- Photos from Italy-
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- One of QPR's Italian Hosts in Possible Trouble...(As is another Italian Club, QPR Fans are familiar with)
QPR IN ITALY -
QPR Official Site - RANGERS ARRIVE IN ITALY
- The QPR squad have arrived safely in Italy ahead of Wednesday night's tour opener against Cesena.
The 21-man squad, accompanied by the R's backroom team, touched down at around 6.00pm local time following a comfortable two hour flight from London Gatwick.
The R's squad will undergo their first training session of the tour tomorrow, before all focus turns to our fifth pre-season friendly of the campaign on Wednesday evening.
*We'll be bringing you daily updates from the tour exclusively on www.qpr.co.uk, whilst QPR Player subscribers will be able to watch exclusive video content throughout the week. QPR
QPR Squad for Italy Tour has been announced: QPR squad: Agyemang, Bothroyd, Buzsaky, Connolly, Derry, Dyer, Ephraim, Faurlin, Gabbidon, Gorkss, Hall, Helguson, Hill, Kenny, Murphy, Orr, Perone, Smith, Taarabt, Vaagan Moen, Webber.
- (Among those NOT in the squad: Hulse, Cook, Rowlands, Clarke, Balanta, Borrowdale, Cerny, Shittu, Pellicori, Alberti) QPR
- Photos from First Day of Italy Training
- Reserves (with Cerny, Shittu, Ramage, Hulse, Cook, Rowlands, et al) beat Saltash
- Cesena vs QPR Broadcast Live on Italian Satellite TV
- "Council promise to stop QPR move" - Exactly Ten Years Ago Today
- A Statistical Guide to Points Needed to Stay Up
- Play "Spot The Ball"
- A Look Back at "The QPR Class of 2006" (On and Off The Field)
- Twelve Year Flashback: Robbie Steiner Joins QPR
- Championship Club, West Ham reportedly Bid EIGHT MILLION Pounds For Player
- Birmingham's Fresh Approach to Shirt Sponsorship
- Wolves Warn Players (with Lawyer) re Tweeting....FA to License Clubs?...Cambridge Cancel Signing after Five Weeks Because of Medical
- An Early Preview of QPR vs Bolton
MIRROR ' Italian job for QPR target Campbell
- Neil Warnock is set for talks with DJ Campbell at QPR’s Italian training base in the next 48 hours.
- Blackpool striker Campbell is expected to fly out today to meet Warnock and finally complete his protracted £1.25million move.
- Rangers agreed a fee with Blackpool earlier this month, but the deal to sign the 29-year-old collapsed over demands from his agent.
- However, Warnock has resurrected the deal and will meet Campbell in Ravenna this week in a bid to get the deal across the line.
- Championship side West Ham are also keen to take Campbell back to London, but the Hoops are set to win the chase. Mirror
- The Perspective of Mirror's Paul Smith "Smudge1962"
Guardian Blog/Michael Hann - A summer of discontent for Queens Park Rangers and Neil Warnock
Last season, QPR had it all. They played with style and won with ease, but since then things have taken a turn for the worse
What kind of club do you think would provoke these kinds of comments on message boards?
"I've had my fill tonight of the club, they can fck off."
"I have mates who support other teams asking me if I am looking forward to this season and I tell them I don't want to talk about it because I am so depressed about the current situation."
"We've been fleeced as fans, the manager has been taken for a ride and the club's name has been continually dragged through the dirt IMO."
"Whenever I think about the shambles they have turned us into I feel like spouting off. There literally is so much material. I find it hard just to accept it and get on with things."
"I refuse to be part of their willful destruction of our club whilst paying through the nose for the privilege."
Maybe one that was teetering on the edge of bankruptcy? One that had just been relegated to the lowest point ever in the football pyramid? Or one that had just won the Championship at a canter, playing often sparkling football, inspired by the Championship's player of the year?
You guessed it. Those quotes – from the Loft For Words, We are the Rangers Boys and QPR Report message boards respectively – are reflections on what has been a dismal summer for fans of the Superhoops. The "they" referred to is the combination at the head of the club, F1 owner Bernie Ecclestone and Flavio Briatore.
So what's gone wrong since May, when the mood of optimism around London W12 was unbridled? Simpler to ask what's gone right – the answer would be: almost nothing.
No sooner had the Championship title been secured than the first reports emerged suggesting Neil Warnock – the one off-pitch figure at QPR in whom the fans have absolute (or, indeed, any) faith – might be replaced as manager.
A fortnight later, Warnock's leading ally on the club's board, Amit Bhatia, resigned as vice-chairman. Bhatia's statement suggested he had been unhappy at the direction the board was taking, though you don't have to be a thoroughgoing cynic to think his departure might have been more closely connected to Bernie Ecclestone's refusal to sell his 62% shareholding in QPR to Bhatia's father-in-law, the Indian steel magnate Lakshmi Mittal, who holds 33%.
Nevertheless, Bhatia's statement was the shrewdest thing anyone connected with QPR has said this summer, for he fully reflected the anger QPR fans felt when season ticket prices were announced this summer. It was not just that prices were hiked that caused anger, though, it was the gouging around the margins.
Season ticket holders were previously automatically classed as members. Next season the two are separated, so if season ticket holders wish to buy extra tickets they have to pay for separate memberships. When you add up all the costs, the result – for my son and I at least – is a per-game price increase of 100%. Given the capacity of Loftus Road is just 18,000, it is not even as if these massive increases are going to significantly increase the cashflow.
Then there's been the transfer budget. What transfer budget? Warnock has told the press he has just £1.25m to spend this summer, which means a string of targets – including last season's Championship top scorer, Danny Graham, have gone elsewhere.
It looks as though Wayne Routledge, who had a sparkling second spell at the club on loan in the second half of last season, will be playing his football away from Loftus Road next term. The Rs at least managed to secure signing of Jay Bothroyd (on a free), but the only other notable signing has been Kieron Dyer, a man who plays so infrequently that a Google search for Kieron Dyer injury brings up 108,000 results.
Meanwhile, players signed a while ago on very generous contracts – the likes of Rowan Vine – remain on the books on contracts often reported to be of Premier League value, with no one willing to take the financial burden off QPR's hands.
Then there's the little stuff. QPR still have not announced next season's strip, which would not be a worry but for this, from the Premier League rules: "Not later than four weeks before the commencement of each season each club shall register its strips by submitting to the secretary form 9 together with samples of its home strip, away strip and goalkeeper's strip complying with these rules and a brief written description of each and the secretary having entered the descriptions in a register will cause the same to be printed in the handbook of the league."
Let's hope it is just the fans who do not know about the strip yet – although the case of Alejandro Faurlín has already proved QPR's inability to read the small print when it comes to the football rulebook.
Rumbling on beneath it all has been the seeming certainty that the club's star player, Adel Taarabt, would be off to Paris Saint-Germain before the Premier League season kicks off. In the event, QPR released a statement on Saturday announcing Taarabt would be staying – the one piece of indisputable good news since the season's end.
But even then, buried four paragraphs from the end, was this little beauty, which had the fans facepalming all over again: "We are aware of some issues that have been raised in the press by the coach, but we have discussed these with him internally and he has agreed to be more reserved in terms of what he discusses in the future." Watch it Neil; we have still got Claudio Ranieri's phone number.
Those of us who follow the Rangers should have been happy this summer. We should have been looking forward to seeing the Rs have a bash in the Premier League (though, typically, the season ticket bump sent out at the start of the summer sold us the prospect of seeing Wayne Rooney et al at Loftus Road, rather than our own players competing against them). Instead every single day has been an exercise in preparing ourselves for whatever the latest disappointment might be.
On the bright side, though, QPR do not seem to have signed Luís Boa Morte. Yet. Guardian
- Premiership Rules re Kits
- VANISHED WITHOUT NOTICE! The Club's Official Messageboard
- Job Opening: QPR in The Community Trust
- For Sale: QPR Championship Medal (Proceeds to QPR in the Community Trust)
- Still No QPR Offical Site Update re the Status of the Official Supporters Club (OSC). Despite Committee Resignations.
- QPR Reserves Beat Truro City
- QPR Youth Exit in Irish Tournament
- UEFA U-19 Championships Currently Under Way
- Home Ticket Price Information
- Something to Look Forward to: Flashback from June Official Site: "Plans are already afoot for a pre-season celebration, once the players return to training in July" - QPR
- Year Flashback "When Saturday Comes (WSC)/Matthew Rudd - The problem with Jimmy Bullard
QPR Pre-Season Fixtures 2011/12
Wednesday 27th July - Cesena (a) 8.30pm
Saturday 30th July - Trofeo Bortolotti Tournament (a) 8.00pm onwards
Tuesday 2nd August - Crawley Town (a) 7.45pm
Friday August 5 - Vs Luton (A)
QPR
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- Bid on a QPR Championship Winners Medal (Proceeds to QPR Community Trust.)