Oliver Holt/The Mirror
QPR's mad, mad world hits the big screen
By Oliver Holt in Mirror Football Blog
Published 22:30 01/03/12
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A Comedy of Errors
After four defeats in five games, QPR boss Mark Hughes and his players were in need of a little light relief.
So on Tuesday, Hughes took the team to an art-house cinema in Mayfair to watch a special screening of a new comedy.
The Four Year Plan, a brilliant documentary about QPR under the regime of former joint-owner Flavio Briatore, was not conceived as a vehicle for merriment.
But for the first half of it at least, as Briatore and his henchmen cull one unfortunate manager after another, that was how it turned out.
The documentary – part Sopranos, part Sweeney and part Do I Not Like That – legitimised every rumour about Briatore’s interference in team affairs. At one point, he had to be persuaded that rather than phoning the manager on the touchline during a match, it would be more discreet if he texted him instructions instead.
As Adel Taarabt, Joey Barton, Anton Ferdinand, Shaun Wright-Phillips and the rest of the current team watched the story unfold, astonished laughter rang out around the auditorium.
There are any number of priceless moments, including the scene when Briatore bullies sporting director Gianni Paladini into going down to the touchline to order caretaker coach Gareth Ainsworth to bring Gavin Mahon off the bench.
Mahon promptly scores a last gasp winner and Briatore, his football genius now proven, erupts in a mixture of self-righteous anger and joy in the directors’ box.
Then, after he has dispensed with the services of managers Iain Dowie, Ainsworth, Paulo Sousa, Jim Magilton, Paul Hart, Steve Gallen, Marc Bircham and Mick Harford in short order, there is this discussion between Briatore and club director Alejandro Agag.
Briatore: “The problem is we found four or five idiots. Incompetent. Somehow, we found all the incompetent ones.â€
Agag: “We found every idiot.â€
Briatore: “No idiot spared.â€
Agag: “Every idiot available.â€
Briatore: “We found a band of drunkards. One hits a player. Another gets drunk. This is impressive.â€
Things only improved when Neil Warnock, who was also at the screening and is, in many ways, the hero of the film, took over in March 2010 and Briatore became less involved with the day-to-day running of the club.
The documentary ends in triumph with QPR’s promotion to the Premier League the following season and as the credits rolled, Warnock hurried off into the night.
Hughes stuck around, chatting in the foyer. He had seen the film once before, he said, but his expression showed he had marvelled at it just as much the second time around.
He had, he said, never encountered anything remotely similar in all his years in the game and the QPR he inherited from Warnock is a very different one to the version depicted in The Four Year Plan. Briatore is gone, of course, and it was new owner Tony Fernandes, who sacked Warnock in January and gave the job to Hughes.
But the push towards mid-table that many anticipated has not materialised and after successive defeats to Fulham, Blackburn and Wolves, only one point separates QPR from the bottom of the table.
Hughes is a fine manager and in Mark Bowen and Eddie Niedzwiecki, he has a talented team of coaches around him.
He was cheerful enough on Tuesday night but it is clear that while the club is now a long way from the chaos depicted in the film, he is beset by a host of problems. It’s no secret that there were tensions between Warnock and some of the more high-profile members of the QPR squad, particularly Barton, who criticized his ex-boss on Twitter in the wake of his departure.
Rumours of fresh dressing room unrest and arguments between players have surfaced.
Discipline has been poor, too. Red cards in the home games against Fulham and Wolves forced QPR to play for long periods with 10 men.
Fernandes’s response has been to promise to tour pubs in Shepherd’s Bush before the crucial home game against Everton tomorrow to respond to fans’ concerns.
Like Warnock before him, Hughes now finds himself in a situation where he needs to turn QPR around as it teeters on the edge of the relegation zone.
Anything other than a victory against David Moyes’s resurgent side tomorrow is likely to see the west London club slip into the bottom three.
Still, as he left the cinema, Hughes realised things could be a whole lot worse.
It will only be if his phone starts ringing in the Loftus Road dug-out tomorrow that he will know things have come full circle.
*******
TIMELINE OF BRIATORE REIGN
November 7 2007: Flavio Briatore and Bernie Ecclestone pay £14million to take over QPR and settle their debts.
December 12 2007: Family of billionaire Lakshmi Mittal buy 20 per cent of club.
May 12 2008: Luigi Di Canio leaves at the end of the season, claiming his pregnant girlfriend wants to return to Italy. Iain Dowie is appointed within a couple of days and spends the summer putting together his team.
October 24 2008: Dowie sacked after just 15 games in charge, with popular player Gareth Ainsworth asked to mind the shop.
November 19 2008: Paulo Sousa appointed.
April 9 2009: Sousa sacked for disclosing details of Dexter Blackstock’s proposed loan move to Nottingham Forest. ÂAinsworth again handed the reigns Âtemporarily.
June 3 2009: Jim Magilton named as manager.
December 9 2009: Magilton suspended and then departed “by mutual consent†following an alleged bust-up with midfielder Akos Buzsaky. Marc Bircham and Steve Gallen named joint caretakers.
December 17 2009: Paul Hart appointed but quit after only five games in charge.
January 15 2010: Mick Harford named caretaker but the team is beaten in six of his seven games in charge.
February 19 2010: Briatore steps down as chairman but keeps his shares.
March 2 2010: Neil Warnock appointed and steers team to Championship title. But promotion only confirmed after an FA investigation into the transfer of Alejandro Faurlin ends with a fine rather than a points deduction.
Jan 8 2011: Warnock sacked by the new owners.
www.mirrorfootball.co.uk/opinion/blogs/mirror-football-blog/The-Flavio-Briatore-era-at-Loftus-Road-makes-for-hilarious-viewing-in-new-TV-documentary-but-things-are-deadly-serious-for-Mark-Hughes-by-Oliver-Holt-article873019.html