QPR - Relegated & Ruined

I’ve now finished my third season in charge, the second in the Premiership and I’m pretty pleased with how things have gone. We did have a reasonably good run in however losing to Derby, who were eventually relegated was particularly disappointing and cost us moving up an extra league place.



Despite this we did improve on last season, finishing in 12th place which is two above last season however we did finish with one point less, finishing on 43. With a media prediction of 15th I don’t think we can complain too much, I am again left disappointed by our cup runs however we our slowly moving up the league and with a few changes in the Summer I’m sure we can push for a top half finish next season. The main struggle will be keeping players like Will Hughes and Jan Vertonghen, who have the likes of Chelsea and A.C. Milan sniffing around them.



One other pleasing factor from this season is my strike force, I finally seem to have two strikers that can play off each other and almost guarantee me a goal a game, Nassim Ben Khalifa and Andy Carroll finished joint 3rd and 9th respectively in the league scoring chart and got 34 goals between them.

After last season I didn’t want to disrupt the squad too much, however I did think some changes needed to be made. I have always signed a few youngsters every season who I immediately loan out, James Ward-Prowse is the most high profile one, who I spent £6.5m on then immediately loaned to Sunderland, I think he will prove to be a quality investment.

As soon as the window opened I made a couple of moves, Tom Cleverley became available at Tottenham and cost me just £2.8m, he is one of the high earners at the club however I think he’ll prove to be worth it, certainly a good replacement for the outgoing Kallstrom.

Tom Cleverley



I think I need another striker to avoid being left short of numbers at any point during the season so I also signed Youan Gouffran from Lyon for £2m, a small fee to pay to provide me with a good rotation option.

Youan Gouffran



I did release two first team players, Kim Kallstrom and Kemy Agustien who I felt were no longer needed, Kallstrom has been impressive for us but I think it’s time to go in another direction. I brought in three free agents, Scott Sinclair being the main one with Curtis Davies and Peter Gulacsi coming in as back-ups. I think Scott will be a good signing, particularly for free and with Isaac Cuenca and GroBkreutz in good form in certainly does give me some depth and isn’t really on too much either.

Scott Sinclair



Peter Gulacsi



Curtis Davies



I only made three sales this Summer, Matt Phillips was unhappy with his first team opportunities and decided to let him leave to Everton for £3.5m, he had three full seasons with us and I almost tripled the £1.2m I spent on him so I’m pretty happy with how he worked out. Remi Pillot also left for first team opportunities as well as Simon Cox, who I reluctantly sold to West Ham for £3.7m, unfortunately the club has just progressed beyond his abilities otherwise I’d have liked to have kept him.



Possibly the two most high profile signings were the last, I was very surprised when Ramires agreed to a loan move from P.S.G. I’m only paying £21,000 of his wages which makes it a real bargain, will definitely be a big feature this season. Next to follow was his team mate Matias Ezequiel Schelotto, I’ve never heard of him but he’s a leading Premier right mid, however I’ll be playing him at right back where he’s accomplished and hope I can train him to natural, however will be far better than Chris Gunter either way.

Ramires



Matias Ezequiel Schelotto



So, a reasonably quiet window with seven players joining the first team squad, but with some only joining as back up I’m confident it won’t disrupt the squad too much and will be playing with roughly 8 of the same starting 11 from last season.

I am quite optimistic about this season, we have a fantastic squad especially in midfield and I believe we can definitely improve on last season and perhaps break the top half. After the first 10 games of the season we find ourselves in 8th place with 15 points, 5 wins and 5 draws which I can’t really complain about. The only frustrating part is we lost to Swansea, Hull and Watford all of which I would say are games we could win, which would have put us in an even better position. The highlight has to be a 2-0 win against Tottenham which most expected us to lose heavily, and then a 5-1 win against Stoke to cancel out the goal difference against Man City. We have a media prediction of 14th place this season which I am pretty confident we can finish higher than.



I suppose the major disappointment is losing to Colchester in the Carling Cup, I really don’t understand how that happened, I had most of the key players involved, but with the league positon the board don’t seem too unhappy.

Not a terrible ten games for us in the league this time but not the best either, suffering five defeats. Four of the losses against Manchester United, Arsenal, Chelsea and Everton could be expected I suppose but the disappointing one was the week after against Norwich. Despite this we did manage to get back onto our feet winning three of the last four with Nassim Ben Khalifa again taking the headlines getting ten goals from ten games.



11th position isn’t that great, but looking at the points we are actually only 4 points off 6th position and 13 clear of relegation so I am pretty impressed in that perspective. There are a lot of winnable games coming up before now and the end of the season and I think we’ve got a real chance of performing well above expectations both in points tally and league position, our current record is 44 points and I need just 16 points from 18 games to break that, so I’m targeting at least the 50 point mark now, and if we get on a decent run we could even do better.

I was going to do two updates but after finishing the season I’ve decided to compile it into one, it’s been a very good season, poor cup runs which seem to be our trademark but a very impressive league position and outstanding performances from individual players.

This is where we found ourselves after 30 games, we had a very realistic chance of finishing in the top six, but could also still finished below mid table so it was all dependant on the final fixtures. I also brought in more reinforcements during the January window, just the one signing however and it was Yannick N’dJeng from Liverpool on loan until the end of the season, he scored 19 goals for them last season but found himself unneeded this season, he eventually got 3 goals in 8 games for me and I sold Youann Gouffran, probably my most uninspired signing as he never really got going, however I didn’t lose any money, actually making £200k in the sale fee to Watford.





The last eight games we only suffered two losses, which were to be expected against Chelsea and Manchester United, however we did manage a dramatic victory over Arsenal in between which proved to be the deciding factor in our end of season success. Nassim Ben Khalifa scored eight goals in those final games and we finished in 6th position, qualifying for the Europa League!







Player Stats

As you can see we had some very impressive individual efforts, we only had a 41 game season and Ramires started 40 of those matches which should explain his worth, he also achieved an average rating of 7.50 which is incredible.



Nassim Ben Khalifa again had an incredible run in front of goal, finishing just one behind top goalscorer Lewandowski, which was a relief as only Andy Carroll also reached double figures.



It would appear that our presence in Europe will improve our financial situation dramatically, with our sponsorship deals almost doubling.



My fears have finally been realised, big clubs are starting to come in for my stars and Will Hughes and Nassim Ben Khalifa are attracting the likes of Liverpool and Chelsea, I have rejected their first advances and hopefully that will be all, the only way these two will be going is if the board automatically accept an offer, they are that valuable to us.





One other pleasing factor is Mason Bennett is showing his potential, winning young player of the year award in the Championship, it may be time to give him a run in the first team or possibly give him one more year out on loan, but I do believe he will prove to be a star.

You've done great to bounce back up and get in the real mist of the top 6. Its going to be hard to repeat the success of last season but I am looking forward to see how your players cope in the tough world of European football.