QPR supporter gives us a complete run-down of Neil Warnock
Mon Oct 10, 2016 10:41 am
QPR supporter gives us a complete run-down of Neil Warnock
Thanks to Jamie Kemble
Monday 10th October 2016
We spoke to QPR supporter Clive Whittingham to find out everything you need to know about new Cardiff City manager Neil Warnock.
Neil Warnock has instantly become one of the most popular managerial signings at Cardiff City for a number of years but what’s in-store? What can we expect from the veteran boss? QPR supporter Clive Whittingham from ‘LoftforWords‘ gives us a detailed run-down.
Neil Warnock enjoyed a good first spell at QPR, talk us through his time at Loftus Road.
Warnock is a revered figure at Loftus Road and with very good reason. We’d been out of the Premier League for 15 years when he arrived, and looked about as far away as we’d ever been from getting back.
Our billionaires takeover – Flavio Briatore, Bernie Ecclestone, Lakshmi Mittal – three years prior was supposed to make us the “richest club in the world” but it had descended into a farce because Briatore wanted control of everything, including team selection.
When Warnock arrived two-thirds of the way through 2009/10 we were firmly in a relegation battle, on a long losing run including home defeats by Scunthorpe and the likes, and looked absolutely bereft.
We’d already gone through Jim Magilton, Paul Hart and Mick Harford as managers that season and had seen off Iain Dowie and Paolo Sousa the season before.
The board came up with a new plan whereby Briatore would back off, Lakshmi Mittal’s son in law Amit Bhatia would be the figurehead, his old uni mate Ishan Saksena would be the CEO and a strong manager would be employed and left to it.
They poached Warnock from Palace and, frankly, given his reputation and QPR’s standing in the game at the time he could pretty much name his price and conditions – i.e. I’m not coming if that megalomaniac Italian is going to start poking his nose in.
We escaped the drop with something to spare. He immediately put some belief in the players and, contrary to the common perception, played attacking football that was very decent to watch. We immediately beat league leaders West Brom 3-1 at home and then went to his old club Palace and won 2-0 with a fabulous Akos Buzsaky goal in there.
When he arrived we actually had more loan players (seven) than you were allowed to pick in a matchday squad (five) and he stated openly that there wouldn’t be loans like that the year after – he wanted a settled core group of players.
The signings, and this is a Warnock trait, were underwhelming on paper – Clint Hill was getting on in years and had an ankle like a cement mixer, Shaun Derry seemed past it, Jamie Mackie was an unknown from Plymouth, Paddy Kenny had just been out for a year with a drugs ban and so on.
But in actual fact, they gave the team a spine and a heart it didn’t have, policed the dressing room, maintained standards, gave us a really solid platform to build on.
In actual fact his biggest name and money signing, Rob Hulse, was his biggest disappointment. There were others that didn’t work – Big Fat Leon Clarke – but overall his transfer record was superb that first summer.
We won the first two games of the season easily, 7-0 on aggregate against Barnsley and Sheff Utd, then recovered from 2-0 down with 91 minutes played to get a 2-2 at Derby.
That result in particular just injected belief into the team and we didn’t lose any of the first 19 matches that season. In the end we only lost five times in the whole campaign, three of those in a little wobble over Christmas which he immediately corrected by adding Wayne Routledge, Ishmael Miller and Danny Shittu in January.
The group was so solid it was even able to ride out the three-month Ale Faurlin controversy and win the league regardless. A wonderful team to watch, great group of players.
What happened next is open to some debate. Either Warnock wanted to sign Ashley Williams, Wayne Routledge, Kyle Naughton and several others of that ilk, but couldn’t because Briatore was now trying to sell the club and wouldn’t release any money, forcing us to first of all sign a load of stop gaps like DJ Campbell and Jay Bothroyd before then going on a mad trolley dash at the end of the window when Tony Fernandes did buy the club.
Or Warnock got it wrong, thought personalities like Joey Barton and Shaun Wright Phillips would come in and be part of the same group ethic, listen to what he had to say rather than trying to run it themselves.
We went on a bad run through December in the top flight, but they were tough fixtures, then St Joseph stupidly got himself typically sent off in a game we were winning at home to Norwich resulting in another defeat.
Warnock was very harshly sacked at Christmas time, basically because he was trying to sign Alex from Chelsea whose agent is Kia Joorabchian who also just so happens to be Mark Hughes’ best chum.
Very harsh, very premature. Warnock should have been given that season regardless for what he’d done the previous year.
Things clearly weren’t going very well, there was an FA Cup game at MK Dons where we were embarrassing, and the old ‘lost the dressing room’ stuff started circulating – difficult to keep hold of a dressing room with ‘idiots’ like Barton in it – but his sacking was a disgrace with hindsight.
He returned for a second, briefer spell last season – what was all that about?
We obviously started last season after relegation with Chris Ramsey in charge – a good youth coach by all accounts, a decent man, but not experienced as a number one. The fans didn’t really take to him, and expectations were higher last season than the team was ever going to be able to achieve, so it got quite toxic quite quickly.
To try to help Ramsey out in October time the club came up with this idea that Neil Warnock would come back as an “advisor” and soon he was up in the stand phoning instructions down to the bench. It was a bit cringeworthy really, like Terry Venables standing two steps behind Bryan Robson at Middlesbrough that year.
Ramsey was eventually sacked and Warnock took caretaker charge for a period of games where we won two and drew one of four, conceding only one goal in the process.
He kept insisting he didn’t want to return to management (he says this a lot, he’s been saying it since Palace and has managed QPR, Leeds, Rotherham and now Cardiff) permanently, and as it transpired his wife was quite ill at the time.
Les Ferdinand, our director of football, said Warnock told him he could do three months with us. There was a feeling that Warnock was actually after Ferdinand’s job – he’s spoken frequently of the need to have experienced “football people” like himself between the foreign owners and the managers at clubs, presumably to stop things like Kia Joorabchian getting in the chairman’s ear.
We went ahead with the search for a new manager and got Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink. Then, just as he was about to take the job, we won a game at Reading in the last-minute (fluke, the goalkeeper dropped the ball in the net) and Warnock was on the pitch at the end, soaked through, punching the air in front of the fans.
He seemed to get the bug back, by which time it was too late and we had another manager.
Loads of QPR fans wanted him to stay, felt we could have a tilt at the play offs with him, and have never really warmed to Hasselbaink since because of it.
It didn’t help that he then, having got the bug, turned up at Rotherham and worked another minor miracle there. Every QPR result through to the end of the season was judged in the context of what Rotherham had done on the same day.
What can we expect from a Neil Warnock side? What sort of style does he favour and what does a Warnock side look like?
Very much horses for courses. The perception that he’s some sort of Tony Pulis figure, and it’s all long balls and kicking people, is entirely wrong. If that’s what the players he has at his disposal are best at, that’s what he’ll do, but at QPR he had (and added) speed in wide areas, quality in the number ten role, and a quality number nine in Heidar Helguson so he set us up in a very attacking version of 4-2-3-1 and blitzed teams.
It was wonderful to watch, with Taarabt at the heart of it, Faurlin pulling strings from midfield. Exhilarating stuff, you always thought we’d score. One of my favourite ever QPR teams. Cardiff know all about it of course because we took four points and one of the promotion spots off you that year.
But, like I say, he’ll pick according to what he has available. When he came back for that brief spell last year we only had Charlie Austin up front, and he was injured, so he played 4-6-0 and tried to grind out 0-0s and 1-0s. That was fairly dire to watch, and we only scored twice in the four games – one of those the keeper’s disaster at Reading.
Every manager has his downsides, so what are Warnock’s? What could hold him back during his time at Cardiff?
Well a lot of his old favourites are a bit old now, so presumably he’s on the look out for a new Derry/Hill/Kenny combination having taken them everywhere with him. He absolutely loves Phil Jagielka but it might be a bit soon/expensive for him to drop down.
He unashamedly talks an absolute load of bollocks publicly. Win 3-0, lose 3-0, crash the team bus down a rocky cliff on the way to an away match, he’ll almost always say “it was just what we needed if I’m honest”. “If I’m honest” is his tick when he’s lying, so watch out for that and discount everything he said before it.
Every job is his last job, he’s always about to retire to his farm in Cornwall; whichever club he’s at is always his “kind of club” with “fantastic fans”; the players are only ever told to “go out and enjoy it”.
He wasn’t as bad with referees at QPR as he had been previously, but he will frequently deflect a poor performance away from him and the players and pin it on the officials.
He’s a master of PR – he made a mess of that QPR promotion summer, bringing in ‘fools’ like Anton Ferdinand and Armand Traore, but escapes all blame for it because it all got pinned on Briatore.
And he’s failed in the Premier League – with Palace, with Sheffield United, and perhaps you could also say with us as well even though he wasn’t given a fair crack at that in my opinion. He admits himself now he’s a Championship manager – and seven promotions is remarkable.
I think what happened at QPR first time round hurt and surprised him, he spoke in his book about Shaun Wright-Phillips in particular making fun of him and mocking him when he fined him, because he was on so much money it didn’t matter.
I don’t think he’s well suited to the big money, big ego Premier League players. Obviously Cardiff are a bit of a way off that at the moment, but if you do have a dressing room full of egotistical bums he won’t be able to start replacing them until January.
It’s worth saying that if you interviewed a Leeds fan for this they’d tell you he’s useless. He was absolutely brilliant for QPR, so we’ve nothing but good things to say.
He is getting on a bit in years, and he has been talking about retiring for ages, so it’ll be interesting to see how he does and whether his heart is still in it if things don’t go well at Cardiff straight away.
How do you think Warnock will do at Cardiff? Can he succeed in South Wales?
Absolutely ideal for the situation you’re in now. I’d expect an immediate, dramatic upturn in results – literally starting in the next game.
Whether that maintains through to the end of the season or not, and whether he’s got the heart and energy for it if it doesn’t go well straight away, we’ll see. But I certainly don’t think you’ll be where you are now for very long.
Thanks to Jamie Kemble
Monday 10th October 2016
We spoke to QPR supporter Clive Whittingham to find out everything you need to know about new Cardiff City manager Neil Warnock.
Neil Warnock has instantly become one of the most popular managerial signings at Cardiff City for a number of years but what’s in-store? What can we expect from the veteran boss? QPR supporter Clive Whittingham from ‘LoftforWords‘ gives us a detailed run-down.
Neil Warnock enjoyed a good first spell at QPR, talk us through his time at Loftus Road.
Warnock is a revered figure at Loftus Road and with very good reason. We’d been out of the Premier League for 15 years when he arrived, and looked about as far away as we’d ever been from getting back.
Our billionaires takeover – Flavio Briatore, Bernie Ecclestone, Lakshmi Mittal – three years prior was supposed to make us the “richest club in the world” but it had descended into a farce because Briatore wanted control of everything, including team selection.
When Warnock arrived two-thirds of the way through 2009/10 we were firmly in a relegation battle, on a long losing run including home defeats by Scunthorpe and the likes, and looked absolutely bereft.
We’d already gone through Jim Magilton, Paul Hart and Mick Harford as managers that season and had seen off Iain Dowie and Paolo Sousa the season before.
The board came up with a new plan whereby Briatore would back off, Lakshmi Mittal’s son in law Amit Bhatia would be the figurehead, his old uni mate Ishan Saksena would be the CEO and a strong manager would be employed and left to it.
They poached Warnock from Palace and, frankly, given his reputation and QPR’s standing in the game at the time he could pretty much name his price and conditions – i.e. I’m not coming if that megalomaniac Italian is going to start poking his nose in.
We escaped the drop with something to spare. He immediately put some belief in the players and, contrary to the common perception, played attacking football that was very decent to watch. We immediately beat league leaders West Brom 3-1 at home and then went to his old club Palace and won 2-0 with a fabulous Akos Buzsaky goal in there.
When he arrived we actually had more loan players (seven) than you were allowed to pick in a matchday squad (five) and he stated openly that there wouldn’t be loans like that the year after – he wanted a settled core group of players.
The signings, and this is a Warnock trait, were underwhelming on paper – Clint Hill was getting on in years and had an ankle like a cement mixer, Shaun Derry seemed past it, Jamie Mackie was an unknown from Plymouth, Paddy Kenny had just been out for a year with a drugs ban and so on.
But in actual fact, they gave the team a spine and a heart it didn’t have, policed the dressing room, maintained standards, gave us a really solid platform to build on.
In actual fact his biggest name and money signing, Rob Hulse, was his biggest disappointment. There were others that didn’t work – Big Fat Leon Clarke – but overall his transfer record was superb that first summer.
We won the first two games of the season easily, 7-0 on aggregate against Barnsley and Sheff Utd, then recovered from 2-0 down with 91 minutes played to get a 2-2 at Derby.
That result in particular just injected belief into the team and we didn’t lose any of the first 19 matches that season. In the end we only lost five times in the whole campaign, three of those in a little wobble over Christmas which he immediately corrected by adding Wayne Routledge, Ishmael Miller and Danny Shittu in January.
The group was so solid it was even able to ride out the three-month Ale Faurlin controversy and win the league regardless. A wonderful team to watch, great group of players.
What happened next is open to some debate. Either Warnock wanted to sign Ashley Williams, Wayne Routledge, Kyle Naughton and several others of that ilk, but couldn’t because Briatore was now trying to sell the club and wouldn’t release any money, forcing us to first of all sign a load of stop gaps like DJ Campbell and Jay Bothroyd before then going on a mad trolley dash at the end of the window when Tony Fernandes did buy the club.
Or Warnock got it wrong, thought personalities like Joey Barton and Shaun Wright Phillips would come in and be part of the same group ethic, listen to what he had to say rather than trying to run it themselves.
We went on a bad run through December in the top flight, but they were tough fixtures, then St Joseph stupidly got himself typically sent off in a game we were winning at home to Norwich resulting in another defeat.
Warnock was very harshly sacked at Christmas time, basically because he was trying to sign Alex from Chelsea whose agent is Kia Joorabchian who also just so happens to be Mark Hughes’ best chum.
Very harsh, very premature. Warnock should have been given that season regardless for what he’d done the previous year.
Things clearly weren’t going very well, there was an FA Cup game at MK Dons where we were embarrassing, and the old ‘lost the dressing room’ stuff started circulating – difficult to keep hold of a dressing room with ‘idiots’ like Barton in it – but his sacking was a disgrace with hindsight.
He returned for a second, briefer spell last season – what was all that about?
We obviously started last season after relegation with Chris Ramsey in charge – a good youth coach by all accounts, a decent man, but not experienced as a number one. The fans didn’t really take to him, and expectations were higher last season than the team was ever going to be able to achieve, so it got quite toxic quite quickly.
To try to help Ramsey out in October time the club came up with this idea that Neil Warnock would come back as an “advisor” and soon he was up in the stand phoning instructions down to the bench. It was a bit cringeworthy really, like Terry Venables standing two steps behind Bryan Robson at Middlesbrough that year.
Ramsey was eventually sacked and Warnock took caretaker charge for a period of games where we won two and drew one of four, conceding only one goal in the process.
He kept insisting he didn’t want to return to management (he says this a lot, he’s been saying it since Palace and has managed QPR, Leeds, Rotherham and now Cardiff) permanently, and as it transpired his wife was quite ill at the time.
Les Ferdinand, our director of football, said Warnock told him he could do three months with us. There was a feeling that Warnock was actually after Ferdinand’s job – he’s spoken frequently of the need to have experienced “football people” like himself between the foreign owners and the managers at clubs, presumably to stop things like Kia Joorabchian getting in the chairman’s ear.
We went ahead with the search for a new manager and got Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink. Then, just as he was about to take the job, we won a game at Reading in the last-minute (fluke, the goalkeeper dropped the ball in the net) and Warnock was on the pitch at the end, soaked through, punching the air in front of the fans.
He seemed to get the bug back, by which time it was too late and we had another manager.
Loads of QPR fans wanted him to stay, felt we could have a tilt at the play offs with him, and have never really warmed to Hasselbaink since because of it.
It didn’t help that he then, having got the bug, turned up at Rotherham and worked another minor miracle there. Every QPR result through to the end of the season was judged in the context of what Rotherham had done on the same day.
What can we expect from a Neil Warnock side? What sort of style does he favour and what does a Warnock side look like?
Very much horses for courses. The perception that he’s some sort of Tony Pulis figure, and it’s all long balls and kicking people, is entirely wrong. If that’s what the players he has at his disposal are best at, that’s what he’ll do, but at QPR he had (and added) speed in wide areas, quality in the number ten role, and a quality number nine in Heidar Helguson so he set us up in a very attacking version of 4-2-3-1 and blitzed teams.
It was wonderful to watch, with Taarabt at the heart of it, Faurlin pulling strings from midfield. Exhilarating stuff, you always thought we’d score. One of my favourite ever QPR teams. Cardiff know all about it of course because we took four points and one of the promotion spots off you that year.
But, like I say, he’ll pick according to what he has available. When he came back for that brief spell last year we only had Charlie Austin up front, and he was injured, so he played 4-6-0 and tried to grind out 0-0s and 1-0s. That was fairly dire to watch, and we only scored twice in the four games – one of those the keeper’s disaster at Reading.
Every manager has his downsides, so what are Warnock’s? What could hold him back during his time at Cardiff?
Well a lot of his old favourites are a bit old now, so presumably he’s on the look out for a new Derry/Hill/Kenny combination having taken them everywhere with him. He absolutely loves Phil Jagielka but it might be a bit soon/expensive for him to drop down.
He unashamedly talks an absolute load of bollocks publicly. Win 3-0, lose 3-0, crash the team bus down a rocky cliff on the way to an away match, he’ll almost always say “it was just what we needed if I’m honest”. “If I’m honest” is his tick when he’s lying, so watch out for that and discount everything he said before it.
Every job is his last job, he’s always about to retire to his farm in Cornwall; whichever club he’s at is always his “kind of club” with “fantastic fans”; the players are only ever told to “go out and enjoy it”.
He wasn’t as bad with referees at QPR as he had been previously, but he will frequently deflect a poor performance away from him and the players and pin it on the officials.
He’s a master of PR – he made a mess of that QPR promotion summer, bringing in ‘fools’ like Anton Ferdinand and Armand Traore, but escapes all blame for it because it all got pinned on Briatore.
And he’s failed in the Premier League – with Palace, with Sheffield United, and perhaps you could also say with us as well even though he wasn’t given a fair crack at that in my opinion. He admits himself now he’s a Championship manager – and seven promotions is remarkable.
I think what happened at QPR first time round hurt and surprised him, he spoke in his book about Shaun Wright-Phillips in particular making fun of him and mocking him when he fined him, because he was on so much money it didn’t matter.
I don’t think he’s well suited to the big money, big ego Premier League players. Obviously Cardiff are a bit of a way off that at the moment, but if you do have a dressing room full of egotistical bums he won’t be able to start replacing them until January.
It’s worth saying that if you interviewed a Leeds fan for this they’d tell you he’s useless. He was absolutely brilliant for QPR, so we’ve nothing but good things to say.
He is getting on a bit in years, and he has been talking about retiring for ages, so it’ll be interesting to see how he does and whether his heart is still in it if things don’t go well at Cardiff straight away.
How do you think Warnock will do at Cardiff? Can he succeed in South Wales?
Absolutely ideal for the situation you’re in now. I’d expect an immediate, dramatic upturn in results – literally starting in the next game.
Whether that maintains through to the end of the season or not, and whether he’s got the heart and energy for it if it doesn’t go well straight away, we’ll see. But I certainly don’t think you’ll be where you are now for very long.
You do not have the required permissions to view the files attached to this post.
Re: QPR supporter gives us a complete run-down of Neil Warno
Mon Oct 10, 2016 11:47 am
Really interesting comments from the QPR fan. Very honest and balanced 
Re: QPR supporter gives us a complete run-down of Neil Warno
Mon Oct 10, 2016 12:18 pm
Interesting he said "if I'm honest" a few times in his first interview, and that were his type of fans haha
Like he said, master of PR as was malky
Like he said, master of PR as was malky
Re: QPR supporter gives us a complete run-down of Neil Warno
Mon Oct 10, 2016 12:40 pm
worcester_ccfc wrote:Really interesting comments from the QPR fan. Very honest and balanced
Agreed, a super read!
Loved reading that.
Certainly with Warnock there are warts and all... but I'm still very happy.
Re: QPR supporter gives us a complete run-down of Neil Warno
Mon Oct 10, 2016 12:50 pm
Very interesting read and confirms what I personally thought which is all good news. What I like about NW is his track record and what you see is what you get. I think we are both a perfect fit for each other and it wouldn't surprise me to see an immediate improvement in performance and results starting this Friday - can you imagine the lift that this is going to give the squad? Many of us thought under RS that a decent manager would be able to get the potential from what I still think is a strong squad. Good to read that NW will play a system based on the players he has as opposed to trying to fit them into his preferred formation and tactics - this is a key element that was missing under RS/PT and I suspect why heads and performance have gone down. Appreciate that write up and looking forward to hopefully starting our season versus the Wurzles on Friday.
Re: QPR supporter gives us a complete run-down of Neil Warno
Mon Oct 10, 2016 1:03 pm
Great read. Get the feeling the rest of the season will be v interesting!
Re: QPR supporter gives us a complete run-down of Neil Warno
Mon Oct 10, 2016 2:22 pm
IF I'M HONEST I enjoyed reading that HE'S MY SORT OF MANAGER.
I'm really looking forward to the rest of the season as long AS THE OFFICIALS DONT COST US POINTS.
I'm really looking forward to the rest of the season as long AS THE OFFICIALS DONT COST US POINTS.
Re: QPR supporter gives us a complete run-down of Neil Warno
Mon Oct 10, 2016 3:06 pm
I don't like Neil Warnock, He drives me around the bend when he is interviewed and not someone that I could warm to.
But as a Championship football manager he is excellent, successful, organized, puts a bit of steel in his teams, seems to motivate the players, everything that we are lacking a City. So come on Neil, the fans will back you, so give us something to cheer about starting Friday.
But as a Championship football manager he is excellent, successful, organized, puts a bit of steel in his teams, seems to motivate the players, everything that we are lacking a City. So come on Neil, the fans will back you, so give us something to cheer about starting Friday.
Re: QPR supporter gives us a complete run-down of Neil Warno
Mon Oct 10, 2016 3:07 pm
nojac wrote:IF I'M HONEST I enjoyed reading that HE'S MY SORT OF MANAGER.
I'm really looking forward to the rest of the season as long AS THE OFFICIALS DONT COST US POINTS.
City get the sh***y end of the stick when to comes down to officials.
Lost count of the number of times we get decisions going the opposition's way and ithahs been like this since I started going down.
Will never forgive that west country bald geezer (Brian Stevens) for some of the decisions he gave against us in the 70's & 80's.
Re: QPR supporter gives us a complete run-down of Neil Warno
Mon Oct 10, 2016 3:47 pm
Thats what makes Warnock so good is that you know what you're getting from him. 
Re: QPR supporter gives us a complete run-down of Neil Warno
Mon Oct 10, 2016 10:27 pm
Danny Says wrote:nojac wrote:IF I'M HONEST I enjoyed reading that HE'S MY SORT OF MANAGER.
I'm really looking forward to the rest of the season as long AS THE OFFICIALS DONT COST US POINTS.
City get the sh***y end of the stick when to comes down to officials.
Lost count of the number of times we get decisions going the opposition's way and ithahs been like this since I started going down.
Will never forgive that west country bald geezer (Brian Stevens) for some of the decisions he gave against us in the 70's & 80's.
And every fan of every club will say exactly the same thing ....
Re: QPR supporter gives us a complete run-down of Neil Warno
Mon Oct 10, 2016 10:29 pm
AfricanBluebird wrote:worcester_ccfc wrote:Really interesting comments from the QPR fan. Very honest and balanced
Agreed, a super read!
Loved reading that.
Certainly with Warnock there are warts and all... but I'm still very happy.
Horrible man, but hope he saves you before he legs it again.