my own enjoyment is having no-one in the squad who is likely to get game time who I will actually look forward to watching play.
I can't remember feeling like that since a stultifying 0-0 pre-season friendly at Griffin Park back in the days of Vinnie. A few weeks later there was (IIRC) the first mass airing of "One Gerry Francis" at Watford and the start of the long road to playing Palace in their flip flops.
If Chair, Willock, Dykes (and presumably Dickie, and Dieng) all depart then I'm afraid I can't summon any enthusiasm for the idea of spending my afternoons and evenings hoping that players who could just as easily be playing National League South are all going to punch above their weight at the same time often enough to win a dozen games.
Our current scouting record does not suggest that we will get as lucky as Gerry got with Darlington and Wardley let alone achieving that in half a dozen positions. Gerry had a lot more to work with in terms of viable Championship players than Ainsworth will have. The starting position squad wise was much much healthier and the experienced players were able to provide a good foundation when properly utilised. There is no such foundation today.
Nailed on for 23rd unless there are two or three FFP handicaps handed out along the way.
For those who wanted their Rangers back I think that day is looming and the question is if that were to happen what do you want to do with it? Are you going to do the equivalent of a Union Berlin fan and pick up a shovel and build your own stadium? Cos that is probably what is going to be required in some form or another. Radical surgery top to bottom and a long painful rehab. |
| News
Comment | Bittersweet symphony — Report
at 08:19:36
"This has the potential to get a lot, lot worse without some really quick, clear-headed, decisive action, almost immediately"
Well, yes. Quite.
This might actually be my favourite of your recent reports, Clive. No romance, no light at the end of the tunnel, just hard cold facts.
There are many things that worry me about this team and this club but Ainsworth making out that 18%, 19%, 20% possession is something that had been planned-for rankles. Of course I would rather have a lucky general than not but don't over- egg it son.
The idea that the team has brought much more to the table the last fortnight than a wild-eyed desperation is pure self-delusion. This is a very poor team playing in the colours of a rudderless club supported by some of the most patient people in professional sports. Players playing to keep a significant black mark off of their cvs when shopping for new contracts come June rather than any affection for the shirt or any of us.
I watched a lot of Southern League and Alliance League football as a kid in the early 70s and most Novembers I would get to see teams of former pros and nearly pros, combining playing for some extra walking-around money with driving cabs, running pubs or wiring houses come up against an actual Football League team in the cup. The part-timers would more often than not gut their way to a fortuitous 1-0 or maybe a replay playing ugly, brutal, gutsy 18% possession football against the likes of Torquay and Darlington and Peterborough. Truth being that the semis pros were pragmatists, supporting families and probably seeing more money each week in total than the full-timers they were pitted against.
The suspension of disbelief that was required while witnessing out-of-condition bruisers wading through mud in search of some kind of personal redemption masked the fact that the same match-up, taken out of the context of the cup, would 9 times out of 10 be if not a cricket score then an ice hockey score the other way.
It is the kind of football that is exhausting to watch and while it might have been the sort of thing that would get the mayor, the local paper and On The Ball excited for a week or so, everyone knew deep down the inevitability of the 4-0 drubbing that was waiting in January when a team of over weight misfits would come up against a switched-on side of actual athletes with even a modicum of self-respect.
Continue like this and we are *that* team except we are that team every single week. Every game feeling like we are hanging in there, absorbing pressure, hoping for a lucky punch and an opponent without the wherewithal to punch back. There are points to be won with that approach but I doubt there are 50 given that the league looks like it is going to get a lot stronger with its fresh intake from both ends. A lot of the deadwood is being cut away.
We haven't actually seen Ainsworth try this kind of thing at home yet. It will be interesting to see how patient everyone is come November, if it turns out that grim, attritional, house-to-house defending is going to be the actual strategy and Wycombe's 39 goals in 46 (and significantly less than a goal a game at home) is the actual template he is most comfortable with. You probably wont see people on the pitch calling for blood but you wont see many people in the stands either. |
| News
Comment | Everything we’ve come to expect from this team and more - Report
at 23:58:34
Not for the first time this season I have looked forward to reading your match report more than I have going to actual game. I feel really bad having dragged my daughter into this. At 26 she should really be doing something with her Saturdays that feels less like an act of self-harm.
The only thing I would take issue in your yet again glorious piece of writing is the idea that Chair's performance was "pony".
Every time the ball found its way to him (usually a happy accident than the result of strategy or even intent) he was surrounded by three sometimes four players. Is he given options for a pass? No. Not once. So he is left with either playing for a throw (and you very eloquently pointed out how those go) or attempting to dribble through the pack. These are his only choices and even Adel is thinking twice about the dribble in most of these situations.
You would think with three or four Coventry players drawn the ball it would open up all kinds of options elsewhere in the attacking 3rd but it doesn't because no one apart from Chair wants the ball. In the same way Dykes can't nod the ball down to himself even someone as talented as Chair can't work a triangle with himself, get to the bye-line and find himself on the edge of the 18 yard box for a shot at goal. He needs an Eze or a Manning or a Wallace or a Pugh or the Willock of not so long ago who can find space to receive the ball while three defending players are occupied with one guy and have a pre-conceived idea of what to do next.
Speaking of missing players lets scroll back to just before Covid when Pugh was literally central to all that was good in that promising run of form but he doesn't have an uncle who used to work in the box office and no one can make a penis joke chant out of his surname so he is apparently completely dispensable, so dispensable it would seem that he has never effectively been replaced.
And why do our players get drawn to the ball and then conspire to get in each other's way while leaving acres for opposing players to run into? I'll tell you why - fear and abject coaching. They know they can't afford to make any mistakes so they all panic and panic together. They can't bring to mind the very basics of defending when it matters. Gun shy doesn't come close to describing it. They play like men who get shouted at an awful lot and now only hear the tone and none of the actual content.
And while we are in this pit of despond lets ponder how many crosses were aimed over the heads of Dykes and Martin and in the general direction of the smallest man on the pitch? So many it almost seemed deliberate.
As for Chair's substitution that had all the hallmarks of John Gregory. Insecurity expressed through a silly, self-defeating power play. Maybe it was the fasting thing. The player certainly didn't seem to think so and he should know.
All Coventry had to do to win the game was stifle Chair out on the wing and be alert for second balls off of Dykes. That. Is. It. So not any kind of breed of pony for me.
Lets also not forget that we effectively started with 9 players set-up in a bound to fail formation - it's Dykes or Martin not both and Albert should probably be playing at Dulwich or Lewes at this point. As you say the midfield was overwhelmed (Amos might have helped but probably not enough) and playing Dunne at RB is massively stupid even before you get to the issue of 4 vs 5 at the back. Laird probably has a questionable attitude but for godsake start him and see how it goes. He is a fit, talented right back and considered good enough to potentially make the grade for an actual Champions League club. But no lets play a centre back there whose confidence levels are already rock bottom.
That's my friend is pony right there.
Speaking of 4 vs 5 and in case anyone is wondering, Barbet's Bordeaux are second in the table, conceding less than a goal a game and are a good bet for promotion despite losing to third place Metz. We're doing just fine without him, right? Warbs would have kept him. He might have kept Moses Odubajo too and right now I would give you all the money I may or may not be spending on a season ticket next season to have them both back for the final four games.
I said last week that English ex pros see their coaching badges as akin to a driving licence rather than the opportunity to continue learning. And what do we do? We give the keys to someone who used to look good in the shirt, a coach who has kept the same job for en eternity without being snapped up by anyone else (think about what that means in the context of this industry) and applauded that decision while he drives the club (well loved, family vehicle in need of a re-spray but in passable nick, many previous owners) over and over into the nearest wall while claiming that he is getting the hang of it and the cavalry are coming. He gets paid to do this and will eventually be paid not to do it. That's where we are.
Actually where we really are right now is in the final scene of Zulu except in the QPR version everyone is dead apart from bed ridden depressive Paul Daneman and the massed ranks of the enemy gathered on the hills above are not going to turn around and go home. |
| News
Comment | It’s about ownership — Preview
at 13:45:47
Sad and desperate times and only an upgrade on 2021 because of the very dichotomy you have so very brilliantly outlined. The bottom line for me and the pre-requisite for making progress any time soon is to let go of the past. No more misty-eyed, mostly second hand memories of 67 or 76 (or even 2011) until we've achieved some degree of respectability in the here and now. As the song says ... yesterday's gone. |
| News
Comment | Things turn toxic as hapless QPR lose yet again - Report
at 12:50:27
Given that this attack has to practice against this defence what can either party possibly be learning in training? You'd be better off paying some mid table National League South side to come in three times a week to provide the oppo.
There's clearly no tactical plan so why bother training at all? You might as well have no coach, let the captain run the bench and let the players do what they fancy in the game. Could that really be any worse?
We'd actually be better off with the team going nowhere near a football pitch and spending the week in psychotherapy.
I have a lot of time for GA as a legacy figure but for Christsakes don't hire a head coach who has hobbies! You need monomaniacs, people who do little but watch, analyse, read and talk about football 18 hours a day. The level of fine detail that is involved now compared with 20 years ago literally makes it a different sport from the one Gallen and Ainsworth et al played. Motivational buzzword bingo is not coaching in 2023.
Back in November I listened to a really intereating pod with the Scandi coach who was allegedly in the frame after Beale. The man is clearly an obsessive and the attention to detail was quite frightening. Night and day compared with the platitudes a lot of our ex pro coaches trot out here. The line between pundit and manager seems wafer thin In England at times. Holloway talks a load of nonsense as well. Pre-data, condiment pots on the caff table levels of thinking. Getting the badges should be just the start. Here it seems to be treated as the equivalent of a driving licence.
Meanwhile Emma Hayes is sat at Chelsea, clearly bored with the WSL. She would have been an upgrade on Beale, a born winner, in need of a challenge and would sort this dressing room out in no time. Tough-as but smart with it.. Too late now as she is way too good for L1. Some might laugh but it's the Moneyball thing - we literally can't buy what we need so we need to be doing and thinking what no one else is doing and thinking and finding a different route to respectability. But we needed to do it a lot of yesterdays ago. |
| | PastCaringNW2
|
Site Scores| Prediction League: | 0 | | TOTAL: | 0 |
|
By continuing to use the site, you agree to our use of cookies and to abide by our Terms and Conditions.