Post by Macmoish on Jan 8, 2014 7:57:39 GMT
Two years ago: January 15, 2012 (Just after the Warnock Axe/Hughes Appointment)
Flashabck after Warnock Axe QPR CEO Beard plans to move to a new training ground within 12 months and to a new stadium within four years
GUARDIAN
QPR's Stadium Plans:
"...[QPR CEO Philip] Beard said that the plans to move to a new training ground within 12 months and to a new stadium within four years are vital to the club's development. "Staying at Loftus Road or the Harlington training ground is not going to get us where we want to go and I don't think it would have got us Mark Hughes either. We have owners who are ambitious but they are realistic as well. What we are trying to do is grow and develop the squad."
The proposed move to a new training ground is taking shape, he said. "We have identified a site and have plans in place. We are looking at two or three options for a new stadium and are now looking at options to fund it and making the numbers work.
"It won't be simply a football stadium. Our intention is to build a multi-use stadium where the main tenants are QPR. It will be great for the area and that's what the current climate needs." www.theguardian.com/football/2012/jan/14/mark-hughes-qpr-newcastle?
Site for new QPR training ground revealed
By Paul Warburton
THE Warren Farm Sports Complex is set to become QPR’s new training ground – and one of the reasons Mark Hughes became the club’s new manager this week.
Rs ambitions to develop the 59-acre site in Windmill Lane that borders Southall and Osterley, and provide a state of the art complex for both the Premier League Club and the community, is within weeks of being finalised with owners London Borough Of Ealing council.
Hughes was unveiled as the man to replace the sacked Neil Warnock on Tuesday, and ironically returned to the place he trained as a Chelsea player when he took his first session as Rs boss the following day.
But the Imperial Sports Ground at Harlington is past its sell-by date according to Hughes, and plans for not only a new stadium to replace Loftus Road, but a training ground worthy of a Premier League club was a clincher in securing Sparky’s return to west London 16 months after he quit Fulham.
“Harlington is also 10 years older since I was last there,” said Hughes, “and I realised the Rangers’ ambitions were mine as well with the various exciting plans they have in place.”
QPR have slated two other possible sites for its new training base, but the rundown Warren Farm complex is the favoured choice by a distance.
qprreport.proboards.com/thread/28880?page=1#ixzz2pn88wHro
12/01/2012
by David McIntyre/West London Sport
QPR plan to use mock-ups of the club’s proposed new training facility to try to entice new signings.
CEO Beard has led the search for a new training ground.
Rangers are desperate to leave their current Harlington training ground, which is well below Premier League standard and is a possible barrier to attracting top players.
The site of Warren Farm Sports Centre near Osterley Park is their preferred location for a new state-of-the-art complex, which is likely to be ready later this year.
And R’s chief executive Philip Beard revealed: “At Harlington it’s challenging to impress players that you’re looking to bring into the club, so very shortly I intend to have pictures and graphics of what the [new] training ground will look like.
“The reality is that we aren’t a Premier League club in terms of the training facility we’ve got. My job is to make sure that in the future the training ground reflects us as a quality club.” www.westlondonsport.com/qpr/qprs-plan-for-attracting-top-players/
qprreport.proboards.com/thread/28880?page=1#ixzz2pn8HYj00
INDEPENDENT/Steve Tongue - High hopes for Hoops as Beard faces future
The man who saved the O2 now plans to make west London's unfashionable club into a money-spinner with Mark Hughes at helm
For a man who helped transform the Millennium Dome from a supposed white elephant into one of Europe's foremost concert venues, turning Queens Park Rangers into a force in English football should be a doddle. Philip Beard does not put it quite like that, of course, for even as a comparative newcomer to the unpredictable world of football – having joined QPR as chief executive after Tony Fernandes's takeover in August – he appreciates that those who sit in the directors' box are at the mercy of what goes on inside the rectangle of white lines in front of them.
Unless board members are inclined, like a previous Rangers owner, to send messages to the touchline demanding substitutions or tactical changes, all they can do is hire and fire the right people, and provide the financial backing and best possible working conditions.
To that end, Fernandes and his team deemed it necessary a week ago to dispense with the services of Neil Warnock, who had achieved the Premier League status that made the club such an attractive acquisition in the first place, and install Mark Hughes, a man considered to have a better chance of maintaining and building on it.
The building will be literal as well as metaphorical, involving a new training ground plus academy and, as this newspaper revealed when Fernandes arrived, a new stadium. "I don't think it would have got us Mark Hughes as manager," Beard says, "if the plan we'd laid out to him was that for the next 10 years he'd be training at Harlington or playing his team at Loftus Road."
The current training ground, under the Heathrow flight path, is the ramshackle place used by Chelsea when Hughes joined them as a player more than 15 years ago, when London University students would arrive after lunch to reclaim the dressing-rooms.
Rangers have identified a site for a replacement, which will prove easier to construct and finance than a new Loftus Road. The key to both, Beard says, is what businessmen apparently call "sweating the asset", or as he puts it: "Our plan is to build a multi-use stadium where the main tenant is Queens Park Rangers but we'll look to monetise other aspects of the stadium because that's what the current climate needs for investors to become part of the project. It's about funding it, making the numbers work. But this area is fantastic, the catchment area is great, the transport links are great.
"Coming from the O2, if we can build a venue that will be more than the home of QPR – while that will be the main part – I think we can do things that will be exciting for the area. And if and when we build a new stadium we will need to grow the fanbase significantly, so my job off the pitch is to start thinking about how we grow the brand that is QPR not just domestically but internationally."
The new regime clearly cannot be faulted for lack of either ambition or cash. As well as Fernandes, the owner of AirAsia and the Team Lotus/Caterham Formula One team, they are backed by the Mittals, whose pater familias Lakshmi is the world's fifth or sixth richest man, depending on who is doing the sums.
Yet the need to "grow the fanbase" acknowledges that Rangers have never been regarded as a big club in their 126-year history. The longest period they have ever enjoyed in the top flight was from 1983 to 1996; last season's average attendance in a Championship-winning season was under 16,000; and 25 years ago there were plans to merge with neighbouring Fulham.
Fulham, where to Hughes's frustration last summer a rich owner decided to put a cap on spending, are one of the clubs Beard mentions as a benchmark to aim at in terms of having got into the Premier League and stayed there. Stoke are another, though a few seasons ago he might have named Charlton or Southampton.
Clearly a man with a plan, he lays out the following path for the short, medium and long term: "We want to stay in the Premier League and stabilise in the short term. The short to medium term [aim] is to build a new training ground and encourage and attract players to come. The medium to long is to build a new stadium. It's crazy to speculate on how long it would take to get to the stage where you're competing for a Champions League place or the title, but if you don't have those dreams and goals, there's not much point in doing this."
Hasten slowly may be a sensible policy, or as Hughes put it, "don't run before you can walk". Beard, having helped secure the Olympics for London and built a future for the doomed Dome, prefers the line with which he signs off his programme notes: "Dare to dream."
Newcastle United v Queens Park Rangers is on Sky Sports 1 today, kick-off 1.30pm
www.independent.co.uk/sport/football/premier-league/high-hopes-for-hoops-as-beard-faces-future-6289888.html
The Star/Tony Stenson - MARK'S & SPENDERS
MARK HUGHES is the man with the Midas touch.
Not many hit the jackpot twice but Queens Park Rangers’ new manager will soon be wallowing in wonga again.
After spending a whopping £216million during 18 months as City boss, it is music to Hughes’ ears to have been told by the Hoops’ equally wealthy new owners ‘to spend as much as it needs’ to take the club to a new level.
Vice-chairman Amit Bhatia, son-in-law of co-owner Lakshmi Mittal, third-richest man in the football, said: “We believe in the long-term future of this club. The potential here is unlimited and we’re pushing for exciting days.
“The club has enough money – as much as it needs. We want players for the future but if we want household names we will do it. We have a well thought-out plan. We are prepared.”
His views were echoed by chief executive Philip Beard who told the Daily Star Sunday: “I joined QPR because of what Tony Fernandes and the Mittal family are trying to do here.
“And if I can help by building a new training ground and building a new stadium then all to the good.
“But what you have to get right is what happens on the pitch and over the last few days we have brought in a man with a team behind him who can help develop the club and certainly get us to stay in the Premier League this season and then grow.
“It’s crazy to speculate how long it will take to get to the stage where we are competing for the title and Champions League places.
“But if you don’t have those goals there’s not much point in doing this. We want to stay in the Premier League and we want to provide facilities that will also attract top-quality players. Loftus Road only has a capacity of 16,000, so any money must come from the board or owners.
And Beard added: “We have owners who are ambitious but they are realistic as well. What we are trying to do is grow and develop the squad.
“It is going to be very difficult to make major changes in January but if we can bring one or two players in then we will do that.
“And going forward we will look at who Mark wants to bring in. We will look at it again in August.”
And with a nod to the disciplined structure behind the club’s boardroom doors, Beard said: “It isn’t just one person who will make this work.
“It is Tony Fernandes and his partners and Amit Bhatia and the Mittal family.
“My job is to make sure we all work together so we get relationships right. I wouldn’t have come here if I didn’t think the aspirations of the owners weren’t strong for the long term. They see projects through.
“Very rich people are successful in making money, investing it and holding on to it. But we want to make sure that they can invest here for all the right reasons.”
Hughes, fully aware he is the club’s 13th manager in the last six years, admits it does help being backed by the world’s third-richest man.
He said: “Yeah. It gives us the opportunity. You would hope that if we keep building steadily rather than running before we can walk it gives us a real opportunity to do it in a considered and proper way.
“I have not been told by the backers, ‘We want the title’, not in those terms, no. If we’re all still here in the next five, six, ten years then we can have that conversation – but not at this stage.
“You have to have ambition. It will be a long road and there will be a few bumps along the way but we are prepared for that. It is really exciting and we have just got to see it through.” The Star
Flashabck after Warnock Axe QPR CEO Beard plans to move to a new training ground within 12 months and to a new stadium within four years
GUARDIAN
QPR's Stadium Plans:
"...[QPR CEO Philip] Beard said that the plans to move to a new training ground within 12 months and to a new stadium within four years are vital to the club's development. "Staying at Loftus Road or the Harlington training ground is not going to get us where we want to go and I don't think it would have got us Mark Hughes either. We have owners who are ambitious but they are realistic as well. What we are trying to do is grow and develop the squad."
The proposed move to a new training ground is taking shape, he said. "We have identified a site and have plans in place. We are looking at two or three options for a new stadium and are now looking at options to fund it and making the numbers work.
"It won't be simply a football stadium. Our intention is to build a multi-use stadium where the main tenants are QPR. It will be great for the area and that's what the current climate needs." www.theguardian.com/football/2012/jan/14/mark-hughes-qpr-newcastle?
Site for new QPR training ground revealed
By Paul Warburton
THE Warren Farm Sports Complex is set to become QPR’s new training ground – and one of the reasons Mark Hughes became the club’s new manager this week.
Rs ambitions to develop the 59-acre site in Windmill Lane that borders Southall and Osterley, and provide a state of the art complex for both the Premier League Club and the community, is within weeks of being finalised with owners London Borough Of Ealing council.
Hughes was unveiled as the man to replace the sacked Neil Warnock on Tuesday, and ironically returned to the place he trained as a Chelsea player when he took his first session as Rs boss the following day.
But the Imperial Sports Ground at Harlington is past its sell-by date according to Hughes, and plans for not only a new stadium to replace Loftus Road, but a training ground worthy of a Premier League club was a clincher in securing Sparky’s return to west London 16 months after he quit Fulham.
“Harlington is also 10 years older since I was last there,” said Hughes, “and I realised the Rangers’ ambitions were mine as well with the various exciting plans they have in place.”
QPR have slated two other possible sites for its new training base, but the rundown Warren Farm complex is the favoured choice by a distance.
qprreport.proboards.com/thread/28880?page=1#ixzz2pn88wHro
12/01/2012
by David McIntyre/West London Sport
QPR plan to use mock-ups of the club’s proposed new training facility to try to entice new signings.
CEO Beard has led the search for a new training ground.
Rangers are desperate to leave their current Harlington training ground, which is well below Premier League standard and is a possible barrier to attracting top players.
The site of Warren Farm Sports Centre near Osterley Park is their preferred location for a new state-of-the-art complex, which is likely to be ready later this year.
And R’s chief executive Philip Beard revealed: “At Harlington it’s challenging to impress players that you’re looking to bring into the club, so very shortly I intend to have pictures and graphics of what the [new] training ground will look like.
“The reality is that we aren’t a Premier League club in terms of the training facility we’ve got. My job is to make sure that in the future the training ground reflects us as a quality club.” www.westlondonsport.com/qpr/qprs-plan-for-attracting-top-players/
qprreport.proboards.com/thread/28880?page=1#ixzz2pn8HYj00
INDEPENDENT/Steve Tongue - High hopes for Hoops as Beard faces future
The man who saved the O2 now plans to make west London's unfashionable club into a money-spinner with Mark Hughes at helm
For a man who helped transform the Millennium Dome from a supposed white elephant into one of Europe's foremost concert venues, turning Queens Park Rangers into a force in English football should be a doddle. Philip Beard does not put it quite like that, of course, for even as a comparative newcomer to the unpredictable world of football – having joined QPR as chief executive after Tony Fernandes's takeover in August – he appreciates that those who sit in the directors' box are at the mercy of what goes on inside the rectangle of white lines in front of them.
Unless board members are inclined, like a previous Rangers owner, to send messages to the touchline demanding substitutions or tactical changes, all they can do is hire and fire the right people, and provide the financial backing and best possible working conditions.
To that end, Fernandes and his team deemed it necessary a week ago to dispense with the services of Neil Warnock, who had achieved the Premier League status that made the club such an attractive acquisition in the first place, and install Mark Hughes, a man considered to have a better chance of maintaining and building on it.
The building will be literal as well as metaphorical, involving a new training ground plus academy and, as this newspaper revealed when Fernandes arrived, a new stadium. "I don't think it would have got us Mark Hughes as manager," Beard says, "if the plan we'd laid out to him was that for the next 10 years he'd be training at Harlington or playing his team at Loftus Road."
The current training ground, under the Heathrow flight path, is the ramshackle place used by Chelsea when Hughes joined them as a player more than 15 years ago, when London University students would arrive after lunch to reclaim the dressing-rooms.
Rangers have identified a site for a replacement, which will prove easier to construct and finance than a new Loftus Road. The key to both, Beard says, is what businessmen apparently call "sweating the asset", or as he puts it: "Our plan is to build a multi-use stadium where the main tenant is Queens Park Rangers but we'll look to monetise other aspects of the stadium because that's what the current climate needs for investors to become part of the project. It's about funding it, making the numbers work. But this area is fantastic, the catchment area is great, the transport links are great.
"Coming from the O2, if we can build a venue that will be more than the home of QPR – while that will be the main part – I think we can do things that will be exciting for the area. And if and when we build a new stadium we will need to grow the fanbase significantly, so my job off the pitch is to start thinking about how we grow the brand that is QPR not just domestically but internationally."
The new regime clearly cannot be faulted for lack of either ambition or cash. As well as Fernandes, the owner of AirAsia and the Team Lotus/Caterham Formula One team, they are backed by the Mittals, whose pater familias Lakshmi is the world's fifth or sixth richest man, depending on who is doing the sums.
Yet the need to "grow the fanbase" acknowledges that Rangers have never been regarded as a big club in their 126-year history. The longest period they have ever enjoyed in the top flight was from 1983 to 1996; last season's average attendance in a Championship-winning season was under 16,000; and 25 years ago there were plans to merge with neighbouring Fulham.
Fulham, where to Hughes's frustration last summer a rich owner decided to put a cap on spending, are one of the clubs Beard mentions as a benchmark to aim at in terms of having got into the Premier League and stayed there. Stoke are another, though a few seasons ago he might have named Charlton or Southampton.
Clearly a man with a plan, he lays out the following path for the short, medium and long term: "We want to stay in the Premier League and stabilise in the short term. The short to medium term [aim] is to build a new training ground and encourage and attract players to come. The medium to long is to build a new stadium. It's crazy to speculate on how long it would take to get to the stage where you're competing for a Champions League place or the title, but if you don't have those dreams and goals, there's not much point in doing this."
Hasten slowly may be a sensible policy, or as Hughes put it, "don't run before you can walk". Beard, having helped secure the Olympics for London and built a future for the doomed Dome, prefers the line with which he signs off his programme notes: "Dare to dream."
Newcastle United v Queens Park Rangers is on Sky Sports 1 today, kick-off 1.30pm
www.independent.co.uk/sport/football/premier-league/high-hopes-for-hoops-as-beard-faces-future-6289888.html
The Star/Tony Stenson - MARK'S & SPENDERS
MARK HUGHES is the man with the Midas touch.
Not many hit the jackpot twice but Queens Park Rangers’ new manager will soon be wallowing in wonga again.
After spending a whopping £216million during 18 months as City boss, it is music to Hughes’ ears to have been told by the Hoops’ equally wealthy new owners ‘to spend as much as it needs’ to take the club to a new level.
Vice-chairman Amit Bhatia, son-in-law of co-owner Lakshmi Mittal, third-richest man in the football, said: “We believe in the long-term future of this club. The potential here is unlimited and we’re pushing for exciting days.
“The club has enough money – as much as it needs. We want players for the future but if we want household names we will do it. We have a well thought-out plan. We are prepared.”
His views were echoed by chief executive Philip Beard who told the Daily Star Sunday: “I joined QPR because of what Tony Fernandes and the Mittal family are trying to do here.
“And if I can help by building a new training ground and building a new stadium then all to the good.
“But what you have to get right is what happens on the pitch and over the last few days we have brought in a man with a team behind him who can help develop the club and certainly get us to stay in the Premier League this season and then grow.
“It’s crazy to speculate how long it will take to get to the stage where we are competing for the title and Champions League places.
“But if you don’t have those goals there’s not much point in doing this. We want to stay in the Premier League and we want to provide facilities that will also attract top-quality players. Loftus Road only has a capacity of 16,000, so any money must come from the board or owners.
And Beard added: “We have owners who are ambitious but they are realistic as well. What we are trying to do is grow and develop the squad.
“It is going to be very difficult to make major changes in January but if we can bring one or two players in then we will do that.
“And going forward we will look at who Mark wants to bring in. We will look at it again in August.”
And with a nod to the disciplined structure behind the club’s boardroom doors, Beard said: “It isn’t just one person who will make this work.
“It is Tony Fernandes and his partners and Amit Bhatia and the Mittal family.
“My job is to make sure we all work together so we get relationships right. I wouldn’t have come here if I didn’t think the aspirations of the owners weren’t strong for the long term. They see projects through.
“Very rich people are successful in making money, investing it and holding on to it. But we want to make sure that they can invest here for all the right reasons.”
Hughes, fully aware he is the club’s 13th manager in the last six years, admits it does help being backed by the world’s third-richest man.
He said: “Yeah. It gives us the opportunity. You would hope that if we keep building steadily rather than running before we can walk it gives us a real opportunity to do it in a considered and proper way.
“I have not been told by the backers, ‘We want the title’, not in those terms, no. If we’re all still here in the next five, six, ten years then we can have that conversation – but not at this stage.
“You have to have ambition. It will be a long road and there will be a few bumps along the way but we are prepared for that. It is really exciting and we have just got to see it through.” The Star
