- From a couple of Years Ago-
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- No QPR Players in Championship Team of The Week! (First time this season)
Excerpt from Mihir Bose/Standard Article re Warnock
- "...Warnock has spent around £900,000 although he says: “My budget is a lot more than that.
- “But I doubt if I will spend a lot before the transfer window closes. I think we're going to have to use the loan market until Christmas and then look at exactly what we need.”
- So why has he not spent more? “There are one or two things that are going on behind the scenes which should come to fruition shortly,” he adds in reference to the impending takeover of the club by Bhatia.
“It is a subject Warnock is somewhat reticent about but admits that it has cost him a couple of players."
Despite this Warnock shares Bhatia's ambition to bring Premier League football to Loftus Road.
“Yeah, that's what I said to Amit, I want to try my hardest to get you in the Premier League',” insists Warnock.
“I want to go up this year. I haven't got time on my hands to wait two or three years.
“I wanted to retire at 55. Now at 61 with two young kids, I want to spend a bit of time with them. And I hope it's with QPR.”
Complete Standard/Mihir Bose Article - London is perfect for my family, says Neil Warnock
- There is one only weakness that Neil Warnock readily confesses to as he makes me a brew at his home in Richmond. “I only use one teabag, just dip it in mine, then my wife has it.”
It is not the only thing that Warnock shares with his family, who remain the most important part of his hectic life.
The manager is widely seen as one of the most controversial in the English game with a career littered with clashes with opposing players, managers and referees, yet he smiles as he says: “I tell my children they must have good manners. I'm okay except between five to three and 10 to five during a game. Then somebody else takes over. People say why don't you change? But it's difficult to at my age. To be successful I have to be what I am.”
Yet Warnock has changed. He may still look for his home town Sheffield United's result first but now, he insists: “I absolutely love London. I never thought I'd ever say that.
“I used to think you needed a passport to go south of Watford. But when I came to London the people were fantastic, so good, right down to earth, my kind of people. Palace and QPR fans have been fantastic. I see a lot of rival fans in London every time I go out but it is all good banter.”
Part of this zeal for the capital comes because his family, both his second wife Sharon and his two children William and Amy, feel very at home in their rented Richmond house.
“In 20 minutes we are walking around Covent Garden and it is just lovely,” he says. “The park is just round the corner. We bike round it for two hours three or four times a week, it's absolutely fabulous.”
This means a lot for the nomadic 61- year-old — QPR being his 12th club as a manager, having started with Gainsborough Trinity back in 1980 — because of the disruption it has meant for his family.
“My son William is only nine but he's had four public schools so far, one in Cornwall, one when I was at Sheffield, one in Beckenham when I was at Palace,” he adds. “Then, coming here after moving to QPR, William went to Kings House, his first all boys' school. I felt so sorry for him the first day. There he was in his new uniform with his bag and the tears were flooding down his cheeks. But he's such a fighter, within two days he was fine and he loves it.
“People just do not realise what a football life can be. Since 1968 I've never had more than a few weeks out of work, when I left Sheffield United and I have not had a Christmas.”
All this makes him very keen that William should not follow him into a football career. “No, a cricketer, maybe a golfer,” hopes Warnock. “He's a good batsman, a decent off spinner and a good golfer. It really bugs me, he beats me at golf, it's embarrassing really. But he is such a bad loser, he takes after me.”
His family is so important to Warnock that he took them along for his interview with Queens Park Rangers vice-chairman Amit Bhatia.
“Yeah, Sharon and William went with me. And, during the two hours at Amit's house, he didn't just interview me, I interviewed him as well. It was a joint interview.”
Warnock's departure from Palace was marked by much acrimony with chairman Simon Jordan calling him “disloyal” and the club's administrator alleging Warnock did not have the “stomach for the fight”.
“I don't really take much notice of people like him [the administrator], they don't know anything about football.” His view of Jordan is different. “Simon's comments hurt me deeply,” he reveals. “In the two-and-a-half years I was there, I never said anything about the board not giving me any money.
“You pick the paper up and you read these managers saying, I need three more players and they've got to give me some funds'. But that's has never been my scene.
“Simon apologised to me once. He said, I haven't been able to give you the money that I've given some of the other managers'. And the last 15 months at Palace were as hard as I have ever worked in my career. The situation gradually got worse and Simon didn't know half the things that we had to cope with behind the scenes because the money was not there. I never told him as he had his hands full trying to save the club.
“But he is still the best chairman I've ever had and Sharon loves him as well. People who don't know him think he is arrogant, always in Spain, tanned and all that. But when you know him, he's soft, the most kind person you can meet and like a younger brother.”
There are no such sentiments for Kevin McCabe, the Sheffield United chairman who claimed he regretted letting Warnock manage the club in the top flight after they were relegated from the Premier League in 2007.
“McCabe was not only disrespectful but he ignored what I'd done, building the club following up from 8,000 to 25,000 fans and leaving them with a good training ground and academy instead of the botched-up one they had. That cost £5.5million and other managers would have used that money to buy players. I got 38 points that year in the Premier League.
“That, and my evidence to the commission helped the club get £25m from West Ham over the Carlos Tevez affair. I had a staying-up bonus in my contract. He hasn't even considered paying it or given me a word of thanks. So my allegiance is gone from there.”
The animosity between the two is now so sharp that Warnock believes that QPR's victory at United two weeks ago led to the manager Kevin Blackwell losing his job.
“If it hadn't been my team he wouldn't have gone. The chairman didn't like me winning three-nil.”
The other person who will never get a Christmas card from Warnock is Graham Poll, whose refereeing of Sheffield United's 2003 FA Cup semi-final against Arsenal led to a Warnock outburst and a £3,000 fine.
“I got upset because Poll should've got out the way of Michael Tonge,” he recalls. “The lad was making a straightforward pass to one of our lads in midfield and this referee runs in his way, knocks him over and the ball goes to the Arsenal lad who carries on playing, crosses it and they score. That was the winning goal. For a top referee his positioning was a disgrace. He could've stopped the game. The worst thing was at half-time Graham Poll is laughing his head off coming off the pitch.”
Warnock had to wait three years for his revenge. Then during the 2006 World Cup he got a call from a friend, “You'll never believe it, Poll has just given three yellow cards'. I've got to say it was one of my happiest days.”
But for Warnock real happiness will come, and pain of relegation with Sheffield United cease, when he fulfils his one remaining ambition — to become a Premier League manager again.
And with unbeaten QPR top of the Championship, the moment must be approaching soon.
“No,” argues Warnock. “We have exceeded expectations. We've had seven new players and as any manager will tell you it takes a couple of months to bed them in.
“We're nowhere near a top of the League side. We are really only a sixth to 10th position team with the people we've got. We've got so few forwards. If we lost two then we're right down to the bare knuckle. By Christmas, you'll see who the top sides are and I'd be very surprised if we are top then.”
By then he expects Cardiff, Middlesbrough and Ipswich to be near the top. “Cardiff have just got all the money haven't they? Bellamy, Boothroyd, Chopra, Koumas, they've got so many good forwards, seven or eight. And Middlesbrough have spent nearly £10million.”
Warnock has spent around £900,000 although he says: “My budget is a lot more than that.
“But I doubt if I will spend a lot before the transfer window closes. I think we're going to have to use the loan market until Christmas and then look at exactly what we need.”
So why has he not spent more? “There are one or two things that are going on behind the scenes which should come to fruition shortly,” he adds in reference to the impending takeover of the club by Bhatia.
“It is a subject Warnock is somewhat reticent about but admits that it has cost him a couple of players."
Despite this Warnock shares Bhatia's ambition to bring Premier League football to Loftus Road.
“Yeah, that's what I said to Amit, I want to try my hardest to get you in the Premier League',” insists Warnock.
“I want to go up this year. I haven't got time on my hands to wait two or three years.
“I wanted to retire at 55. Now at 61 with two young kids, I want to spend a bit of time with them. And I hope it's with QPR.” QPR
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