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Reply | In Advanced Talks With Edwards
at 11:57 28 Aug 2025
Don’t disagree with anything you say in this post.
I was taking issue with your previous post when you said we are more than one player short.
Pretty well every fan has identified the inability of the midfield to progress the ball (I had to self censor myself from commenting on it last season because I was starting to bore myself).
But where do we go from here?
Personally I’m not convinced Varane or Field can be taught to pass forward. The way Varane pinged a heavy ball straight back to Walsh on Saturday who had already conceded several goals and was clearly soiling himself was just unacceptable. And very few truly believe Madsen can be taught to tackle. And Morgan looks fairly lightweight.
So can we sell any of those players?
I don’t see a queue of buyers.
But as you would say we can’t keep racking and stacking players on top of the existing.
So we (as fans anyway) all get the problem: but in fairness, no easy solutions. |
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Reply | In Advanced Talks With Edwards
at 11:45 28 Aug 2025
There is no way we can sign 2 or 3 CMs on top of Field, Varane, Hayden, Madsen, Morgan and Vale (even ignoring EDB and Richards). You might not think some or perhaps even all of those players are good enough but they are the players we have. |
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Reply | In Advanced Talks With Edwards
at 11:31 28 Aug 2025
That was more because players were not fit/ performing / motivated sufficiently.
We have seen every single one of those players (bar perhaps Walsh) play to a much higher level.
You have long argued that one of our mistakes is to constantly think Nirvana lies with yet another signing.
Are you now saying we bin off Morrison or Varane (just picked at random) because they are playing poorly, and buy better players?
We can’t buy a new squad because they have had a terrible start. If anything, the opposite. We need to build fitness levels, understand why the motivation appears lacking, work on that, and somehow craft these players into a team.
But with a new coach, half a new team, a few signings who haven’t had a pre-season, and the usual ridiculous number of injuries that isn’t (realistically) all going to happen immediately. |
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Reply | In Advanced Talks With Edwards
at 11:21 28 Aug 2025
Hardly the first time a QPR team has neared the end of the window and we are one player short - normally it’s a lot more than that. |
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Reply | In Advanced Talks With Edwards
at 11:07 28 Aug 2025
Fair points, but:
The window isn’t over, how do you know we won’t sign an “8”? We have actually got far more business done far earlier than in a typical window for us.
You say we keep signing tricky wingers yet many team predictions for Charlton still have us playing Smyth due to unavailability of various others.
Sell Varane - agree, but do you know if any of that reported interested culminated in a good, concrete offer?
Lack of options at full back - Dunne was in last season’s Championship team of the season, we have Mbengue in reserve who looked excellent there against Preston. Esquire looks an exciting prospect and we now have experienced cover after the first choice blew his ACL (was that the club’s fault too?)
Ronnie a short term signing - he is 22. Coleback, Fox, Cook etc were short term signings we now have one of the youngest squads in the league. Indeed, most of the criticism has been that we are thinking too long term and ignoring the here and now - so which is it?
I get the criticism that we are buying exciting, saleable assets that we haven’t yet crafted into a team. I would also have made a number 8 my priority. But it is slightly determined by who is available at what price at what time. Go on any message board of any Championship club and they will all be demanding why their club has not addressed some structural weakness. It’s a feature of the Championship and what makes it a lot more even than the Premier League.
I get the negativity given how under-baked the first team looks but if at the start of the window someone had said we would sign Kone, Poku, Mbengue, Hayden and Burrell among others who would have believed it? We are a flawed work in progress, but the squad as a whole is considerably stronger. Now the challenge is with the fitness team and the coaches to get a tune out of it. And funds allowing, maybe that 8 will still come. [Post edited 28 Aug 11:12]
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Reply | We had a perfectly good manager in Marti…
at 10:40 24 Aug 2025
Agreed on Marti.
Tho despite being more positive about Nourry than you generally, in that particular respect I thought from the get go that Nourry had to take some of the blame for losing a manger who can par the course. What we would give for par now!
Rest of it I take your points apart from the bibs and cones bit - that’s glib IMHO. He is (as far as we know) the guy who selects the team, runs training, briefs the team on the opposition, gives the motivational pre match talk, the half time talk, makes subs and other tactical changes in play.
I get people are furious with the set up (and I can’t defend the whole fitness issue either) but you can’t lay 100% of the blame for that shambles on any one individual, be that Nourry, Stephan or individual players. Has Sam Field become terrible overnight? Is he unfit? Does he hate Nourry? None of us know and we shouldn’t impose one narrative to explain every event when none of us have such insights.
I fully accept this doesn’t look good for Nourry - I made the point when he ousted Marti that the spotlight would shine on him very quickly if the new guy doesn’t work because the managerial change is, to a significant extent, on him. So it has proved, earlier than probably any of us could have imagined.
But equally let’s not overstate it. Clive is among those who acknowledge there is no alternative to the transfer strategy and he has largely complained about the comms rather than the substance.
Perhaps I’m clutching at straws but the one positive I take on Nourry is he seems to learn from his mistakes. First summer transfer window was a disaster, this one appears to have been on the right lines (of course we will only know that for sure many months in).
Maybe he will give the coach the added authority he needs (though please not on transfers - we saw where that lead with Beale and Warbs among many others).
He also acknowledged at the fans forum that the hardest part of his job is balancing short term v long term goals. Maybe he will now realise it’s time for a bit of pragmatism, not least getting players fit! But let us not throw the baby out with the bath water because we are all p@ssed off. For example, I actually really like the look of Esquire (young Brazilian left back). We need some cover but let’s persist with him even if he makes some mistakes. Besides, we did drop Madsen and go 3 in midfield which was a pragmatic response to Watford yet we were even worse.
A lot is wrong and it would be dumb to deny that. But the solutions are harder to find, as you see from all the wildly different ones offered here (some fans even suggesting we should ignore data, for example).
Nourry is a slightly odd and mercurial character: no idea what he will do.
But what I HOPE he does is:
call in all the players, Williams, Stephan etc and ask them to speak frankly about what is going wrong
if fitness is identified as a key issue (and that along with motivation is what assaults my eye the most) either get Williams to review what he is doing or replace him with someone with a good track record in football.
Not claiming that is the whole picture but this one aspect. |
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Reply | The QPR summer transfer rumours thread
at 11:19 23 Aug 2025
Last season club was crucified for not having a reserve left back.
Now we are potentially getting one and club being crucified by some for that, too - only QPR fans… |
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Reply | Julien Stephan - BBC London interview
at 00:28 23 Aug 2025
Exactly. That would be my answer to Hunter’s (very articulately expressed) point.
Most of us I hope get the “vision stuff”. We want to sell player x for y, and do that enough times to build a team to get promoted. Not because of balance sheets but to improve the standing of the club. It’s simple. If the owners just wanted a RoI there are way, way easier ways of achieving that.
I agree (to Hunter’s point) the club has been catastrophically poor at articulating the strategy. And if these people are in any way sensible they should be thinking v seriously about how they explain that. But don’t assume just because the comms are so poor that there are no targets and discussions behind the scenes on precisely the points Hunter raises.
I took the refusal to say where we would be in five years as a bunch of jobsworths worrying about their mortgages.
But it would be totally unlike any boardroom I’ve ever attended if at least short to medium term targets had not been signed off on - along with, at the v least, some airy fairy b*locks on where it might lead.
The strategy is obvious, surely. If you want some guy to stand up and say “we will be competing in Europe in x years” then fine, but I think that is just going to breed cynicism. No company is going to (in my v humble opinion) produce publicly the degree of financial methodology you seem to seek. There is simply too much guesswork about outcomes, it’s not science and it’s not a closed system: how can you possibly say x club will be promoted in y years if it does z - because it obviously depends on strategies and chance events at other clubs. That’s sport, no? |
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Reply | Julien Stephan - BBC London interview
at 16:04 22 Aug 2025
We are in close agreement the way I see it.
On a thread about "the project" recently I argued that the strategy was broadly right, the comms were poor. You seem to be saying similar. I was getting a lot of blow back and eventually gave up because (it seemed to me) a number of posters were conflating the strategy itself with how the club talks about that strategy. Because Nourry is bad at the second part he was also getting attacked (by some) for the first part.
I guess the only area where we differ (more on emphasis) is I believe that getting the actual strategy right is so much more important. So much better to have a great product and a poor marketing campaign than the other way round. And that's because the messaging is so much easier to fix than the other stuff.
All the criticisms you make about Nourry's failure to sell a journey to the fanbase are fair. But maybe its because I work in marketing / comms, these problems are just so much more solvable than, say, achieving year on year league progression while also selling players for chunky fees.
I guarantee you if I worked for Nourry for a few weeks gratis I could repair a lot of this stuff - that's not me arrogantly making myself out to be a genius, I'm far from that, but literally any bog standard comms professional probably could sort this fairly quickly. The proviso being that Nourry was open to taking constructive criticism and advice, and would act on it.
And by the way, a successful comms strategy is not simply telling the "customer" whatever they want to hear: the 4 year plan talked of competing in Europe. Such talk is cheap, and audiences have grown way more cynical. To be genuinely successful, the message has to be positive, but true to what you are actually doing.
It would involve treating the fans as grown ups and setting goals that we could get behind but that are also realistic.
Lets also cut him a little slack given he is 27: if he were 47 with 20 years senior management experience he would be way better at articulating that vision. But then he probably wouldn't be running QPR at its current level. If Hoos is still chairman, maybe he should be doing that (but then I always found his comms skills even worse).
I also suspect with Nourry there is an element of "I'm going to tell them how tough it is so they don't criticise": keep in mind that there have long been fans of the "just sign a f*cking striker" persuasion who have limited appreciation for the financial high wire act it is to keep a club like ours in the Championship, let alone progress it. So he has been explaining, too aggressively and without much charm I grant you, how we have to do that.
Give me good strategy over good comms any day. I could even face listening to whoever that ars*hole was at the fans forum who said that QPR would be judged in five years in terms on whether their policies had been "consistent". Utter boll*cks what he said, obviously. But I'd suffer ALL of that and more than go back to hiring Ainsworth, Begovic, Fox etc. |
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Reply | Julien Stephan - BBC London interview
at 13:29 22 Aug 2025
It’s a very tricky balancing act - we do need performances and results on the pitch for all the reasons stated. Even Nourry acknowledged that at the fan’s forum. And even for the “project” to work as we won’t continue to attract bright talent if we don’t start climbing the table.
But equally, I STILL have no answer to the question: what is the alternative? We tried short-termism under Warbs and Beale and it left us with a lot of aged crocks.
The board are stumping up the 39m every 3 years but can’t do much more. It’s up to Nourry and the manager to generate additional revenue.
I get the frustration - but the problem is not that the strategy doesn’t work but that this is probably the first window when it has been remorselessly applied.
For me the issue is not player recruitment this window (last summer: very different story) but potentially manager recruitment. Am not criticising Stephan personally but the fact we had to change manager. If you listen to Gallen on the WLS podcast he rightly attacks the naivety of the team selection v Watford. We are having to go through the same losing streak we suffered twice under Marti through trying to play in a purist style when we simply aren’t good enough yet.
Three in midfield tomorrow. No Madsen. We aren’t strong enough to carry him. Grind out an ugly draw. Start from boring basics. Hopefully Stéphan is a quick learner. We have some pretty good players now, the most exciting crop for some years. With a really good number 8 Iike the Watford player (Louisa?) which might now be possible thanks to Eze and this team could suddenly look quite good.
If the club work on that hopefully the fans will stay patient. |
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Reply | The ‘project’…please enlighten me?
at 16:55 15 Aug 2025
Not my intention to patronise, so apologies if that's how you interpreted it.
And I was being sincere in my praise for this site - in particular Clive's match reports. Many a dark hour supporting this club has been made a little more bearable thanks to his humour.
But what would be a little patronising, surely, would be if humble, ordinary posters like me were not allowed to disagree with Clive or ask why the tone on this site is generally more negative than elsewhere? My sense of Clive is he can can more than handle himself in a politely expressed exchange of views.
I do think Clive has blown up some relatively trivial negative events and put them on a par with what he himself acknowledges are the much bigger positive events taking place. The media team might be far more likely to grant Clive's interview request if they only knew he was actually such a supporter of "the project"!
But I am a guest on Clive's site and am not looking for rancour so happy to accept, as he says, there are a range of views.
Love the Bob Hazzel picture BTW. |
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Reply | The ‘project’…please enlighten me?
at 14:08 15 Aug 2025
That is your distinction re the fanbase, not mine.
As I said, I was talking about forums. On Fantasy Island - similar age group to here - posters were not hurling themselves off buildings because (surprise, surprise) we didn’t do very well in a cup game; or, as some were on here for a while, turning a debate on almost any subject into another conversation about contract lengths; there is some ribbing about Nourry speak, and there is certainly a range of opinions, but most posters there seem pretty clear what the project is and seem to broadly support it.
There are plenty of excellent posters on here and I love your match reports but I do think there is a reason why the tone is generally more negative here than among other elements of the fanbase and it’s not just down to age.
I probably read the majority of your output on here and until I read your comments on this thread I did not realise that you thought Nourry was basically doing an excellent job and he is only really letting himself down at his own PR. |
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Reply | The ‘project’…please enlighten me?
at 12:40 15 Aug 2025
Lot more cynicism about the "project" on this site than on other forums. Maybe that's just coincidence... |
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Reply | The ‘project’…please enlighten me?
at 12:37 15 Aug 2025
Anyone who saw the fans forum could be in no doubt Nourry is in charge. I've never once heard him say he isn't responsible? Maybe around injuries at that forum there was a lack of accountability but on everything else Nourry seems only too happy to show the buck stops with him? |
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Reply | The ‘project’…please enlighten me?
at 12:19 15 Aug 2025
Then why put a criticism after every positive point? You are a very good writer. You are making a point and then a counter point. |
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Reply | The ‘project’…please enlighten me?
at 12:14 15 Aug 2025
In an ideal world with ideal people I make you right.
But think about the human psychology for a minute.
Nourry is very bright and has got a big job very, very young.
And as is so often the case with people like that he is a curious mixture of arrogant and insecure. Like you I like people to apologise. I'm the kind of guy who apologises to the person who bumps into me at a supermarket. I don't think saying sorry makes you look weak, if anything the opposite.
But that is a realisation which often comes later in life.
We know Nourry isn't the finished article because if he was he would probably be CEO of a Premier League club. But we do know he learns as we see how he has changed transfer policy. So maybe in time he will learn humility and better comms skills.
But again, if you had to choose between a) humility and b) getting the majority of decisions right, which one would you prioritise? Besides, if we are looking for comparisons, I actually found Hoos the more arrogant and quite dismissive, but maybe that's just me... |
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Reply | The ‘project’…please enlighten me?
at 12:03 15 Aug 2025
I was using "Les" as shorthand for the group of people running the club at that time. I didn't realise I was making comparisons with Cambodia.
My point, btw, was not to sl*g off Les but to contrast what the club was doing then with what it is doing now.
I actually agree with you on accountability. Nourry absolutely has to own this, success or failure, which is one of the reasons why axing Marti was such a big call. |
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Reply | The ‘project’…please enlighten me?
at 11:52 15 Aug 2025
My problem with this post is you seem to be implying (apologies if I am misinterpreting) that these two aspects of the Nourry regime are of equal or similar importance: a) how Nourry and his team talk about running the club, and b) how he actually runs the club.
You seem happy (maybe even very happy) with the fundamentals, but you counter all these really important advances with in many cases quite trivial criticisms around PR, management speak, lack of communication, being a bit patronising to fans etc.
I get that the perceived comms failures irritate some, but turn it round a second. Lets imagine we had a PR genius, a mister charmer respected by fans (Les!) but someone who fundamentally wasn't taking the club in the right direction.
Of course we want our CEO to be perfect, but given a choice between competence or PR, I know which one I would go for. IF this "project" is successful, no one is going to be moaning about much of the stuff you highlight.
FInal point: I'm middle aged and yes I do find talk of "progressing through zones" a little comical, but I prefer to have people at the club who think in that way rather than the Gareth Ainsworth "boot it up to the big man" approach that belonged to a 1990s John Smith ad. |
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Reply | The ‘project’…please enlighten me?
at 09:55 15 Aug 2025
But Les didn’t implement any such plan, he merely talked about it.
His regime developed Eze and Chair (massive kudos there) but rather than replicating the Eze model he allowed managers to a) buy and loan players with zero sell on value and b) keep hold of rising stars rather than cash in and re-invest.
His regime was a failure, albeit he inherited another failure. We needed another dozen lads bombed out of the Arsenal academy in the hope that two made it, not an injury prone Odobajo or de Wijs (spelling?).
It seems what some don’t like is that, rather than paying lip service to this plan, we are now actually pursuing it rigorously. No more “we are in with a sniff of the play offs here so let’s get in Andre Gray on 20 bags a week for half a season and we can always get back to the project next season.”
For balance Nourry has made some, IMHO, very poor choices - notably Madsen and Celar. But those two signings were the least “project” signings he has made in that they were established players who he wrongly thought could adapt to the Championship.
But the blooding of Morrison, Kolli and Morgan has worked. It’s way too early to say definitively if it has been a success but footballing folklore says you should aim to have one young player break through per season. Many of the young players - by the law of averages - won’t make it. But hopefully by better targeting, better coaching and giving a pathway to the first team we will start to get an assembly line going.
Clearly pursuing a development strategy is not easy and there will be bleak nights like Tuesday.
But credit to Nourry that he has learned and adapted: for all the talk of consistency he now favours Division 1 over the Swiss league. And while a lot of the players are young it’s not like our overall squad resembles the team fielded against Plymouth: many of the youngsters signed this summer have considerable first team experience.
Nourry’s execution of the plan might not work. But in that scenario someone else will probably have to come in and try to do it better. I don’t see a world in which we hand the keys to a new Warburton or Beale and QPR succeed. Does anyone?
We won’t have the budget to “buy” promotion as we showed with the Andre Gray season. Not even close.
So amid all the complaints about this “project” what is the alternative? Because none of the critics have come up with one as far as i’m aware? |
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