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- Throughout the day, the QPR Report Messageboard has news updates, comments and perspectives - even links to other board comments of interest re QPR matters (on and off the field) along with football (and ONLY football) topics in general....Also Follow: QPR REPORT ON TWITTER
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- Reminder Today (Sunday morning): Sky Sports "Goals on Sunday" (11:00 am) - Ask Warnock & Rodgers
- QPR Report Poll Question: Will QPR's Promised "Pre-Season Celebration" Be Held?
Flashback: QPR Official Site - May 11, 2011 - CLUB ANNOUNCEMENT (No Parade...But Pre-Season Celebration)
"Regrettably, the Club can confirm that, for a number of reasons, we will not be holding an end of season parade following our promotion to the Premier League. We know this will be a huge disappointment to our fans who have been fantastic this season and everyone at the Club shares this view. ....However, plans are already afoot for a pre-season celebration, once the players return to training in July. We will, of course, keep you - our supporters - updated with any developments in due course. QPR Official Site: May 11 2011
And along the same lines: - VANISHED WITHOUT NOTICE! The Club's Official Messageboard
- Still No QPR Offical Site Update re the Status of the Official Supporters Club (OSC). Despite Committee Resignations.
- Past Opening Day August 7 Games for QPR
- Bookies and Pundits Favour QPR for Relegation
- Press Versus Football Clubs Dispute. Lock Out
- Two Year Flashback: "Top-Flight Clubs Losing Lustre for Sponsors"
- Luton vs QPR: Match Reports, Comments, Photos & Video
- An Early Preview of QPR vs Bolton
- A Statistical Guide to Points Needed to Stay Up
- England Squad to Play Holland: Robert Green, Joe Hart, David Stockdale, Leighton Baines, Gary Cahill, Ashley Cole, Rio Ferdinand, Phil Jagielka, Joleon Lescott, Micah Richards, John Terry, Kyle Walker, Gareth Barry, Michael Carrick, Stewart Downing, Adam Johnson, Frank Lampard, James Milner, Scott Parker, Jack Wilshere, Ashley Young, Andy Carroll, Peter Crouch, Wayne Rooney, Danny Welbeck BBC
Mail/Joe Bernstein - Hoops legend Marsh slams 'idiot' QPR owners for failing to splash the cash
QPR legend Rodney Marsh has accused owners Flavio Briatore and Bernie Ecclestone of treating fans 'like mushrooms' - and said he would have respected manager Neil Warnock if he had quit.
- Marsh, who scored at Wembley when Rangers won the only major trophy in their history, is fuming at the way the two Formula One tycoons have failed to back the club's bid to stay in the Premier League after winning promotion last season.
- So far, QPR's only cash signing has been £1.2million Blackpool striker DJ Campbell, with Southampton winger Jason Puncheon expected to join this week in a £2m deal.
- Marsh said: 'It's nowhere near enough. I said Blackpool would go down last season because they hadn't spent enough.
- 'Without at least £10m being spent, you've got virtually no chance. I don't know why they didn't get someone like Scott Parker in with proven Premier League experience.
- 'Briatore and Ecclestone have treated the fans like mushrooms. Somewhere a village is missing two idiots.
- 'I thought four weeks ago that Neil Warnock would have walked out. I'm not saying he should have but I'd have respected him for it. Because what will happen is he'll go on a streak of games without winning and people will call for his head anyway.
- 'Neil's had his hands tied in the transfer market. He did wonders last season, winning promotion was like swimming the Channel with diver's boots on. And he kept Adel Taarabt under control, which is no mean feat.
- 'But instead of backing Neil, the club have treated him like a naughty schoolboy who has to stand in the corner in silence.'
- Marsh's outspoken comments about keeping supporters in the dark - like mushrooms - are certain to have a huge impact. He is still revered for the goal that helped win the 1967 League Cup final against West Bromwich.
- And he warned: 'It is going to be very difficult for QPR to stay up - the first 10 games are absolutely critica." Mail
Independent/Steve Tongue - Rangers in a hurry to get up to speed
Manager Warnock is back in the top flight but he's hoping another Formula One mogul buys QPR and invests in new players, writes Steve Tongue
Sunday, 7 August 2011
For much of the past few months, managing Queens Park Rangers must have felt like driving a Formula One car in a 30mph speed limit; enjoyable in its way but more than a little frustrating.
Neil Warnock, who in May led Rangers back into the Premier League for the eighth promotion of his career, admits that in younger days he would have been tearing his hair out about the uncertainty surrounding the club's ownership.
After 30 years in management, however, he is trying to adopt a calmer approach, and one which may shortly be rewarded with an alternative mode of transport. Tony Fernandes, of Team Lotus and Air Asia, is in talks to buy out Bernie Ecclestone, another F1 man, whose only interest in owning a football club appears to have been selling it on at a profit.
"I don't really have the time to pay the attention I should to it," Ecclestone told the BBC. He had admitted just before the Championship title was secured that he was a Chelsea supporter who couldn't name half the QPR team and left matches at half-time to avoid the traffic. Having originally bought into the club with his fellow F1 mogul Flavio Briatore for a modest sum, then purchased the latter's shares, he is now in the happy position of being able to demand tens of millions for them.
Fernandes appears willing to pay and while many Rangers followers are unhappy that his greater love is West Ham, a club he has tried to buy twice in the past 18 months, others believe he can take them sky-high. Air Asia may be a budget airline but its owner, a 47-year-old Malaysian educated at Epsom College and the London School of Economics, is worth some $450 million (£275m) and should the deal go through before the end of this month there could even be the funds that Warnock has craved to give his latest charges a realistic chance among the big boys.
Yesterday Rangers denied reports that Fernandes had already taken a 20 per cent share after he tweeted: "I look forward to talking about football next week. My dreams, my nightmares. How people treated me so badly and insulted me. Why I'm doing what I'm doing."
On tour in Italy recently, Warnock had meetings with Fernandes and Briatore, who is handling the negotiations, and was impressed with the potential new owner. But as a sign of his new maturity, Warnock has been notably careful not to say too much about his employers. He is keen to restrict himself to football matters and to stress the positives about players he has been able to recruit.
He says the latest acquisition, DJ Campbell from Blackpool, is "a QPR fan who can't wait to play for us". Jay Bothroyd, who boasts an England cap, is another new striker: "I liked him from a long time ago, and tried to get him before, so it's funny how it's worked out." Kieron Dyer, also an England player – though not for four years – naturally attracts some scepticism because of his injury record, but Warnock says: "It's not a gamble, the lad just wants to play and I liked him straight away."
Even if no change of ownership materialises, he is hopeful of at least one more new signing and optimistic that Adel Taarabt, the maverick midfielder named Player of the Season in the Championship, will stay. That would appear to be crucial to Rangers' prospects, and Briatore did at least win some plaudits from supporters by refusing to budge from his £15m asking price when Paris St-Germain, offered £3m less.
"He was inspirational at times," Warnock says of the Moroccan, who contributed 19 goals and 16 assists. "He can be a bit of an enigma but you'd pay to watch someone like him. We also had the best defensive record in the League with 25 clean sheets, which takes some doing, and a super work ethic, even the forwards. So we had a good mixture.
"The difference in the Premier League is that you have to have two or three for every position because when the end of August comes you're on your own, like being in a boat without oars. Otherwise if you get two or three injuries, you can't cope."
As he well knows after taking Notts County (in 1991) and Sheffield United (2006) into the big league, it is a huge step. Each went straight back down by a narrow margin, which hurt for different reasons: County missed out on the inaugural season of the Premier League, and Carlos Tevez was allowed to save West Ham, who were then forced to pay his beloved Blades £20m in compensation.
"It was the biggest disappointment of my career. When all's fair and square you can take it on the chin but the way everything went with the Tevez thing, and then to miss out by one goal, it was hard to take."
The irony was that Rangers spent much of last season embroiled in a similar third-party ownership case involving their midfielder Alejandro Faurlin and did not discover until the morning of their final match that they would also only be fined (£875,000) and not have points deducted.
"I don't think it's a League you've got to be frightened of and I wanted one more go at it," Warnock said. "Blackpool really showed people last season that if you play without fear you can give it a good go, and I think we've got to do that. We've got a very good asset in Loftus Road, which with 19,000 in it is a very exciting place. It's an old-fashioned type of ground and I do personally love that, where the crowd are close to the players. And we'll have to do well at home without a shadow of a doubt."
He warns that there may be some beatings along the way: "You can get one or two heavy defeats in this league when the top teams play well on the day, but it's how you bounce back."
As for the season's targets – aside from a settled club – Warnock says: "I'm not one to declare what they are but if you asked the fans they'd be quite happy to be fourth from the bottom. I want to do the best we can and see where it takes us."
Bernie versus Tony
Bernie Ecclestone
Net worth:
$4.2bn (£2.58bn)
Forbes list:
No 4 in UK
Source of wealth: Formula One, CVC Capital Partners; 62 per cent stake in QPR
Anthony Fernandes
Net worth:
$450m (£275m)
Forbes list No 20 in Malaysia
Source of wealth: Budget airlines, hotels, mobile phones and insurance Sunday Independent
- Luton Youth Player to QPR This Summer: Charlie Smith
- Three Years Ago: "Crazy" Pre-Season "Iain Dowie Out" Rumours
- Four Years Ago: Lee Cooks "Saves The Club" - Gives QPR 250,000 Pounds
- Five Years Ago: QPR Chairman Gianni Paladini "Living in Fear"...Bullet Proof Vest..."Enemy Within"...Training Ground Not Closed
- Six Years Ago: Ian Holloway's QPR Start at Hull "Bombers" (A Week Later came the Alleged Boardroom Incident at QPR-Sheffield United)
- Seventy Years of Supporting QPR: A Longtime QPR Supporter Remembers
- Play "SPOT THE BALL: The ANSWER!"
- Two Year Flashback: Magilton - No Interest in DJ Campbell....Five+ Year profile of Yeading's DJ Campbell!
- Three Year Flashback "ABC Loan Paid Off"
- JAKE Cole remembers his time at QPR
- QPR Youth Team Off to Belgium
- Some Great Old QPR Videos: QPR's 1975/76 "Championship" Season Final Game vs Leeds + Some Videos From Early 1990s
- Flashback: "40 Factoids About QPR"
- Two Hundred Percent: Pre-Season Previews: Queens Park Rangers Assessment of QPR
- 2010/11- Championship Attendance Stats (Including Club-by-Club Stats re Travelling Fans)
- Parliamentary Committee Issues Report Calling for stronger FA, Control over Club Ownership and stronger, implemented "Fit and Proper" Rule, and So Forth
- Guide to Football Grounds... Guide to Loftus Road
- Home Ticket Price Information
COST OF WATCHING FOOTBALL:
- BBC/Stuart Rowson: Clubs reveal all in BBC Sport Price of Football survey
- QPR's 2011-12 Strips: From Premier League Handbook: Pages 38-39 - (Actual photo downloaded by Juzzie on LoftforWords)-
