QPR Report Update: The Latest on QPR and Magilton

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- Big Money for Clubs From the Internet


- For Earlier Stories re Magilton, Buzsaky and QPR: Scroll down or click here

By Jim White/TelegraphJim Magilton mess merely adds to cloud of confusion swirling round QPR
If Jim Magilton is shown the door after his alleged bust-up, it will only add to the circus at Loftus Road.

- Anyone logging on to Queens Park Rangers' official website at the moment is invited by an advert on the home page to "Buy a Player as a Gift".
- Sadly, given that several members of the current Rangers squad might happily take their place in any round up of stocking fillers for under a tenner, it turns out that Player is the trade name for an internet subscription service and thus this is not a reference to a mass clear-out of the playing staff after all.
- Even so, it is not quite what you would expect of the self-styled second wealthiest football club in the country. You might imagine this ought to be the sort of place where the club's mega-wealthy owners do all the player purchasing themselves.
- But then for some time around Loftus Road things have not been quite as they seem. It began, the confusion, about the time the former owner Gianni Paladini claimed he was held up at gunpoint in the stadium in 2005. The six men tried for the crime were all acquitted.
- Since then things have become ever less explicable. For instance, once the collective of billionaires to whom Paladini handed over the club in 2007 arrived, you might have expected some fevered transfer activity.
- Or just any transfer activity. But the forays of Bernie Ecclestone, Flavio Briatore and Lakshmi Mittal into the market have been more about signing Adel Taarabt on loan from Spurs than pipping Real Madrid to Kaka's signature.
- Indeed, such has been their extreme reluctance to sanction any investment beyond improving the quality of the catering in the corporate boxes, it is not exactly clear what the three men – worth in excess of five billion between them – have bought Rangers for.
- Of course, it would be unfair to suggest that Ecclestone and Briatore have brought with them none of their expertise at running motor racing to the football field. They have, without doubt, introduced a spot of glamour to the directors' box, where every other Saturday they can be seen sharing their blankets with some photogenic companions.
- Plus, the way they operate at Loftus Road is every bit as opaque, and politically charged as anything they have managed in the world of Formula One.
- Take this week. The club manager, Jim Magilton, was suspended from duty following an alleged fracas in the dressing room after a defeat at Watford. Nothing has been proven, all parties are denying anything untoward happened, but Magilton has been suspended and probably already fears he is unlikely to be returning to do anything more than pick up his compensation cheque.
- If the allegations that he butted one of his players have any foundation, it might be thought that Magilton is not on the firmest of moral high ground here. But compare his treatment with that of Tony Pulis at Stoke City.
- Pulis is also alleged to have resorted to the forehead during a debate with his striker James Beattie last weekend. Six days on Pulis is as ensconced as ever at the Britannia Stadium, apparently exonerated.
- At QPR, however, the first instinct of the motor racing demons at the merest hint of trouble is to get rid of the manager.
- If he goes, Magilton will make it four revolving through the exit door in two years (not including the departure of John Gregory a month before Briatore took over), a turnover which even Jesus Gil in the height of his Caligula-esque reign at Atletico Madrid might have considered a touch over excited.
- Some, like Luigi di Canio, have gone for personal reasons. Others – Paulo Sousa – for questioning the directors' decision to sell his best player without informing the manager first. Though to be fair to the owners, at least one boss, mentioning no names Iain Dowie, has gone for the crime of not being very good.
- Now the speculation is mounting as to who could succeed the feisty Magilton. Darren Ferguson and Gareth Southgate are said to be at the head of the wish list. In which case, does either of them know what they are letting themselves in for?
- Is it in the job description that Briatore picks the team? Or that the manager's first meeting with Ecclestone and Mittal will be the one in which he receives his P45?
- Or that, despite being among the richest men on the planet, the directors' attitude to buying new players is to leave that sort of thing to the fans? Who knows.
- But doubtless Ferguson and Southgate are at the head of a very long queue. In football, it seems, there is always someone keen to take control of the keys to the asylum. Telegraph


David Healy Belfast Telegraph - Magilton deserves to have a fair hearing
- A lot has been made this week about an alleged incident involving my old mate Jim Magilton and one of his Queen’s Park Rangers players, Akos Buzsaky.
- It would be foolish to go into the specifics of what did or didn’t happen as I was not there, but I can’t say I was stunned by the story — bust-ups happen every week at clubs, as Tony Pulis and James Beattie proved earlier in the week.
- I have been involved in them myself and there is nothing new in players being at each other’s throats after a game or during a training session.
- I would say every player has been involved in such an incident one way or another.
- All it takes is a late tackle in training or something said on the pitch; football is full of pressure and sometimes that spills over.
- Falling out with a manager isn’t just as common but it is by no means something new.
- People argue with their boss in every walk of life but because football is so high-profile, everything is magnified.
- The important thing to add is that these incidents are forgotten as quickly as they begin.
- I am a big fan of Graeme Souness and I noticed he said recently that he had no interest in going back into management.
- He has played for and managed some of the biggest clubs but doesn’t fancy it now because, as he puts it, “you can can’t manage players”.
- Some players earn more money than their boss these days and the important things in their lives are the size of their fancy cars, the size of their house or the latest watch they have.
- Things have changed in football and that natural respect is not there in some cases.
- Whatever has happened at QPR, I hope Jim Magilton is back as soon as possible." Belfast Telegraph