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Dave McIntyre/West London Sport
Redknapp warns QPR could struggle in the Championship next season
QPR manager Harry Redknapp
19/04/2013
By David McIntyre
Harry Redknapp has warned that QPR could find the going tough in the Championship.
Rangers’ big-spending owners will target an immediate return to the Premier League if the team are unable to pull off a miraculous escape and avoid the drop this season.
But manager Redknapp believes the problems encountered by Wolves and Blackburn since they went down last term is a stark indication of what the R’s could face in the second tier.
He said: “It’s not easy. You look at this year – Wolves went down and I thought they were a good side.
“Under Mick McCarthy, Wolves were a strong side. They then got relegated and are now hanging in there not to go down again.
“Blackburn went down and they were a decent team last year who weren’t that far short in the Premier League.
Clint Hill of QPR
The likes of Clint Hill could be vital for QPR next season.
“It’s hard that Championship – you ain’t going to suddenly go in there and get straight back out of it. It’s very tough.
“I don’t think you can go down with the attitude ‘Oh we’ll come straight back up next year, it’s going to be easy’. It ain’t going to be easy for whoever goes down.”
And Redknapp believes physical and mental toughness will be as important as the players’ ability if Rangers are to have a realistic chance of returning to the top flight.
He explained: “It’s a lot of hard work and a scrap. In that league it’s Saturday-midweek-Saturday every week.
“You need people who going to be willing to roll their sleeves up and want to play all them games, not people who go ‘Oh I’m tired, I can’t play Tuesday’ – you don’t need that.
“You need a group of players who are going to scrap. That’s very important.” West London Sport
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Queens Park Rangers manager Harry Redknapp warns that selling players will not be easy if club are relegated
By Monday evening Queens Park Rangers could be relegated. Should they lose to Stoke City on Saturday afternoon, and all the relegation-threatened sides currently above them in the table win, demotion will be confirmed; they will be down.
By Jim White7:30AM BST 20 Apr 2013Comment
As he prepared to meet Tony Pulis’s fellow strugglers, the QPR manager Harry Redknapp insisted on Friday that he had not yet given up hope.
He spoke of it being “part of the job” to maintain optimism in the dressing room. Even as the fat lady cleared her throat to deliver the final judgment on the club’s two ignominious seasons in the top division he was obliged to keep his chin up.
“We have got to keep believing that we can do the almost impossible,” he said. “Sure by Monday it might be over. So then I’ll stop believing. So then we will sit down and we will see where we are looking to go player-wise. And then you have to get people who will give everything they can to get you back up.
"They have to be as hungry as you are to do that. That is the next move. But at the moment, we are not there because we are still hanging in there.”
To avoid relegation when ten points adrift with five matches to play would entail an unprecedented act of escapology even for a man of Redknapp’s Houdini-like capabilities. And the truth is the discussions at the club are already under way about the practicalities of demotion.
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Much will be needed to be done to trim a bloated, expensive and horribly ineffective squad. There are many in the Loftus Road stands who reckon only a couple of names should be retained. Not that rebuilding will be an easy task.
“There’ll be people you want to get rid of you can’t because they’ve got contracts,” Redknapp admitted. “And the ones you want to keep, they want to go. That’s the trouble in football. They’ve all got contracts.”
Whatever the manager’s whimsical nostalgia for the days of a slave economy, the widespread assumption among fans and press alike is that relegation will not present too sustained a humiliation.
With the largesse of the Mittal family behind them, Rangers will be able to buy themselves a speedy return to the Premier League. A future of a 40,000-seat stadium in the heart of a new west London entertainment complex beckons. Yet Redknapp cautioned against any expectation of immediate bounce back.
“It’s not easy getting out the Championship. Look at the teams that went down [last season]. Wolves were a good side under Mick McCarthy, they were a hell of a strong outfit and they’re hanging in there not to go down again. Blackburn: I thought they were a decent team in the Premier League, they weren’t that far short. That’s the Championship, you don’t suddenly go in it and walk straight back out.
"It’s getting tougher every year. It’s going to be hard work, a scrap. You need people who will do that. In that league it’s Saturday,
Tuesday, Saturday, Tuesday every week. You need people willing to roll their sleeves up and play all them games. You can’t have people going: ‘oh I’m tired I can’t play Tuesday’. You need a group of players up for the scrap.”
The fact is, had Redknapp been able to count on a squad with that kind of resolve this season, the club would not be currently ensconced in the league’s ejector seat. Instead, since he arrived last November, the manager has been obliged to firefight with inadequate equipment. Particularly in his forward line.
“We have been short of strikers all year. Until [Loïc] Rémy has come in, the leading goalscorer had three or four goals. We brought Rémy in thinking we’ll be great with him and [Bobby] Zamora. But Bobby’s only half fit, Rémy’s had an injury, they’ve only played two or three games together.”
Just to reinforce the sense that for every step forward Redknapp made, fate pushed him back a couple, on only their third appearance together the pairing the manager believed might provide a route to salvation was once more broken up. This time the wounds were self-inflicted.
Against Wigan Athletic, Zamora was sent off for a kung-fu kick on Jordi Gómez. He is now suspended for three of the final five games the club might play in the division, including Stoke. “You hope he’s disappointed with what he did,” Redknapp said of his Bruce Lee impressionist forward. “What he did cost us.”
The cost means Redknapp finds himself on the brink without his best means of escape. And for a manager who only two seasons ago was flying high in the Champions League, the Championship now beckons. Telegraph
from my job here at the Trust that better people's living in Tanzania then I’m a lucky person.”
The Street Child World Cup is a global movement for the rights of street children. In 2014, Rio will host teams of street children from 20 countries ahead of the FIFA World Cup in Brazil, drawing from a network of outstanding projects all campaigning for the rights of street children.
Th Street Child World Cup is a joint venture by Amos Trust, Momentum Arts and Action for Brazil’s Children. This joint venture is called Street Child United - a registered UK charity.
The aim is to provide a platform for street children to be heard, to challenge negative stereotypes of street children and to promote the rights of street children.
“Working with participants from the Tanzania Street Children Sport Academy will be richly rewarding experience,” Dixon added.
“I’m very honoured that Street Child United have approached us to front-up this work and it is a privilege to be ambassadors for QPR and the Premier League in this way.”
Gareth will be keeping a diary throughout QPR Trust’s time in Tanzania.
Keep an eye on www.qpr.co.uk over the coming days for more.
For more information, please contact:
Andy Watkins, Club Journalist, Queens Park Rangers Football Club
andyw@qpr.co.uk
020 8740 2542 / 07880 204424
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