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Bored and can’t sleep - there’s at least one earlier player: George Vose signed for Man United in 1932 and played a single game for them after the war.
Mixed feelings about this, seemed great when he arrived and has been solid throughout, but his game hasn’t really developed - though I’m sure all the upheaval at the club hasn’t helped - and he’s clearly been checked out for the entirety of this season. Suspect he’ll go on to have a decent career overseas, and wish him well. Big season required from whoever comes in to replace him, presumably one of Vale, Esquerdinha or Larkeche.
Right, but how many of those sixteen players are centre forwards who would have been available on our budget, and been interested in coming here? A quick check on transfermarkt suggests that only Emil Riis, and maybe Josh Maja fit that criteria. Norwich spent 11 million quid on Andre Crnac, who ended up scoring one goal less than Frey did.
Dream all you like, but the financial realities are what they are: the market for Championship goalscorers has exploded, and we don't have enough money to compete, so we've had to buy cheap and hope we get lucky. You can criticise how we've approached that (Washington and Bonne, for example) or other clubs beating us to emerging talent. But when the market is stacked against you, you're inevitably going to end up with more misses than hits.
I also think you're applying a pretty rosy filter to the past: Les was a generational talent, but around the same time we also spent decent money on Mark Falco (£500k, 12 goals in his first season, no more than 5 subsequently), plus obvious dross like Mark Hateley and Mike Sheron. The idea that, Les aside, we used to have a conveyor belt of amazing strikers is pretty tenuous. Even if it was accurate, it's clear that the game's changed beyond all recognition since then.
Except if you play three at the back and two up top, where do Chair / Dembele / any of our other midget 10s go? We've clearly been better playing 433 than 4231 recently, but we never stick with it because it doesn't suit our creative players.
Whatever formation we choose, we'll keep running into trouble because there isn't any setup which suits all of our players: either because they haven't been recruited with a shared approach in mind, or because they're just not very good, so we have to shift everyone else around to compensate for their flaws.
Absolutely chuffed for Eze and Palace. Proper club, great fans, and entirely deserved on the day. Beating pep, city and all they’ve come to represent just makes it sweeter.
Agree with your second paragraph: it's entirely possible the club decided in Feb that it was worth triggering the extension in order to keep playing him and make sure we stayed up, but have rowed back a bit from that since.
Looked up the source of this and it’s pure clickbait nonsense. Headline is “Eze sends goodbye message as Crystal Palace exit confirmed” - it’s only halfway down the article that you find out the “exit” in question is in fact Joel Ward confirming he’s leaving Palace at the end of the season, which Eze’s then posted about on Instagram.
From looking at transfermarkt it seems like his 60th appearance for us was the Preston game he got injured in. Entirely possible that the club were happy to extend his contract at that point, but that things have changed in the last month or two.
These aren’t the only two options though? The club could have said that this was an auto-renewal, while also framing things a bit more positively. Maybe that’s just semantics, but I think the way this stuff is communicated matters.
Also the bigger point is that none of this would have been an issue in the first place if they were a bit more transparent generally. Being so secretive about everything just makes it harder when there’s information they do want to share.
Not every criticism of your darling Christian is part of some sinister plot in to do him in, though. I think he’s done some good stuff, and I hope he succeeds as CEO. Even if I have some concerns, I’m perfectly willing to judge him on what he actually does in the role.
Taking all emotion out of it, I simply think it’s strange for the club to refuse to talk about contract details under any circumstances, only to reverse that position suddenly for this one specific case. That’s not a “hidden message” - that’s a very simple factual observation about the conspicuously different amounts of information we’ve been given about Varane’s contract last week, and Cook’s this week.
If the club don’t want us discussing or drawing conclusions from these inconsistencies in how they’re communicating, maybe the answer is for them to be a bit more open with us in general?
I mean each to their own, but I read the club’s part of the statement as extremely muted - “we are pleased to be working together” hardly screams enthusiasm, does it?
And yes, if you’ve made a point about never releasing any details about any player contracts ever, because it’s apparently a strategic necessity, if you then suddenly make an exception to that rule in order to make clear that this particular extension was forced on you, then that clearly carries a pretty hefty and obvious subtext. It’s either a deliberate attempt to distance themselves, or they’re so bad at comms that they haven’t spotted how badly it comes across. Neither are ideal.
1.) We're losing a bunch of first-team experience this season, especially if (as expected) Dunne, Paal and Fox all leave at the end of their contracts. Even if he's on a chunk of cash, and even if he's old and increasingly injured, then having a really solid senior pro in the dressing room for what's likely to be a transitional season at best, and a vicious relegation scrap at worst, shouldn't be underestimated.
2.) The statement we've put out feels very uncomfortable to me, for two reasons. Firstly, it makes clear that, contrary to everything we usually claim, we're perfectly happy to release extremely specific details about contract renewals when it serves our purposes. Two, how would you feel if you were Steve Cook, looking at the club very publicly saying "yeah we didn't want to do this, but we were forced into it"? Why risk pissing off a high-earning senior player, when you could have just been a bit more diplomatic?
It's the same principle as putting Marti on gardening leave and letting all the acrimony spill out into the open rather than sitting tight and hoping you can get him out the door quietly.
Regardless of whether or not the Cook deal is good value, the whole approach here feels (yet again) like the people in charge of the club are trying to be too clever, and are also very keen for everyone outside the club to see how clever they are, rather than taking a step back, putting the egos to one side, and working out what would best serve the interests of QPR itself.
Bumping this thread in the light of Kelman topping the League One goalscoring charts. What do people reckon we should do with him next season?
If we'd signed the best striker in League One at 23 years old on a free transfer - which is essentially what's happening with him coming back to us post-loan - then I suspect we'd all be thinking "that's a great bit of business, exactly the sort of signing we should be making, let's give him a run in the first team and see how he adjusts to the Championship."
I know he didn't exactly set the world alight for us previously, and I've only seen brief clips of his time at Orient, but his stats suggest he's kicked on massively this season. Surely he's worth a punt, given our other striking options? Or do we cash out now, assuming Orient might try and sign him permanently?
It does always tickle me when people (by no means exclusive to here) look at people reacting negatively to them, and decide that it’s because they’re a horrible mob addicted to groupthink and mercilessly bullying them for their fearless truth-speaking, rather than because their opinions are bad and their manner is offputting,
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