“It's hard to believe we sat at the top of the table a mere 12 months ago. What has happened over the past 12 months is as confusing as it is unimaginable.”
For fans of QPR, the departing words of Amit Bhatia, who on Wednesday stood down after 16 years as chairman, certainly ring true.
Championship leaders on October 24 last year, QPR plummeted and only escaped relegation by six points last season. Now they are second-bottom and winless in two months.
On Saturday, in a relegation clash at Rotherham, new head coach Marti Cifuentes takes charge for the first time following his appointment this week.
“Something has gone from the heart of the club”, says Neil Jackson, a board member of QPR1st, an independent supporters’ trust. “I don’t know what it is, but that’s what the manager has got to get back.”
Perhaps the biggest reason for QPR’s decline is their dire financial state. Much of the problems stem from overspending in the promotion-winning 2013-14 season, which led in 2018 to a £40million fine.
At the time, that was the biggest fine in the history of global sport, and parachute payments from QPR’s 2015 Premier League relegation soon ran out.
The club loses £2.06m every month, according to its latest set of accounts released in March.
The same accounts showed its operating costs had surged from £3.5m the previous season to £24.1m, with debts spiralling from £36m to £49.6m. Owners Ruben Gnanalingam, Richard Reilly and Lakshmi Mittal continue to absorb those losses.
Attempts at copying the Brentford and Brighton models of buying young to sell on for a profit have failed, with the one exception of the £17m sale of Eberechi Eze in 2020. But the profits from his transfer to Crystal Palace are no longer part of the three-year FFP cycle, so operating losses make QPR’s spending power extremely low.
Many fans believe Tony Fernandes, owner between May 2011 and July this year, overpromised. Former director of football Les Ferdinand also came in for criticism over player recruitment before he stepped down in June. That role has been vacant ever since, while chief executive Lee Hoos has also taken on the chairman role after Bhatia’s resignation.
One criticism fans have levelled at the board is a perceived lack of speaking up in hard times. In his resignation post on social media, Bhatia said: “I haven’t said much recently, frankly because I really couldn’t explain it or didn’t know what to say.”
A great deal of the struggles on the pitch at Loftus Road are down to a succession of failed managerial appointments.
Mark Warburton steadied the ship between 2019 and 2022. That included two seasons in which QPR almost reached the play-offs before falling away. After form dipped and they missed out, Warburton’s contract was allowed to expire in the summer of 2022.
"Something has gone from the heart of the club... I don’t know what it is, but that’s what the manager has got to get back"
His replacement, Michael Beale, started well but soon departed for Rangers in Scotland. Assessing the young squad’s reaction to Beale’s sudden exit, a former QPR employee told Standard Sport: “That’s enough to demoralise any workforce in any industry. Beale did the dirty on us.”
After a disastrous 46-day spell for Neil Critchley, who won one of 12 games in charge, the board made what turned out to be another poor appointment by hiring QPR legend Gareth Ainsworth.
His old-school style of play was enough to narrowly avoid relegation last season but garnered just eight points this term before he was sacked last weekend.
Cifuentes inherits a squad low on confidence and, crucially, goals. Chris Willock has not been the same since the 2021-22 season due to injuries, while striker Lyndon Dykes has scored just once this term.
A £20m training ground at Heston, which opened this summer, is a huge boost. Previously, the academy trained elsewhere, but with seven pitches, Cifuentes will be able to identify youth talent easier.
The Spaniard is now entrusted with picking up the pieces from the wreckage of the past few years.
Trying to be optimistic about a new dawn at Loftus Road, one lifelong QPR fan said: “Bad runs don’t last forever… do they?”
