uRRRs blog The Doomsday Project

Posted: January 27th 2010
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Much of the beauty in the beautiful game comes from the fact that it is gloriously unpredictable.

So much so that yesterday afternoon, there were many on QPR messageboards happy to state on a public forum that we could “get a result” at “in form Nottingham Forest”.

What we got was not only a good thumping, but a stark lesson for Snr Briatore and his chums. “Bad luck Flavio, never mind, here’s what you could have won...had you employed a manager with a proven track record in this division, stuck with him after an iffy start, and allowed him to spend some money (not crazy money) to assemble a well-balanced squad”.

Such has been the silence of late on all things QPR from our collection of motormouth millionaires that I was half way through a blog on the fact last week, questioning their continued interest / motivation...when Flavio broke his silence.

Alas, he simply repeated the same old lines that are now getting very stale. The one about how without them there would be no QPR (well actually there would, albeit most likely in a lower division...and anyway that was two & a half years ago, change the record); that he wasn’t really interested in the views of us mug punters who pay our £20 (if only...he scored this own goal before, the vast majority of us pay £25-35); and that you can’t include the caretakers into the managerial count during his tenure, and that of the 6 permanent ones he’s got through since autumn 2007, apparently only Iain Dowie was actually sacked. Oh and he added that contrary to rumour he had no intention of selling up.

No mention whatsoever of how he viewed the progress of his Four Year Plan to get the club to the Premiership...oh how easily he could win back some level of support from many fans if he could bring himself to come out and say “sorry guys, we meant well but we’ve screwed up...we’ve learned from our mistakes...and a period of stability under the stewardship of a good manager who will have total control over playing affairs is the plan from hereon in”.

Amit Bhatia, steel billionaire Lakshmi Mittal’s son-in-law and QPR board rep who made a habit of playing good cop to Flavio’s bad, seems to have disappeared off the face of the earth as regards all things QPR. Bernie Ecclestone has thankfully kept his trap shut – all he ever did was revel in his lack of knowledge of all things football, and bang on about Chelsea and his mate Roman.

Meanwhile the official site blathers on regardless, trying to get us excited about the return of Nigel ‘relegation man’ Quashie and the departure of Wayne ‘opta stats sensation’ Routledge. It’s the footballing equivalent of state-controlled TV in a tinpot dictatorship. Oh and on the cover of the new issue of our exceedingly pointless quarterly glossy mag is one Akos Buszaky, fans’ hero rapidly turning into panto villain. Presumably they won’t be asking him about his drastic loss of form, his apparent weight gain, and did Jim Magilton really headbutt him.

Aaah, the much-maligned Mr. Magilton. None of us wanted him in the summer (the only man desperate enough to take the job was the consensus), but by the autumn W12 cafes were taking in huge deliveries of humble pie as we threatened to blow the division apart with a winning brand of total football not seen at the Bush (or in the Championship) for a very long time...

...which brings us back to football’s marvellous unpredictability. From mid-September through to early November, we embarked on a run of a very creditable 20 points from 30, which included a win at Cardiff and a draw at Newcastle, 13 goals in 3 home games, and a 4-2 win at Derby shown live on the BBC, a game which, despite being 2-0 down, we all felt confident we’d win. And the football was scintillating. Towards the end of that run, 1 point from 2 home games (Leicester and Palace) hinted that the purple patch may be over, but a gritty away win at Hillsborough appeared to get us back on track. All the fans nodded sagely as Magilton said these were the sorts of wins you needed, and that in the dressing room the players were just as chuffed as they’d been when winning by 4 or 5.

11 short weeks later, and it’s 7 points from the last 30, culminating in a 5-0 humbling at Forest with a display so spineless, so gutless, that for the first time in 35 years, I left a QPR game early. Have a team’s wheels ever come off so quickly and spectacularly?

Where do we go from here? It’s hardly worth debating, as where we go depends solely on the whims of Flavio Briatore. The rock is more of the same; the hard place is he goes and administration soon follows. We’re inbetween. It’s often been said that he “doesn’t do failure”...surely he also doesn’t “do embarrassment”? Who’d have thought this Saturday’s game against Scunthorpe would suddenly seem so pivotal to our season?

I’ll be there, a gruesome fascination is wooing me, I’m genuinely curious as to how players, management and fans will react – and to those of us who support teams which rarely if ever threaten to win silverware, it’s often such curiosities that keep us coming back for more...but for how much longer, I couldn’t say. Last night I broke the habit of a lifetime by leaving early. We may just be another bad date away from a trial separation.

uRRRs!