sure as eggs
QPR fans
This one for LG; West Ham away at QPR - where would you drink?
Sorry Mate, missed this thread, not much to be cheerful about to be honest. The Conningham Arms or the Spring Bok would be my choices as a QPR fan.
We're dead and buried for sure but shark $8.50 for a win and Liverpool playing inconsistantly, might be worth a tenner just for the hell of it.
I'm going to City v QPR this weekend. I'll definitely be backing the hoops, despite sitting in with the locals...
Good on ya, wait for Barton to get sent off yet again. ;)
Yep, the only goodnews is that 14 freeloaders are all off contract, including 4 defenders and a goalkeeper - Green. Phew. Then there's the perenial freeloader Shaun Wright-Phillips whom only ever had one decent season anywhere and was sucking the club dry for 3 years. Good riddence. Even if he is a friend of Chris Greenacres.
Who signed him up... Arent they mainly Harry's signings?
Yes most of them are. "Triffic set of lads", Possibly Hughes that signed SWP or was it Warnock? It might have been Briatore who signed him and dumped him on Warnock if I remember right. Bye bye Rio, Sad about his wife, no one deserves that happening but as a player for QPR, you sucked, along with Park. Hill is over the Hill, Dunne is over the Hill, Caulker played like shark when we were hoping he would be the base for a new solid defence. Barton to his credit only screwed up once this season has did put in an effort but Phillips, SWP, Hoillett were just waste of spaces.
To all you Geordies out there, Newcastle must be shark if even QPR can beat them. We're not bottom of the league without good reason. Although Fer's goal was pretty impressive.
Right, time for an update,
Lots of the deadwood has gone, loanees gone, Barton gone, Dunne gone, Green probably of to Chelsea (hehehe), Austin might be going to Chelsea (booooo) or Nukeasrehole or WestHam, Traore to go with some luck as he was one of the bad eggs. Henry offered a new deal - but he had a decent enough season. Fer is meant to be going but no one has made a move for him, Taarabt has gone, the biggest fudgeen sponge at the club has gon - Shaun Wright-Phillips, Phillips might be going to WBA, Hoilett has gone. Zamora gone, Murphy (goalkeeper) gone. Isla, Vargas, Zarate & Kranjkar were the loanees. Vargas was always played out of position and i reckon we would not have been relegated if he had been played as the lone striker or as a partner up front for Austin. Ask Liverpool fans on their visit to London. Rio Ferdinand, retired.( Very sad about his wife, not nice. Hopefully he will find success in some venture, just didn't do it for us in the Hoops like Park before him)
In comes Jay Emmanuel-Thomas, Swindon Town's Massimo Luongo and Ben Gladwin are here. Jamie Mackie has been re-signed from Forest. Faurlin has signed a new contract. Hill unfortunatley has been offered a new contract. Too old and a slower turning circle than a bus.
QPR going after Reece James - Man U.
Any QPR fan will be hugely stoked with that list of released/leaving, between poor attitude to lack of ability it's amazing most of them have lasted so long!
Sources within the club says there were some bad eggs. Vargas, Taarabt were 2 mentioned and Traore is another who still is there for the moment. Wouldn't be so bad if Traore wasn't such a shark player. That the club have pruned their wage bill quite considerably, yes we are releieved. Still some fat to be trimmed yet though. SWP was getting at least 65k p/w for not even making the bench. and hardly made it for 3 years. When offered to go out on loan, he refused. Which suggests he is in it for the money only as anyone else would have gone just to play regular football.
Interesting times at Loftus Road. I don't think that Chris Ramsey is as clueless as some on QPR forums are making out. Fascinated by what CR and Ferdinand are trying to do. Made some interesting signings - young and cheapish for the most part which is a breath of fresh air. For all that, if Austin and Phillips go in the next day or two we could be rather screwed. I will be amazed if they stay. I don't even mind Clint Hill still playing as at least you know that he will give 100% which is more than can be said for some that have 'represented' the club in recent years.
But Hill's 100% is no good anymore. too slow and turns like a Wellington bus. Has been found out for the last 3 years. Passionate player that was solid but sorry, the legs have gone so to speak. Luongo has done very well.
Disagree LG. Hill still has a roll to play for me in a backup capacity now and then later on in other capacities with the club..
WHAT A SENSATIONAL TRANSFER WINDOW!!!! Been a good few years since the club has had one quite so positive. Shame Hoillet and Traore didn't go and I don't really care whether Fer and Sandro are with us either. Don't rate Sandro and for all his spectacular goals Fer is extremely poor defensively. Would have rather have got the money for them but unfortunately no one else rates them either.
Kept Austin yet some team paid 32 mill for a 19 year old unproven striker. Austin has the history and was easily worth a lot more more than the 15 million asked for. Shame Green, Hoilett, Sandro and Traore didn't go. Chery and Luongo have been bargains and revelations.
Unlucky this morning too. Green sent off then conceded another later. Poor first half but looked much better until sending off.
Calamity Green had yet another brain fart. Seething over it. The club should just let him go but no, Ramsey says he has forgiven him. WTF?? 3 points gifted.
I don't think I'll ever understand the decision to keep Green and let Cesar go. I imagine not too much difference in wages and Cesar the far better keeper.
Chris Ramsey is gone. Warnock temp boss.
So much has happened in the last five months. Warnock moved on, Jimmy Floyd Hasselbank installed. Over the "close season" almost all of the expensive dead wood has been moved on. Only left are Caulker & Sandro to drain the clubs financial resources. And new players are arriving.
Today we kicked off in the Championship - a 3-0 win against Leeds at Loftus Road. Onohua, Chery & Poulter scored for the hoops.
This season we have 3 new kits too and I like them all. Back to full and broad hoops for the home top. Also a "new" club badge and gone is the last memory of the Orange Donut.
A great start, fingers crossed!!
Great kits they've got this year, yeah. Nice, simple but elegant. The red/maroon kit my favourite.
Lonegunmen, do you reckon QPR will get promoted this season?
No but things are being sorted off the field to put the club in a better place so to speak. Still missing a proper right back. I predicted 10th, anything above that would be nice. I liek all three kits, might have to try and invest in some should I get some dosh together. Phoenix Season ticket is next after I get my car sorted.
Fudgeing lol
Not Lol, but a good old fashioned thrashing. A loss totally deserved and well done your guys.
Yay, some awesome news, Jimmy Floyd-Hasselbank is goner burgers! Also known as Chris Ramsey ver 2 with both know for playing an "attacking" 4-5-1 formation at "Home" and achieving sweet FA as a result. Sadly it looks like Ferdinands former Spuds buddy - Sherwood -looks like he is gonna be the front runner. Still the Phoenix won, the All Blacks lost and JFH gone, what an awesome weekend.
Ollie is back on a 2 1/2 year deal. We now have the motivator, we just need a tactician. Paul Clement or Kenny Jackett?
Marc Bircham is back now as first team coach, Ian Holloway is Manager. At least the premodonnas will now learn to respect fans and play with some pride and passion instead of just the money and run.
Next Up - a visit to Portman Road and HN's beloved Ipswich. Will I get banned? Will he even speak to me should our guys win?
Naturally, should Ipswich win I do expect a remark or 3 from him...and rightly so.
It's OK HN, your guys won because you played a lot better, especially in the 2nd half when our goalie had a brain fart. 3 points to you and fair enough too!
You read Loft for Words? Well done, there is some good stuff in there. Here is that article.....
Following Thursday’s poorly attended defeat to Wolves, and two months before we get to play at home on a Saturday afternoon again, LFW would like to plea for a ceasefire from the Championship’s main broadcaster.
Dear Sky,
My old mate Stuart, sadly no longer with us, used to start letters like this with ‘do you recognise me? I’m your customer.'
Every month the thick end of £100 goes out of my bank account and for that we get the whole lot – the fibre broadband, the telephone we never use and all of the television. All the kids channels, all the movies, all the documentaries and all the sport including, for an extra £17 a month, all the BT Sport channels which we never watch but pay for just on the off chance we might. LFW is a Sky household, one of those ‘triple play customers’ who are the prime real estate for the telecoms companies. The BT rights grab, the rising Premier League deal – it’s all done to get people like us signed up to contracts exactly like the one we’re on. There are half a dozen of us working on this site, and there are four all-encompassing Sky subscriptions between us.
So please, if anybody at Sky does ever read this, don’t dismiss this as the standard anti-Sky, anti-Murdoch rant by somebody who in any way boycotts your product.
Nor is it a worthy piece from the Against Modern Football movement. We don’t spend our Saturdays at Dulwich Hamlet supping pints of Goblin’s Cock and saying we enjoy the football much more than the professional stuff. We are Championship season ticket holders who consume Sky’s football content voraciously. I’m about to sit down and watch Forest v Newcastle, really looking forward to it.
The coverage, the camera angles, the analysis, the picture quality – all of it is fantastic. Sky are way ahead of the rival broadcasters in recognising that football fans don’t want to be bored to death by Chris Sutton, don’t want to be antagonised by a bonehead like Steve Claridge, don’t want to be provoked by a honking goose like Robbie Savage. We want to learn, and be educated, and understand, and gain insight. We want Gary Neville, Jamie Carragher, Graeme Souness, David Prutton – we don’t really want Jamie Redknapp, but we appreciate the fact he lets us clear extra football watching time past the Mrs – and you give us that.
And we’re not going to sit here and make out like the Football League would be better off without you. Firstly, because we’ve seen in the days before Sky, and in more recent times when terrestrial broadcasters have laid their hands on highlights and live rights to our division, what a pale imitation the coverage they provide is. Rushed, poorly edited highlights packages beamed out in the middle of the night, occasional live matches on dim and distant digital channels.
Secondly, because the money you pay to our clubs is vital to the survival of many of them – three Championship mainstays at the time of the ITV Digital collapse (Grimsby, Stockport, Tranmere) plunged into non-league and will never ascend back to their previous level because that money never materialised.
And thirdly because we like watching it. It’s fantastic that somebody is paying such attention, offering such coverage, to our divisions. Ian Holloway speaks highly of Gary Hughes, your head of football content, who went to his superiors and convinced them that wider, better, improved Football League coverage could be the answer to losing the Champions League rights to BT Sport. He sounds like a man after my own heart. I’ll take a League One tear up between Bury and Bolton over any meaningless Champions League group stage game – a group stage that lasts five months, is frequently played in front of half full stadiums, and produces the same dozen teams for the final knockout stages – any day of the week. I think you had a bit of a touch losing that competition just as it stagnates completely. We should meet for a pint, it sounds like we’d get on.
But, guys, we need to talk.
On November 19 QPR played a home match with Norwich City at 15.00 on a Saturday. This is the last time we will do that until Saturday January 28 when we play Wigan – a full three months, through the busiest part of the season, and even that will be moved if either team makes the FA Cup fourth round. Conceivably, it could be Saturday February 11 against Huddersfield before it happens again – 84 days between Saturday afternoon home games, longer than the summer off-season. In the meantime we have games on Thursday night, Friday night, Saturday lunchtime, Sunday morning, Monday afternoon, Tuesday morning, and Wednesday night.
This may not resonate with you. What’s in a kick off time? In Spain the whole top flight is staggered across three days and it’s all on TV, it’s the modern era. You pay a lot of money for your Football League rights, money the clubs can’t do without, and for that money you expect to be able to move fixtures around, stage your little ‘Ten in Ten” gimmicks and so on, and that’s maybe fair enough. But let me give you three reasons why it should – one from your business’ point of view, one from my (your customer’s) point of view, and one wider ‘what sort of country do we want to live in?’ view.
Firstly, from Sky’s point of view, you are damaging your product by the way you’re going about this. You are football people - we can tell from your coverage, you love the sport. You’ve surely noticed how dreadful the atmosphere is at games you move to morning (and 12 noon is the fudgeing morning let me tell you) kick offs. Who has ever turned around at 12 noon on a Sunday and said “do you know what I could do with now? QPR v Aston Villa"? Everybody is tired, bleary eyed, hungover. The players’ routines and timetables are thrown out of whack. The atmosphere is non-existent. The games frequently take a long time to get going and peter out quite quickly. You must have noticed this. You’ve also surely noticed that moving games to Thursday nights shaves thousands off the gates. Our recent match with Wolves was a prime example – half as many away fans as Wolves usually bring, huge swathes of empty seats across the home ends. Yes the TV money is vital to the clubs, yes you pay extra match fees to cover that loss of ticket income for games you do pick as part of the deal, but do you really want to be showing second tier matches, being played in front of empty stadiums, on a Thursday night? I noted with interest the dozen or more occasions your presenters and commentators mentioned the fact that it was a sell out for the recent Leeds v Newcastle game – so you clearly do think that a big, noisy crowd adds something to your product.
It may sound impressive to be able to say you’re showing 180 games from the Football League, but if you end up achieving that by cramming poor quality, often meaningless, games into anti-social kick off times, wrecking the atmosphere in the process, is that really providing value to subscribers? Do you believe anybody catching a look at QPR v Wolves last Thursday in a pub or at a friend’s house will have thought “this looks/sounds great, I’ve got to get a Sky subscription”? I bet most of the people who do have one watched The Apprentice instead. What were the viewing figures for that game? Honestly? Would showing 60 good matches at times that don’t hamper the atmosphere not be better for you and your subscribers than showing 180 games like that?
Secondly, from our (your customer’s) point of view – you’re pissing us off. Last season, under pressure from the Football Supporters Federation, you agreed to release a rough guide to when your fixture changes would be announced. The November fixtures, you said, would be revealed by the end of August. When that date came and went, and with the cheaper tickets fast running out, we purchased six train reservations for our away match at Middlesbrough. This was then, deep into September just six weeks before the game, moved to a Friday night.
I’m still amazed that anybody at Sky, Middlesbrough, QPR or the Football League thought that was ok. This “they pay the money, they can do what they like, we can’t do anything about it” attitude is not acceptable in that circumstance and it ignores a lot of the traditions and fabric of the sport that made you invest so heavily in it in the first place. What did you buy Football League rights if it wasn't for people like us? We certainly won’t have been the only QPR fans left nursing completely useless, non-refundable advance purchase £40 train tickets that day (£240 worth of them).
Now you may not care about that, but back to point one, that game was subsequently played out in front of almost no away fans at all, because London to Middlesbrough on a Friday night in November is in no way practical. Is that good for your product? Occasionally the Sky commentators will mention “the brave few” or “the hardy few” who’ve “travelled all this way” on “a difficult night for travel” with an apparent complete lack of self-awareness that the reason Gillingham are playing at Wigan on a Friday night is because Sky told them they had to.
As we’ve already outlined, we’re your prime market for this Championship coverage, and yet you’re constantly going out of your way to antagonise us by moving fixtures close to the date of the game, moving fixtures to anti-social kick off times, and moving games over which huge distances must be travelled to get there away from Saturdays, making us take time off work, costing us money for unused train tickets. We want to watch your coverage, we want to attend games and create the atmosphere that improves your coverage, why are you being like this with us?
Thirdly, a wider point. If we could go for that pint, I know a nice little pub in Shepherd’s Bush that would be ideal for it. It’s a pub that had to give up its Sky subscription, when the cost of it was upped to £1,400 a month (£16,800 a year) a year ago. It’s taken a hit to its takings as a result, customers have gone elsewhere – some of them to pubs with hooky foreign feeds of your coverage, some reward for our landlord playing by the rules – but not £16,800 a year’s worth. It is, though, now even more reliant than ever on the trade it gets between 11.00 and 23.00 on a Saturday when QPR are at home as a result. Now you’ve taken that away from them during what should be their three busiest months of the season. A pub in an absolutely prime piece of real estate, at the end of a road where five other pubs have been closed and turned into flats. A pub full of your customers, a pub that used to be one of your customers itself. A pub where they stand four deep at the bar at 14.00 on a Saturday, but one that was absolutely dead at 18.45 on Thursday night. A pub that can’t live with Sky, and can’t live without you.
And don’t think that there won’t be other pubs, cafes, restaurants, chicken shops that suffer the same. Reliant on 18,000 people coming into the area every other Saturday, you’ve taken that away from them for three months.
QPR is one of the few clubs left with a print fanzine. A Kick Up The R’s is absolutely brilliant. More than 30 years old, full of wonderful writers, considered pieces, brilliantly edited and curated for three decades by Dave Thomas who travels to every QPR game from the north west. A vital voice when, on three separate occasions, people have spoken about merging our club with another and ending it altogether. There'd potentially be no QPR for you to mess with without these guys. It relies on Saturday home games, when the crowds are bigger, and the selling time is longer. Midweek matches, morning matches, with lower crowds, less selling time etc hits it hard. You’ve taken away all of its former and left it with only the latter for three months over Christmas.
QPR is one of the few clubs around that still makes an effort with its matchday programme. It’s a regular award winner, edited by a lifelong QPR fan, but its sales are being hit the same for the same reason. What incentive is there for the club not to just hack a publication that has a rich history back to the very basic, cheapest format it can find?
Sky, with all its riches, may not care about fanzines, or chicken shops, or pubs in Shepherds Bush – though it should, it’s exactly this sort of tradition and fabric of the game that sets English football apart, that makes it so appealing around the world. It should care more that months of fixture fudgewittery like this will put people off buying season tickets at QPR, Leeds and elsewhere. The Sky staff on duty on Thursday night may not have twigged that the Lower Loft behind the goal was entirely empty because that’s the family stand and lads and dads – Sky customers current and future – can’t do midweek games on school nights and therefore can’t do a QPR home game at all for weeks at the moment because of you.
But when the pubs are all flats, and the football fans have all got sick of paying £500 for a season ticket only to have all the games moved, and the Sky subscribers are tired of watching mediocre football played in front of half full stadiums and dead atmosphere, then what? Then who’s going to be there to listen to Ray Winstone trot out his latest odds? Then who’s going to happily swallow a seven week wait for a rude Open Reach engineer to come and connect our broadband, because we love our Sky Sports so much?
We’re not asking for QPR to never be on television. We’re not asking for games never to be moved. We’re quite reasonable really. Please give three months’ notice for moves – the cheap train tickets go on sale three months before. Please consider the distance between the two clubs if you’re moving it to a Friday night. Please forget this idea that anybody wants to watch Championship football on a Thursday – nobody does, not even your most obsessive viewers like us, your viewing figures tell you as much. Please take into consideration how long it’s been since that club has played on a Saturday before moving another of their games – and the effect the lack of Saturday games has on your customers and the businesses around football grounds. Please ask yourself whether you like watching football on a Sunday morning, whether you think it’s a good product for your channels. Ask yourself what made you invest so much in the rights you now exercise without thought or consideration in the first place.
Or, you know, don’t. But I think you know you’ve paid too much for that Premier League deal, I think you know you’ve paid too much for Thierry Henry to say nothing very much at all, I think you know the Premier League isn’t all it’s cracked up to be (I had to laugh at the outcome of your "Red Monday"), I think you know the viewing figures for it are falling (and therefore subscribers will follow) and I think you know you’re in trouble if Google or Apple get involved in that next round of rights bidding for the top flight. If I’m wrong, I wonder why your call centre throws free stuff at us whenever we ring and say we’re thinking of cancelling a bit of our subscription
If I’m right and you’ve pissed the Football League around so much that supporters have lost interest in both attending the matches and watching them on your channels, that pubs have closed, that there’s an active movement against you… Then what?
Yours,
LoftforWords (Sky customers)
Never read it before, came across that article on twitter
Good stuff innit
What some do not know is that QPR fans in general are quite a realistic and honest bunch. We take the piss out of ourselves, we live in hope and forever have such hope dashed. We might not be a BIG club but my fellow supporters have a lot of heart and a sense of humour.
The only thing we keep reminding the club about it to be honest with us.
Having said all this, I personally find very similar parallels between QPR and the Phoenix. False hopes not materialising, no consistency. You are either on a high or a very low and a lot of the time the football sucks to watch and it is only the banter amongst fans that keeps you coming along.
Maybe this is why I keep punishing myself? However I do love both entities with a passion despite my negative approach to some things - that is because I care.
Sorry HN, bragging rights till next we meet. The game was on Bein 2 this morning and I have recorded it - an extremely rare QPR win in front of the cameras.
Where do I start? FA Cup Round 3 QPR 1 Blackburn 2.
Now for the two records which I am not sure if I should or should not be proud of but the cynical side of me says I should.
Ollie has never won any cup matches whilst in charge of QPR in two spells.
QPR have not progressed beyond the 3rd round since 1997...and You Man United fans complain when you lose just one game.
Cliches are about to be released including the generic ones -
"Now we can concentrate on improving our League position."
"The youngster were given a run to show what they have."
"The FA Cup is not that important anymore" (Except for most of us fans whom still think it is the number one Cup).
"I'm very disappointed, the lads are shattered" - yeah right.
Reading vs QPR on live on Bein2 @ 8:55am tomorrow (Friday).
Yep, recording whilst I will be at work.