Cardiff City Vs QPR: View from the away end
Friday April 15, 2016
By Jamie Kemble
We spoke to QPR fan Clive Whittingham to find out the thoughts from the away end ahead of the visit of QPR to the Cardiff City Stadium on Saturday.
Hoops’ fan Clive Whittingham provided an in-depth view of QPR as we prepare for the visit of the London-based club this coming weekend. Thanks to Clive, you can get an informed view on QPR and what sort of season they’ve been through.
What’s your view on QPR’s season?
Results wise, the league table is fairly self-explanatory – we’re eleventh, almost exactly the same number of points from the relegation area as we are from the promotion picture.
What’s gone on at QPR in recent years is well documented and justifiably mocked. We’ve spent more than a quarter of a billion pounds in five years under this ownership and given that we’re still in the same rotten training ground, same outdated stadium and have dropped down a division.
It’s reasonable to assume all we’ve accomplished with it is making lots of mediocre – or well past it – football players very rich indeed. Joey Barton, Ji Sung Park, Shaun Wright-Phillips, Rio Ferdinand, Luke Young, Sandro, Jose Bosingwa, Chris Samba, Jermaine Jenas and on and on and on it goes.
This season was pitched as a much-needed departure from all of that. We hired the CEO from Burnley, Lee Hoos, to get us operating in something approaching a sane manner.
It seems he may even have succeeded in dragging us under the FFP limit for this season less than 12 months into the job, which would be remarkable, and he really seems to have taken the bull by the horns. Exactly what we needed.
We brought in club legend Les Ferdinand to oversee the football side, and while he’s got some things wrong and some things right, overall I think he’s been terrific. We walk away from transfer deals now when they get too expensive, or the player gets too demanding, or the agent starts sticking his nose in.
We’ve made some excellent, younger, cheaper signings that will do us well next season and/or make us a profit in the future.
There was a little mad moment, in October time, when the chairman returned and put on his social media (where else?) that this was all well and good but “promotion means everything to me” and suddenly the likes of Leroy Fer and Sandro were back in the team, the new signings were benched, the manager was sacked, and it all felt like another QPR disaster in the making.
The lousy results over Christmas, highlighting once and for all that these big names are nowhere near as good as their reputation suggests, nor do they care very much about playing well for QPR, saw normality restored in January and we’ve been a good deal better, more settled and more consistent since – just three defeats in 16 matches in 2016.
Hopefully this means we’re nicely poised for a better season next year, and in better financial shape to tackle it. To the board’s credit, they have written off £250m-worth of debt accumulated by their failed policy during the first four years of ownership so it is a clean slate for us.
Was the JFH appointment the right decision? How is he doing? What’s his relationship with supporters?
I like him a lot. Firstly, because I like the way he built his experience as a coach and a manager up at places like Woking, Forest, Antwerp and Burton Albion rather than just using his name to demand a big job he wasn’t experienced enough or qualified for – Tim Sherwood cough.
Secondly because QPR are always at their best when looking down the divisions, or into bigger club’s youth and reserve set ups, or in weird corners of Europe for people who have lots to prove and see the club as a big opportunity for them. Coming from Burton, Hasselbank certainly ticks that.
Thirdly because there have been obvious improvements in the team. It looks fitter and better organised – we were averaging two goals against per match well into October.
Players like Tjaronn Chery, Seb Polter and Junior Hoilett have improved massively under his guidance. He’s stern, demanding, big on fitness, big on long and difficult training sessions. He doesn’t seem to take much shit.
He hasn’t built up much of a relationship with the supporters yet for a variety of reasons. One is Neil Warnock’s brief return to the club in October, first as an advisor to Chris Ramsey and then as his caretaker replacement.
We won two of his four matches in charge (albeit one thanks to a horrendous keeping error, and all while playing a 4-6-0 formation) and of course he did a fabulous job here before and is doing so again now at Rotherham.
Lots of people would like him to have been given the job instead – there’s a weekly thread about Rotherham on our message board at the moment which always descends into the same row.
I love Warnock as much as the next QPR fan – we’re one of the few clubs he’s massively popular at – but I think we made the right decision for the medium and long-term.
At the time he was pitching for Ferdinand’s job anyway, rather than being the new manager, it was only towards the end that he suggested he’d take it after all and by then we were deep into the recruitment process.
Are QPR capable of pushing on to promotion next season or is there still work to be done?
Well capable, but that doesn’t mean I think we’ll definitely do it. We’re short in key areas – we’re going nowhere until we can finally find an uncompromising centre half to replace Clint Hill, and a proper, athletic, box to box midfielder capable of dominating that area in front of the back four.
There are other spots all over the team that need work, so a lot depends on this summer’s activity which will in turn depend on how many idiots we can find to take the likes of Sandro, Fer and Caulker from us permanently rather than just on loan.
What’s the current mood amongst QPR supporters?
Relaxed/bored. Enjoying the sun.
There’s quite a vocal minority aren’t having this consolidation, do-things-a-bit-more-sensibly stuff at all and would presumably like to have seen a load more money chucked at a promotion push.
Likewise, Les Ferdinand has a few detractors, some for footballing reasons, others more personal. And, like I say, Warnock winning every week at Rotherham stirs things up a bit.
Overall though, reasonably positive I think. I’ll soon be told on the Twitter if I’m wrong about that I’m sure.
How do you see the Cardiff fixture?
Well Saturday against Charlton was the first time I’d thought the team was starting to look like it had one eye on the beach – performance and effort levels had remained reasonably high before that despite us having little to play for.
Cardiff have something to play for – just about – and this ticket offer will mean a bigger crowd. We draw a lot away from home at the moment – difficult to beat without a real cutting edge – so I’m torn between tipping that or us just coming up short against a team that needs it more than we do.
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