So Queens Park Rangers have gone down.
Which gives me an opportunity to re-visit one of my footballing bug-bears.
They must suffer, and suffer fairly horribly. Not necessarily a £50 million fine or a four division relegation to the Conference, as has been reported. But they must suffer some form of penalty to put off other clubs throwing good money after bad in a desperate attempt to get to or stay in the Premier League.
The path that the club from Loftus Road have taken is almost the polar opposite of the route that the Palace board have taken since 2010.
Palace’s board have been accused of being fearful of breaking salary caps, of making marquee signings, and of making the most of the extraordinary sums that will be generated by the new television deal.
But they have made decisions in the context of the club going bust twice in little over ten years, because the club over spent out of desperation to get to and stay in the Premier League.
As football blog Swiss Ramble reported this week, Palace’s latest financial results show that the club is on a remarkably strong financial footing (see link below).
While results on the pitch for the last eighteen months speak of the success of the board’s strategy, the demise of QPR should remind Palace fans, angry at the lack of big money transfers, and fans of other clubs of the dangers of mismanagement.
I have nothing against QPR fans. I only know one committed QPR fan to be honest, but the last time I saw him, he had a great job and a good life. He just supported the wrong team.
I did have a bit of a chip against QPR back in the early eighties after Terry Venables had fled there, then took half the team with him. Over time my anger towards them subsided, but my feelings about Venables stayed reasonably consistent.
When Venables returned to Selhurst Park under the Goldberg regime, he had an expectation that money should and would be spent. It did not work out. As costs rose, the points tally did not, and so the club were left with an expensive and under-performing squad with little hope of recovering from relegation.
When the daft ITV Digital Football League broadcast deal, that had promised financial relief for Championship clubs, collapsed in 2002, Palace were one of those left under-funded, and had to re-plan at lower levels.
QPR can be pretty confident that Sky will not go the way of ITV Digital, but that means they can only blame themselves for their demise.
Joey Barton has referred to QPR being full of ‘bad eggs’, which sent journalists off in pursuit of scapegoats. I have no idea who Barton might be referring to, although I assume it is not Clint Hill, because Joey Barton – like everyone else – must be scared of Clint Hill.
There is an argument for re-signing Clint Hill as he is clearly a player always committed to the cause. If we do sign him, I suggest we keep him off the 25 man squad but have him sitting in the corner of the dressing room glaring at the team when they are under-performing.
There are clearly lots of players at Loftus Road earning far more money than Clint. In many cases the QPR players are earning a lot more than equivalent players at Palace, even Jimmy Kebe.
As QPR changed manager, each new boss was allowed to bring in players they thought would help. Too often, those players were brought in at high wages on long-term contracts. So you end up with Adel Taraabt and Shaun Wright-Phillips, who rarely play but take the wages. And you have Steven Caulker, who has a damn fine agent, but would struggle to justify the wages he has received for the last two seasons while getting relegated both times. And there is utility defender Nedum Onouha, who was reportedly signed on a wage that would make him the highest paid player at Palace.
You also have your honest pros – the likes of Clint Hill and Richard Dunne – who are on lower wages than the likes of Onouha and Wright-Phillips, but are simply not good enough. The sight of Sergio Aguero out-pacing Hill then Dunn in sequence before the first Man City last weekend was hilarious. Aguero is really good, but he is the sort of player you must be able to defend against in the Premier League.
So QPR must die horribly, suffering consecutive relegations as they struggle to replace an entire squad while using the parachute payments to fund contracts of players not even good enough for the Championship.
Or maybe it will not even be the Championship.
Link to the Swiss Ramble article – http://swissramble.blogspot.co.uk/2015/05/crystal-palace-ill-fly-for-you.html
