braineclipse
Steve Sedgley
In before the "why didn't we sign Sissoko?" posts?
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The Other Clubs Transfer Rumours and News Thread
- Thread starter Jordinho
- Start date
SlumDilla
Michael Brown
:lol: seriously tho, 5 mill for Hudd could've covered the Sissoko transfer.
Nobody with a Sky Sports microphone bothers with Portsmouth any more on transfer deadline day. There was a time, not so long ago, when they would be outside Fratton Park from daybreak to last thing at night. Harry Redknapp would wind down his car window to let us know who was next to arrive. He would thank his chairman and talk about how terrific it was to sign another player for a big fee and fat contract. Then he would drive away with a little wave to the crowd who had gathered expectantly.
No point going down there now, though. The gates are locked. The curtains tremble. Portsmouth won the FA Cup under Redknapp and were bucket-collection skint within six weeks of handing it back. These days you will find them grubbing around for points towards the bottom of League One, just grateful still to be going. Pompey are the rusty old Fiat that has failed its MOT and been left out over winter. There's an engine in there somewhere, but it sounds terrible.
All of which may make this an appropriate moment, perhaps, to ask what measures Queens Park Rangers have in place to avoid the possibility of their own meltdown if they drop out of the Premier League this season. Is there even the basis of a fully integrated plan? Or, looking at their business over the last couple of weeks, is this the point when they, too, appear to be basing their entire financial strategy on the theory of chaos?
They are not alone, to give them their due, when it comes to the frenzy of the transfer window and what it tells us about the clubs who prefer to do their business the sensible way and those who can be found on the trolley dash.
Yet QPR stand out for a number of reasons when their chairman, Tony Fernandes, increasingly comes across as the gambler desperately trying to cover his losses with a series of wild bets. Redknapp, the man who once walked out of a television interview after he was described as a "wheeler-dealer", has brought in half a dozen players and tried for goodness knows how many others. For the club's sake, you just hope they know what they are doing.
There is, after all, a point when spending becomes reckless and QPR are surely straying close to the line when, even ignoring for one moment the Loïc Rémy deal, they have just splurged £12.5m on a 28-year-old centre-half – Chris Samba – and agreed to pay him somewhere around £20m in wages over the next four and a half years.
It is true, granted, that someone with Samba's competitive courage could be an important player for a club that have won two league fixtures all season and that, if the gamble comes off and there is a dramatic late feat of escapology, they will no doubt consider he was worth every penny. But £12.5m? Simon Jordan may be a tiresome old rent-a-quote sometimes but when the former Crystal Palace chairman described it as "financial suicide" it was almost reassuring to find someone within the sport who was not willing to sugarcoat the truth. Niall Quinn was also in Sky's studios alongside Jordan on deadline night. Financial suicide? "It's heading that way," the former Sunderland chairman agreed. Jordan talked about a club with "lunatics running the asylum", where the culture was to sign the cheque and think of the consequences later, and it all boiled down to one thing: where does it leave QPR if they go down?
On Friday, at Redknapp's press conference, he was asked that very question and delivered a masterclass in evasion. Will they be financially stable? "I don't know," he replied. "It's the chairman's decisions." It's big money, though, Harry … "That's up to the chairman and the shareholders. That's their decision to spend the money."
Nobody returned to the subject or pointed out that, a few days before the transfer window opened, Redknapp had talked about wanting to change the spending culture of the club. It was his job, he had said, to make sure the owners no longer had "their pants taken down". He was sick and tired of agents wanting a quick payday, and he made it clear that a club the size of QPR had to stop being such an easy touch. "You shouldn't be paying massive wages when you've got a stadium that holds 18,000 people." Quite.
It sounded very noble at the time and still does, in fact. It can also look a bit silly, however, when the club then breaks their transfer record twice in the space of two weeks, first for Rémy and then Samba, and agrees to pay them more than Gareth Bale earns at Tottenham and more than everyone bar Theo Walcott takes home at Arsenal.
There will be QPR supporters, of course, who argue that it is worth the gamble. Far better, they may say, that Fernandes is throwing money at the problem rather than the shift in policy that his Aston Villa counterpart, Randy Lerner, has brought in. Yet there is a middle ground otherwise known as common sense.
Certainly it's a bewildering set of events when, in 18 months, a club can make 31 signings. In three transfer windows QPR have now signed seven new strikers, seven centre-halves, four goalkeepers, eight midfielders, a winger, two left-backs and two right‑backs. They now have such a bloated squad – 42 players if we are counting the 10 they have out on loan – that it has been impossible for them to shoehorn everyone into the revised 25-man squad they submitted to the Premier League on Friday. Luke Young, one of football's forgotten men, has been left out. Andy Johnson, another former England international, is due back from injury next month – but no need to rush now. Radek Cerny has not played for 13 months. That won't be changing between now and May.
Redknapp brought in Samba, Andros Townsend and Jermaine Jenas to go with Rémy, Tal Ben Haim and Yun Suk-yung but missed out on Peter Crouch and Peter Odemwingie. He had no joy with an ambitious inquiry for Scott Parker and, most perplexingly, he also tried to sign David Bentley, the player he marginalised at Tottenham to the point he ended up at Rostov in Russia. They, of course, are just the deals we know about.
It is a scattergun approach that may yet form the backdrop to one of the great escapes if Redknapp can make the most of his restorative powers. At the same time, QPR are still bottom of the league, with 17 points from 25 games, and it does makes you wonder whether there is any kind of joined-up thinking behind the scenes and what might happen a little further down the line bearing in mind Fernandes has already indicated he will relinquish his position if they go down. Who clears up the mess then?
Because it would be a mess. Maybe not as extreme as Portsmouth but a mess, all the same.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/blog/2013/feb/02/qpr-gamble-harry-redknapp
No point going down there now, though. The gates are locked. The curtains tremble. Portsmouth won the FA Cup under Redknapp and were bucket-collection skint within six weeks of handing it back. These days you will find them grubbing around for points towards the bottom of League One, just grateful still to be going. Pompey are the rusty old Fiat that has failed its MOT and been left out over winter. There's an engine in there somewhere, but it sounds terrible.
All of which may make this an appropriate moment, perhaps, to ask what measures Queens Park Rangers have in place to avoid the possibility of their own meltdown if they drop out of the Premier League this season. Is there even the basis of a fully integrated plan? Or, looking at their business over the last couple of weeks, is this the point when they, too, appear to be basing their entire financial strategy on the theory of chaos?
They are not alone, to give them their due, when it comes to the frenzy of the transfer window and what it tells us about the clubs who prefer to do their business the sensible way and those who can be found on the trolley dash.
Yet QPR stand out for a number of reasons when their chairman, Tony Fernandes, increasingly comes across as the gambler desperately trying to cover his losses with a series of wild bets. Redknapp, the man who once walked out of a television interview after he was described as a "wheeler-dealer", has brought in half a dozen players and tried for goodness knows how many others. For the club's sake, you just hope they know what they are doing.
There is, after all, a point when spending becomes reckless and QPR are surely straying close to the line when, even ignoring for one moment the Loïc Rémy deal, they have just splurged £12.5m on a 28-year-old centre-half – Chris Samba – and agreed to pay him somewhere around £20m in wages over the next four and a half years.
It is true, granted, that someone with Samba's competitive courage could be an important player for a club that have won two league fixtures all season and that, if the gamble comes off and there is a dramatic late feat of escapology, they will no doubt consider he was worth every penny. But £12.5m? Simon Jordan may be a tiresome old rent-a-quote sometimes but when the former Crystal Palace chairman described it as "financial suicide" it was almost reassuring to find someone within the sport who was not willing to sugarcoat the truth. Niall Quinn was also in Sky's studios alongside Jordan on deadline night. Financial suicide? "It's heading that way," the former Sunderland chairman agreed. Jordan talked about a club with "lunatics running the asylum", where the culture was to sign the cheque and think of the consequences later, and it all boiled down to one thing: where does it leave QPR if they go down?
On Friday, at Redknapp's press conference, he was asked that very question and delivered a masterclass in evasion. Will they be financially stable? "I don't know," he replied. "It's the chairman's decisions." It's big money, though, Harry … "That's up to the chairman and the shareholders. That's their decision to spend the money."
Nobody returned to the subject or pointed out that, a few days before the transfer window opened, Redknapp had talked about wanting to change the spending culture of the club. It was his job, he had said, to make sure the owners no longer had "their pants taken down". He was sick and tired of agents wanting a quick payday, and he made it clear that a club the size of QPR had to stop being such an easy touch. "You shouldn't be paying massive wages when you've got a stadium that holds 18,000 people." Quite.
It sounded very noble at the time and still does, in fact. It can also look a bit silly, however, when the club then breaks their transfer record twice in the space of two weeks, first for Rémy and then Samba, and agrees to pay them more than Gareth Bale earns at Tottenham and more than everyone bar Theo Walcott takes home at Arsenal.
There will be QPR supporters, of course, who argue that it is worth the gamble. Far better, they may say, that Fernandes is throwing money at the problem rather than the shift in policy that his Aston Villa counterpart, Randy Lerner, has brought in. Yet there is a middle ground otherwise known as common sense.
Certainly it's a bewildering set of events when, in 18 months, a club can make 31 signings. In three transfer windows QPR have now signed seven new strikers, seven centre-halves, four goalkeepers, eight midfielders, a winger, two left-backs and two right‑backs. They now have such a bloated squad – 42 players if we are counting the 10 they have out on loan – that it has been impossible for them to shoehorn everyone into the revised 25-man squad they submitted to the Premier League on Friday. Luke Young, one of football's forgotten men, has been left out. Andy Johnson, another former England international, is due back from injury next month – but no need to rush now. Radek Cerny has not played for 13 months. That won't be changing between now and May.
Redknapp brought in Samba, Andros Townsend and Jermaine Jenas to go with Rémy, Tal Ben Haim and Yun Suk-yung but missed out on Peter Crouch and Peter Odemwingie. He had no joy with an ambitious inquiry for Scott Parker and, most perplexingly, he also tried to sign David Bentley, the player he marginalised at Tottenham to the point he ended up at Rostov in Russia. They, of course, are just the deals we know about.
It is a scattergun approach that may yet form the backdrop to one of the great escapes if Redknapp can make the most of his restorative powers. At the same time, QPR are still bottom of the league, with 17 points from 25 games, and it does makes you wonder whether there is any kind of joined-up thinking behind the scenes and what might happen a little further down the line bearing in mind Fernandes has already indicated he will relinquish his position if they go down. Who clears up the mess then?
Because it would be a mess. Maybe not as extreme as Portsmouth but a mess, all the same.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/blog/2013/feb/02/qpr-gamble-harry-redknapp
Lily White
Clive Wilson
http://metro.co.uk/2013/02/02/west-brom-players-mock-peter-odemwingie-with-qpr-shirt-gag-3378278/
West Brom players mock Peter Odemwingie with QPR shirt gag
Saturday 2 Feb 2013 2:09 pm Oddballs
West Brom players wasted no time in mocking Peter Odemwingie's failed QPR move (Picture: Twitter)West Brom players wasted no time in mocking Peter Odemwingie’s failed QPR move (Picture: Twitter)
West Brom players have added a touch of humour to the bizarre Peter Odemwingie fiasco, after a picture appeared on Twitter showing a QPR shirt with ‘Odemwingie 12’ emblazoned on the back, which they have reportedly hung in their dressing room.
The Baggies host Tottenham at the Hawthorns tomorrow and will be without the wantaway striker after he was omitted from the squad, but Odemwingie’s team-mates have ensured he will be with them in spirit.
West Brom boss Steve Clarke indicated the 31-year-old may not be too popular with his fellow Baggies, after he drove to QPR on transfer deadline day to try and force through a move.
He said yesterday: ‘I am sure he has annoyed his team-mates. There always has to be a way back.
‘I think there has been a number of high-profile cases where there is a way back. It’s not going to happen overnight, it’s going to happen over time.
Peter Odemwingie tried to engineer a move away from West Brom (Picture: Getty)Peter Odemwingie tried to engineer a move away from West Brom (Picture: Getty)
‘Maybe he has to apologise. Maybe he has to get back into the squad. Maybe he has to show his team-mates he is willing to help them.’
Odemwingie was even interviewed outside Loftus Road by Sky Sports and spoke enthusiastically about his prospective switch to QPR, before a deal failed to materialise and he was sent back to the Midlands with his tail between his legs.
And while the ill-advised move may not have impressed manager Clarke, the striker will be pleased to know his team-mates appear to have at least seen the funny side.
West Brom players mock Peter Odemwingie with QPR shirt gag
Saturday 2 Feb 2013 2:09 pm Oddballs
West Brom players wasted no time in mocking Peter Odemwingie's failed QPR move (Picture: Twitter)West Brom players wasted no time in mocking Peter Odemwingie’s failed QPR move (Picture: Twitter)
West Brom players have added a touch of humour to the bizarre Peter Odemwingie fiasco, after a picture appeared on Twitter showing a QPR shirt with ‘Odemwingie 12’ emblazoned on the back, which they have reportedly hung in their dressing room.
The Baggies host Tottenham at the Hawthorns tomorrow and will be without the wantaway striker after he was omitted from the squad, but Odemwingie’s team-mates have ensured he will be with them in spirit.
West Brom boss Steve Clarke indicated the 31-year-old may not be too popular with his fellow Baggies, after he drove to QPR on transfer deadline day to try and force through a move.
He said yesterday: ‘I am sure he has annoyed his team-mates. There always has to be a way back.
‘I think there has been a number of high-profile cases where there is a way back. It’s not going to happen overnight, it’s going to happen over time.
Peter Odemwingie tried to engineer a move away from West Brom (Picture: Getty)Peter Odemwingie tried to engineer a move away from West Brom (Picture: Getty)
‘Maybe he has to apologise. Maybe he has to get back into the squad. Maybe he has to show his team-mates he is willing to help them.’
Odemwingie was even interviewed outside Loftus Road by Sky Sports and spoke enthusiastically about his prospective switch to QPR, before a deal failed to materialise and he was sent back to the Midlands with his tail between his legs.
And while the ill-advised move may not have impressed manager Clarke, the striker will be pleased to know his team-mates appear to have at least seen the funny side.
jamonserrano
John Scales
Striker Carlos Tevez, 28, will be allowed to leave Emirates Marketing Project as the Premier League champions plan a massive summer clear-out. Edin Dzeko, Samir Nasri, Joelon Lescott, Scott Sinclair, Aleksandar Kolarov and Maicon could all leave the club.
Full story: Sunday Mirror
I'd take Dzeko (for a reasonable price).
Full story: Sunday Mirror
I'd take Dzeko (for a reasonable price).
Danishfurniturelover
the prettiest spice girl
oh yeah i would be all over that and felt we should have tried to get him on loan this season he has been so unfairly treated at city i think
To fill their overrated English winger quota?