Articles re QPR Mass Spending - Fernandes Responds

[bowranger]

Aug 23, 2012 18:26:23 GMT Macmoish said:

Mark Hughes’ short term fix not a long term solution
www.footballfriendsonline.com/blogs/2012/8/23/mark-hughes-short-term-fix-not-a-long-term-solution.html

The ineptitude of QPR’s display in the debacle of the Swansea game will only be the tip of the iceberg for Hughes, for even if form does improve, a rise in results will not realise any ambition as Hughes has failed to build a squad that can continue to build on it in the long-run.

That's definitely the main point for me. If we succeed this season by consolidating, where do you go next? A lot of these signings aren't going to improve as players as such, or if they did, they wouldn't have long left in their playing career either. So they either stay and stagnate (or, as I fear, get worse). But we can't sell them on for anything like an economically viable fee. So if we buy more players to improve, which judging on current behaviour we would, we are even deeper in the hole.

My only hope is that these contracts don't average out to be prohibitively long. If Fernandes is panic-buying a squad that will keep us away from relegation and it comes right for us, he's going to have to take a massive hit to keep us there the season after, whilst still paying off our insane wage structure.

[ingham]

It's the classic dilemma of what to do when things start going wrong.

Managers know all about it. They pick the players, then results don't come. You change something, because you think that's why, and results don't improve. Do you change back? Or make another change? If you make another change, you have 3 formations, none of which work. And you don't know if things might have come out of all right if you'd left things as they were.

You replace the odd player from the squad, and that doesn't work. You change the tactics, and the formation, but you have to do that for every combination of players. So you end up with dozens of possible tactical schemes, dozens of formations, and dozens of players.

So you get rid of the lot and start again. Except you can't. The Club can't be allowed to slide down the divisions while you learn the game.

Among other things, you've spent so much that - as Mac points out - the cost will be prohibitive.

But the cost of being in the Premiership is even more prohibitive. Clubs' losses, bad in the lower leagues, are stupendous in the Premiership.

And they're getting £30 million, £40 million a season.

If they were paid PROPERLY on the basis of what they've achieved, it would be all right. The winners would get the really big money, the losers would get what they deserve.

If you improved, you'd get more. And you'd operate within your limitations.

But every Club has moneylenders attached to it, using their own wealth to run up massive losses on the Club's tab. The shares go up in price, they sell, and it starts all over again.

Once, you knew who had talent and who didn't. Now, nobody has any idea, outside a tiny elite. Any bunch of dodos can spend tens of millions artificially inflating the team's performances.

So there is no incentive to learn how to find talent, to develop it, to learn from your mistakes. No-one does that. They simply find another moneylender, and repeat them all.

[Macmoish]

I think the Horizon is always receding/the Pot of Gold always being moved (or the Football as in Snoopy always being moved by Lucy)

If just get promotion, we'll get all that TV Money... and if we act wisely, even if we go down, we have that parachute money

So we get promoted...and then we spend to stay up - and have to increase wages...

And then because we've spent, and are in dire trouble if we go down - despite parachute money, we spend more...and more..

And so if we go down, we're REALLY in trouble...

[sharky]

Aug 24, 2012 9:05:21 GMT Macmoish said:

I think the Horizon is always receding/the Pot of Gold always being moved (or the Football as in Snoopy always being moved by Lucy)

If just get promotion, we'll get all that TV Money... and if we act wisely, even if we go down, we have that parachute money

So we get promoted...and then we spend to stay up - and have to increase wages...

And then because we've spent, and are in dire trouble if we go down - despite parachute money, we spend more...and more..

And so if we go down, we're REALLY in trouble...

Stop it Mac your doing my head in. Just reads Blah, blah, blah..... "if we go down, we're REALLY in trouble"!!!

[ingham]

Maybe that's what's so alarming.

No-one ever seems to be really in trouble. They go into administration, then come out of it pretty much the same. They run up losses, but nothing much is ever done about them. Nobody is held to account, everyone gets paid more and more, one manager follows another.

If you go down, it's a new era. If you go up, that's a new era too. Wherever you are, it's nothing compared to where you will be. No matter how many times it is proved untrue, we're ready to believe it the next time.

And if they do get a few results, like Holloway and Warnock, we can't wait to get rid of them.

Maybe Mac is right. There may be a turning point at some time.

Has all that 'investment' created a situation where Clubs just can't be what they are, just muddling along until they have a stroke of luck.

Once, that was possible. Maybe they can't cope, now, unless they ARE successful.

A couple of wins and everything will look different. More than a couple would be nice.

And why ISN'T Mittal splashing £1 billion to win us the title. A few titles in a row and it might begin to look as though QPR could fill a 45,000 stadium.

If it's only a matter of the money ... we've got it.

Haven't we.

[RoryTheRanger]

Aug 24, 2012 10:21:25 GMT ingham said:

Maybe that's what's so alarming.

No-one ever seems to be really in trouble. They go into administration, then come out of it pretty much the same. They run up losses, but nothing much is ever done about them. Nobody is held to account, everyone gets paid more and more, one manager follows another.

If you go down, it's a new era. If you go up, that's a new era too. Wherever you are, it's nothing compared to where you will be. No matter how many times it is proved untrue, we're ready to believe it the next time.

And if they do get a few results, like Holloway and Warnock, we can't wait to get rid of them.

Maybe Mac is right. There may be a turning point at some time.

Has all that 'investment' created a situation where Clubs just can't be what they are, just muddling along until they have a stroke of luck.

Once, that was possible. Maybe they can't cope, now, unless they ARE successful.

A couple of wins and everything will look different. More than a couple would be nice.

And why ISN'T Mittal splashing £1 billion to win us the title. A few titles in a row and it might begin to look as though QPR could fill a 45,000 stadium.

If it's only a matter of the money ... we've got it.

Haven't we.

Because they don't want to run the club like that, they want us to be self sustaining in a few years time

[alfaranger]

I have just spent a bit of time reading this thread. Its only 2 pages but I can honestly say that some of the posts on here are of the quality you would expect from only the leading newspapers and far and away above the vast majority of the sh*t tabloid lowest common denominator contributions. Not a picture of Prince Harry in sight. I am sure there cant be another message board with such insightful, incisive and downright well written articles and responses. Brilliant!

[scarletpimple]

Chelsea spending over £60mill plus high wages, on transfers this season on 42k gates, is that a lot worse than were doing.

West ham is another one.

[ozzh00p]

Aug 24, 2012 12:18:20 GMT scarletpimple said:

Chelsea spending over £60mill plus high wages, on transfers this season on 42k gates, is that a lot worse than were doing.

West ham is another one.

Exactly scarlet. THere's a table somewhere shows we are about 15th or something in the spending stakes .West Ham are above us.

[ingham]

Yes, OK, but how will QPR build and pay for a 45,000 capacity stadium from the revenue generated by 17,000 capacity attendances? Assuming that's what self-sustaining means. Even if it happened, we've got 5 more years before the big ground materialises.

And how will being self-sustaining enable QPR to compete if every other Club continues borrowing on a massive scale to get the edge? - which is exactly what they're doing, the biggest Clubs most of all. Converting debt to equity to disguise what they're up to.

Do we borrow up to the point when the new Ground is built, so we can compete with the title winners, then stop borrowing so we can't?

We can't do an Arsenal, can we? Their ground has a capacity of 60,000, so even if they are living within their means (and they still have debt, so they don't seem to be) QPR will be nowhere near able to compete with them merely by living within OUR means.

And we won't be able to compete with the big spenders like City and Chelsea if we aren't matching their spending at £1 billion over and above revenue. That's over and above revenue in a 40,000 plus stadium, not a 17,000 capacity one.

But if we don't do that, so we aren't delivering the goods at that level, how will we pay for a 45,000 capacity ground, let alone fill it?

If the Club borrows to build the new Ground, it can't be self-sustaining. If it doesn't, using the TV money to pay for it - assuming we are still in the Premiership - what do we use to buy players?

We wouldn't even be able to compete with the smaller Clubs like Norwich and Swansea, if we're spending the TV money on the Ground and they're using theirs to improve the team.

What do we do then? Borrow?

I can see a certain logic in Mittal buying the title for £1 billion and then putting forward arguments for a big ground on the basis that QPR are then as successful on the pitch as title winners like Arsenal, Man City and Chelsea so we must have a stadium of a comparable size to accommodate the same sort of attendances.

But there's no sign of it yet, even though Abramovich and the Man City guy were spending big right from the outset.

[Lonegunmen]

Here's a question for you Ingham.

IF football grounds were allowed to bring back terracing, would you think our average gate would go up to say 25k?

Personally, I'd love to see terracing back. I note the germans have no real problems with it and attendances there seem pretty good. Mind you, tickets to matches are a lot cheaper.

[ingham]

Hard to say, lonegunmen. Wasn't it 25,000 capacity when the lower part of the home and away ends were terracing? In the Guinness era, as it were?

Future anything is just guesswork. Sure, if we're brilliant, why not? The tricky part is the brilliant bit, not the 25,000. Clubs talk as if there's never a downside. You only go up, you only stay up, you only improve. People don't say 'if we had terracing, could we get 8,000?'.

Yes. Or any other figure.

As a Club, we've never got particularly big attendances just for showing up. Even in 1976, attendances went up from the previous season because being top or thereabouts generated a lot of excitement, but they went down sharply afterwards, because we weren't.

Clearly there's an element based on expectation. In the past, expectation was based on performance. The longer a team did well, the bigger the expectation that it would continue to do so. If we had continued to do as well as we did in 1976, our attendances would have gone up, certainly.

But if any Club like QPR did as well as we did in 1976, THEIR attendances would have gone up too. So that kind of speculation is more or less meaningless.

And there's the question of what attendances of 25,000 would cost. The assumption is that it would bring in more, but would it? If that is true, why do Premiership Clubs have bigger losses and bigger debt than Clubs further down the league?

Nowadays bigger attendances cost more than they are worth, rather like the players. If we hope to get at least 25,000 a week, I don't see how we can afford that on the REVENUE from 25,000 a week. And if we're spending sums that would require attendances of 39,000 or 55,000 to cover the cost, how long could we keep it up, without attendances of that size?

Especially if the Board are saying that we're going to be self-financing or sufficient or whatever it is.

Managers who don't have the talent to make a profit for the Club look round for money to spend to cover up their deficiencies. Warnock came here because he thought we would give him more money than Palace. We did, but we also gave him the boot pretty quickly. It is said that Hughes did, too. He'll get the boot in no time if his results aren't up to scratch.

So they're in an awkward position. If the Club must provide them with big money, you don't have to be a genius to see that the quality of performance depends more on the Club's money than the manager, so why does the Club need them?

We need someone, but managers are ten a penny, and our track record for getting rid of them suggests there is some truth in this.