uRRRs blog Let’s go incremental, let’s go incremental, la la la la, la la la la...

Posted: August 25th 2008
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So is there really a 4 year plan, of which this is year 2, with Championship top half consolidation the aim? Is there hell...Flavor Flav wants us hobnobbing with the big guns as soon as possible, boyeee

Will caution continue to be exercised in the transfer market? Yes. I believe the de rigeur expression for this approach is “incremental steps”. In other words, small steps. Proceed with caution. Softly softly. Slowly slowly catchy monkey.

In QPR terms, this means we will continue to buy proven Championship players who can play a part in getting us up, knowing full well they may be jettisoned the moment they succeed...adding a smattering of young continental talent, Wenger-style, and predominantly on loan with an option, in the hope that (a) some of them work out; and (b) if and when they do work out, they want to sign for us.

The fanbase is clearly split on ‘incrementalism’. Some want money thrown at the team now, let’s buy our way out of the division now, then buy again when we’re up...after all, we (or to be more precise they) can afford it. Some don’t want the fancy dan foreigners, because of course they all dive and cheat and won’t fancy Burnley on a wet February Tuesday.

Me, I like the look of the group...but think it needs another couple of months to gel. We have two keepers and six defenders in the first team squad all of whom, before a ball was kicked in anger this season, I felt were at the very least top half of the Championship standard. The fact that to date they’ve performed nowhere near this standard is a concern...but not one that I feel is best addressed at this early stage by buying a complete set of replacements (though yes, like any other Rs fan, I’d have former loanee Martin Crainie back from Pompey in a blink).

So the national media (and thus by extension the regional media and by further extension fans of our Championship rivals) will continue to call us “moneybags QPR”. They will continue to refer to us as “the richest club in the world”, as opposed to the far more accurate “club with the richest owners”.
They will continue to peddle Flav’s quote about “the Champions’ League in four years” as a stated aim when in the original interview it was clear it was his “dream” not his “goal”. And they will continue to assume we’ve spent oodles on our current squad (tho’ in reality Barnsley spent more in the summer), and continue to crow / mock every time we suffer a defeat.

And many of our fans will fall into the same trap (though the crowing / mocking will be replaced by hand-wringing and spleen-venting).

Flav wants to make us sexy, but incremental steps aren’t sexy. However, there are increasing hints that the football played by some of the incremental signings could be just that...