QPR were a Premier League club not so long ago, but Dave Thomas outlines the poor decisions that have cost the club dear
According to April’s Sky TV Guide, the clash between Sunderland and QPR on Good Friday is not only important to the home side (“desperate to return to the Premiership after the disappointment of last season’s relegation”) but also to Rangers, who “after replacing Stewart Houston (sic) with Ray Harford … are chasing promotion, too.” With, at the time of writing, half a dozen games left to avoid the ignominy of a second relegation in three years, that’s going to be some chase. Given the amount of money poured into getting Rangers back into the Premiership, it’s surprising that the Fraud Squad haven’t been called in to investigate yet another season of woeful underachievement. After 13 years in the top flight, during which time a points-for-finishing-position table would have seen QPR seventh, Rangers finally paid the price for having a rich kid owner/chairman, Richard Thompson, who could reel off scores and League positions at the drop of a hat, but didn’t understand the difference between running a club in businesslike fashion (good) and running it as a business (not good).
Just five seasons ago, QPR finished fifth in the Premier League. The following season we finished ninth. And the season after that, eighth – narrowly avoiding relegation. Of course, Thompson couldn’t see that. He only understood League positions. That fifth place should, and could have been built on. Instead, key players (Ferdinand, Sinton, Darren Peacock) were allowed to leave for no discernible reason. We’d papered over the cracks for a couple of years but relegation was inevitable.
Chris Wright, a season ticket holder and boss of Chrysalis, though strictly second division in the millionaires league, took over with ambitious plans to bring rugby to Loftus Road. To facilitate this Rangers would become a plc through a share issue. A T-shirt on sale at the time summed up the prevailing mood: Rangers were only ‘on loan to Division One’. Ray Wilkins managed to convince Wright that everything would be okay because, in his words to us some six months previously, “the guys at Crystal Palace tell me we’ll beat 90 per cent of the First Division if we go down”.
In fact, 90 per cent of the First Division completely misunderstood the message, and with a second successive relegation beckoning, and the share issue having by now swelled the coffers, Wilkins’ successor Stewart Houston was “ordered” to raid the piggybank. John Spencer and Gavin Peacock, noses firmly out of joint at Gullit’s Chelsea, were bought with little, if any, change out of £4 million. Anxious to avoid sending out the wrong messages to Rangers fans, Wright had earlier refused to sanction the sale of Trevor Sinclair for a tempting £5 million. It was enough to steer us out of danger and almost within reach of the play-offs.
During the summer, Wright and his board decided to go for broke. A club record £3 million was shelled out for Mike Sheron, who is now repaying that investment at the rate of around a half-a-million pounds per goal. Mind you, he’d get a game with Wasps any day. The fans and the board gave up on promotion six months ago, long before Stewart Houston had given way to Ray Harford. Harford has now not only to pick up the pieces of six years’ worth of mismanagement,with the two-year Sky TV money cushion about to disappear, he has to do it without the funds made available to his predecessors.
Oddly enough, and even with the share price now less than the cost of a tube of smarties, the fans remain generally supportive of both chairman and manager. The sale of Andy Impey and Trevor Sinclair to West Ham has signalled a return to the Rangers’ way of old, but we’re realists now. The club used to survive by buying promising players from the lower divisions, turning them into the nearly-finished article, and selling them on. It used to cause dismay but it’s far easier to accept when you’re at the bottom of the First Division.
It’ll probably be a while before we’re welcoming £3 million players to Loftus Road again, but given the performances of the big names this season that may be no bad thing. Chasing promotion is one thing, chasing rainbows quite another.
From WSC 135 May 1998. What was happening this month