Super Bowl for the accountants and geeks amongst us, but plenty for the common or garden QPR fan to concern themselves with as well, as the club drop their 2024/25 accounts on the eve of the trip to Hull City.

Hull (16-6-9 WWWWDL 5th) v QPR (12-8-12 DDLWDL 13th)

Sky’s Super Saturday Brunch Spectacular >>> Saturday February 21, 2026 >> Kick Off 12.30 >>> Weather – Cold, wet and windy. Next. >>> Boothferry Park, Hull, East Yorkshire

Links >>> Simon Dorset's in depth accounts analysis >>> Patreon Podcast with Niall Rogers

The legendary investigative reporter Andrew Jennings would swear by documents. Well-connected sources are gold dust, naturally you speak to as many people as you can for your story, but they’re often biased and pushing their own agenda. It’s a paper trail you need. In the investigations he ran into corruption at FIFA and the IOC, which brought both corrupt organisations to their knees, Jennings would methodically go through literally hundreds of thousands of sheets of paper at a time looking for the key piece of evidence - the silver bullet - that proves everything.

You can lie, you can spin, you can obfuscate, you can threaten the journalist and take their access away, you can bluff your way through, you can deny the facts in front of your face and provide “alternative truth”, but once it’s down on paper it becomes more difficult. As a certain “prince” is currently discovering.

If you want to know what’s really going on, it’s documents you need.

Which is why, back at the most important least important thing, I always find it an interesting and enlightening time each February when QPR drop their accounts for the previous season.

Dry, boring, difficult to interpret, of absolutely no interest to great swathes of the support base who just want to turn up on a Saturday and have a pint with their mates or an afternoon out with their kids… sure, I get all of that. But if you are concerned about the club’s future, how it’s being run, is it in safe hands, where it’s going next, then it is worth sitting down once a year and going through these 30-odd pages – particularly as the club itself now goes out of its way to tell you as little as possible about what it’s doing.

For instance, remember when a whole load of “ITK” social media accounts were passing around the cigar memes and hailing the club’s incredible dealmaking skill for getting £2.5m from Bristol City for Sinclair Armstrong? Well, turns out our entire intake for player sales last year (Armstrong; Dykes to Birmingham; add ons from Eze winning the FA Cup and playing for England and qualifying for Europe; staged payments from all previous sales) was £1.8m.

Remember last summer at the fan’s forum when you were told, contrary to popular belief, there had been no injury “crisis” and actually our player availability over the course of the 24/25 season was 85%, up from 80% in previous years? Well, chairman Lee Hoos’ advice to the club’s shareholders, in literally the first line of this year’s accounts, is “hampered by injuries, the non-availability of players affected the performance of the team throughout the season.”

Remember just last week, in the wake of the Blackburn no-show, when Julian Stéphan told reporters he was working with the second lowest budget in the division? Well, it’s actually around 14th, which means, as we said at the time, Marti Cifuentes absolutely parred the course in finishing 15th. And, by the way, there are several Millwall, Preston, Coventry types doing much more than we’re seemingly able to on similar budgets and with similar restrictions.

Few 'lines' survive the light of a document.

Bit inconvenient really that Christian Nourry’s recent pre-recorded Q&A session was done and put out before these were released. We might have been able to come up with some better questions than ‘can we rotate the stadium 90 degrees?’ and ‘do you know where Norway is?’. Mind you, I suspect there were probably some better questions than those submitted anyway, and in any case all of this ‘pick your favourite personal grievance or bugbear’ is skirting around the edge of the real issue. As Nourry said in that broadcast, how you make Queens Park Rangers more sustainable is currently a £20m question.

The club’s losses are back up north of £20m after the relative low of the £13.5m it lost in the 2023/24 Gareth Ainsworth season, driven largely by the salary bill swiftly climbing 15% back up to £27.5m. As Simon Dorset points out in his annual analysis piece for LFW it was widely expected the payroll would rise in these accounts, in part due to the backloaded deals offered to the likes of Steve Cook, Michi Frey, Jack Colback and Lucas Andersen to entice them here for 23/24 when the team was in serious relegation danger with no PSR headroom to do anything about it. Still, spending 98% of your turnover on wages alone is an easy way to go bust in any business and how we ended up in that 23/24 position in the first place is a pertinent point as we move through these numbers.

QPR don’t go bust because our incredibly benevolent owner Ruben Gnanalingam prevents it from doing so by putting in £2m a month to keep the lights on. Without that we’d be a League One club at best.

This is not unusual in the Championship. QPR’s losses are about par for the course in a division that is an absolute bin fire for owners’ cash. They come into the gig with eyes open (or at least they should). Everybody loses money at this level, and Rangers wouldn’t stay here for very long if they didn’t – even trying to hack the loss down to a slim £13.5m would have relegated them but for an extraordinary managerial performance by Marti Cifuentes.

Nor is it necessarily a particular problem. Gnanalingam seems to remain wholly committed to the club, continues to invest in its training facilities, and has signed deeds undertaking to continue providing financial support up until May 31 2027 (don’t read anything into the date – it gets extended every year) to a maximum funding of £40.6m so that the auditors can sign the club off as a going concern. Most clubs in this league are wholly reliant on a benefactor like this.

Still, it is a single point of failure. If Ruben were to turn the taps off, we’d be Derek Chansiri’s Sheffield Wednesday by the end of the month. Here's that Piper Alpha analogy again - on an oil rig everything's fine until it's not, and the moment it's not is the moment it becomes the farthest thing from fine.

Gnanalingam would presumably like the club to lose a lot less money. The rules of the league dictate that QPR must lose less money. Ostensibly you can only lose £42m over any rolling three-year period before you’re in breach of the league’s FFP/PSR loss limit, although with the various disallowable costs (training ground, academy, women’s team) QPR have previously set a high-water mark of £58.5m worth of losses without being in breach. That means we’re fine for now because a chunky £24.6m loss from 2021/22’s aborted promotion push has now rolled out to be replaced with this £20m deficit. However, in February 2028, that low £13.5m loss from 23/24 rolls out, and if you replace that with another £20m loss like this year’s then you’re going to have a problem.

Of course, it may be that the Championship’s FFP/PSR rules have changed completely by then. The Premier League has already voted 14-6 in favour of moving to a system where you’re allowed to spend 85% of your income on football related thigs (transfer fees, managers, wage bill) and that’s that. Given QPR spend 98% on wages alone, a move to this system in the Championship would be unwelcome for clubs like us who struggle to improve revenues, play in challenging stadiums and therefore rely on owner handouts. No surprise that among the nae votes in the Premier League were the likes of Bournemouth, Fulham, Leeds and Palace. Nourry was entirely correct at the fan forum where he said we don’t actually know what wicket we’re batting on really, which is a ridiculous situation.

Under either system, the numbers this week show one thing very starkly: QPR either need to get promoted, or they need to start selling players for good money, or they’re going to have a problem again. That Ainsworth season was traumatic because we had to take a club losing £20m+ and turn it into a club losing £13m, and that’s very difficult to do (unless you sell a player) without seriously damaging the team on the field. That’s exactly what happened– poor Gareth floundering around in his cowboy boots with Joe Gubbins at centre back and the likes of Aaron Drewe and Stephen Duke McKenna getting game time.

We worked ourselves into that position by gambling on Austin, Johansen et al to try and get Mark Warburton’s team up, and then doubling down the summer after with Honest Mick. Looking at the numbers in these accounts we have gambled again, albeit with a couple of key differences.

As detailed in our Ronnie Edwards signing piece the word of the moment at Loftus Road is ‘amortisation’ because under FFP/PSR if you give Ronnie a five-year contract then the £4.5m you allegedly paid for him gets stretched out over that term (and whatever remains gets credited back if you sell him in that time, by the way) whereas if you sell Charlie Kelman or receive a sell on fee for Ebere Eze that gets plonked on straight away in a lump sum.

Both those amounts should make next year’s figures much more attractive. They drop straight into our PSR calculations, while money spent on players amortises over the length of their deals. However, nobody should be in any doubt that QPR have spent some serious money on the team you now see before you.

The ‘post balance sheet events’ (stuff we’ve done this season) at the end of the accounts lists a number of players whose registrations have been acquired (Kwame Poku, Amadou Mbengue, Rumarn Burrell, Richard Kone, Koki Saito, Isaac Hayden, Karamoko Dembele, Kealey Adamson, Tylon Smith and Jaylan Pearman), the sale of Kelman’s registration to Charlton, a further list of players who have left due to the expiry of their contracts (Colback, Morgan Fox, Andersen and Kenneth Paal) and the much anticipated sell-on clause activated by Eze’s transfer to Arsenal. The note goes on to say that the impact of this player trading is a net outflow of £1.498m with contingent clauses which, if all are realised, would give a further outflow of £2.4m. That doesn’t include Edwards or Justin Obikwu who would presumably push that ‘outflow’ up towards the £5m-6m mark. Having talked for so long about the Eze sell on clause, it’s amazing how quick that appears to have come and gone. That lifeline is spent now.

It means, as far as I can see anyway, that we really need to get this ‘player trading model’ moving pretty rapidly. You can see, looking at these numbers, why they were so keen to do a deal for Sam Field, even though it leaves the squad without cover in two of its most problematic areas – CM and LB. We have, kindly put, speculated to accumulate. We’ve done the shopping bit, and at least this time acquired what we think are some sellable assets for the football club rather than expensive wages for old timers at the end of their careers with no sell on potential. That’s an improvement. Now, over the next couple of years, some of those are going to have to realise their potential and be moved on for good money.

That makes the current situation where so many of them are sitting in the stand with us lot absolutely lethal to the club’s strategy and approach. Rumarn Burrell had already reached double figures by Christmas, had he gone on to bag 15+ this season you could easily have flipped him this summer to a Middlesbrough or Birmingham type for £8m. Not now. Jonathan Varane already had interest, allegedly at the £5m level, but he’s screwed his knee. Karamoko Dembele was apparently being lined up for a return to the continent but will now miss almost all of 2026 and come back eventually in who knows what shape. Kwame Poku has lost a year of his career by moving here and is now probably worth less than what we paid until he can prove his fitness. Koki Saito is heading in the wrong direction. Richard Kone is the next cab off the rank but, like Burrell before him, is being run into the ground playing every minute of every game. When he jarred his knee against Blackburn last week I bet the finance director’s heart hit the back of his teeth.

Whoever is overall responsible for the fitness, availability and performance side of the business needs to be held to account. They attempted to front it up at the fans forum and pretend you didn’t really go to Stoke and West Brom last season and see Karamoko Dembele or Paul Smyth playing as lone strikers, and now the problem has got worse rather than better. The chairman of the club does not agree that we were fine for availability last season. If our squad is in this state again this time next year that is a huge problem for Queens Park Rangers and its current business model.

The news from WLS that Jake Clarke-Salter, Ilias Chair and Jonathan Varane are all back for Hull away this weekend is welcome for the team, which is clearly now creaking and tiring under the weight of its absentees, but it’s more important still for the financial model the club is pursuing. If you don’t start selling these guys then you’re very quickly heading back to exactly the same situation we were in for 2023/24 which we worked so hard to get ourselves out of.

In why the fuck do we bother news, Birmingham City’s owners Knighthead have just sold the club’s women’s team to… another branch of Knighthead. Deep sigh. Fourteen games to go.

Links >>> Battle of the future stars – History >>> Surprise package – Oppo Profile >>> Premier League official – Referee >>> Hull Official Website >>> Hull Daily Mail — Local Paper >>> The Amber View — Blog >>> Tigerlink — Blog >>> Amber Nectar — Blog and Forum >>> Not606 — Forum >>> Ground Guide >>> Hull City Live — Blog

Parish Noticeboard – Sky have deigned us with their selections for the weekend of March 21, and our home game with Portsmouth has dodged their claw of doom so a rare Saturday 3pm kick off at home is ours. Tickets for Birmingham and Leicester away went on sale today.

Below the fold

Team News: Intriguingly, the club appears to have now deleted all the previous injury updates from the official website denying us the chance to relive those glory days when Kwame Poku wasn’t seriously hurt and might be back for Wrexham away and Ilias Chair’s return was going to be your Christmas present.

Poku, Rumarn Burrell, Ziyad Larkeche and Karamoko Dembele all remain sidelined long term. There remains nothing really seriously wrong with Justin Obikwu, but he still can’t play, and you still can’t know why that is – he’s likely to sit out all three games this week. There is apparently some light at the end of QPR’s availability tunnel though. Jake Clarke-Salter was back on the bench for the Blackburn defeat, Nicolas Madsen’s knock sustained in that game is not said to be serious, and Jonathan Varane and Ilias Chair are now in full training. Amadou Mbengue remains one yellow card away from a two-match ban, and we’re five games away from the amnesty on that one.

Just to prove the curse is strong this year, Murphy Cooper’s golden chance to get half a season of Championship football under his belt at Sheff Wed has now also been scuppered by injury. The Owls have moved quickly to secure Seny Dieng on an emergency loan from Middlesbrough – the seventh different person to keep goal for them this season. That list includes Cooper and another of our former charges Joe Lumley so the weird goalkeeper connection between Loftus Road and Hillsborough which already included Chris Woods, Ron Springett, Peter Springett and Kieren Westwood is really ratcheting up now.

Defender Matty Jacob, who spent the first half of the season on loan at Reading but has done half a dozen games for Hull since returning in January has injured his knee in training this week and been ruled out for two months. He joins experienced duo Matt Crooks and Semi Ajayi on the sidelines. Given Toby Collyer missed almost his entire West Brom loan spell with injury before Christmas it was always a risk to take the Man Utd youngster on in January and, sure enough, he’s already crocked again. Charlie Hughes will be checked late, top scorer Roddy McScotsman returns after a one-week absence, Eliot Matazo is a long-term absentee.

Elsewhere: Charity Park Rangers’ donation to the Blackburn Rovers cause last weekend gave Michael O’Neill a win in his first game in charge and lifted them out of the bottom three at the expense of Leicester – although both the Foxes and the Premier League are now simultaneously appealing the six point deduction they’ve suffered which I’m sure will be sorted out quickly and efficiently well in time for the end of the season. Rovers have a chance to put six points between them and the bottom three tonight in the live TV game at home to Preston while Leicester go on the road again tomorrow in one of the other early kick offs this time heading to Stoke.

I’m not sure there would have been much money on Frank Lampard’s Coventry to beat Middlesbrough at home on Monday night given the respective directions of travel. Cov had just two wins in eight games going into that match while Boro had won five in a row and were pretty sensational in the final one of those at Sheff Utd the prior week. Boro played most of the football, but Coventry were aggressive in their defence and clinical in their attack when chances came along – Haji Wright’s hat trick moving him to 16 goals for the season, though he’d only scored two in his prior 20 games. It all means the Sky Blues are now back on top with 62 points ahead of a Midlands local at West Brom, but Boro are only one back in second with a home gimme against Oxford due up next.

Our pre-season fancy Millwall are currently next in line to the throne if either of those two abdicate. The Lions have won four and lost one of six to slide into third, five points behind Boro, with a homer against Pompey this weekend. John Mousinho’s side may as well have stayed over having won their game in hand at Charlton comprehensively during the week – amazing what happens when you go to The Valley and have a bit of a go, even while nursing an injury list 14 players strong as Pompey currently are. Ipswich are still probably the one to watch in fourth, they go to Wrexham just one week after losing there in the FA Cup setting up a tie between Disney FC and Chelsea that I’m sure the TV companies will play nice and low key.

Wrexham are one of three teams tied for the final play-off place on 48 points along with Preston Knob End who play tonight and the team in possession Derby who go to fast fading Watford tomorrow in the John Eustace Derby, derby, Derby etc…

Bristol City are currently alternating between existential crisis triggering defeats and enormous statement victories, they go to Swanselona early doors. Improving Norwich and Southampton round out the Saturday list with homers against Birmingham and Charlton.

Pompey’s midweek win moved the nightmare Sheff Wed scenario a step close to reality. They will be relegated at Chris Wilder’s Sheff Utd on Sunday lunch time unless they win. They’ll be relegated before that if Blackburn take a point and West Brom three from their games. Thoughts and prayers.

Referee: It’s certainly been a while. Premier League referee Andy Madley takes this game, despite 13 of his last 14 matches being in the top flight. It’s his first QPR appointment since a 4-0 home win against Swansea in 2019 and he hasn’t refereed Hull since September that year either. Details.

Form

- QPR simultaneously have one win from seven league games and two from ten, but also only two defeats from seven. Still, things are trending in the wrong direction – it’s two wins in 11 in all comps after winning five of the prior seven.

- Leicester’s points deduction moving them to 22nd means that since December 20, when the Foxes were hammered 4-1 at Loftus Road, QPR have played the teams currently lying 24th, 23rd, 22nd, 21st, 20th, 19th, 18th and 17th. They have won only two of those (Sheff Wed H, Leicester H). Their next set of fixtures include games against the sides currently 2nd, 5th, 10th and 11th.

- The divide between QPR home and away is stark. It’s six wins from nine at Loftus Road despite last week’s aberration against struggling Blackburn. The bore-draw at Charlton the week before means it’s one win from ten on the road.

- QPR haven’t won away from home in eight attempts in all comps since a 1-0 at Blackburn on November 26. They haven’t won away on a Saturday since October 4 at Bristol City. Four away wins all season is two fewer than Blackburn have managed while sitting 20th.

- - QPR have drawn 0-0 in three consecutive away league games for the first time since April 1910 in the Southern League. They have never drawn four successive away games 0-0. @JTSupple

- Only two sides have ever played four consecutive away goalless draws in the history of the second tier: Grimsby Town in 1963 and Crystal Palace in 1978. @Opta

- By contrast, Hull absolutely stormed their Christmas period. The Tigers won eight and drew one of their ten league games from the start of December to the end of January losing just the once at home to Stoke (1-0). They won their last four games of January consecutively, three of them away (Southampton, Preston, Blackburn) but have since drawn one and lost two of three home games against Watford, Bristol City and Chelsea.

- Widely tipped for a relegation struggle (yes, by us) after a summer of managerial upheaval and financial tumult, Hull continue to confound the doubters sitting fifth in the Championship. This is despite them conceding 43 times. Only four teams outside the relegation zone have conceded more, including ourselves.

- A lot of Hull’s heavy lifting is done away from home, where they’ve won eight times – no other Championship side has that many victories on the road and QPR’s 3-2 win in the first meeting is one of four away defeats which, again, is the division’s best record. At home Sergej Jakirovic’s side are 8-3-5. Only Derby and Bristol City (six each) have lost more home games in the top half of the table. Stoke, Blackburn, Ipswich, Middlesbrough and Bristol City have all won here already.

- QPR haven’t won a game when holding more possession than their opponent for a year, since a 2-1 home win against Blackburn last February. All 16 victories achieved since have come with less of the ball. Each of Hull’s last seven victories have also come with less possession – in the case of their wins against Swansea and Boro down as low as 30%. The last time they won with more of the ball was a 2-0 here against Wrexham at the start of December. In only two of their last 15 wins have they had more of the ball than the opponent.

- These two sides have met 62 times with 22 wins each and 18 draws. It took QPR eight visits to this ground to record a victory but they’ve won three of the last five trips including this time last year when Koki Saito and Kenneth Paal scored in a 2-1 midweek victory.

- A QPR win here would be a first league double against Hull since 1969/70, although the R’s did twice win both legs of League Cup ties in 1985 and 1991. The Tigers have never lost three league games in a row against the R’s.

- Ilias Chair’s alleged return from injury this weekend could be very timely. He scored his only goal of the season so far in the 3-2 home win against Hull, and has scored more goals (five) against the Tigers than any other club.

- Top scorer Tartan McPartick (13 goals) returns from injury up front for this one alongside Joe Gelhardt (10 goals, including the opener in the first meeting). Between them they are the division’s most efficient strike force. Hull rank 22nd for total shots in the Championship this season (345), but joint-6th for shots on target (135). The Tigers have fired the highest share of their attempts on target in the division this term (39%).

Prediction

In our Prediction League for 2025/26 we’ll once again be handing out prizes for being top at Christmas and overall winner from The Art of Football - sample the merch from our sponsor’s newly extended QPR collection here. QPR_Hibs won last season’s Prediction League at a canter and is lending his thoughts to this year’s previews…

“Big news for all you ‘Eurovision’ fans out there. Earlier in the week it was announced that YouTuber/songwriter Sam Battle has been chosen by the BBC and ‘industry experts’ to represent the UK in Vienna this May. Well, they claim that industry experts were involved but I strongly suspect that the BBC just fed a load of data into Tony Bloom’s computer system and this is who it came up with. Fortunately, they didn’t ask QPR’s head of technical data methodology to assist in the process or we’d have ended up with Christian Nourry and his Jazz All-Stars belting out their rendition of “Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien.” Royaume-Uni, nil points?

“There have been a number of classic parodies on the Eurovision theme over the years. Most of you are probably familiar with the ‘Father Ted’ episode where Ted and Dougal are chosen to perform ‘My Lovely Horse’ for Ireland, but I would particularly recommend seeking out episode five of the short-lived BBC comedy series ‘The High Life,’ where Scotland are allowed their own entry into the competition and they showcase the brilliant ‘Pif, Paf, Pof’ complete with its own hilarious dance routine.

“I’d rather not have to do the actual football bit of this preview after Rangers’ embarrassing performance against Blackburn last week. Every player had a poor game, but I’m certainly struggling to understand what exactly has happened to the Koki Saito that played so well for us towards the end of last season. The back four also looked dreadful after playing very solidly throughout January and what’s our fascination with conceding a goal immediately after half time nearly every week.

“I’m not entirely sure what Julien can do to change any of our current woes. It reminds me of the time when Paul Ince, then manager at a struggling Blackburn side, inadvertently displayed his tactics notebook to the TV cameras just before half-time at Upton Park. On it was written the single word “Shoot.” I mean, it might be worth a try lads!

“Expect much of the same dross from us this Saturday, away at Hull in Sky’s 'Super Pass-It-Around-At-The-Back Brunchtime special,' where the friendly broadcasters have not only moved our game, but also three other Championship matches, to a 12.30 kick off for no apparent reason. Paul Smyth must start this one, replacing either Bennie or Saito (take your pick) but otherwise it’s the same old faces in the starting XI. Ilias Chair and Jonathan Varane may be fit enough to sit on the bench.

“QPR haven't won an away game on a Saturday since October 4 and I can't see us getting anything here.”

QPR_Hibs Prediction: Hull 2-0 QPR. First QPR substitution – 70 minutes

LFW’s Prediction: Hull 3-1 QPR. Scorer – Ilias Chair

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Pictures - Ian Randall Photography

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