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Reply | Bluetooth active speakers v sound system
at 17:59 27 Aug 2025
In which case the Ruark may well be what you are looking for but give them a road test first.
I am pretty fussy without being an audiophile and haven't yet found a genre that it doesn't compliment. Acoustic instruments and voices generally sound well rounded and natural. Can also handle either a King Tubby album or Mahler 2nd with no problem. Space wise we are using the unit in an open office that is probably 20' x 15'. |
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Reply | Bluetooth active speakers v sound system
at 16:53 27 Aug 2025
I can highly recommend a pair of Ruark MR1 MK2s. Work well whether plugged in to a laptop headphone socket via a mini jack or connected to a phone (or any other device) via Bluetooth. Obviously depends on what you like but being a fan of a strong and realistic low end the Ruark scored bigger for me than the SONOS which I thought was a bit polite. Also depends on the size of the room and how much "crank" you want to be able to access.
Anyway ... review here.
https://www.whathifi.com/ruark-audio/mr1-mk2/review |
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Reply | Confront the training ground - 11am Monday
at 18:59 25 Aug 2025
Decade? 30 years in my book. Three good seasons in 30 and 1 great one. The rest (and I bought my first ST in 1995) have been either plain dire or curate's eggs.
Maybe age is catching up with me but this just feels like post - Thompson / Les QPR doing all too familiar QPR things. Can't imagine where protest would lead that could be in anyway helpful to the team. Which is presumably the point of the exercise? |
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Reply | Le Shrugs thoughts post Plymouth stuffing.
at 12:52 13 Aug 2025
It's a good point. I wouldn't expect the club to flag an intent to field an U23 / U21 type line up in a first team game but laying on coaches or such like would have been a gesture that could have covered their backs from a customer service POV. If I was in a PAYE job and had taken a day off work out of my annual leave to be there then I would feel let down for sure. |
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Reply | Le Shrugs thoughts post Plymouth stuffing.
at 12:35 13 Aug 2025
Looking at the number of players in the treatment room and the players available on the bench on Saturday the last thing this squad needs is more games in the pursuit of pipe dreams so I have no problem with what happened last night. They gave a decent account of themselves and there are maybe three or four in there that really enhanced their chances of breaking through as regular and reliable subs.
There are only 46 games that matter and if doing what we did helps us take some points from the next 3 of those then so be it. It is going to be a grind, lets face since 1994-95 it has nearly always been a grind in at least half our games and I would include the last promotion season in that category.
That said I totally feel for the people who travelled to Plymouth expecting to see a competitive starting line up but for me a "debacle" was letting Vinnie Jones leave a League Cup game during extra time so he could make a film premiere. Signing Joey Barton on crazy money and then taking him back despite what happened in the City game was the definition of an embarrassment. As was the appalling treatment of Mark Warburton, being subsequently hoodwinked by Michael "Mick" Beale, and the spectacle of Charlie Austin (much as I loved him in both spells) apparently sulking in an empty Ellerslie Road while an entirely winnable FA Cup game was still in progress.
I guess it depends in the end what kind of thing grinds your gears. [Post edited 13 Aug 12:48]
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Reply | Players who you thought would be brilliant but ended up being bang average !!!
at 09:40 12 May 2025
I drank the John Hollins Kool Aid back in 96 when relegation was followed a couple of afternoons later by the reserves winning the Combination League with a win at Loftus Road against Brighton IIRC.
Mark Graham was the new Beckenbauer, Paul Bruce the new Beckham etc etc. Charles and Mahoney-Johnson our very own "smash and grab" duo. New deals all around then!
Willing the hype to be real goes with the territory at times but you'd have been waiting a long time for either of those first two predictions to come true. I can't remember a single thing about Mark Graham. Paul Bruce definitely had his day where it all came together in the first team but on reflection it probably was just the one day.
For the cadre of players (that included that unicorn of unicorns, Steve Slade) who were supposedly challenging Hateley, Gallen and Dichio for places in the team that optimism lasted as long as a clutch of wholly anonymous performances in a miserable home defeat to Port Vale in a half empty stadium.
So much for a golden age then but I hung on to the idea that we had greatness in the wings for far longer than was sensible.
The two I thought deserved a lot more time and a better shot were Trevor Challis and Matty Lockwood but the Houston / Rioch combo didn't seem to have much interest in developing youth unless we had over-paid Arsenal to get it. IIRC Holloway took both of them to Bristol Rovers so he must have seen something he liked. [Post edited 12 May 9:43]
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Reply | The game model
at 11:54 25 Nov 2024
Seems that Noury went to Imperial in 2019 to study for an MSc in Innovation, Entrepreneurship and Management. This after doing History at Trinity, Oxford. Not an educational path that would normally bring a lot of humility with it and not a lot of football on that educational cv either. I am not sure where the data expertise was acquired. A hobbyist perhaps? So there's that.
I wouldn't bet against Noury having watched Moneyball and / or read the Michael Lewis book and thought "I'm very smart, I can make spread sheets that are works of art, I really like football and football is loaded with money, short of a lot of rationality and full of people promoted above their skill-set and intelligence. In that kind of environment I could be Pete *and* Billy rolled into one. I'll clean up!"
No one who goes to Trinity wants to be making their way into their stellar post- post grad career based on something as ephemeral as actual experience on the job. No one wants to be Art Howe, the schlubby guy who looks bad in the uniform, the guy who wants to stay in the game on his terms and by leaning on a skill set earned having done his 10,000 hours multiple times along the way.
No one who goes to Imperial aspires to be a man out of step with the Zeitgeist like Grady the chief scout. They want to be seen to be the smartest, most forward thinking person in the room on any given occasion. Contrarian by nature, they want to lead the future not chase the bandwagon.
Though a Grady might also once in a while find you a one season wonder Stuart Wardley in the rough. He might have seen enough with his own eyes to know someone who knows someone who knows that an Ebere Eze, or,a Jason Puncheon say, have far far more to offer than what their career paths to date suggest. A Stuart Wardley would never make a data-driven short list. Would Eze at the point just before he came to Rangers? Would Puncheon when Barnet picked him up from the cast off pile? I very much doubt it.
And there's the rub when you over-correct from a conservative, 16th-place-and-hoping-for-better- kind-of-works-for-now strategy. That has been a strategy that says leave-the-football-men-to-do-football-man-things. With all the hit and miss consequences you would expect.
Yet here we are doing a 180 on a cliff edge to chase a lets-give-the-disruptive-tech-bros-all-the-power policy the next. The guy driving this isn't even doing it with his own money.
Warbs is the nearest thing we have seen who more or less rides both those horses, even if his experience of using data to feed decision-making will be more of a Gary Stevenson risk management type than player assessment per se. His data-led decisions in the markets might even have involved similar amounts of money and more. Which will presumably teach you a lot about how to actually reach safe but progressive decisions based on multiple sources of information. Little of that nouse is found in text books and coaching manuals.
I would bet Marti is cut from similar cloth in terms of temperament but with the bias more toward the training field than the analyst booth. Thoughtful at the very least.
So, of course we will end up having fired them both in favour of chasing dreams of beating the EFL house on the dirt cheap. Too impatient to build, too keen on a lottery win solution to a nose-to-the-grindstone for five years problem.
Until we learn patience and true painstaking graft we are going nowhere. There might always be enough of a January parachute to stave off disaster but that's our ceiling right now. With this fan base (the most patient I have ever come across) that is more than possible. |
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Reply | What is your second sport.
at 09:22 4 Jun 2024
Ice Hockey and Rugby League are the only other sports outside of football that I have the time or inclination to follow in any detail. Like a lot of people of a certain age I got into both in the early 70s thanks to Grandstand and the one season stand of the London Lions, a Detroit Red Wings farm team, playing at Empire Pool in 73 (?).
As a non driver, with Romford and Streatham the nearest hockey teams worth travelling to pay to watch and the Broncos long since based back down in south London, these are both strictly armchair sports for me these days. |
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Reply | New manager
at 18:15 9 Oct 2023
If Chair, Willock, Dykes, Field are the solution isn't Warburton (preferably) or Eustace the logical solution? |
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Reply | New manager
at 16:06 9 Oct 2023
Not with the help of my money. I am not far from my 30th anniversary as a ST holder but that would be the end for me. I only renewed this year because my daughter loves going so much.
The last year has been like reliving the first month under McClaren over and over again. Madness to tolerate it. Renewing just encourages them. Surest way of changing anything is to withdraw our custom. Chanting against absentee owners and expecting change is the definition of futility. Time to go on strike or a Notts Co type descent beckons. |
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Reply | Ainsworth
at 13:31 8 Oct 2023
Eustace? Knowing us we'd make him manager and hire Warbs as his assistant. Very 1996. |
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Reply | Ainsworth
at 09:20 8 Oct 2023
An appeasement appointment has appeasement consequences.
The club's endless fueling of nostalgia for 67, 76, 82, 04 is also part of the problem or rather an exercise in distraction. Forever Rs is a beautiful thing but also has a role in keeping people docile.
We needed a forward-thinking strategy, heavy on data and Individualised coaching with a high degree of risk-reward. We got the Dad Rock strategy instead complete with the endless repackaging of the back catalogue.
Right now we would struggle to get a Luke Garrard or even a Gareth Taylor ( speaking of nostalgia! ) to come here. Emma Hayes probably wouldn't even take the meeting.
Still you can always buy a 96 relegation season away shirt to cheer yourself up and all those home defeats now feel depressingly familiar. And dare.I say that was another season when owners were looking to get out from under at the least possible expense to themselves.
And we let Warbs go for this??? |
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Reply | "Our Rangers Back"
at 10:55 9 Aug 2023
The same thing happened under McClaren. The team was in a decent place (against all the odds given the general dysfunction) and fell apart when too many players were left dangling with no deal in place for the following season. For it to happen twice suggests an unhealthy disregard for the playing staff emanating from the DoF's office or the MD's or both. |
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Reply | "Our Rangers Back"
at 08:30 9 Aug 2023
It feels like that but I think it has happened six, maybe seven times, in the last half century. All of them before financial doping became the work of billionaires rather than millionaires.
The Rangers I would happily have back is the one that won up at Preston just before Covid or maybe the one that won at 'Boro in August 2021.
Don't care about trophies. Don't care about the Prem. Don't even care much about the play offs. Just want to watch something that makes the world seem a bit brighter and our personal loads feel a bit lighter.
You could double my season ticket price if it brought Warburton back as manager or DoF. |
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Reply | Season s Expectations
at 08:39 3 Jun 2023
Per someone rational I heard speaking on one of the Rangers pods yesterday - the final position will have a 2 in front of it. Couldn't argue with that.
Where we finish in that bottom five is probably going to be determined by FFP not points earned.
I have no idea where the dozen wins we will likely need are going to come from so I figure we are heading for 23rd without a point deductions elsewhere.
21st with. On goal difference. |
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Reply | Bhatia speaks
at 12:05 13 May 2023
Pro sports is how the mega rich keep score between themselves. Demonstrating the power of their wealth through sporting success is how they flex.
Used to be focussed on horse racing and F1 and it was far harder to break into football as owners of top clubs were very reluctant to sell. Especially if there was a family legacy involved in the ownership or a major shareholding. [Post edited 13 May 2023 12:12]
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Reply | To Renew or Not Renew
at 16:36 10 May 2023
Just a reminder again of Ainsworth's all-time record playing at home in the Championship
30 games
20 goals for (17 in 23 with WW)
40 goals against
23 of those games were played with his "own players" and the other 7 with a team allegedly giving their all.
The only incentive to renew is to ensure I keep hold of a seat that I really like having moved a few times in my 28 years as a ST holder. Is that enough? We'll see come June. [Post edited 10 May 2023 16:38]
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Reply | Season Tickets
at 09:43 9 May 2023
Yesterday felt like a taste of things to come in all sorts of ways so it is a wait and see for me.
Ainsworth's teams have registered just 20 goals at home (and 40 against) in his 30 attempts over two stints as a Championship manager. That is a very decent sample size with 2/3rds of the games contested with his own players.
His instinct is to not bleed-out on the field, to limit the damage as much as possible and hope to sneak enough points to finish above the one team that gets a deduction and two that are even worse than you.
No more than one of the teams coming up from L1 and none of the teams coming down from the Prem will be relegation fodder.
So I reckon we are trying to finish in the top half of a six or seven team league comprised of ourselves, Hull, Rotherham, Birmingham, Stoke, Huddersfield and also the side that comes up from L1 as long as it isn't Sheffield Wednesday. That's the job in hand.
The handful of players actually worth paying to watch are headed out the door out of necessity and are getting replaced by loanees, lower league prospects and seasoned head-bangers rather than the products of our own system
You can hang all the banners and wave as many flags as you like but it doesn't mask the grim reality - we don't have a single player who is legit Championship standard who is also "one of our own". From what I gather, other than Armstrong (who desperately needs a full season in the SPL or L1), there is not even a Paul Bruce or a Leon Jeanne on the fringes to pin our unreasonable hopes on.
Where's the incentive to commit to that? |
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Reply | Which is the worst QPR team? 2022/23 or 2000/01
at 09:10 19 Mar 2023
Man for man we have a far better squad of footballers available to us than in 2000-2001.
There was not a single player back then who could have felt any real confidence about moving up to a better club in our division let alone rising to the Prem. They had all been found out in one way or another.
We had gathered a lethal combination of has-beens and never-could-bes. I believe Paul Murray was the only one who tasted football at a higher level after that and his career was already beset by injury.
Remember when Four Four Two projected Quas and Murray as England's starting midfield for the 2002 world cup? Funny now. Not so funny seeing that promise evaporate in real time. The depressives among us may see Willock and Chair as direct parallels today.
The biggest similarity is that there are a lot of players in both squads who would look perfectly fine in a good team but can't be relied on to save a sinking one. On the other hand this time around we do have plenty difference-makers (which were not available back then) but they are nearly all either injured or opting to stay out of the firing line. So there's that.
The most significant difference between then and now? In 2001 Chris Wright was desperately looking for a way out and in the process the whole club found itself in serious jeopardy. That is only the case now if a large enough section of the fans want it that way and turn understandable bile into "activism".
Ironically the mind set of the fans chanting "sack the board" now will be more or less the same as those chanting "Chrissy Wright Wright Wright" to almost the very last 22 years ago. There are no white knights coming to save the day and Wright somehow got away with being seen as one for far longer than was the actual case. He had decided to bail long before he actually showed his full hand and sucked up the adulation while a series of poor managerial appointments took the fall. If there is anything resembling a rescuer to be had today then they are already in-situ. If the abuse becomes personal and spills from social media into real life then this error-prone but fundamentally honest and well-meaning ownership group may become our worst nightmare. They wash their hands of us and League One is the least of our worries. [Post edited 19 Mar 2023 9:22]
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Reply | What a F ucking week.
at 09:44 5 Mar 2023
The choice is stark
Either stick with those who have stewarded the club into this turbulence, knowing that they are most likely continuing to fund the club more out of a sense of collective responsibility for the lost opportunities offered by the yo-yo years of 2011 - 2015 than out of any sense of burning ambition.
or
Find a way to live within our very limited means, while paying off the fine (and presumably some of the debt if we are to hang on to ownership of the stadium) with every danger that we plummet into the 2nd division or even the National before staging a revival.
There is no argument for relocation outside of London that will allow us to remain what we are if unmoored from W12 - we will be the proud owners of a fine history, a nice badge and a distinctive shirt template in a sport that has proven resistant to clubs
being transplanted hither and yon. How much of the fan base we would take with us is highly questionable and where exactly is this commutable community housing thousands of strangely uncommitted football fans that would welcome a slightly careworn football club into its heart. Starting a club from scratch MKD style is one thing, QPR playing out of Slough or Bracknell or somewhere something else entirely.
There are no white knights coming to save the day. Any investor will take one look at the ground, the lack of potential for expansion and put their money elsewhere.
All that is out there are the kind of shape-shifting mavericks whose plans will make Pete WInkelman's ideas seem almost desirable by comparison.
Sucking this up for now feels like the only option to me and anyone referencing the dog days of Chris Wright's tenure who thinks this is anything close to being as bad as that wasn't there. Could be if people starting thinking it is wise to run these owners out of town during a crisis. [Post edited 5 Mar 2023 10:03]
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