QPR Story: 3rd season: Very consistant!

Hello readers, hope you are well. Now in my last post, we were 13th in the league, and facing a tough run of fixtures, that I thought could put us back in a relegation place. Fast forward to 14 games later (13 in the Premier League) and here are our results:

These are not very good to be perfectly honest, only 2 wins being picked up in 13 Premier League games, away to West Brom and Reading at home. The draws with West Ham and Wigan were the only other collected points, and they should have both been 3, as we destroyed them for the 90 minutes. Now you might be thinking that we are now deep in the relegation places, with just 22 points from 25 games, but you would be wrong. Take a look:

Surprisingly, we are still 6 points clear of the relegation places! We are just 3 points off of 13th, and just a couple of wins away from 12th. Last season, 22 points would have been enough to put us 19th, and with 13 games to go, and no cup competitions to worry about, I am confident that relegation is the least of our worries. Moving on now, here are my January ins and outs:

INS:

OUTS:

As you can see, I did not do that much business, as Gerson and Danny Wilson are good young players that I bought for the future. Antonio Barragan is a solid and reliable right back, Francisco Ochoa is a fantastic goalkeeper who many of you know of. He was brought in as a replacement for Steve Harper, and to push Bogdan Lobont to the bench, as he has been making some very high profile errors lately. As Ochoa is still young, Lobont will have a chance to get back in the team, but at 33, I see him just as very very very good back up! Marius Niculae was originally brought in as a replacement for Mike Aram (I'll explain later) but seeing as that move did not materialise, I can now just use him as extra cover for Peter Crouch and Kevin Doyle, while using Mike Aram as an AMC as Steed Malbranque and Jack Wilshere are not playing well at this moment in time. Edu and Steve Harper were let go mainly because of their age, and because they just weren't cutting it any more. Gerson and Matthew Connolly were loaned out to get some first team experience, but I may let Connolly go at the end of this season.

Now, I mentioned before that relegation was the least of my worries, and now I shall explain what is at the forefront of my worries. This also ties in with the replacement for Mike Aram thing. You all know that QPR is not a very big or attractive club. We can offer Premier League football for the moment, but as we are near to the relegation places, and only narrowly avoided the drop last season, we cannot offer it for a sustained period of time. Due to this, if a team like Newcastle or Sunderland, or Everton comes along and tries to buy one of our players, we can do little to stop it other than reject the bid, and having to face unhappy players. Now due to some good transfers in the past, and a relatively successful season, my players have become hot property, with no less than 15 out of 21 of my first team squad being wanted by other, bigger, clubs. Kevin Doyle, Joe Mattock, Peter Crouch, Mike Aram, Etienne Didot, Jack Wilshere, Chris Burke, Hobbit Bermudez, Steed Malbranque, and Bogdan Lobont have all had offers rejected, with the exception of Mike Aram who just rejected a contract from Chelsea after our chairman had accepted a £20m bid for him. This resulted in very unhappy players at not being allowed to move clubs. Mike Aram's contract runs out at the end of the season, and as he is not accepting even our greatest offers, there is a great danger that we will lose him for free at the end of the season. All of the unhappy players have had a dip in form, and will not sign new contracts. I am left with a dilemma, try and sell them to the highest bidder and use that money to rebuild the squad, or keep my best players here, but risk losing them on frees at the end of their contracts. I am going to need help on this!

Finally, a screenshot which relates to my poll. I was offered a job at Palermo (Serie A side) which I rejected, seeing as staying at QPR was the choice of you, my readers. I was very tempted though, and the £20m transfer budget had me purring! Take a look:

I decided against it, and now I am more committed to QPR than ever. I also passed up opportunities to manage Championship side Portsmouth, and fellow Premier League side Middlesbrough. I am not against managing a country as well as QPR like I did with Cameroon, but no jobs are available as of yet unfortunately. Anyway, as this was a very long post, I will skip the player ratings for now, and give you the overall ratings at the end of the season. Take care!