BEGIN:VCALENDAR PRODID:-//vBulletin 6//EN VERSION:2.0 CALSCALE:GREGORIAN BEGIN:VEVENT UID:3f1383e7-4a9f-425c-9ea2-71126d27fe31 DTSTAMP:20261023T004045Z SUMMARY:Ollie DESCRIPTION:I asked Aidan Magee from Skysports his views on the Ollie sacki ng on another FB Page.\nBelow is his brilliantly crafted response:\n\nPaul Dowling Have to say I'm disappointed.\n\nI've read closely some of the co mments on here and on other QPR pages on Facebook and it's encouraging tha t most of our fans - usually the ones who attend most weeks - disapprove o f the decision to remove Ian Holloway.\n\nI must confess that last summer\ , I feared relegation and thought we'd finish with fewer than 35 points. T hat's certainly where our spending should have left us.\n\nTo secure safet y by March\, having made some very decent signings in the last 18 months\, introducing some promising young players to the team\, and slightly raisi ng last season's finishing position and points total is very good going.\n \nTo do so beating Wolves\, Cardiff\, Aston Villa and Sheffield United\, w hen they were second in the table\, and fighting back from 2-0 down at Ful ham - the best team in the Championship since Christmas - to get a draw\, is also worthy of credit.\n\nYet doing so on a spend of £530\,000 this se ason is\, frankly\, pretty remarkable.\n\nThat barely gets you a two bedro om apartment in Chiswick. And even then\, you'll be lucky to get your own parking space.\n\nIn 1996/97\, we paid nearly £8million in what's now the Championship for John Spencer\, Gavin Peacock\, Mike Sheron\, Matthew Ros e\, Steve Slade\, Paul Murray and Steve Morrow - then another £500\,000 o n Vinnie Jones the following season.\n\nFor the avoidance of any doubt - t his was 21 years ago\; Princess Diana was still alive and Hong Kong was st ill sovereign British territory.\n\nI have repeatedly asked during convers ations on Facebook this season who the critics of Holloway would have sign ed for £530\,000. \n\nNobody has replied with a name. Not even one.\n\nEv en Holloway winning an average of one in three of his games since returnin g to the club warrants a mention when so many of those matches near the en d of both campaigns were earmarked for looking at squad players. \n\nDon't get me wrong\, there have been low points in the last 18 months. \n\nThe away form has been very poor\, certain players have not markedly improved as we hoped and the football hasn't always been attractive to watch. \n\nE ven allowing for this\, it's impossible to argue that Holloway did a bad j ob. \n\nIn fact\, he did a very good job.\n\nI spend my professional exist ence talking to players\, managers\, agents\, ex-pros\, directors\, owners \, club media officials\, fellow journalists and many others within footba ll. All of them will tell you how critical recruitment is in the modern ga me.\n\nWithout good recruitment\, you can't achieve the quality of individ ual nor the "culture" needed within a squad - and the most common result i s a handful of disaffected players who undermine the manager and invariabl y get him sacked.\n\nThe key determinant of effective recruitment is money . And we don't have much of that. Only three clubs in our division spent l ess on transfer fees than we did.\n\nThere are a few who dispute how much we've spent\, and point to a dwindling number of high earners still presen t in the squad as part of the expenditure. \n\nThe decisions not to renew the contracts of Jamie Mackie\, James Perch and Nedum Onuoha make clear th e club's intention to move on many of the players earning five-figure week ly sums.\n\nThere have been some horrific mistakes made in the transfer ma rket since 2011. We all know about them. Indeed\; we're still paying for t hem in so many ways. \n\nAt some point\, though\, we have to move on from those appalling errors of judgement and look at what is being done to reme dy the situation. We can't change the past\, so let's live in the now.\n\n There are some who contribute to QPR debates on social media who don't gra sp how little we've spent\, and just how vital that is when assessing wher e the club\, the team and the management are at.\n\nIt's absolutely fine f or fans on here to immerse themselves in all things Rangers - we have care ers\, families and mortgages absorbing our time and headspace and we can't always preoccupy ourselves with the affairs of our Championship rivals. \ n\nA big part of my job\, however\, is knowing what goes on elsewhere in f ootball. \n\nAnd if I were to offer any advice to fans who use only scorel ines and soundbites to form their opinion\, I'd urge them to take a closer look at other clubs in our division and match what they've done against w hat Holloway has done. \n\nLeeds United is a good starting point. They've spent £25.6million since last summer. They also took two Premier League l oans.\nThe average wage of a Premier League player is now a staggering £5 0\,817-a-week\, which means that when a Championship player signs from tha t level on loan\, even if you're only paying a percentage of the salary\, you're probably placing that player among your highest earners.\n\nNeedles s to say\, a win at Elland Road last week would have seen us finish higher in the table than Leeds. As it was\, they got four points more than our 5 6. It appears £25.6m doesn't buy you much these days.\n\nElsewhere in Yor kshire\, Sheffield Wednesday spent £13.6m - including more than £10m on one player\, Jordan Rhodes. We took four points off them.\n\nFurther down the country\, Birmingham splashed out £15.49m\, brought in five Premier L eague loans and I'm told they are paying their goalkeeper David Stockdale £100\,000-a-week after he joined on a free from Brighton. \n\nWe did the 'double' over them and finished 10 points better off.\n\nNorwich spent £1 3.3m\, with three top flight loans\, to finish two places and four points above us in the league\, but not before we beat them 4-1 on Easter Monday. \n\nSimilarly\, Reading invested £13.1m trying to bolster a squad which r eached the Play-Off final at Wembley. They didn't take any Premier League loans but did sign two pretty expensive ones from the Championship in Chri s Martin and Tommy Elphick - and all to finish 12 points below us in 20th. \n\nContinuing the theme\, Nottingham Forest spent £6.6m and recruited fo ur on loan from the top division\, supplemented by the not-so-cheap free t ransfer of former QPR loanee Ben Watson from Watford.\n\nForest would be c onsidered lower end investors in the Championship\, yet they've spent 12 t imes what we have\, and finished one place below us.\n\nSunderland spent t wice what we did and brought in nine loans from the Prem. We all know what happened to them. \n\nHull were supposed to be in meltdown in respect of ownership and expenditure. It didn't prevent £17.6m leaving their account . They may have beaten us 4-0 the other week but they still finished below us.\n\nAt the top end\, the sums reach truly eye-watering levels.\n\nMidd lesbrough spent £50.4m and after losing their first leg Play-Off semi-fin al at home to Aston Villa\, who boast a former England captain and Champio ns League winner on £100\,000-a-week\, they now have their work cut out t o win through to the Play-Off final.\n\nEven those who laud Neil Warnock - a manager I respect greatly - for leading Cardiff to automatic promotion and\, like me\, feel he should have been given the QPR job when Jimmy-Floy d Hasselbaink got it\, will be interested to hear that he spent £11.4m. A job very well done\, yes - but still no fairytale.\n\nAs documented above \, we gave Holloway £530\,000 to improve a squad which finished 18th the previous season. \n\nWe signed one loan from the Premier League from a sid e promoted from the Championship - that was Brighton's Kazenga LuaLua. He hadn't played in the top division in nearly a decade since making a handfu l of appearances for Newcastle. \n\nHe left us after a few months - no har m done\, but he was no Alexsandar Mitrovic\, who by the way cost Fulham £ 600\,000 in loan fees alone! That's more than we spent in the entire seaso n and he'll only be there for five months.\n\nSo if our manager gets sacke d for outperforming most of his counterparts with a budget of £530\,000\, which he spent shopping at the likes of Barnsley\, Exeter and Linfield - what should happen to the managers of Leeds\, Sheff Wed\, Birmingham\, Hul l and even Barnsley\, who parted with £5.7m and got relegated?\n\nI'm gue ssing they should all be burned at the stake?\n\nOr do we accept that\, ac tually\, we were employing an experienced guy with three promotions and tw o Play-Off final appearances under his belt\, who knew his squad and its l imitations\, had intimate knowledge of players coming through\, had an und erstanding of the Championship\, spent his money exceptionally well and ha d an historic attachment to the club?\n\nHis modest spending brought Luke Freeman\, Josh Scowen\, Matt Smith\, Paul Smyth\, Alex Baptiste and Ebere Eze to Loftus Road - all very sound acquisitions for various reasons.\n\nH ow many worthwhile signings can you think of from the previous five years before Holloway returned? Charlie Austin\, Ryan Nelsen\, Danny Simpson\, N iko Kranjcar\, Matt Phillips - and you could make a case for Richard Dunne and Rob Green. \n\nWe'll be lucky to use the fingers on our second hand t o count them because it's not long before you really have to start scrapin g the barrel.\n\nI met up with some senior QPR employees before the Leeds game last week\, and one told me that while the season as a whole represen ted a very respectable achievement\, it's unrealistic to expect to repeat it again next year without investment.\n\nThe truth is that if we actually did have anything like a generous budget\, we'd be attracting managers wh o aren't in the last chance saloon that Steve McClaren now finds himself i n - one more bad job\, and his days in front line management are probably done.\n\nI've met McClaren at Sky a few times and he's a likeable bloke. I 've even spoken to him fairly recently about his time at QPR\, which he th oroughly enjoyed.\n\nI'm doubtful that he can get more out of the squad th an Holloway has. It all depends on whether he illicits the kind of respons e he got from his players while coaching Manchester United and QPR\, and m anaging Middlesbrough\, FC Twente\, and during his first spell at Derby - rather than his unsuccessful periods with England\, Wolfsburg\, Forest\, N ewcastle and second time round at Derby. \n\nHe's experienced\, respected and has plenty to prove. If QPR continue not to support their managers fin ancially and are up front about it from the start\, then at least there wi ll be few arguments over transfer policy.\n\nPerhaps\, therefore\, the job will be one that appeals to the very best of McClaren's coaching ability\ , which may work to our advantage.\n\nIf not\, and it transpires that Tony Fernandes has yet again been seduced by a big name\, then it's sadly back to square one. URL:https://www.wearetherangersboys.com/node/2467500 DTSTART;VALUE=DATE:20180515 DTEND;VALUE=DATE:20180517 END:VEVENT END:VCALENDAR