Stuck In The Middle - With Whom?

I asked Aidan Magee from Skysports his views on the Ollie sacking on another FB Page.
 Below is his brilliantly crafted response:



Paul Dowling Have to say I'm disappointed.
 I've read closely some of the comments on here and on other QPR pages on Facebook and it's encouraging that most of our fans - usually the ones who attend most weeks - disapprove of the decision to remove Ian Holloway.
 I must confess that last summer, I feared relegation and thought we'd finish with fewer than 35 points. That's certainly where our spending should have left us.
 To secure safety by March, having made some very decent signings in the last 18 months, introducing some promising young players to the team, and slightly raising last season's finishing position and points total is very good going.



To do so beating Wolves, Cardiff, Aston Villa and Sheffield United, when they were second in the table, and fighting back from 2-0 down at Fulham - the best team in the Championship since Christmas - to get a draw, is also worthy of credit.
 Yet doing so on a spend of £530,000 this season is, frankly, pretty remarkable.
 That barely gets you a two bedroom apartment in Chiswick. And even then, you'll be lucky to get your own parking space.
 In 1996/97, we paid nearly £8million in what's now the Championship for John Spencer, Gavin Peacock, Mike Sheron, Matthew Rose, Steve Slade, Paul Murray and Steve Morrow - then another £500,000 on Vinnie Jones the following season.
 For the avoidance of any doubt - this was 21 years ago; Princess Diana was still alive and Hong Kong was still sovereign British territory.



I have repeatedly asked during conversations on Facebook this season who the critics of Holloway would have signed for £530,000.
 Nobody has replied with a name. Not even one.
 Even Holloway winning an average of one in three of his games since returning to the club warrants a mention when so many of those matches near the end of both campaigns were earmarked for looking at squad players.



Don't get me wrong, there have been low points in the last 18 months.
 The 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.
 Even allowing for this, it's impossible to argue that Holloway did a bad job.
 In fact, he did a very good job.
 I spend my professional existence talking to players, managers, agents, ex-pros, directors, owners, club media officials, fellow journalists and many others within football. All of them will tell you how critical recruitment is in the modern game.
 Without good recruitment, you can't achieve the quality of individual nor the "culture" needed within a squad - and the most common result is a handful of disaffected players who undermine the manager and invariably get him sacked.
 The key determinant of effective recruitment is money. And we don't have much of that. Only three clubs in our division spent less on transfer fees than we did.



There are a few who dispute how much we've spent, and point to a dwindling number of high earners still present in the squad as part of the expenditure.
 The decisions not to renew the contracts of Jamie Mackie, James Perch and Nedum Onuoha make clear the club's intention to move on many of the players earning five-figure weekly sums.
 There have been some horrific mistakes made in the transfer market since 2011. We all know about them. Indeed; we're still paying for them in so many ways.
 At some point, though, we have to move on from those appalling errors of judgement and look at what is being done to remedy the situation. We can't change the past, so let's live in the now.



There are some who contribute to QPR debates on social media who don't grasp how little we've spent, and just how vital that is when assessing where the club, the team and the management are at.
 It's absolutely fine for fans on here to immerse themselves in all things Rangers - we have careers, families and mortgages absorbing our time and headspace and we can't always preoccupy ourselves with the affairs of our Championship rivals.
 A big part of my job, however, is knowing what goes on elsewhere in football.
 
And if I were to offer any advice to fans who use only scorelines 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 what Holloway has done.



Leeds United is a good starting point. They've spent £25.6million since last summer. They also took two Premier League loans.

The average wage of a Premier League player is now a staggering £50,817-a-week, which means that when a Championship player signs from that level on loan, even if you're only paying a percentage of the salary, you're probably placing that player among your highest earners.
 Needless 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 56. It appears £25.6m doesn't buy you much these days.



Elsewhere in Yorkshire, Sheffield Wednesday spent £13.6m - including more than £10m on one player, Jordan Rhodes. We took four points off them.



Further down the country, Birmingham splashed out £15.49m, brought in five Premier League loans and I'm told they are paying their goalkeeper David Stockdale £100,000-a-week after he joined on a free from Brighton.
 We did the 'double' over them and finished 10 points better off.



Norwich spent £13.3m, 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.



Similarly, Reading invested £13.1m trying to bolster a squad which reached 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 Chris Martin and Tommy Elphick - and all to finish 12 points below us in 20th.



Continuing the theme, Nottingham Forest spent £6.6m and recruited four on loan from the top division, supplemented by the not-so-cheap free transfer of former QPR loanee Ben Watson from Watford.
 Forest would be considered lower end investors in the Championship, yet they've spent 12 times what we have, and finished one place below us.



Sunderland spent twice what we did and brought in nine loans from the Prem. We all know what happened to them.



Hull 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.



At the top end, the sums reach truly eye-watering levels.
 Middlesbrough spent £50.4m and after losing their first leg Play-Off semi-final at home to Aston Villa, who boast a former England captain and Champions League winner on £100,000-a-week, they now have their work cut out to win through to the Play-Off final.
 Even 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-Floyd Hasselbaink got it, will be interested to hear that he spent £11.4m. A job very well done, yes - but still no fairy tale.



As documented above, we gave Holloway £530,000 to improve a squad which finished 18th the previous season.
 We signed one loan from the Premier League from a side 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 handful of appearances for Newcastle.
 He left us after a few months - no harm 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 season and he'll only be there for five months.



So if our manager gets sacked 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, Hull and even Barnsley, who parted with £5.7m and got relegated?
 I'm guessing they should all be burned at the stake?
 Or do we accept that, actually, we were employing an experienced guy with three promotions and two Play-Off final appearances under his belt, who knew his squad and its limitations, had intimate knowledge of players coming through, had an understanding of the Championship, spent his money exceptionally well and had an historic attachment to the club?
 


His 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.
 How many worthwhile signings can you think of from the previous five years before Holloway returned? Charlie Austin, Ryan Nelsen, Danny Simpson, Niko Kranjcar, Matt Phillips - and you could make a case for Richard Dunne and Rob Green.
 We'll be lucky to use the fingers on our second hand to count them because it's not long before you really have to start scraping the barrel.



I met up with some senior QPR employees before the Leeds game last week, and one told me that while the season as a whole represented a very respectable achievement, it's unrealistic to expect to repeat it again next year without investment.
 The truth is that if we actually did have anything like a generous budget, we'd be attracting managers who aren't in the last chance saloon that Steve McClaren now finds himself in - one more bad job, and his days in front line management are probably done.



I'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 thoroughly enjoyed.
 I'm doubtful that he can get more out of the squad than Holloway has. It all depends on whether he illicits the kind of response he got from his players while coaching Manchester United and QPR, and managing Middlesbrough, FC Twente, and during his first spell at Derby - rather than his unsuccessful periods with England, Wolfsburg, Forest, Newcastle and second time round at Derby.
 He's experienced, respected and has plenty to prove. If QPR continue not to support their managers financially and are up front about it from the start, then at least there will be few arguments over transfer policy.



Perhaps, therefore, the job will be one that appeals to the very best of McClaren's coaching ability, which may work to our advantage.



If not, and it transpires that Tony Fernandes has yet again been seduced by a big name, then it's sadly back to square one.