Is it time for a change at the top?

[ConorQPR2000]

For me personally, I have never been a fan of this DoF model, it stops managers who come in from bringing their own approach and ties their hands too much.

I personally favour the club scrapping the DoF role and instead merging it with the current Head of Recruitment role.

I also find it bizarre that we pay Les 500k a year when we talk about being financially stable, when there are better uses for that kind of money, we could easily put that back in the academy or invest in a player.

My worry is that Les has far too much influence at this football club, and its perhaps time we saw Amit take a more hands on role.

[FurtiveFox]

Can't see Amit having the time for a more hands on role given his business commitments. Les and Hoos, or others in those roles, are here to stay.

[Gibby]

On the back of more recent news… would anyone here be able to figure out how many players we’ve now let go on a free/ termination of contract? I get that it frees up wages and (HOPEFULLY) Means we are looking to do some business in the transfer window… which seems positive but it’s become quite common for our club to either miss out on a transfer fee or have to sell on the cheap in favour of doing decent business and getting some crucial funds in… is questionable business like this that makes me uncertain of the current set up and it would be interesting to hear others thoughts. The next few months could be crucial, such as renewing Willock contract, which I would personally prioritise over Dykes of whom if Beale & Rangers really want him, we should snap their hands off in favour of getting some funds to rebuild our weak striking presence (not taking anything from his performance against Sheff Utd but just doesn’t have the consistency or accuracy that this club so desperately needs)

[Gibby]

No not necessarily… that’s why I say it is hopefully a promising sign of some action in this transfer window as it frees up wage. However, clubs have previously been interested in buying Bonne and we opted to keep him which seemed a wasted opportunity as he’s then gone on not to make the first team much at all.

Given the circumstances mutual termination of contract is a positive but can’t help but feel he should’ve been sold much sooner. There’s no hiding in the fact that this has happened a number of times with other players (either mutual termination, contract expiration or selling on the cheap before contract expires) and I would’ve thought the club, given the financial constraints would be a bit more savvy in this area.

22/23 - at least 5 players left Free
21/22 - at least 3 players left Free & 2 on the cheap (if not free)
20/21 - 3 left for free, we panic sold Bright OS for £450,000 & Ryan Manning for £225,000 who we should’ve got A LOT more for. Though this is the season we also cashed in on Eze.
10/20 - I believe around 7 players left on a Free…
I won’t keep going but hopefully that shows some sort of pattern…

I completely get that sometimes it’s unavoidable (maybe player retirement etc) & sometimes the best option but that’s 18+ players that, had the club managed contracts etc better… could’ve gained some kind of transfer fee from… am I not correct?

[Harrow QPR]

I think one area of our club that needs to improve massively is our scouting network , we seem to make a lot of mistakes in the transfer market , especially with Strikers , Dykes, Bonne, Washington , Sylla just to name a few.
We had a great scouting network in the 70 and 80s and used to buy players for small fees and most improved and were sold on for better money.

[FurtiveFox]

Football was very different back in the 70s and 80s. The big clubs with their resources and the amount of money being thrown around get a much higher proportion of promising youngsters leaving the rest scrapping around for what's left. There seems to be a much larger reliance on the loan system at Championship level downwards and these are often players who cannot get any game time at higher levels due to the sheer numbers of players these clubs have.

I'm not saying we are doing an amazing job but you only have to look at some of our younger first team players to see the pattern. Willock had to leave Arsenal to get any game time and found his way to us. Dunne was offered a new contract at Burnley but was barely getting a look in so came here. On loan at present we have Laird, Roberts and Richards from Premiership sides. Field, Masterson, Amos, Thomas others who had a go with bigger clubs and ended up here. That's where we are in food chain, looking to pick up these types of players and trying to make something of them.

[Harrow QPR]

Football was very different back in the 70s and 80s. The big clubs with their resources and the amount of money being thrown around get a much higher proportion of promising youngsters leaving the rest scrapping around for what's left. There seems to be a much larger reliance on the loan system at Championship level downwards and these are often players who cannot get any game time at higher levels due to the sheer numbers of players these clubs have.

I'm not saying we are doing an amazing job but you only have to look at some of our younger first team players to see the pattern. Willock had to leave Arsenal to get any game time and found his way to us. Dunne was offered a new contract at Burnley but was barely getting a look in so came here. On loan at present we have Laird, Roberts and Richards from Premiership sides. Field, Masterson, Amos, Thomas others who had a go with bigger clubs and ended up here. That's where we are in food chain, looking to pick up these types of players and trying to make something of them.

I see your point and agree with some of it but our scouts must have guide dogs if they thought that players like Amos or Thomas ever had much potential to make it at championship level , plus their injury records were atrocious and still are.
Teams like Leicester , Brighton , Brentford and a lot more have made some great signings on the cheap and sold players on for millions.
We need to have scouts at the lower leagues and abroad looking at young players we can develop not players we get for nothing because no-one else wants them because they've had horrendous injuries. Players are rarely the same after a bad knee or ankle ligament injury .

[FurtiveFox]

The likes of Brentford are the exception rather than the rule although I agree we should certainly look to learn what we can from them and they show it is possible to punch above your weight. Agree with Brighton although they had an atrocious transfer window around three years ago spending millions on players who nearly all flopped and Hughton ended up losing his job. Every club signs duds, even the well run ones.

Amos has looked good at times and cost us nothing or very little. Real shame about his injuries. Thomas Leicester paid money for as a prospect from Coventry. Wasn't good enough for them but can see why we thought he was worth a punt for not very much money for us.

We are gambling on players and win some lose some. There are far wealthier clubs at our level who will be ahead of us in the queue when players become available.

We got Dickie from lower league and for a while looked one of our top players and was linked with a number of Prem clubs. Quite shocking how he went downhill so quickly and was our fourth choice central defender earlier in the season.

Can just hope we do cast our net as wide as possible. Paal overall has been a decent signing and we had been keeping an eye on him before Beale came.

[Harrow QPR]

The likes of Brentford are the exception rather than the rule although I agree we should certainly look to learn what we can from them and they show it is possible to punch above your weight. Agree with Brighton although they had an atrocious transfer window around three years ago spending millions on players who nearly all flopped and Hughton ended up losing his job. Every club signs duds, even the well run ones.

Amos has looked good at times and cost us nothing or very little. Real shame about his injuries. Thomas Leicester paid money for as a prospect from Coventry. Wasn't good enough for them but can see why we thought he was worth a punt for not very much money for us.

We are gambling on players and win some lose some. There are far wealthier clubs at our level who will be ahead of us in the queue when players become available.

We got Dickie from lower league and for a while looked one of our top players and was linked with a number of Prem clubs. Quite shocking how he went downhill so quickly and was our fourth choice central defender earlier in the season.

Can just hope we do cast our net as wide as possible. Paal overall has been a decent signing and we had been keeping an eye on him before Beale came.

The trouble with Amos and Thomas was they both had bad long term injuries at they're previous clubs and it was always a big gamble signing them , i would rather we stay clear of this type of player.
Paal has been decent so far , i agree.
I never rated Dickie from day one , yes he went on some marauding runs upfield and he used to win a few headers but defensively he was very poor , so slow and not enough agression and desire for a centre half.

[Abseits]

I'm sure Brentford have bought many duds down the years - we just don't notice or hear about them. Most of their recent signings have been VERY expensive too. If we end up selling Armstrong for £50 million in a couple of years suddenly our model will look pretty darn fine.
I reckon the single biggest factor in Brentford and Fulham being perceived as canny operators in the transfer market is fact they played attractive, successful and winning football - it makes their players look good. I'm sure if we had Toney up front instead of Dykes in our current system he'd look like a lumbering hapless oaf. However, as spearhead of Bees attack he looks potent and effective.
How many people are noticing Will Keane or Oscar Estupinan banging the goals in this season? Hardly anyone cos they are playing in struggling Wigan and Hull sides that lose most games.

[Gibby]

Our owners apparently couldn’t afford to pay for the rename for the Stan Bowles stand so set up a fan lead imitative… to which either they or the suppliers ripped the fans off but claiming to need much more than it costs to get the job done.

meanwhile…. https://vm.tiktok.com/ZMFK1E31G/

our owners refurb their box which probably cost 10 fold what the stand rename would’ve. I’m so glad to see they have their priorities right!

also, has anyone ever thought that our boxes are actually too big? Other teams even in the prem (West Ham for example) the boxes are a 3rd of the size. Why not section them up more to create hospitality? Or even better… remove some and let them be reclaimed by seats in the ground?

[Gibby]

From my understanding It was a fan led initiative that they approached the club with but the board advised that they would not foot the bill. Could’ve been the sort of initiative that the fans I’m sure would have appreciated the small gesture by the club and probably helped win back some of the fans that have become less trustworthy of the board. Instead, they claim the fans need to raise an amount much more than the costs required to do the job in hand (I’ve 14 year’s experience in that industry to know the costs). Then the owners go and kit (their idea of ‘more important things’) their box out even more than it already was for an amount that would’ve definitely cost more than the bill for the stand rebrand and it’ll probably rarely get used throughout the season, unless Ferdinand uses it as a hiding space as more and more fans turn against him

That doesn’t sit right. Don’t get me wrong, I support the board as much as I can and was gutted when Fernandes decided to take a step back to focus on air Asia as he was doing a great job but now he seems more interested in Malaysian football than QPR, think he’s only been to one game this season and that was away and all we see Bhatia do is pop up on twitter when we get a win. Just seems a huge disconnect between a large portion of fans and the board at the moment. If the clubs marketing team are so set on pushing fans to get behind the team, the club need to do more to encourage that instead of raising ticket prices, raising cost of shirts, make it difficult for newer fans to get tickets to matches etc.

hate to admit it but over the years we’ve clearly lost fanbase to other London clubs, I remembered the days of Division Two and sell out fixtures at Loftus Road week in week out. More needs to be done by the club to bring this back… instead of just putting patronising posts out on social media telling the fans that already commit so much home & away to make more noise & support the team.

I know that you’ll probably think a lot of the things I say and points I make are complete nonsense but they are views of my own and that’s the point of these chat boards after all. I respect the opinions of everyone else and it’s always interesting to learn what other people think.

long and short of it is… I’d like to see some change, more commitment & communication from across the board with a hint of passion. Ideally I’d like to see this from the current board, but if they are not capable of this then I’d question their loyalty & commitment and then my preference would be a fresh start.