Dear Bernie, Amit and Flavio,

[LoftusRoadLad]

Excellent post but is this being sent to the Club or is it just an open letter?

Would be great if there was some way we as fans from across the messageboards could also put our names to it

Agreed on that.

[Snaxo]

Great post but I really cannot imagine that Bernie and co are not already fully aware of all of this ..... which really is the ongoing mystery when they don't 'appear' to be acting on it.

We'll see though. Maybe they will yet surprise us (one can live in hope!).

[kron-1664]

i am sure ecclestone and amit are completely aware of this . Warnock will drum it home again. I am sure they will support the squad for the final push if they pulled the plug now they would be mad as they have put so much in to getting us to this position

[oldhoop]

Now is the time for the board to show their real intent. The underlying question is are they really serious or is this all a bit of a game and a huge ego trip? Or, God forbid are they are trying to do the near impossible and get promtion on the cheap without investing at a critical time in this seasons campaign.

I'm sure all will become clear over the next couple of weeks and if we are still in contention come May and we pull it off the next test will be August and how much is thrown Neils way to strengthen. Just remember Blackpool bought 9 players in last August!!!!!!

Time will, my friends, certainly tell.

In the meantime enjoy the ride cos being top and contemplating promotion is a whole lot better than where we were this time last year.

Top,top post Sir Pie

[QPR1976]

Spot on thread.
We have NEVER (even in '83) been better placed for promotion just over half way through the season.

A small (in comparison) investment now, say £3m, for 3or 4 QUALITY players will reap ten fold benefit next season alone.

Speculate to accumulate.

If we don't go up, not only will we not spend more to survive, we won't get the initial investment back or get the 'worst case' parachute payment for the next 4 years which will be imperative to bouncing back !

Now is the time.
Don't fail the fans, NW and his team or Yourselves.
We are not close, yet, but with a few more pushes, we will be.

Oh and make SirPie the next Buxton !
God bless you Derek.

COME ON YOU R's !
The time is now and the next 2 weeks or so.
Let's look forward with optimism, not backwards with regret.

[80sCasual]

Great post but will anyone who's anyone ever see it?

[12345]

You talk about the club losing money but then want them to gamble on promotion. If we investy and fall short who do you think will end up paying for the shortfall of investing on players that got us knowwhere (see Sheron, Mike for more information)

[Goddard]

Nice post SPC...

..and if I may, I'll add Clives words on LFW into the mix.
It's long, but worth a couple of minutes reading time.

Nothing hysterical, nothing unreasonable, just plain straight talking from a QPR fan:


"At the start of the season I’d have shaken your hand and walked away had you offered me a play off spot, now if the Championship stays true to its recent form, we can be in the Premiership in 21 game’s time just by winning 12 of them.

I’m also not one of these fans who is only ever happy when a new player is being signed by their club either. “We need to sign a proven Championship striker,” people crowed before Tommy Smith and Rob Hulse arrived on the same day. While the rest of the division marvelled at that statement of intent the “we’re three signings away from a decent team” brigade paused for a moment, took a sip of bleach, and then simply started repeating the “we need to sign a proven Championship striker” mantra again.

One of QPR’s many problems in recent times has been too many managers adding too many signings on top of too many other signings by too many other managers. Every transfer window we have plastered another layer of five or six players on top of the five or six we bought in the previous window. Until recently it was always a different manager doing it as well so the layers were formed of different kinds of players, signed for different reasons by different managers to do different jobs in different systems. The result is that just three years after our takeover by rich backers we’re desperately trying to offload the high earning, under-performing tat we bought to start with – and having little success in doing so as Rowan Vine and Fitz Hall continue to loiter like vastly overpaid, injury prone bad smells.

So while the calls persist to “show intent” and “get the cheque book out” I have been, until recently, quite happy with the lot that we’ve got and wouldn’t have been unduly concerned had we got until the end of January without signing anybody new. I appreciate that such a scenario would be seen as an absolute disaster by many and a sign that our board members have lost interest and won’t put their hands in their pockets although I struggle to think sometimes what exactly people who believe this think the 32 permanent signings and 25 loan deals made since the takeover have been paid for and with. To say QPR have a first team built with tens of millions of pounds in transfer fees is wrong, but to accuse the board of not spending money on the team is just plain daft.

However with Kyle Walker now elsewhere and Jamie Mackie still picking bits of his shin bone out of the Ewood Park turf it’s plainly obvious that QPR need to find replacements for what have become two absolutely key components of our success this season. While Bradley Orr seems to have been completely forgotten about by some, dazzled by our shiny new toy from Spurs, he’s a player I rate very highly and somebody I was glad we signed, but left back where Walker had played occasionally remains a worry. Mackie’s absence is more of a concern – his work rate and energy set the tone for the rest of the team and it’s that we’ll miss more than any footballing ability he offers, especially if Warnock continues with his baffling fascination in Leon Clarke who weighs as much as a cement mixer but offers all the presence, and usefulness, of a soiled piece of toilet paper.
That’s on top of the worry that we don’t play as well when Helguson doesn’t start, and that our centre halves struggle when faced with a physical challenge such as the one set to be posed on Saturday by Burnley’s Chris Iwelumo. I’ve said on the message board my dream, and not altogether unrealistic, shopping list this January would be Curtis Davies, Bruno Berner, Martyn Waghorn and Ishmael Miller but we’ve long since established I know nothing and Warnock would probably swiftly rule out all four for a variety of reasons.

The big worry for me though is the sudden presence at training and in reserve games of Emmanuel Ledesma. I’ve no beef with the lad as a player or a person – he seemed keen and skilful, but lightweight and naïve when he was last here.
But the strength of Neil Warnock at QPR is similar to that of Harry Redknapp at Tottenham and Ledesma’s return could undermine it. Both clubs tried a foreign system where ‘non-football’ people were making football decisions and the manager was merely a head coach and it failed miserably. Both clubs went out of their way to completely do away with that by appointing Redknapp and Warnock and the success for both in allowing a traditional English manager to manage in the traditional English way has been there for all to see in the league tables.

Ledesma harks back to an era when Flavio Briatore and Gianni Paladini had far, far, far, far, far too much input into our starting eleven. Neither has ever gone away, but the balance has been restored since Warnock was appointed. The manager’s quote on Thursday: “"The powers-that-be want me to have a look at the lad – and that’s fine with me. But I do need to get other players in, so I hope that if Emmanuel does get invited to stay – it doesn’t affect our other plans,” fills me with dread. Invited to stay? Isn’t that Warnock’s decision? This, and other quotes recently about missing out on Kyle Naughton because of money and his interview in the Guardian last week sound horribly like exactly the same things Iain Dowie was saying when he wanted to sign Clinton Morrison, Mark Hudson and others and was instead presented with Ledesma, Sam Di Carmine and Damiano Tomassi.

It may be that Paladini, Briatore and the other “powers that be” have been inviting players for Warnock to “have a look at” all along, and Ledesma is just getting coverage because he has been here before. After all, little has been said about Darko Zec, the Slovenian who arrived on trial at the same time. If that’s the case then fine, but Warnock’s barbed comment makes me uneasy about the developing situation.

If we cannot afford the players that Warnock wishes to sign then fine, tell him that.
The mathematically challenged among the support will say the board has been tight and won’t put its hand in its pocket when you only have to look at our squad compared to our gate to know that’s not true.
But don’t, dear God, let’s go down the route we did with Dowie again, where the manager asks for four specific players and ends up presented with cheaper foreign equivalents from rich chums of Briatore and Paladini’s agent friends."




Hard to argue with most of that.

[Jeffro]

Great piece sir pie, but if im honest, a few of the lines in there if read by ego's Flavio and Bernie, I think would be taken as quite condescending towards themselves.

They will look at it as in
"We have mad millions and Billions and to be honest , do not need some two bob fan telling me how to run a club"

I must stress this is not my opinion , i agree whole heartedly with what you say but i think everything is summed up by Flavio's comment

" £20 pound fan doesnt tell me what to do"

Unfortunately Sir Pie , Flavio and Bernie and probably Amit couldnt give a flying one whether our seats are filled by people who have been going 26 years like me or some two bob joey s first ever game.

[sirpiechucker]

Very good letter, well argued as ever, and agree with the thrust: one more heave and, miraculously really considering how little Neil Warnock has spent (I realise a lot was spent prior to him taking over) we could be in the promised land of the Premiership.

Three caveats.

Firstly, I think its perfectly obvious why the club is losing so much money. Wages in football are ridiculous. We could make a heroic stand against wage insanity, but then we wouldn't get any experienced players - so catch 22.

Secondly, all the sponsorship deals to which you refer are, I understand, pretty small beer - the headline figures, generated I suspect for PR purposes, may look impressive but the serious money only comes after promotion etc.

Thirdly, there is no pot of gold waiting in the Premiership - it all goes on transfers and wages. Man Utd is the only profitable premiership club .

I don't want to attack our owners and this wasn't ever the intention when writing the above but I’ll answer your three points:

1) Who decided the size of the wages? As Clive's piece on LFW points out we've made 57 permanent or loan deals since the takeover. Considering that this squad already had Rowlands, Camp, Blackstock and Stewart before the takeover did we really need to sign so many players? Did we really need to waste so much money on the hiring and firing of managers as well as the transfer fees and salaries for so many different players? How much are the likes of Agyemang, Clarke and Vine earning? Should we really continue to spend money on Mahon if the pot is empty? Was there a point in signing Quashie? Did we really need to sell Delaney and then later sign Williams? Did we need to sell Blackstock and ultimately replace him with the likes of Di Carmine or Clarke?

The list of bad signings and somewhat strange decisions is a long one. Why sell/release any player and replace him with another one of a similar standard just a few months later? Why sign any player who historically or statistically has a bad record of injuries or abilities and then offer them a long contract which will later make it notoriously difficult to get rid of them. Why offer four years contracts but then three years later only offer two year contracts? I've identified four solid Championship players already (arguably all good enough for at least the bench especially considering the strength of our bench now) meaning we really only needed a third of the signings we've made since the takeover. I’ve never had a problem offering a player the going rate but (rumour) offering players way and above what they were previously earning is ridiculous. I’d much rather us buy one quality player for £15k per week than buy two mediocre players who combined are worth £15k per week. We didn’t ever need to sign 57 players to win promotion – we need to sign 20 at most and IMO that’s where the money has gone.

2) I've asked a couple of friends whether their clubs (Burnley and Ipswich) announce all of their sponsorship deals and the answer was a definite no. I can understand announcing the kit manufacture and the main sponsor but to announce deals like Chronotech and Toyo has to mean something. If it's not because of money then what is the point? If no money has been made whilst we are a Championship side on the commercial side of things then you can guarantee that if we get promoted there will be a massive increase in this revenue stream. All companies are cutting back but surely we could sell every advertising board even if we are offering them for next to nothing?

3) If QPR enter the Premiership with monthly debts and leave the Premiership with no new players after February this year we will leave the Premiership in profit. Obviously people will argue what is the point of going up just to risk coming straight back down again but what quality and what money have Blackpool spent? Yes they brought in a lot of players but with little or no Premiership experience (or even NPC experience if you take Matt Phillips). They released a huge number of players at the end of last season and combined with the extra revenue in ticket sales I believe that not only will they secure Premiership safety this season but do it without breaking the bank. Until Burnley’s accounts for last season come out I can’t prove this but I am absolutely sure they made a profit last season. Of course they got relegated but ultimately they’ve secured the financial future of the club. I happen to be friends with a number of Burnley supporters and they are all delighted that their club has a future because of the money they made from their time in the Premiership. They have a strict wage cap (which was the reason why Coyle left as he couldn’t sign the players he wanted) but as a result they aren’t left with huge debts.

[stanley75]

Yes, on the thoird point there actually is a pot of gold waiting in the premiership. Both inb the TV cash, money by league position, increased attendances (and hiked ticket prices) but most importantly (in this context) the parachute payments. £48m even if you fail takes any of the risk out of gettinbg there. The real risk is to spend badly not make it there and miss out on this cash. That is the point.

the parachute payments grow again this year. That means we will increasingly be competing against teams who have made the drop who are armed with £48m to get them back. It is going to get more and more difficult for any team without that cash to compete for Prem status. Another reason to get a wiggle on and make sure we grasp this opportunity with total conviction.

[sirpiechucker]

Excellent post but is this being sent to the Club or is it just an open letter?

Would be great if there was some way we as fans from across the messageboards could also put our names to it

If there are lots of positive responses and lots of healthy sensible debate on the benefits of promotion than why not. But if people don't agree or think that there is little point in doing so then we just have to hope common sense will prevail.

[sirpiechucker]

You talk about the club losing money but then want them to gamble on promotion. If we investy and fall short who do you think will end up paying for the shortfall of investing on players that got us knowwhere (see Sheron, Mike for more information)

Sell your assets.

Do you or anyone else believe that Adel Taraabt will be a Championship player next August? I don't. If we spend say £4m on fees and a further £1m on salaries between now and May we will be forced to sell Taraabt if we don't go up because he'll engineer a move anyway. His market worth would be similar to the £5m we need to spend to improve this squad.

[sirpiechucker]

Great piece sir pie, but if im honest, a few of the lines in there if read by ego's Flavio and Bernie, I think would be taken as quite condescending towards themselves.

They will look at it as in
"We have mad millions and Billions and to be honest , do not need some two bob fan telling me how to run a club"

I must stress this is not my opinion , i agree whole heartedly with what you say but i think everything is summed up by Flavio's comment

" £20 pound fan doesnt tell me what to do"

Unfortunately Sir Pie , Flavio and Bernie and probably Amit couldnt give a flying one whether our seats are filled by people who have been going 26 years like me or some two bob joey s first ever game.

Unfortunately I agree. They won't listen and won't admit failures for one minute. I'd just love to be proven wrong on that though.

[haqpr1963]

As always excellent posts from SPC.

Let's hope this somehow gets through too the board....