Hoop Dreams - QPR FC

Well, not really no. Again, not to over-egg the point that I'm a newcomer to watching the Hoops (and perhaps this was a golden season and I should be prepared for worse to come) but it wasn't hard to pick up on an atmosphere of disappointment and even boredom around Loftus Road for much of the last 12 months. I hate to say it, but QPR have been far from an exciting team to watch since last September, scoring very few goals and rarely playing attractive football. Some of their most memorable wins such as the victories over Birmingham (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5yfWBWTBmKM) and Wolves (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TnalOJ0LNAY) were great to watch with fantastic atmospheres, but both were based on resolute defending and hustle on the back of two solitary strikes (though both would easily rank amongst the Hoops' goals of the season). QPR rarely put teams to the sword or even looked like they had the ability or worse, the desire, to do so.

The official line, of course, is that Rangers are making progress all the time and by the letter of the law, that is true. Their points haul last season was their best since 2004/5, their first season back in the Championship and QPR are a team who have teetered near the relegation area in recent memory, so their establishment as a credible mid-table side in the Championship shouldn't be scoffed at.

But there is still a large gap between the ambition of the club and the reality we see on a Saturday. Flavio Briatore and Amit Bhatia are only involved with QPR to get them into the Premiership and there is nothing wrong with that. Until quite late in the season, there was much talk of QPR still making the play-offs (in the end they were 13 points off them and the likelihood of them beating the other sides in that bracket is questionable). To aim for the sky is no bad thing - most QPR supporters would be disappointed if the owners showed no ambition.

At the same time, the leaps made over the last 12 months are minimal. To jump back to the safety of the stats page, Rangers achieved only 3 more points than last season and scored far fewer goals. Added to that, they go into the close season without a manager and a fractious relationship between board and supporters following Paulo Sousa's departure and various bust-ups over ticket pricing and player selection throughout the season. Perhaps the one real area of progress has been at the back; the Hoops now have their meanest defence in a long time which conceded a miserly 44 goals, bettered by few other teams in the division (only Birmingham City, Sheffield United and Reading).

So while there is no need for doom-mongering, talk of promotion to the Premiership is woefully premature until there is some serious investment in the team, most clearly in the creative department. At least one top-draw striker needs to be added to the squad, but that is definitely a subject for another day.

That's my current report card on the team as a whole filed then - a definite 'could do better' but no need for hair-pulling just yet. I also plan to look at the different areas of the team as well to see how they did over the season and where additions are needed. It should be helpful to me if no-one else but keep your eyes peeled soon for my assessment of the goalie and the back four. Oh, you lucky, lucky people.

First post and a quick description of what this website is supposed to be about. I am a recent convert to the world of Queens Park Rangers FC - a strange, murky yet sometimes happy world.
There are a few disclaimers for why I am suddenly so interested in QPR though. Firstly, my indoctrination in the world of the Hoops was for professional reasons - I want to be a football journalist and was lucky enough to get a freelance job for a local paper (the Hammersmith & Fulham News: http://www.lbhf.gov.uk/Directory/News/) writing about the club. Prior to that my contact with west London's finest was minimal - vague memories of Trevor Sinclair scoring possibly one of the best goals ever (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y2KeX7nhZRY) and of Arsenal thrashing them in the FA Cup (http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/fa_cup/1138764.stm).
That leads me to the second disclaimer - I'm a life-long Arsenal fan who wasn't even born in London (East Midlands) and I have probably thereby alienated myself to 90% of football supporters who might read this. I'm a fully paid-up prawn sandwicher - I never watched a game before Italia 90 and Gazza crying (more because of age than any other reason), I've never been pissed on while standing on a crumbling terrace and I sadly think Fever Pitch is a pretty decent book and not the downfall of football as we know it. I barely deserve a footballing opinion considering these qualifications and I should probably go and watch rugby, but it is incredibly dull whereas football is undoubtedly, provably the greatest sport ever invented and should be celebrated as such.
Now, QPR aren't currently the finest exponents of this beautiful game but a job is a job and after a season of watching them struggle to mid-table, sack 2 managers and perfect a tactical system which saw them score the fewest goals in their league, I can truly say they have grown in my affections. Not enough to forget about Arsene Wenger, why he won't spend any money and another trophyless season but more than enough to actually want to go to a half-empty Loftus Road on a winter's weeknight and watch them lose 2-1 to Burnley. And then write about it.
There is undoubtedly something about QPR, a reason why people turn up week after week even though their current owners have a tendency to openly take the piss out of them.
You can't really be a fair-weather fan at QPR for a start - you have to pay more than any other supporter in the Championship to go and watch them. It could be their history (to the uninitiated and briefly, in 1975-6, QPR were a game away from winning the First Division and former player Stan Bowles is ranked as one of England's greatest forgotten talents), their location, their kit, I don't know.
Which is probably the main point of this website. I go to the games, I hear what the manager has to say, I write a match report and then thats it (though sometimes I do get some nice lasagne from Flavio's Ciprianis restaurant): http://www.qpr.co.uk/page/NewsDetail/0,,10373~1355821,00.html).
A match report is a match report but there's more to going to watch football then what formation the Hoops lined up with or why they need to sign a striker. So hopefully here I can write a bit more freely about trying to work QPR out, whether its about the supporters or the chairman.
And hopefully I can get a better idea when I'm talking utter shite. There is clearly a massive amount about QPR which I don't know and though it may be breaking some journalistic covenant, feedback should be important. How else can I know that Peter Ramage is possibly the worst right-back to ever turn out for them? Or that Dexter Blackstock will never be as good as Les Ferdinand (that one is actually obvious to be honest)?

Just don't send me messages to say 'F8ck off back to the Emirates'.