QPR – Promotion or Bust?
After shipping out some dead wood, and others who lack enough passion to play for a Harry Redknapp side, the financial side of QPR cannot live for more than a year without top flight football. In 2011/2012 the club lost £22million – although slightly better than £25million the previous 12 months. This isn’t surprising when player wages shot up dramatically during their recent relegation campaign.
An immediate promotion would surely go far in easing Rangers’ financial woes, though it wouldn’t be surprising for half of that money to go on players wages in 2014/2015 instead of clearing off some debt.
High earner Jose Bosingwa has recently completed his move to Trabzonspor after a season to forget at Loftus Road, with Jamie Mackie and Christopher Samba other notable faces to leave this summer. Even with these 3 players gone, i’m sure the likes of Karl Hendry, Danny Simpson and Richard Dunne will go some way in filling the gap in their wage budget. Let’s not forget… Joey Barton is still on the books, what a story it would be if he stayed.
Short term success was supposed to be ‘easy’ for QPR, difficult in the long term. Oddly, this is largely correct. The famous 4 year plan set in 2007 to ‘gain Prem football in 4 years’ was achieved on time yet after just 2 seasons fighting down at the bottom, they are back into the Championship promotion lottery – arguably the toughest league to gain promotion from.
Harry must think he has a good chance of promotion by committing his future to QPR, and you’d be lying if you didn’t agree that they will be challenging for the Championship title. But, what if that’s all they manage, just to challenge for the league title and then end up losing out on promotion? Could we be looking at an owner wanting to cut his losses, players becoming disgruntled and sensing Premier League football elsewhere and fans fed up of paying top dollar to watch a second tier team? Well probably, yeah.
Personally I think all 3 team’s dropping down into the SkyBet Championship will be in the top 6, something of a rarity. Looking at the collective performance of Bolton, Blackburn and Wolves last season, it won’t be hard for Wigan, Reading and QPR to surpass their finishes.
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