The 2021-22 season for QPR ends not with a trip to Wembley for the Championship play-offs but an all too familiar step back on to the managerial merry-go-round.
The club’s board decided that, after three years in the job, Mark Warburton was not going to deliver promotion to the Premier League – or at least not quickly enough. The club is now looking for its eighth manager in seven years.
It really has been a season of two halves. At the start we played some exhilarating football and stayed firmly in the playoff positions for weeks on end. Then with the cold winds of February came the collapse.
One week we were beating Reading 4-0, the next losing pathetically to bottom clubs Peterborough and Barnsley. Players who had been brilliant suddenly looked as though they’d never seen a football before in their lives.
On top of that came a came a growing casualty list and a freak set of injuries to our goalkeepers which meant that not only did we have to sign an emergency replacement keeper but we then had to sign another emergency replacement to replace the emergency replacement. It’s been that sort of season.
While managers will often blame injuries for bad results, it is true that even apart from the goalkeeping crisis, QPR have only been able to name an unchanged team five times this season. All four first team wing backs have been out for ten weeks at a stretch. QPR have a small squad.
The decision to let Warburton go has divided fans. Some thought that recent performances have been so dire that he had to go; others, myself included, thought that what the club really needs just now is a period of stability and that sustainable promotion will only come with building up a squad slowly and steadily.
But the board decided that Warburton had taken the team as far as he could and that it was time to turn to someone else. The problem seems to be that they haven’t decided who that someone else is going to be. Getting someone better won’t be easy. The choice won’t be vast. The budget both for the manager’s salary and to buy players is severely limited.
With his steady and patient leadership style Warburton has done a lot to put QPR on a more even keel on a small budget. At the last home game the show of affection from the fans was manifest and genuine. His departure from the club was handled appallingly. News of his going seeped out from a casual Les Ferdinand media interview at a club golf day. He deserved far better than that.
Over the seasons one of the criticisms of Warburton’s management style has been that when things get tricky he lacks a Plan B. Let’s hope the QPR board have learnt from that and that they have now got a brilliant Plan B to land our new manager. They need one. For all our sakes.
Phil Harding is a journalist and writer. He lives in Hammersmith, is a season ticket holder at QPR and has supported the team since the early 70s.
The views expressed in this blog are those of the author and unless specifically stated are not necessarily those of Hammersmith & Fulham Council.
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