For every Martin O’Neill, there is a Terry Connor. For every Roy Hodgson, there is a Joe Kinnear. Around December, chairman and owners of Football Clubs convince themselves that the man they have in charge of their team is wrong, and the only way forward is to replace the head. BUT… is the new manager bounce a thing? And without the right man to come in… why would you replace the boss at such a crucial stage? Let’s look at QPR’s recent struggles.
In my opinion, the sacking of Neil Warnock will be the reason QPR are relegated this season. To replace him with a man so uninspiring as Mark Hughes at such a vital time, must be up there with giving Avram Grant a position in management, or thinking that Chris Iwelumo is the saviour of Scottish football.
Hughes has shown during his time at QPR, Manchester City and Fulham, that he is only able to work with certain players, with many struggling to cope with his double training and charisma bereft persona. Seriously, has there ever been a person so lacking in charm and humour as Mark Hughes – having a conversation with him would be like having to sit through the extended director’s commentary version of Kevin Costner’s ‘The Postman’ while putting together some flat-pack furniture with your ex-wife in an unheated bedsit in Bognor.
If this were to have happened the other way around, and the motivational Warnock was brought in to galvanise the team in the last few months, you could see it making sense. But to bring in such a divisive character at such a crucial stage of the season… it’s almost as if Amit Bhatia and Tony Fernandes didn’t watch the ‘Four Year Plan’ movie about QPR just a few days before, because they don’t seem to have learned any lessons from it.
This is even more concerning considering Bhatia was portrayed in the film like a He-Man style figure, taking control of the situation just in time to get them promoted (when we need someone to cut the budget in the corporate hospitality suites, we’ll give you a call).
The concern was that QPR were not winning, especially at home, and were going to slide out of the league. But look at the timings of what’s happened to Warnock, and there you have your answer for why he struggled to get the team to gel. He had just a matter of days to identify signings after the Fernandes takeover, and on paper they were not half bad – how would he foresee the underperforming disaster that has been Joey Barton?
It was down to one poor decision but not the one you mention. It was a disallowed onside goal at home to West Brom when the score was 1-0. Had it ended 2-0, Rangers would have gone to 8th in the table. But it ended 1-1 and Warnock never won another game as Rangers manager. It shot our mental confidence to pieces We needed that win against West Brom as we Liverpool and Man Utd in the next 2 matches and had just lost away at Norwich the game before.
Such a lack of insight into the team. Nonsense.