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.