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BBC
By Ben Smith
BBC Sport
As the clock ticked down to Thursday's transfer deadline it was not
Manchester United, Chelsea or Liverpool that were on everyone's lips,
but Queens Park Rangers.
Some called it a trolley dash, others described it as
financial roulette, but as the dust settled on another transfer window,
it was impossible to dispute that Harry Redknapp's squad was better
equipped to remain in the Premier League.
But at what price?
First came a striker. That was Loic Remy, the fluid
French forward, who completed an £8m transfer from Marseille. Then came
the unsuccessful attempt to persuade Yann M'Vila to move to England. But
it was the outlay on deadline day that raised more eyebrows and
prompted new questions.
Analysis
Robbie Savage
BBC Radio 5 live
It is not Chris Samba's fault that they are paying him £100,000 per week, he will be absolutely buzzing
The deal for Christopher Samba,
the towering central defender, broke the club's transfer record for the
second time in a fortnight. The fee was £12.5m, the contract worth more
than £20m over the four-and-a-half-year deal - an incredible commitment
for a 28-year-old.
QPR had met with Samba in the summer of 2012. A deal
had been discussed, but the Loftus Road club would not meet his wage
demands of £100,000 per week. Six months on and the club's increasingly
perilous position in the Premier League changed that position.
"It is not Chris Samba's fault that they are paying him
£100,000 per week, he will be absolutely buzzing," former Blackburn
midfielder Robbie Savage told BBC Sport.
"But 100 grand a week? And they could drop into the
Championship. It is madness. You look at what happened to Pompey and it
was really, really sad. I know QPR are funded very well by Tony
Fernandes. But it is a huge gamble."
The additions of Jermaine Jenas and Andros Townsend
with an hour left on deadline added to the wage bill, although an offer
for West Brom striker Peter Odemwingie didn't come to fruition. QPR have
been among the most active Premier League clubs in the market since the
arrival of Fernandes in October 2011.
Having preached the need for prudence and stability and
insisted he would not bankroll the club, he has found the pressure of
sustaining Premier League football forcing his hand. Under previous
manager Mark Hughes, Ji-Sung Park, Robert Green, Junior Hoilett, Ryan
Nelsen, Andrew Johnson all arrived to boost a squad and a wage bill
already boasting Kieron Dyer, Joey Barton, Luke Young, Shaun
Wright-Phillips, Anton Ferdinand, Nedum Onuoha, Djibril Cisse and Bobby
Zamora.
It is a recruitment pattern that is ambitious,
extravagant but incredibly risky should Redknapp not be able to keep the
club in the top division. "If the worst happens the financial position
QPR will be in doesn't bear thinking about," former Bolton manager Owen
Coyle told BBC Sport. "This feels like a club panicking."
The figures spent on Remy and Samba are startling. The
vast sums of money do not tally with a club battling to avoid the drop.
QPR's total investment in both players across the term of their contract
totals close to £80m.
Nobody at Loftus Road is pretending the model is
self-sustainable in the short term, but having already committed vast
sums to the wage bill it is felt it is better to roll the dice again in
the hope of staying up and cashing in on the lucrative new three-year TV
rights deal which kicks in next season.
QPR signings under Fernandes
January 2013
- Tal Ben Haim - free
- Loic Remy - £8m
- Christopher Samba - £15m
- Jermain Jenas - free
- Andros Townsend - loan
Summer 2012
- Jose Bosingwa - free
- Julio Cesar - undisclosed
- Esteban Granero - undisclosed
- Sam Magri - free
- Stephane Mbia -undisclosed
- Fabio Da Silva - loan
- Park Ji-Sung - £2m
- Junior Hoilett - £4m
- Andrew Johnson - free
- Ryan Nelsen - free
- Robert Green - free
- Samba Diakite - undisclosed
January 2012
- Federico Macheda - loan
- Taye Taiwo - loan
- Nedum Onuoha - undisclosed
- Samba Diakite - loan
- Djibril Cisse - £4m
- Bobby Zamora - undisclosed
"The wages being paid at QPR are
hard for the common man to understand," former Spurs and Luton manager
David Pleat told BBC Sport.
"Given the crowds that they get it seems a rather
strange wage scale that they have. It is a salary scale that will get
them in trouble. It is a difficult market and the weaker clubs do seem
to suffer. They are facing relegation and have the fans pressing them to
make signings.
"You have got to have strong management at this time
and make plans and say we want to sign X and stick to that. Otherwise it
just becomes a spiral, a sense of panic."
And yet if Redknapp can use these new players to steer
the club away from danger will the reward justify the risk? Comparisons
with Portsmouth and Leeds have been made but there are other examples at
Fulham, Middlesbrough and Bolton as clubs who speculated, albeit not at
this level, to accumulate.
And QPR certainly do look an awful lot healthier than
they did a few days ago. To a squad denounced for lack of quality,
Redknapp has added players of international quality. Samba may be
considered something of a plodder, but he is tall, aggressive and
dominant — just what QPR's defence has lacked.
"Harry has had four very good draws," Pleat added. "He
has got them organised, played on the counter attack. He has got a win
against Chelsea, a point against Manchester City, a point against Spurs -
he has nothing fear now.
"He is only a few points behind the clubs ahead of them
but with the players he has brought in can help him bridge that gap."
In QPR's Championship-winning season of 2010-11, the
wages to turnover ratio was 183%. The current accounts make even more
difficult reading.
So much depends on Premier League football. Planning
permission has already been secured for a new training ground at Warren
Farm, locations are being considered for a new stadium.
There is certainly a longer-term desire to move towards
self-sustainability but for now QPR are pushing the financial
boundaries and rolling the dice once more. BBC
David Conn/The Guardian
QPR's panic spree is the exception on saner transfer deadline day
Tony Fernandes's gamble to stay up is understandable but other clubs have taken a more strategic approach
The
January transfer window has always been a sellers' market, so the
behaviour of buying clubs is a barometer of their blood pressure, on a
scale ranging from contented to chaotic. Those who are content with
where they are in the league decline to buy in haste at inflated prices
and stick with squads they are generally happy with until the saner
market of the summer. There are itchily ambitious clubs or those who
cannot help themselves – Roman Abramovich's Chelsea, paying Liverpool
£50m for Fernando Torres two years ago, is forever the classic example –
but there were none in that impulsive bracket this time.
In
fact, considering this transfer window played out under the billowing
prospect of £5bn expected for the Premier League's three-year TV deals
from next season, there has been a notable measure of calm and evidence
of more strategic, professional recruitment than some trolley dashes of
old.
Newcastle signed five French players, but say they were not
knee-jerking at the sudden glimpse of the relegation zone but responding
to it responsibly by bringing forward the signing of players they had
tracked for some time.
So, in a climate now characterised by more
careful, statistics-based assessment of players' abilities and the
financial implications, all of football looked at Queens Park Rangers'
dealings as a club edging towards red on the barometer.
Given the
probable £60m a low-ranking Premier League club will be paid from
television alone next season, compared with about £2m (plus parachute
payments) for clubs in the Championship, it is natural to strain sinews
to stay up. Tony Fernandes, QPR owner for only 18 months, was praised by
his manager, Harry Redknapp, for spending £12.5m to buy out Christopher
Samba's gilt-edged contract with Anzhi Makhachkala. That followed the
£8m spent on Loïc Remy from Marseille, a deal worked on by the agent
Willie McKay, a veteran of transfers from France to England, and so
humble Loftus Road was the stand-out temple of extravagance in this
transfer window.
Samba's adviser, Walid Bouzid, said his client
is not being paid the reported £100,000 weekly wage at Loftus Road but
that the money is certainly "Premier League sized" and does not include a
clause to decrease it if, despite these signings, QPR are relegated.
Spending
£20.5m in transfer fees and committing to many millions more in wages
to two good players may be a rational effort by Fernandes to avoid
greater losses if QPR are relegated but it is also a big-money January
gamble. It is barely 18 months since a tough, muscular side managed by
Neil Warnock convincingly won promotion to the Premier League and,
having sacked Warnock and backed Mark Hughes to assemble a new
collection last year, paying £6.8m in agents' fees, Fernandes should
wonder how it came to this.
Around him are clubs steadily
increasing the sophistication of their scouting and signing of players,
in the context of financial fair play which is promoting responsible
spending. In the relegation zone Reading are not panicking in similar
fashion, perhaps accepting that going down can keep a club strong if the
Premier League bonanza has not been blown. Southampton's radical action
to stay up was the brutal replacement of the manager, Nigel Adkins,
with Mauricio Pochettino, rather than spending millions on players.
Newcastle
acknowledge their French signings in January were partly a response to
finding Alan Pardew's squad sliding down the league but argue that the
strategy helmed by the managing director, Derek Llambias, with the chief
scout, Graham Carr, has identified good value nevertheless. By contrast
the decision by Aston Villa's owner, Randy Lerner, not to sign any
players now might come to seem like paralysis rather than confidence
that Villa's form will improve between now and May.
At clubs in
safer regions of the table the general lack of panic buying, or very
much newsworthy activity, speaks of a satisfaction with squads likely to
ensure survival at least in the golden league. Swansea's chairman, Huw
Jenkins, had said they identified two or three potential targets to
strengthen Michael Laudrup's squad now but, with terms and conditions
not being ideal and the team surpassing expectations, they had the
luxury of waiting until the summer.
Towards the top Arsenal
expressed customary forbearance, while Everton and Tottenham Hotspur
both worked hard to secure quality signings who could help grasp the
fourth Champions League place. Manchester City always said, in the first
flushes of Sheikh Mansour's mountainous spending, that they had a
strategy, supported by a director of football structure, and would not
continue splashing out every window. This time City, who are confident
they will pass Uefa's financial fair play assessment next year, bought
no new players, only selling – Mario Balotelli for a satisfactory £17m
plus add-ons. Manchester United, top of the league, were never going to
indulge too much in January but pocketed Wilfried Zaha for the future.
At
Chelsea Abramovich sated his oligarch's impulses by introducing Rafael
Benítez as interim manager and, despite his team's imperfections,
offered no repeat of the Torres drama. Liverpool, financial fair play
devotees, now operate a line of decision-making via Michael Edwards,
head of performance and analysis. Their £12m signing of Daniel Sturridge
and £8.5m spent on Philippe Coutinho do not quite look like Michu-like
steals for a new edition of Moneyball. But still the club's owners,
Fenway Sports Group, getting to grips with soccer, must look back and
wonder how, in their first weeks in charge, they allowed themselves to
blow the Torres money by spending £35m on Andy Carroll.
Gradually – away from QPR – times are changing. The Guardian
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Guardian - Paul Wilson
Two reasons clubs are more guarded with their money: Torres and Carroll
Transfer deadline day passes with little drama as clubs learn the lesson of 2011 when Chelsea and Liverpool splashed the cash
The
most intriguing question of transfer deadline day was posed by a
contributor to Talksport. Why is it that multimillion-pound,
sharp-dressed, speed-of-light football is the only industry in the world
still using fax machines?
In terms of actual transfers the
questions were no easier to answer, apart from the obvious one about
what on earth a French club with a brief to gain worldwide attention
could possibly see in 37-year-old David Beckham who, if he actually
plays, will become the oldest outfield player registered in Ligue 1.
Classy
as it was of Beckham to announce his Paris Saint-Germain wages will be
donated to a children's charity in the city, it did nothing to dispel
the publicity stunt nature of the exercise. Great pictures, not that
much of a transfer coup.
For England to start exporting
players again was something of a surprise, especially to France, when
the traffic has all been in the opposite direction in recent months,
though possibly not as much of a surprise as Blackburn supporters must
have had when they heard Christopher Samba describe the Premier League
as the best place in the world to play football.
It was not
exactly startling to discover the defender was pining for a return to
England after his lucrative move to Anzhi Makhachkala did not work out
to his liking, though it is hard to fathom – apart from a
four-and-a-half-year contract worth an estimated £100,000 a week – why
he thinks bottom-of-the-table Queens Park Rangers are a better bet to
supply him with the Premier League career he now wishes he had not
interrupted. It could be argued that Samba is a long-time fan of the
Hoops and it was a bid from the former manager Mark Hughes last year
that unsettled him at Ewood in the first place. But 12 months ago he was
not being offered the sort of deal that Harry Redknapp and Tony
Fernandes have just come up with.
At least when Redknapp
described his new acquisition as a monster he intended it as a
compliment, which is more than can be said for some of the names
Sunderland supporters have been calling their new £5m striker. Danny
Graham was more or less destined to end up at the Stadium of Light from
the moment he publicly disparaged the club while still a Watford player.
As a Newcastle fan, he said, he would rather end up playing for
Gateshead than Sunderland if he moved back to the north-east, but
neither that nor the sound of Sunderland supporters booing the player
when he appeared on Wearside with Swansea in midweek dissuaded Martin
O'Neill from getting his man. This could at least be a last-day transfer
story with legs.
With the bigger clubs doing their shopping
early in the window – deals for Demba Ba, Daniel Sturridge and Wilfried
Zaha were conducted with little fuss and, though Mario Balotelli's exit
dragged on, there seemed to be a sad inevitability about the eventual
parting – the deadline day was decidedly short on drama. The more
excitable media outlets always seem to think there is going to be a
repeat of the dizzying last day of January 2011, when Fernando Torres
went south for £50m and Liverpool shoved the proceeds towards Andy
Carroll with all the rash optimism of a tourist at the roulette table,
though it was clear even at the time that that would be the exception
rather than the rule. Two years on it is even clearer that major clubs
are going to be more guarded with their money in winter. There are two
main reasons for that. One is called Torres and the other Carroll.
In
the absence of great big, jaw-dropping deals there was just a list of
tiny surprises. Most people had completely forgotten Heurelho Gomes was
still on Spurs' books, prior to his loan move to Hoffenheim. Ditto all
the other White Hart Lane corpses, sorry careers, Redknapp spent his
evening trying to revive. Ditto Rory Delap, whom many outside the
Potteries might have assumed had left Stoke some time ago. In other
unstunning news the Barnsley right-back turned his back on Wigan in
favour of a move to Everton and Norwich decided Luciano Becchio might be
a Premier League striker after all.
Jack Butland choosing Stoke
over Chelsea and Manchester City looked a bit of a story at first but
the small print knocked it down. The goalkeeper is 19, Birmingham are
holding a firesale, he is staying with his present club until the end of
the season and he reasoned, perfectly reasonably, that he would not be
going straight into the team at Stamford Bridge or the Etihad. Common
sense is going to be the death of deadline-day drama.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/blog/2013/jan/31/transfer-deadline-day
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TELEGRAPH
Transfer window closes in shambles as West Brom block Peter Odemwingie's move to Queens Park Rangers
The
transfer window closed in farcical circumstances on Thursday night when
Peter Odemwingie, the West Bromwich Albion forward, arrived to join
Queens Park Rangers only for the deal to collapse as he waited outside
Loftus Road.
By Jeremy Wilson
12:40AM GMT 01 Feb 2013
Comments8 Comments
With
QPR earlier breaking their transfer record for the second time in three
weeks to complete the £12.5 million signing of Christopher Samba,
Odemwingie arrived in west London clearly expecting to be Harry
Redknapp’s second major deal of the day.
The 31-year-old had even
given an interview from his car to a Sky Sports News reporter in which
he talked about the expected challenge ahead and even appeared to use
the word “we” as he referred to QPR.
West Brom were furious and
quickly issued a statement in which they stressed Odemwingie did not
have permission to speak to another club. QPR then responded by
insisting Odemwingie had not been granted entry to Loftus Road, a
situation that literally left the Nigeria striker out in the cold.
It
is understood that the two clubs had provisionally agreed a £3.5
million fee but negotiations had then stalled on West Brom’s desire to
recruit Junior Hoilett on loan and have QPR continue to pay a
significant proportion of his wages.
The West Brom statement
read: “Albion have moved to clarify developments regarding Peter
Odemwingie after the striker was filmed a short while ago arriving at
Loftus Road. The club can confirm they have held further discussions
with QPR today but those talks have so far proven fruitless and no
agreement has been reached. Albion would also like to make clear that
Peter has not been given permission to speak to QPR about a potential
move.”
By this time Odemwingie had already outlined his
excitement about the prospect of joining QPR. “I think every football
fan is interested to see if we [QPR] are going to make it or not,” he
said. “I am very optimistic about it. I’m happy with the trust Harry
Redknapp has given me. Of course I believe. The last three results have
shown there is a chance.
“I don’t think the owners will bring in
so many quality players and spend so much money if they didn’t believe
it can happen. I’m very optimistic that I will join QPR, it’s a new
chapter in my life. It’s not 100 per cent yet, it’s not sorted yet but I
hope they will be happy with what they get.” Odemwingie was also quoted
as saying that he had been told by Dan Ashworth, West Brom’s technical
director, that he could leave if a £3.5 million fee was met.
“I
am disappointed this is all happening,” he reportedly said. “I met with
Dan Ashworth this morning and we shook hands that I could leave with his
blessing if the £3.5 million fee was met. Now, as I am on my way, I
find that there are more complications. It is frustrating to say the
least.”
Redknapp, who did also complete deals for Tottenham
midfielders Andros Townsend and Jermaine Jenas yesterday, said that
there had been a misunderstanding over Odemwingie. “I think he probably
felt the deal would be agreed between the clubs,” said Redknapp. “It
hadn’t and it was all a bit of a mix-up really. I felt sorry for the
lad. It’s difficult – it wasn’t any of our doing. I think maybe he was
advised he should turn up here, that the club had made an offer and the
offer had been accepted. The wires got crossed somewhere. It’s too late
now.”
Jenas arrived at Loftus Road last night and did complete
his move from Tottenham on an 18-month deal, while Townsend will remain
at QPR until the end of the season.
QPR had earlier competed
Samba’s signing from Anzhi Makhachkala to add to previous deals this
month for Loic Remy, Tal Ben Haim and Yun Suk-young. Samba signed a
contract until 2017 worth an initial £75,000 a week, although it is
believed to contain a substantial relegation clause. “This is an
unbelievable signing,” said Redknapp. “Chris is just what we need – he’s
a monster.”
QPR also failed yesterday with a third and final bid of £5 million for Stoke City’s Peter Crouch.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/footbal....rk-Rangers.html
TELEGRAPH
Harry Redknapp's motor at the epicentre of a fevered crescendo on transfer deadline day
It
is not as easy as you might think, getting signed up on transfer
deadline day. Take Andros Townsend. Early in the morning, the young
Tottenham winger turned up at a private hospital in Osterley, west
London.
Jim White
He was there for a medical,
something he assumed was mere formality ahead of joining Queens Park
Rangers. But, as he gave his name to the receptionist, he received bad
news. The move was off. Tottenham Hotspur chairman Daniel Levy was
making it a condition of any transfer that David Bentley and Jermaine
Jenas also be signed. At that time QPR weren’t interested in his
three-for-one deal.
So Townsend left the building, his ambition
thwarted and headed off elsewhere. Perhaps to Brentford. It makes you
wonder if this is what happens as the transfer season comes to its
conclusion: young players drive round the country turning up unannounced
for medicals in the hope of getting a new contract.
But by the
evening, the deal was back on. Or at least, the Jenas part of it. Not
that it was easy even for a player of his experience. When he pitched up
at Loftus Road to discuss terms, he couldn’t get into the place. Every
door he tried, was locked. As a metaphor for his career, it could not
have been bettered.
If you want to know what is happening on
transfer deadline day, there is only one place to be: Queens Park
Rangers. With Harry Redknapp in charge, the club are guaranteed to be
the very epicentre of activity on deadline day. Indeed, almost as
Townsend was being turned away from his medical, Redknapp was arriving
at the club’s training ground, conducting an interview through the
window of his Range Rover with Sky Sports News.
“I don’t know why
everyone thinks I’m always involved,” he said, even as he gave the
cameras the defining image of any deadline day. As we all know about
Redknapp: the window is never fully closed until he shuts the window on
his motor.
For Aiden Magee, the Sky Sports News reporter, that
was the interview he wanted. He and his cameraman had arrived at
Harlington before dawn. Not because they thought Redknapp might turn up
then, but just to be there. Their first live report had been for the 6am
news bulletin, when all that could be seen in the pitch darkness was
the locked gates of the training ground picked out by the camera’s
arclight.
This is what the deadline day has become for Sky: a
fevered crescendo of manufactured drama, Cohorts of reporters address us
from outside every training facility, passing on information they have
had gleaned five minutes before from a club press officer. “We
understand that Christopher Samba has passed his medical and is about to
sign for the club,” he revealed.
By the time the manager’s motor had swished past, Mark, a lifelong QPR fan, had turned up to see what was going on.
“What’s
going on?” he asked. None of us were entirely sure. Mark had heard on
the radio that there were rumours that David Bentley’s Range Rover had
been spotted pulling into the Osterley medical facility. No one could
confirm that. What we could confirm about a Bentley was that Mark was
almost run over by one being driven at warp-factor speed by Armand
Traoré.
Watching the QPR squad arrive was to engage in a
where-are-they-now contest. There was Luke Young in a Bentley, Andy
Johnson in a Range Rover, Jose Bosingwa in a Porsche. Even as Samba was
signing a deal worth £23.4 million over 4½ years, the club were paying
the leftover remnants of the last couple of transfer windows hundreds of
thousands of pounds to remain idle.
Once training was over, Redknapp headed to Loftus Road. “Triffic player,” he said of Samba through his window.
Anyone else coming? We all asked him. “Nah, don’t think so.” Not even Peter Crouch?
“Nah, unlikely,” he said, just as his phone rang. “Sorry fellas, better get that. Never know who it might be.”
Convinced
his denial meant a very tall man was about to be spotted in the
Shepherd’s Bush area, everyone piled into their cars and followed him to
the stadium. There we joined another three camera crews, all
contributing to the endless urgent waffle of deadline day.
Meanwhile, a man in a white van leaned, Harry-like, through his window and asked if anyone had been signed.
“Christopher Samba,” several of us said, authoritatively.
He
looked at the number of reporters and cameras now filling the pavement.
“Is that it?” he said. “You all here just for him?” It appeared we
were.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/footbal....adline-day.html
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INDEPENDENT - Simon Peach
QPR forced to lock Peter Odemwingie out of Loftus Road after West Brom refuse to give striker permission to speak to club
Harry Redknapp remains active in the market
Confusion
surrounded the future of West Brom striker Peter Odemwingie tonight as
he arrived in London for talks with QPR, only for his club to deny
giving him permission to do so.
Rangers boss Harry Redknapp
earlier spoke of his interest in the wantaway Nigerian, and when the
player was interviewed in London speaking of his excitement about a
move, it looked as though a deal was on.
But West Brom reacted
quickly by releasing a statement which read: "Albion have moved to
clarify developments regarding Peter Odemwingie after the striker was
filmed a short while ago arriving at Loftus Road.
"The club can
confirm they have held further discussions with QPR today but those
talks have so far proven fruitless and no agreement has been reached.
"Albion would also like to make clear that Peter has not been given permission to speak to QPR about a potential move."
Albion's words came just minutes after Sky Sports News interviewed the 31-year-old as he drove into London.
Sky
Sports News then reported that QPR locked Odemwingie out of Loftus Road
to ensure they did not break any rules concerning transfers.
The
striker has been critical of West Brom on Twitter over recent weeks but
he tonight gave a nod to that being in the past, saying: "It's fine.
West Brom was my home but this is a new chapter. I love West Brom and
always will.
"I am optimistic. A few good players have arrived here (at QPR) and I am happy with the trust Harry Redknapp has in me.
"The
last few results have given us a chance to stay up. I don't think the
owners will bring in so many players if they don't think it will happen.
"I hope West Brom are happy with what they will get and they hope to get players themselves."
While
Odemwingie was in front of the cameras, Redknapp was giving an
interview to London Call-In, during which he confirmed his interest in
Odemwingie, Jermaine Jenas and Andros Townsend.
"Peter Odemwingie
has pace, great movement," Redknapp said. "I like him and is a player
that has always given us problems when I was at Tottenham
"I think if we can get Odemwingie he would be a great signing for us, but whether we can pull it off I am not sure."
The
acquisition of Jenas looks like being an easier one for Redknapp, with
the Tottenham midfielder also turning up at Loftus Road ahead of what he
expects to be an 18-month deal.
He told reporters: "That's
initially. I am fit and ready to go, it's a top club and I am confident
the manager can make sure the club stays up. I know Harry well, spent a
lot of time with him at Tottenham and know him well enough.
"It's
a top club, has some good players and not in that bad a position.
They're four points off safety and can definitely claw that back."
Earlier
in the day, Rangers broke their club transfer record when they signed
Christopher Samba from Anzhi Makhachkala after triggering a release
clause believed to be more than £10million.
http://www.independent.co.uk/sport/footb....ub-8476046.html
GUARDIAN
Football
West Bromwich Albion
Peter Odemwingie's bid to force move from West Brom to QPR ends in farce
• Odemwingie barred from QPR after turning up with no deal
• West Brom hit out at striker as 'unprofessional'
David Hytner
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 31 January 2013 20.26 EST
Peter
Odemwingie was at the centre of a bizarre misunderstanding as the
deadline day transfer that he had hoped to force from West Bromwich
Albion to Queens Park Rangers fell apart. When he turned up at Loftus
Road expecting to sign, he was barred from the stadium.
Harry
Redknapp, the Rangers manager, broke the club's transfer record for the
second time in a little over two weeks with the £12.5m signing of the
central defender Christopher Samba from Anzhi Makhachkala and he added
the midfielders Jermaine Jenas and Andros Townsend from his old club
Tottenham Hotspur – the former on an 18-month contract, the latter, on
loan for the remainder of the season.
Yet it was the drama and
controversy of Odemwingie's failed move that appeared to deflate
Redknapp, who also missed out on Stoke City's Peter Crouch, another of
his targets up front, and a third Tottenham player, the midfielder David
Bentley.
Odemwingie is likely to be fined two weeks' wages by
West Brom, who said they were "extremely disappointed to witness TV
footage of Odemwingie arriving at Loftus Road" when no deal had been
struck. The club's chairman, Jeremy Peace, accused the striker of acting
"wholly unprofessionally" and said: "He must now accept the fact he
remains under contract for a further 18 months." Peace called the whole
episode "unsavoury".
Odemwingie had submitted a transfer request
last week at The Hawthorns, which was rejected and he tweeted his
frustration as his club blocked two offers for him from Rangers. A deal
finally looked set to happen on Thursday, with Albion taking Junior
Hoilett on loan in part-exchange, only for the QPR forward to refuse to
move.
At some point the message was not relayed correctly to
Odemwingie, who arrived at Loftus Road to address a media scrum and
suggest that he was ready to join Rangers and begin "a new chapter" in
his career. Albion, though, immediately released a statement, which said
they had no agreement over the transfer and Odemwingie did not have
permission to speak to Rangers.
The London club then said the
31-year-old had appeared "unannounced" and had been "denied access to
Loftus Road". Redknapp and the chief executive, Phil Beard, tried to
revive the purchase but at 10.45pm, 15 minutes before the deadline, they
admitted defeat, with Albion insistent that they would not sell.
Odemwingie may have to work hard to reintegrate himself with his
team-mates and the supporters.
"I think he probably felt that the
deal had been agreed between the clubs and it hadn't and it was all a
bit of a mix-up, really," Redknapp said. "I feel sorry for the lad and
the way the whole thing's turned out. It wasn't any of our doing. I
think maybe he was advised that he should turn up here, that the club
had made an offer and the offer had been accepted. The wires got crossed
somewhere."
Redknapp described the day that he had billed as
crucial to Rangers' Premier League survival prospects as "a bit
frustrating". The move for Bentley fell apart when the Tottenham
chairman, Daniel Levy, demanded a prohibitively high fee. Bentley is out
of contract in 2014 and Levy has been consistently determined to recoup
a portion of the £15m that he paid for him in 2008.
Redknapp,
who loaned the midfielder Alejandro Faurlín to Palermo, was asked
whether he felt more confident about survival than he had done at the
beginning of the day. "It's going to be difficult," he replied. "But we
are bang in there. We still have a chance."
He had been delighted
earlier in the day when Samba became the 27th incoming transfer of Tony
Fernandes' 17-month tenure at Loftus Road, the chairman having met the
value of his release clause at Anzhi. The 28-year-old Congolese joins on
a four-and-a-half-year contract and he follows the striker Loïc Rémy
who, at £8m from Marseille, was the previous record signing.
Samba's
advisor, Walid Bouzid, said that his client's weekly wage was less than
£100,000-a-week but he added that the money was certainly "Premier
League-sized" and did not include a clause to decrease it if the club
was relegated into the Championship. Redknapp's bottom-placed team are
four points adrift of safety with 14 matches to go.
"Chris is
just what we need," Redknapp said. "He's a monster. Great in the air,
quick, a leader, strong, fantastic in both boxes, hard as nails. He's a
proper centre-half."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/2013/feb/01/peter-odemwingie-west-brom-qpr
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