It's an interesting point of view, bradfieldhoop, but I couldn't disagree more.
Gregory was the man whose intention was to close the Club down, summer 1966-67, arguably still the high point of the Club's entire history.
Loftus Road would have been sold off. Gone forever. QPR would have ceased to exist. Also gone forever as far as Gregory was concerned.
Gregory is gone forever. Long gone. But QPR is still here. So are its supporters. It was the Rs supporters who opposed his plans. The supporters won, and he lost. Both times. Same with Bulstrode (who was Marler's boy), and part of the killer deal with Gregory, and then Marler, who took over when Bulstrode died.
They wanted us out of existence. So did Chris Wright. Many of us were supporting QPR BEFORE Jim Gregory, Bulstrode, Marler, Chris Wright et al.
They are all long gone. But the Club is still here, and so are we, still pouring money in. And the wealthy billionaires who come clucking around because QPR has League status and they have nothing (in football terms), are losing the Club's money hand over fist.
As, no doubt, Gregory did.
Just as a rule of thumb, let's skip the recent Premiership seasons, and the very early years, and suppose the Club has earned - at today's values, of course
- the equivalent of £3 million pounds per season in the last 100 years.
That's £300 million quid. Never loaned, never accumulated as debt, never, ever constituting a loss. Not advanced on the basis that the Club must be closed down. Or the Ground sold off. Never with a demand for repayment.
Pick any figure you like. Say we've averaged home attendances of 150,000 for the last 100 seasons. That's around 15 million people, paying to see the Club.
Compared to that, Gregory was nothing. He didn't spend his own money, he spent the Club's. If he hadn't, there would have been no need to close it down, as he claimed.
His own view was that he had made it unworkable. The supporters proved that that wasn't the case. After 1967, and again in 1987 when he left.
Not only did he give the Club nothing, he tried to take everything it had away. AND he failed. It was pathetic then, and it looks just as pathetic now.
Despite the Gregorys, we've kept QPR alive for more than 125 years. And paid its way. The Club provided him with everything, the money, the support, a Club with a home which he wanted to turn into cash for himself.
And the status as a league Club that QPR certainly didn't owe to him. He had never managed anything of the kind, any more than his successors did, despite their zeal for selling off the Ground, or their talent for losing money.
But there is an interesting comparison, at what was his best season (if we set aside 1966-67 as rather unusual). Runners-up in 1975-76.
In that season, we were beaten by someone else who really WAS worth taking note of. Never tried to close his Club down. Never suggested he should help himself to its assets.
The most successful Football League manager ever (and far more so than Ferguson, much as I respect that bloke. in a far more unfavourable and competitive environment).
Paisley had been at Liverpool since the War. It was his first title as manager, and in his time, he made Liverpool the most successful Club in England - ever. I still count that achievement as the greatest (along with Ipswich winning the title in 1962).
Gregory was nothing compared to him. He was arrogant, certainly, and very greedy. But he wasn't a winner. Not like Paisley. Certainly, Liverpool were a bigger Club than QPR. But they had been trying to get out of the Second Division for years (rather like QPR recently) when the Boot Room had its beginnings.
And it was possible to emulate Liverpool, as Robson's Ipswich showed, even if they were arguably too small to have quite the same level of success.
As I say, compared to other directors and chairmen, he was impressive. But not compared to the winners in the game. And not compared to the supporters, either for their money, or their loyalty.
So I prefer the founder of the Boot Room, Bill Shankly's definition. That a football Club is the manager, the players and the supporters. The directors are only there to SIGN the cheques (he was under no illusion that they ever provided any money, still less know-how or talent, although he might have rated Gregory more highly than some).
And his punchline, if I'm not mistaken, was that 'Of the three, the most important are the supporters'.
Shankly really WAS the master-mind of English football. The man who, with Paisley, created the way of thinking, the style of play, and the understanding of how to win, that was second to none. And overturned the apparently irreducible ability of the mass of Clubs to bring down any one single Club which threatened to dominate them all.
Again, Gregory is nothing compared to him. Venables confirmed what you said. That Gregory never thought about the supporters at all.
I loved the QPR era from 1964 to 1987 (except for Gregory's repeated attacks on the Club, and his contempt for us).
But I give all the credit for it to the people and the institution that made it possible.
And who have kept the Club going - without pay, or profits, or asset-stripping - and DESPITE the greed, the damage and the losses that Gregory and his modern heirs have inflicted on it.
The supporters, and the Club ;D.
Good post, mate, thought-provoking. That is always good. There is no discussion without differences of opinion.