Hoop Dreams - QPR FC

Less than two weeks to go. As the opening day of the Championship season draws ever closer, QPR continued their 100% record in pre-season games with a 2-1 win over Ravenna Calcio in Italy last night, their second and final game of their tour there. Back at home, the club are also reported to be on the verge of signing Bradley Orr from Bristol City - a move which would add an extra layer of protection to what is already looking like a far more competitive defence for the upcoming campaign.

First to the game against the Serie C opposition, which going by the match report on the club's website, provided the toughest challenge yet in the games which Rangers lined up as part of their summer preparations.

The art of arranging pre-season friendlies is rarely given too much inspection. Many will argue that the games have almost no bearing on the season ahead, but they can't simply be about developing fitness. They also have to provide an opportunity to gel in new players, which Rangers have enough of and to restore the necessary match skills and ways of thinking which must grow rusty during the holiday break. More than that, there is surely a case for pre-season friendlies as exercises in building confidence and team spirit and turning again to the tour blogs on the QPR website, that appears to have been the case.

A part of building that confidence requires a level of opposition demanding enough to provide a realistic test while not so advanced as to crush the early optimism of the squad. It could be argued that the first two warm-up games which Rangers undertook, against Tavistock AFC and Bodmin Town were firmly in that category, leading to healthy winning margins but little in the way of testing occasions. But the last two matches, both on the Italian tour, have raised the bar, drawing from a pool of ex-Serie A and lower-league players who are much closer to Rangers' natural level. It could be that if this good form can be extended, the club will have pitched their pre-season just right.

The test posed by Ravenna didn't derive purely from their higher league position when compared to Tavistock for example, but also from their playing style. Again I can only go on the QPR website match report, but it sounds like last night's oppositon were more than happy to engage in heavy challenges (described by QPR as 'x-rated') and direct physical confrontation despite the game being a friendly. In fact, matters reached such a head that the returning Fitz Hall and a member of the Ravenna team were told to leave the pitch before tempers truly boiled over.

Before that, Ravenna took the lead through Piovaccari before strikes from Hogan Ephraim (again - his seventh of the summer) and new striker Jamie Mackie either side of half-time ensured the win. What I also took from the match report was the formation employed by Warnock - again a 4-3-3 though with slightly changed personnel, Ephraim pushed back into a roving midfield position and Mackie partnered by Heidar Helguson and Leon Clarke up front. It may be sad to get excited by formations but I would feel some twinge of excitement if Rangers went into the first games of the season offering such a confident set-up. Maybe that's just me. The manager is nothing if not a realist and wants to make the team as hard to beat as possible, which his signings confirm, but he has also spoken of his intention to entertain the crowd this season. I can't help but feel many supporters would welcome such an ambition. 

Adding Orr to the squad fits firmly back into the 'tough-to-beat', realistic way of thinking but as with all the summer signings so far, the logic to me seems pretty spot-on. Still only 27 and with 229 appearances under his belt, he has often been touted as one of the best right-backs in the division and should ensure that the club no longer needs to place players out of position on the right-flank.

I really think the defence could be in a lot better shape over this campaign - both in terms of how they are likely to perform and also in reference to the depth of personnel. Peter Ramage's performances at the tail-end of the last campaign showed that the manager, as so many say, is adept at pushing tried-and-tested squad members to new heights, while the fact that Damion Stewart is only now returning to match fitness shows that Warnock will also have plenty of options.

Three more fixtures to come before the first competitive test of this gradually growing squad - they face Blue Square Premier side Crawley Town on Wednesday. On this site as well, there is still plenty to come before the big kick-off, including interviews with a QPR legend and a man who could still become one, barring any further injury problems. And of course a season preview and some potentially laughable predictions. Get ready to head straight for the bookies.

How much you can ever read into pre-season friendlies can be hotly debated, but if you give the summer warm-up games any credence, you will have been pleasantly surprised by QPR's form at the moment. After successive routs during their tour of the West Country, blasting eight goals past Tavistock AFC and six without return against Bodmin Town, Rangers also saw off the more testing challenge of Torquay United with a 3-1 win last Friday.

Now enjoying the blazing sun in Italy, they continued their fine form with a 4-1 win last night against Equipe  Romagna, a team made up of released Serie A players looking for new clubs for next season. By all accounts, few in the Italian side will have staked a great claim to further football in the Italian top flight, but some in the Rangers starting XI are making better pitches to be included from day one in the Championship campaign.

It may not be too helpful to read greatly into the results QPR have achieved so far, even if the level of opposition they have played has got increasingly more advanced. But the personnel selected by Neil Warnock and their subsequent performances can give some pointers ahead of the opening game against Barnsley on August 7.

Two players in particular have risen to greater prominence in the Rangers team. Firstly, Hogan Ephraim, who has been consistently selected by Warnock since the manager's arrival and who now appears to be paying off that faith with six pre-season strikes so far, including the opener in last night's game, latching onto a Shaun Derry through ball to finish from 12 yards.

Perhaps even more surprisingly, youngster Josh Parker has played a notable role in the manager's plans and along with Ephraim, has also scored in every pre-season game so far. After signing a new contract with the club at the end of last season, which will keep him at Loftus Road until 2011, he is now enjoying his best run in the first team, even if it has come in non-competitive fixtures. Last night, he formed part of a roving three-man attack with Ephraim and new signing Leon Clarke, who also netted twice to seal a comfortable win for the Hoops. According to QPR's press officer the three players insisted on sitting together on the flight over to Italy. Whatever they were talking about on the journey, they are clearly forming a bond on the pitch. Could Warnock go with such an attacking formation once the team gets down to the nitty-gritty of Championship football?

One person the press team could do with having a word with is Bernie Ecclestone, though he doesn't strike me as a man who is used to being told what to say. While honesty is refreshing in any public figure, his comments, which many will have read in the Evening Standard yesterday, are truly bizarre. Clearly the co-owner of the club is no big football fan - for starters, he supports Chelsea and his appearances at Loftus Road have been rare to say the least, which may be no bad thing. Compared to Flavio Briatore, maybe it's better for the club if one of their wealthy owners is more than happy to take a back-seat.

Yesterday's interview showed the extent of his antipathy to QPR though.

He said: "QPR? I don't have a real passion for it at all.

"I got into it by accident. I got involved through Flavio Briatore. It's difficult not to buy into his enthusiasm for things. I took some shares, I don't care. It's just something I've done."

That much was well known already. But has a club owner ever publicly stated he wouldn't like his team to get promoted before. Later on in the interview, when asked if he dreamed of promotion to the Premier League, Ecclestone said:

"I hope not. That's just even more aggravation."

Hopefully he won't consider a pre-match team talk anytime soon.

The best laid plans of mice and men often go awry, or as Scots poet Robert Burns originally said, feck fae bleurgh, something incomprehensible in Scottish. From having hoped to regularly update this site throughout June as I had so miserably failed to do in May, I've actually been even more lapse in my dedication to writing about Rangers. All I can do is blame the World Cup, which unlike Neil Warnock, I have actually been enjoying.

It also provided a much-needed opportunity to do some in-depth scouting for QPR. My own high-level analysis of each and every game in the tournament has revealed that the QPR board should be looking in the direction of David Villa, Diego Forlan, Bastian Schweinsteiger and Mesut Ozil and they need to withdraw any bids for Cristiano Ronaldo and Wayne Rooney immediately. If that fails, anyone from the squads of Ghana, Japan or Uruguay should be able to cut it in the Championship while the footballing feast in South Africa showed that it is wrong to overly rely on English players, as Fabio Capello learned the hard way.

While the England squad was finding imaginative new ways to embarrass themselves in the southern hemisphere, here is what QPR were up to...

New Faces

In the cut-throat world of football transfers, there is no point in being a shrinking violet and no-one could accuse Warnock of tip-toeing around the market this summer. He has been true to his word at the end of last season in making numerous additions to the squad, with the number of new arrivals jumping from two in May to a further three in June and also a further promise that more could be on the way. Prior to the players' return to pre-season training at the start of this month, their manager spoke of his happiness with his summer dealings so far, but also of a desire to add further 'icing to the cake' with two or three attackers possibly to follow.

So, after bringing Leon Clarke and Jamie Mackie in during May, QPR's transfer activity over the last month could best be summarised as 'better the devil you know'. Warnock has been dogged in his pursuit of three players who were formerly under his command while also coming very close, but failing, for now, in adding a fourth. He's also shown that he isn't scared to ruffle a few feathers to get his man.

Goalkeeper Paddy Kenny's arrival from Sheffield United on June 7 in a £750,000, three-year deal enraged supporters in the Steel City. They had given Kenny a standing ovation on his return to their team for the final two games of last season, after sitting out nine months following a positive test for banned substance ephedrine. His overtures of loyalty to United at the time now sound fairly hollow, but to look at it from a fairly cynical Rangers perspective, it's a deal that makes a lot of sense and should foster a healthy degree of competition between Kenny and Radek Cerny, who was much-improved at the end of the last campaign.

Alongside Kenny, the month saw Rangers linked with a multitude of names, wildly varying in ability and likelihood of actually signing, from Lee Hendrie, Roman Bednar and Tamika Mkandawire to continuous flirtations with Crystal Palace's Darren Ambrose. Two Palace players did make the switch though to join their former coach.

Midfielder Shaun Derry signed a two-year deal with Rangers on June 22 and joined up with his new team-mates once his Palace contract expired on July 1. The 32-year old who can point to spells at Leeds United, Nottingham Forest and of course Palace on his football CV is better-known for his ability to break up attacks and doggedly tackle the opposition over his attacking contributions and pace. It's not a transfer which had supporters rushing to Loftus Road to celebrate, but it could mean Rangers are a tougher team to beat next season, particularly on their travels.

Alongside him, another Palace escapee, Clint Hill, was brought in and again, it's hard not to commend Warnock for the reasoning behind his current deals. The clamour for big-name signings at QPR has surely now dissipated as supporters wake up to the reality of the type of players Rangers can attract. Even with money behind them and a well-known and respected manager on board, this is still a team which seriously flirted with demotion to the third tier of English football last season, which became a by-word for 'shambles' throughout the country and which played in a stadium which was close to half-full for much of that time.

In that respect, it's little wonder that the manager has to use his own cache with former players to finalise deals, because there are few other selling points around QPR at the moment. The attraction of promotion to the Premiership can hold little value with potential candidates until Rangers mount anything close to a serious promotion bid. So Hill is the type of player QPR can attract right now and though preferring to play at centre-back, he will provide the only does provide the club's only real option at left-back right now. The only real questions hanging over his and Derry's transfers, to my mind, would be firstly, why did the club let left-back Dusko Tosic depart following his loan deal and secondly, how great a wage bill will the club rack up if they choose to try and tempt players on free transfers? The suspicion being that often in transfers of that type, the savings made from the absence of a transfer fee are passed on to the players' monthly wage packages.

Another player unlikely to step onto the pitch for peanuts is Adel Taarabt and Warnock avoided spending all of the last few weeks in his garden or in front of the TV by heading to Morocco to try and secure a permanent move for the player to QPR. This one can be filed under 'works in progress' for now.

Goodbye... for now?

Another Warnock promise is that players will be heading through the exit door before the start of the season as well, with a number of candidates suggested in local and national press alike, including Rowan Vine, Gavin Mahon and even Lee Cook. One player who failed to feature in the manager's plans at the end of last season was Angelo Balanta and it was announced in June that he would be heading to MK Dons for a season-long loan. It isn't the best piece of news for his QPR career but it will be interesting to see how he fares because he has shown an ability to find the goals in the past.

The other 'departures' include players who were on loan at Rangers last season so who are no longer officially at the club. One such player is Jay Simpson, the R's top scorer last season and Arsene Wenger indicated that though he rates him highly, he won't stand in his way if he wants to leave for first-team football. If Warnock is serious in trying to find a consistent goal-threat for QPR, he could do a lot worse than bringing Simpson back to Loftus Road in my opinion, but he may not fit the manager's preference for a commanding, physically imposing centre-forward.

Any Other Business?

Just the announcement of the fixture list, no less, which always feels slightly weird in a World Cup year because you've not yet had the full symptoms of football 'cold-turkey'. Looking through it to plan QPR's season could be a good antidote to the no-football blues over this month and the first pre-season friendlies are just around the corner as well. Rangers start with a winnable home fixture against Barnsley but travel to Sheffield United just a week later - a fixture which could kick-start the R's season with a bang (..or a whimper). They also discovered the identity of their first-round Carling Cup opponent - Port Vale - and I can't be the only person who would like to see Rangers acquit themselves better in cup competitions next season, particularly the FA Cup in which their record has gone past embarrassing and now defies logic.

And pre-season training started again. And the manager still wants to bring in more players. And I hope, hope, hope, as always, to be writing on this site far more often from now on...