Snippets: Brian Glanville on QPR...Helguson Injury Update..Swansea, Sousa and QPR...Ex-QPR Loanee Named Championship Player of The Month

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- Ex-QPR Loanee Wins Championship Player of The Month Award

- Chris Charles Review of The Week, including of course, re QPR at Newcastle

- U-20 World Cup: England Draw and Get Knocked Out

- "Boys Called Up After QPR Trial Day"

- Steve Wicks Turns 53

- Watford Fan Gets Suspended Sentence for Attack on QPR Fan

- Player of The Month Nominations: Results announced shortly before kick off

- The Kevin Keegan/Newcastle/Dennis Wise/Youtube "Scouting" and Agents' Role - Conclusions

- Already!: A Championship Club Offering 2010/11 Season Ticket Info

- Portsmouth in Seemingly-Major Financial Crisis

- The "Mascots Grand National" being run tomorrow!

- Previews: Swansea vs QPR
- Swansea Away
- QPR Fan Sites: Swansea-QPR Previews

- Sousa's Views About QPR


- "Helguson on Road to Recovery"
- Watford Observer "....Helguson is expected to start running at the weekend and could be back from his calf injury in time for the game with Middlesbrough in two weeks time. [Malkay] Mackay said: “Champney’s have kindly given us the use of their cryotherapy chamber and also they have an oxygen area with a bike and they have kindly given us use of them for Heidar and he is working on both twice a day and is swimming. “He will hopefully be running at the weekend, which then gives him two weeks to have a chance to be ready for the next game. He will miss Cardiff but we are all hopeful that the work Richard Collinge [head of medical] and his team are putting in will benefit quicker rather than later.”


Brian Glanville/World Soccer re QPR
- The Sunday Telegraph carried a devastating chronicle of the excesses of Flavio Briatore at Queens Park Rangers, hot on the heels of his disgrace in Formula 1, having been found culpable of encouraging his Renault driver, Nelson Piquet junior, to crash deliberately at the 2008 Singapore race, thus enabling his team mate to win.
- It should really be a done and dusted case since the rules of the Football League lay down that any director found guilty of transgressions so serious in any other sport should be automatically kicked out of soccer. But it seems that Briatore, a man adept at finding loopholes; may well find one now, since he resigned so quickly from Renault that F1 were unable to ban him.
- Some years ago, he was found guilty in Italy of fraudulent activity, but took off so fast to a remote island that he escaped punishment and, Italy being Italy, was ultimately able to retain unscathed.
- The word from F1 is that, for all his autocracy, he didn’t really know much about motor racing, though this doesn’t stop his compulsive interfering. Such as, we read in the Telegraph, the time when on November 11 2008, Gareth Ainsworth, the sturdy outside right, was in temporary charge of the team which had to play Manchester United in the League Cup, at Old Trafford, Ainsworth on a rain plagued night decided to leave his cell phone in the dressing room. When he returned at the end of the game, he found Briatore had called him 72 times!
- The previous April during a London derby at home to Crystal Palace, Briatore phoned from Kuala Lumpur, 6500 miles distant, to insist that Lee Cook replace Lee Miller at half time. Manager after manager has come and gone. So for that matter, for no apparent reason, has the loyal, long serving club secretary, Sheila Marson.
- The choice of Iain Dowie seemed a strange one; and Dowie still says he likes the man. But before his appointment, Dowie had walked out on Crystal Palace, insisting he wanted to be with his family up North; then gone just down the road to Charlton Athletic. It would cost him very dear and he didn’t last long at Charlton, being sacked and moving to Coventry City. Again, not for long.
- Paulo Sousa, once such a distinguished Portuguese international, was abruptly booted out for daring to say that the effective young striker, Dexter Blackstock, then leading scorer, was lent to Nottingham Forest, for whom he recently signed a permanent contract, without the manager being told. When Rowan Vine, a fellow striker dared to say the loan didn’t make sense, he was promptly fined two weeks’ wages.
- Oh, for the days of tough little Jim Gregory who may have ruled with a rod of iron but at least knew what he was doing. Such as controversially selling that superb maverick, Rodney Marsh, to Manchester City, though his manager, Gordon Jago, had declared it would happen “only over my dead body.” When the smoke cleared, Rodney had gone – alas, it would never work out at Maine Road, but somehow or other, Gordon was still alive. World Soccer


From a year ago: Great oped re being a football fan. Probably applicable to all clubs. "....You may not own it, but your club belongs to you"
The Mirror - Ian Winwood October 3, 2008- Opinion: Why football fans should care as much about who owns their club as they do who plays for it- Sometimes football fans can be difficult people to like.
- Listening to the wailing wall of noise emanating from Liverpool’s red and blue quarters, and of course from the real-life disaster movie that plays in black and white (Tynetanic! It too will go down!), the thing that has struck me most is how naïve and how gullible too many supporters can be.
- If, as they claim, they care so much for the club they support then why do they seem to care so little about those who might like to own it?
- The relationship between a fan and his or her club is about more than what happens on the pitch. In the majority of cases ‘we’ as supporters have no more ownership of ‘our’ club than we do of the train company that ferries us to an away game.
- The allegiance is entirely illogical, and it is from this quality that it derives its strength. How did my team do at the weekend? ‘We’ lost. ‘We’? Who the hell is ‘we’? What part did I play in ‘our’ defeat?
- To varying degrees, football fans can claim to ownership of ‘their’ club in just one way: moral ownership. Increasingly, at the game’s top table your team does not need you, and if you turn your back on it you will be replaced without anyone in power either noticing or caring. Your allegiance means more to you than it does to them. Because of this, it is up to you to take care of it.
- Personally, I take a very relaxed approach to my team’s on-field fortunes. It is none of my business how well, or how badly, they perform; either I support them or I don’t. All that matters to me is that I have a club to support, and that this club survives longer than I do. If they take to the field in the Premier League (I support Barnsley, so this is looking unlikely) then, great; if they represent the Blue Square Conference North (I support Barnsley, so this is looking likely) then so be it.
- Living in London, I attend perhaps 10 or 12 games each season. Despite the fact that the Emirates Stadium is walking distance from where I type these words, my loyalty has never been tested. And if ‘my’ club ceased to exist, I would support no team at all.
- I don’t believe the reason I am so shocked and irritated by the gullibility of so many supporters when it comes to who owns their club is due solely to the fact that no billionaires have been seen in the neighbourhood of Oakwell. If they were, it would be a sure sign that the barrel is running low on biscuits.
- But to mangle a phrase, if the Premier League sneezes the rest of English football – even world football – catches the plague.
- Just last year many fans of Queens Park Rangers were crowing about how, under new ownership, they were suddenly “richer than Chelsea”. Suddenly, these same fans are learning that wealth has a tendency of trickling up, not down. This is why supporters – and visiting supporters as well – are paying inflation-busting ticket prices to sit in a stadium that looks like it was made out of Meccano, and where leg room is at such a premium it makes an economy class on a charter flight look Air Force One.
- At the top end of the country, the soap opera that is Newcastle United – we could call it Neverenders – groans on. The supporter who appeared on the BBC's Football Focus programme to claim that the departure of Kevin Keegan had “ruined [her] life” offered a snapshot of how hysterical things have become.
- Of course, the departure of the Doncaster demigod was clumsy and a cause of distress for the fans who welcomed him back just months previously. Because of the furore his actions have caused, owner Mike Ashley is now looking to sell. Predictably, many fans are delighted.
- But it seems to me that not enough people are asking questions about who might buy the club, just so long as they have wealth.
- Are Newcastle fans – or fans of any club who like the sound of owners for whom money is no object – really so sure that things can only get better?
- Me, I am not at all convinced. At least in principle, I find this influx of new owners to be not alarming, but frightening. What do they want for their money? What are their motivations? And why are so many supporters accepting these developments without a murmur of protest?
- It is obvious that football’s governing bodies do not care to properly regulate the game for which they are responsible. One wonders just how despicable a character would have to be in order to fail the Premier League’s ‘Fit and Proper Persons’ test. But for football to have winners it must also have losers, and this is a fact that no amount of money will alter.
- Consider this: the agreement of 14 clubs is all that’s required for a Premier League rule to be changed. There is nothing whatsoever preventing billionaires and business conglomerates from buying most clubs in the league, just as there is nothing preventing these owners from lobbying together to alter any rule that doesn’t fit with their business plan.
- Tell me, if you’d just invested a kit-bag full of zeros into a club, would you fancy the prospect of being relegated? No? Well, how about we see if we can get rid of it.
- And if you had no real affinity with this club – no moral ownership – would you care what happened to it were you to walk away?
- You might be blinded by the bling, but these are troubled times for football supporters. As can be seen in the meltdown in the financial markets, big money needs careful control and a rigid structure in order that things don’t get out of hand. Ignorant of this, football runs itself with all the care of the Wild West.
- You may not own it, but your club belongs to you. And it will be you who is left to pick up the pieces should things go wrong.
- That is, if there are any pieces left. Mirror

- From Earlier this Week: By the same Mirror writer: Nice story re QPR- Ian Winwood/Daily Mirror - How Queens Park Rangers and the Tiger Cubs restored my faith in football


Chris Wathan/Western Mail -Total fun for de Vries as he puts Rangers horror out of his mind
- SWANSEA CITY goalkeeper Dorus de Vries insists he will always be fearless with the football after hearing his passing come in for praise this week.
- But, as he prepares to face Queens Park Rangers today, the big Dutchman admitted he’s lucky his bravery off the ball is still intact after the horror injury suffered against the Hoops last year.
- De Vries was left hospitalised following a nasty collision with Rangers midfielder Martin Rowlands in the 0-0 Liberty Stadium stalemate 12 months ago.
- A broken jaw, a depressed cheekbone and the need of a protective mask were all the result of a refusal to back out of a challenge for the ball. The sight of de Vries carried off motionless on a stretcher immediately revoked memories of the sickening clash between Petr Cech and Stephen Hunt two years earlier that left the Chelsea keeper with severe head injuries.
- Cech still wears a head guard to this day, with many pundits quick to claim he’s not the same stopper he once was.
- “It’s happened to many goalkeepers,” said the 28-year-old former Dutch youth international.
- “I was lucky not be concussed but you do see it because as a goalkeeper you can’t be afraid and after horrible injuries like Cech’s it can be a mental thing.
- “And I’ll be honest and say it did concern me. But I was lucky to have the Inaki Bergara, the goalkeeping coach at the time, to pull me through.
- “I was straight into surgery and actually back on the training field two days later. But the important thing was that Inaki didn’t waste any time with me, talking me through things and making sure it didn’t affect me.
- “Basically he told me I’d suffered the worst thing that can happen to a goalkeeper on the field – and that I had come through it.
- “You have to be really strong in those situations and in the end it proved good for my development that I came through it.
“And when it came to that next one-v-one I had no fear – it wasn’t even in my mind. There was nothing different for me.”
- Still de Vries admits he was fortunate things were not worse following a night he says he will never forget.
- Yet there is unlikely to be any grudge when he meets Rowlands for the first time since the injury, the Hoops skipper absent when Swansea lost at Loftus Road in March.
- Instead de Vries is more concerned with keeping up the kind of form that has seen him collect five Championship clean sheets so far, arguably performing better than he has done since arriving in South Wales in 2007.
- Yet the former Den Haag and Dunfermline man insists he will not take all the plaudits for the shut-outs under new manager Paulo Sousa.
- But talk to him about his distribution, as Doncaster manager Sean O’Driscoll did in midweek, and his eyes light up.
- Describing Swansea’s talent in keeping the ball, O’Driscoll reckons de Vries’ passing ability is a perfect illustration of the side’s strengths, claiming: “The stats for him are just amazing.
- “You look at that last game against Sheffield United and his passing stats are better than any outfield player. You try and close down a centre-back if they play from the back and he’ll ping it to the full-back.
- “If you try and close down the centre-backs and full-backs he’ll chip it over to the wide right player. He is a cut above anything in this division in the way he plays. He’s taken goalkeeping to a new level.”
- For de Vries, a man from the land of “total football”, such recognition is heaven sent.
- “It’s brilliant to hear that kind of thing,” said de Vries, who admitted he was an outfield player until his mid-teens and only took up life between the sticks when he reluctantly went along to a goalkeeping contest and won the national finals.
- “I’ve always been proud of that side of my game. That’s why Roberto Martinez first brought me in because I have that to my game.
- “I work on my distribution every day because I can help set up counter-attacks with the right pass. And I am comfortable with that because I used to play as a centre-half – it means I’ve only gone back one line in the formation so I’m OK with through balls or even headers!
- “It’s a Dutch thing, total football where the idea is that the goalkeeper is almost a sweeper.
- “Johan Cruyff was big on it where the goalkeeper was the 11th outfield player and it was just as much about keeping possession as anything else.
- “Five clean sheets is a good record but it’s not the most satisfying thing I get from games.
- “Sometimes you can make one or two good saves but you’re not really involved. A clean sheet is about the back four or five, the whole team because everyone has to play their part.”
- Darren Pratley is itching for a first start following his successful substitute comeback in midweek and his return would soften the blow should Andrea Orlandi (thigh), Leon Britton (toe) or Cedric van der Gun (thigh) fail to come through fitness tests. Britton is the more likely of the trio to make it with Jordi Lopez back from suspension to face his ex-team-mates, as is Nathan Dyer who has also served his ban for the sending off against Sheffield United last week.
- And at last Sousa looks like having a selection headache in attack with Stephen Dobbie fit for a start after coming back from a rib injury at Doncaster. Western Mail


SOME OTHER RECENT POSTS

- Flashback: Rowan Vine Joins QPR
- Reading Report on their Finances
- The Sun Gets One Wrong and apologizes to Manchester City
- Happy Birthday to Ex-QPR Don Shanks (57)
- Flashback: Two Elderly QPR Stewarts Axed
- Flashback re Ex-QPR Chief Scout, Mel Johnson
- Scolari Set to Be Axed/Paid Off Again
- FA Condemns Reckless Club Owners
- "Flavio Should Crash Out of QPR" - LoftforWords' Clive Whittingham/Evening Standard Blog
- Turning Forty-one and still playing (and scoring) in the Football League: Paul Furlong

- - The continually-updated QPR Nostalgia Photos Compilation (Feel free to add to)