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They got to the semi final of the League Cup, a full-strength team losing to Newcastle who won the thing. They also got to the semi final of the Champions League, if you recall, so I don't think you can really can accuse Arteta of sacking off cups to come second! They were desperate for a cup final. In fact, they may have done better in both league and CL if they had sacked off the league cup as they lost players to injuries and suspension throughout.
Where do Dembele, Poku, Saito, Chair, Smyth, Kolli play in 3-5-2 with Kone and Burrell up top?
QPR have not invested millions in wingers over the last year to instead play wing backs (having not bought any wing backs). Pretty sure it wasn't "the project" sold to Poku, nor will it be convincing Saito currently.
I noticed that Paul Furlong was on the bench with the other coaches last night - not a bad sounding board for a 9 like Kone. Similar physique and game, started off playing non-league for three years with Enfield, played at every level domestically and in Europe. Reckon Furs could teach Sam Vokes a thing or two, never mind Kone. Frey probably knows some tricks too.
Football's great because it's all theory and methodology and line-up builders cooking on social media in preseason...but there are five games before the transfer window closes the day after Charlton at home on August 30th. Imagine that run doesn't go to plan, and that Jones and Kelman hand our arse to us to cap it off...
Let's see how many DS squad graduates are replaced by signings and loans by then - there'll be loads of them, I reckon, because there always is. The kitchen is gonna get very hot for the CEO otherwise.
Yeah, remember that. Southampton actually played quite well considering they lost 4-1 and scored a belter, but were just not a second tier team physically at all, and had zero game smarts. Lots of very small, highly technical players prone to losing the ball in bad areas and having no idea about how to regain possession. Sounds familiar?
Oh, for Dexter Blackstock now. Maybe even Agyemang. Reckon that 2008 QPR beats QPR 2025 4-1 too.
1/ The first Portishead album came out one week before the first Oasis album; the first Tricky album came out five months after Oasis's debut; Massive had released one album before Oasis. So, "the Bristol scene" was not really dominating anything prior to Britpop. In fact, it would be fine to claim it as part of Britpop, i.e. a renaissance in British music in the 1990s.
2/ You could like lots of things at once, Massive, Oasis, Chemical Brothers, US rap, Goldie. Most people did and do. Some people made music with guitars, others didn't. It's just an instrument. Nobody was trying reclaim anything. There were white faces in Massive/Portishead too.
3/ Ultimately, it's just market forces. If you put a gig on today at Wembley Stadium with Massive Attack, Portishead and Tricky it would not remotely sell out. Oasis can sell out Wembley for a fortnight (and longer possibly). More people connect simply still with the music and experience. It's not a conspiracy.
You can slag off who you want, I don't care. But on this thread about *other Championship transfers in the summer of 2025*, for some reason you and Lassel are arguing about the comparative careers of Niko Hämäläinen and Osman Kakay. You do you, baby, but who cares about Hämäläinen and Kakay and how their careers are going, especially in this context? That's all I'm saying. One left in 2023 and the other in 2024 and yet they're routinely summoned for a little snark.
There's a huge, almost infinitely long list of former QPR youth stars who've gone to have extremely underwhelming careers as footballers, do you wanna just roll some others out for a little bitch too?
Really don't understand why Hämäläinen and especially Kakay are constantly snarked at and belittled here, two years after they left the club: two former QPR youth players who have forged careers as professional footballers to the best of their abilities and as far as I'm aware have never bad-mouthed the club. I mean, Lassel: Ossie Kakay scored an away winner at Stoke for QPR. How about you?
I'd be very impressed if two of last year's much celebrated DS players are still playing professional/international football at 28.
The link between Dave Mc and Ian Mc is not relevant: it's Dave's site and Ian hasn't contributed to West London Sport since August 2024. Ian's a freelancer who six months after last contributing to WLS got a good story in The Sun about the QPR manager, sourced no doubt from both sides, as any freelancer would.
There's no connection to WLS there and David McIntyre is not someone who "supports" anyone connected to the club (or otherwise). It's just reporting. The "bin dirtying" (new expression for me) is provided, as far as I can tell, by anonymous voices on behalf of the club on social media and here.
I still think the club should've kept him last summer and sent Lloyd/Kolli out on loan instead (if anyone wanted them), have Kelman play the Lloyd role as back-up. I think Lloyd in particular needed that. Instead, we sometimes played without a striker - I did not enjoy that. Did you?
As I have said: I saw CK a couple of times in his first spell at Orient, thought he was poor. Would've let him leave, as I am just an idiot fan. However, Wellens - clearly a good judge and coach - saw something else and got him back. Good move by him and Os.
Nice to get money for him, but ultimately the money is all smoke and PR mirrors. Everyone is very interested in the bottom line, sell-ons and what-not - not so much myself, not since details are all a big secret to be kept from the plebs. Interesting to note that when players get sold, the fee gets leaked fairly clearly. When we buy players, it's often much more opaque.
Ultimately, we spent four years developing a striker into a £3 million player during a period we have not had a striker of any note. I like to watch the players the club develop at least play a few games in their position before selling them, otherwise I'll start supporting an estate agent.
Selling him is obviously the right thing, though, not disputing that. Good luck to him and us.
I'm not Mystic Meg, no. I saw him play for Orient a couple of times during his first loan and thought he looked a bit tubby, needed two chances to score, that that level was his limit - and that Smyth was much better in that team.
Saw him during his second loan, and he was transformed. Stronger, fitter, great finisher.
So no, not Mystic Meg. But also not in footballer development, part of a huge expensively assembled staff employed to judge who should be QPR's strikers and who decide to replace Lyndon Dykes and Sinclair Armstrong with Zan Celar and nobody else, while sending Kelman out to have a breakout season elsewhere.
Let's hope they have judged this better. As JD1 says, we'll know very quickly.
...he might have played 30 games for us last term (let's face it, he would've given the others avails), scored a dozen goals, signed a new contract in the summer and be going into this season as our main striker, full of confidence, 23, and ready to kick on in his prime with QPR. Then, how much would he be worth in two seasons, when we aren't forced to sell? It's Eze time again.
I guess we'll see from Charlton. (But I do think the squad we have now, with Poku, Dembele and Chair, possibly Kolli, serving a 9 who is an instinctive finisher like Kelman is built for him and representatives a fck-up. He'd do better here than there.
Last summer, QPR looked at their strikers, their number 9 options, and decided that the best thing would be:
1/ to start the season with (untested) Celar and (regularly injured) Frey as their two main options up top. Youth graduate Alfie Lloyd, who'd grown up a winger, was their understudy.
2/ Sell Lyndon Dykes early into season.
3/ Loan out Charlie Kelman to L1 once again, his third loan to that level.
Meanwhile, the story of the season reads:
*Celar could not adapt for first three months of season, scored twice, blew out hamstring for rest of season. *Frey, mostly injured and unfit, though useful when rarely available. Remains the case. *Lloyd needed/needs a loan. Also unfit for long periods. *Recent youth grad Rayan Kolli - not a natural lone 9 - is adapted to a lone 9 and plays well sometimes in role...before being injured too. QPR find themselves playing (and losing) without a striker in squad.
If you were Charlie Kelman and you've just outscored everyone playing as a lone 9 in L1 and have a load of contract interest, why would you sign a new deal for these people who made those decisons seemingly without reflection last summer?
You'd be off as soon as you could. He's a good lad and a good 9. He deserved better. QPR fcked this up *last* summer, when he should've stayed to fight for the 9 and Lloyd/Kolli should've gone out on loan. But the deal is good for all now.
Yes, this one bit of easily checked and totally unnecessary bullsht from him is...not good, is it? One very short collated news item from the French press when he was 17/18 does not make him a Guardian freelancer.
Why bullsht like that, on mic? Why weren't the people who appointed him suspicious of his CV?
I quite like what's happening at the club, I quite a lot of what he says he's doing. But dropping a casual self-aggrandising lie like that is worrying. Football people must smell him a mile off.
Dunno about that. Both the coach and the DOF/CEO get given time to succeed - but it's not finite for either. The coach gets less time because the work is concentrated into weeks and easily measured, the DOF necessarily needs far longer and a few missteps can be allowed as it's all encompassing.
Let's take Warburton as an ideal appointment: he got three years, which feels optimum for a coach to be judged by. Les and Ramsey took over an absolute clusterfck in 2014 which required a difficult top to bottom refurb (and which I don't think CN properly acknowledged in comparing his processes with Ramsey's). But, in the end, after eight years, and despite some definite successes, they were both shown the door just as all the head coaches were.
If Nourry has a couple of disappointing seasons, if his current appointment disappoints (while Cifuentes excels) and the next fares no better, if the clown memes with his face start popping up, etc...he'll be gone too. He can then return to his career as a "Guardian journalist"...
I thought it was great interviewing by Dave Mc - he asked all the right questions that he was allowed to, frustrating no doubt to be NDA'd about Cifuentes. Sensed DM thought there was more flexibility there than was allowed.
A lot of stuff Nourry said about processes I thought made sense, and I found him once again more personable than his official site royal pronouncements. But he does seem to believe he's invented something new 18 months into his tenure when in fact we're more less where we were 18 months before he arrived, but with arguably a less convincing squad.
Dave had him on the ropes about the nonsensical contract stuff. It just doesn't stand up to any intelligent interrogation. DM eased off in the end on that because he needs to preserve that relationship (and you can tell CN likes him). But CN must realise how silly it sounds: everyone in football apart from the fans are allowed to know how long a QPR player's contract is. When he was sort of role-playing getting an offer...dearie me.
The bit about Ben Williams - come on mate, some of us aren't the divs you must imagine us to be. Real "you wouldn't understand" vibes. We understand. Just say, "yeah, misjudged that."
Overall, I dunno - there was that line from Ian Holloway either when we were on of his mad winning or losing runs: "it isn't heaven and isn't hell."
That's how I feel about Nourry. He's OK. He's a smart guy, he's got a very, very difficult job and he seems to be making a decent fist of it right now. I thought Les was making a decent fist of it too in much, much more trying circumstances until the Warbs/Beale sliding doors misjudgement. David was saying that too: none of this really new, only the results will say if it's successfully different. Otherwise, it's the same: trying to sign players for decent fees we can develop and sell but don't very often.
We'll know more about Nourry after the window closes - but big season ahead for him. It's all on him now, just as it was all on LF when he/the board sacrificed Warbs for a prettier girl they thought fit the model better and everyone got shafted.
The one question I'd have liked asked is 'what are the targets for 25/26?'. Think the answer would be a clarifying moment for all fans - not that he'd answer, of course. It's a long and unpredictable trek from July to November at QPR, never mind to May. Right now, he can be zen. Dave should schedule that promised follow-up for Christmas.
All the names I mentioned were obviously pitching themselves elsewhere too. That's how it works. Gerry Francis was not minding his own business when Spurs came, nor Sexton with Man U, etc etc - they made overtures to get a better job. And they got them, And Marti's got a better job now too. Good for them.
The "loyalty used to mean something" bit. You support a club built up from the Third Division by Jim Gregory, who after three decades sold it out to a property business knowing they wanted to merge us with Fulham and change the name of the club!
Disloyalty is in the QPR DNA, as it is everywhere.
Managers look for new jobs all the time. And managers are fired by owners who are also looking for new managers all the time, all speaking with agents of those contracted elsewhere. This is literally the business model.
Our most celebrated player - the one we named a stand after - was Stan Bowles! He was constantly putting himself on the transfer list, threatening to walk.
Dave Thomas, Clive Allen, Terry Fenwick, Andy Sinton, Paul Parker, Trevor Sinclair etc - all more than happy to take better offers from bigger clubs (of course), agents working overtime for them to get them out.
Our three most successful managers of the last 50 years, Sexton, Venables, Francis: all were straight out of Rangers as soon as a bigger club fluttered their eyelashes. Again, not a negative judgement - that's football. But the idea that "loyalty and professional pride used to mean something" is so demonstrably false at QPR.
The QPR chairman for three decades was Jim Gregory! The least trustworthy, loyal and honest broker in football.
There are no good old days. And having your agent chat with WBA barely scratches the surface in comparison.
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