"Ambitious QPR Could Be A Fit For Pickens"

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US SOCCER PLAYERS. Com - Ian Plenderleith - Ambitious QPR Could Be A Fit For Pickens
WASHINGTON DC (February 5, 2008) USSoccerPlayers -- Out of contract Chicago Fire goalkeeper Matt Pickens has become the latest young Major League Soccer player to move to Europe, having confirmed to the Daily Southdown that he’s been signed by English second-tier side Queens Park Rangers. Pickens, who left the US National Team January training camp to go and train with Norwich City, had also been on trial at Preston North End.

QPR play at Shepherd’s Bush in west London, and Pickens will be close to the American caucus just down the road at Fulham. Not that the team’s fans will be encouraging him to fraternize -- in the late 1980s, QPR’s former owners crafted a plan to merge the two into Fulham Park Rangers, a scheme that was abandoned thanks to furious protests from both sets of fans.

Around that time there was little to differentiate between the two neighbors and their other west London rivals, Chelsea. In the past decade, cash has created a clear pecking order. Chelsea came into Russian oil money and bought their way to the Premier League title (the only way to get one for wannabe big-timers). Fulham became the beneficiaries of Harrods’ owner Mohammed Fayed’s ownership and rose from the league’s lower reaches to the Premier League, where they’re just about hanging in.

During their rivals’ ascendancy, QPR have struggled, falling from the Premier League to the third level in the late 1990s, but they are now back in the second-tier Championship. They have also lived through several ownership changes and all the financial instability that’s come with it, including administration in 2001, followed by an emergency rescue loan whose high interest rates held them back severely in the ensuing years. Another possible merger that year, with south London’s Wimbledon (now MK Dons), was also fiercely opposed and defeated by fans. The only consolation has been that west London’s fourth side, Brentford, were even further down the league pyramid and almost as close to extinction.

That QPR avoided an even earlier merger with Brentford in the late 1960s tells you a lot about the tight market in this part of the English capital. With a compact but spatially limited ground in Loftus Road, and a mainly local (but loyal) fan base, QPR was perhaps the least likely of the Fulham-Chelsea-QPR triumvirate to become a soccer gargantuan once the Premier League age kicked in. Twice in their history they spent periods at the now demolished White City stadium -- once in the 1930s and again in the 1960s -- to try and draw larger crowds, but always ended up back at the place they’ve called home since 1917.

Up until now, Loftus Road seemed an appropriate venue for a team with just one major honor -- the 1967 League Cup. In 1976, with several senior England internationals in the side, they were runners-up in the league, finishing just a point behind Liverpool. They also reached the League Cup final again (losers to Oxford in 1986), and the FA Cup final, going down to Tottenham after a replay in 1982). During the past decade of perpetual crisis, that seemed about as good as it was ever likely to get.

Then last summer Formula One tycoons (billionaire) Bernie Ecclestone and (multi-millionaire) Flavio Briatore took the club over in a $28 million deal, most of which went towards wiping out the club’s debt. They formed a parent company, QPR Holdings, of which Briatore is now chairman. They made some cash available for players, and talked about retaining Premier League status, even as QPR spent the earlier part of this season rooted to the foot of division two.

Just before Christmas they were joined by Indian steel magnate Lakshmi Mittal, who for just $400,000 took a 20 per cent stake in the club, even though he has minimal interest in soccer. But his son-in-law, Amit Bhatia, is very much interested in the game, and is now vice chairman of QPR Holdings. And early in the New Year there were mutterings about eventually playing in the Champions League and a new stadium.

With the help of some fresh signings, Rangers have indeed moved up the table, to seventeenth, and last Saturday outplayed second-placed Bristol City in a 3-0 win. So far, though, no cash has been made available for the kind of new arrivals that shot Chelsea into the headlines, and to the top of the Premier League, under Roman Abramovich. Given the dimensions of the club, the new owners may be pragmatically planning to take things a little slower.

In that context, signing a player like Pickens from the US is a sober move. He’s a maturing but cheap prospect who could follow in the footsteps of his compatriot US net-minders and become a reliable regular, or better. If he doesn’t work out, he won’t have cost the team millions of dollars.

For Pickens, he’s joining a team that’s on a newly secure financial footing, and where he has a realistic chance of playing time. If things go according to plan on both sides, the team and the player will continue to grow and reach the top flight within the next three to four years.

Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on how you look at it), nothing’s a certainty in soccer. There are still some question marks about what motivated the rich men of steel and super-fast cars to buy into an ailing soccer club. And even stable ownership and steady finances don’t necessarily guarantee good results on the field. Never mind the Champions League, QPR is currently still just the third best side in west London. USSoccer