A QP R f an’s view on the new Ger s bos s Struggles

An eye for talent ... but team had set- piece

WITH Michael Beale confirmed as Rangers manager, Derek Clark sought opinion from a QPR perspective to get an understanding as to what supporters can expect and how his departure has been viewed.

Here is everything Alex Bullamore from QPR fansite rgeneration. net had to say.

Does it sting a bit losing your manager in this way after knocking back Wolves not so long ago?

Yeah, it’s been an unfortunate couple of weeks really. The Wolves one really came out of nowhere, to be honest. There are obvious links between Beale and Rangers. I think he spoke to you guys at the start of the season saying he would like to come back to Rangers at some point so it’s not necessarily the most surprising thing that he’s decided, in the end, that Rangers is a good move for him. Wolves was a little bit more out of the blue and we were all quite delighted when he knocked that offer back. A Premier League club is always going to be a hard one to turn down but at that point in the season we were about to go top of the league and now a couple of games later it’s all kind of gone a bit wrong. It is disappointing that it’s going to end up with him leaving so early. Personally, I hoped he would stay until the end of the season at least which seems crazy to say. I know there’s no loyalty in football but I think you kind of expect whenever you sign a manager that he at least sticks it out for a season. Unless he’s had a really bad time, he’s not going to be leaving.

Does his interview he gave after knocking back the Wolves job where he talked about “loyalty” stick in the throat?

Yeah, that interview’s quite a weird one. This is something that, reading between the lines, could be an interview the club said he has to do to try and win back the trust of the fans. He was going to have to say something in there that perhaps in the long run is going to make him look quite stupid. To a certain extent, saying that you’re loyal and that integrity is really important and then running off a few weeks later certainly paints a picture. From his point of view, he seems to be a victim of his own ambition really. You could tell when he came into the club at the start that he was very ambitious in what he thought he was able to do as a manager. We all knew that this would be a stepping stone for him and we have no real problem with that, it’s just the timing of what’s happened. When your manager is saying stuff like that, at the time, you really want to hope and believe it but I always felt a little bit funny about it.

What was the feeling amongst the QPR fans when he was appointed in the summer?

It was definitely one of excitement. We flirted with the playoffs last season under Mark Warburton, another exRangers manager and it ended up a sour situation. We kept the core of our squad together and with a few additions here and there we felt quite positive going into the new season and hoped that we would be a bit of an outsider for the playoffs. Having looked at what he’s done elsewhere and what former players that he’s coached were saying, there were all these glowing reviews. He seemed like a really decent appointment and an appointment QPR wouldn’t usually make. We were definitely excited about what he could achieve and for the most part, it’s been enjoyable.

The summer signings were all free transfers and loans so he built a squad on a shoestring, didn’t he?

Yeah, and this is something from Rangers’ point of view whether he would be able to repeat the same sort of tricks. Every player that he’s brought in has come in with his stamp of approval. He’s seen them play in some youth tournament when they were 12 or he’s seen them play when he was Chelsea reserve manager or whatever. All these players are his players. They know him and he knows them and he has this photographic memory when it comes to seeing a player when they’re developing at a young age and he seems to know they’re going to be pretty decent for the future so he’s definitely got an eye for talent.

I really wondered when he was linked with Wolves whether he would be able to repeat the same tricks there because they have their specific way of recruiting Portuguese purely. I wonder if at Rangers he’d be able to do the same. There’s obviously less scope to do that in the middle of the season and if he wants to take any players from us, they’re all under contract so you’re going to have to pay us a certain amount of money to get these players.

What was his style of play like?

When we looked into it at the start of the season, it dawned on us that Beale was the brains behind the operation with Gerrard. The formations and styles were exactly what Villa had been playing and what Rangers had been playing. Your fullbacks are going to have to be very important. Generally, at the moment, we play two No 10s. I don’t know whether that’s because our two best players are Ilias Chair and Chris Willock. They are two outstanding players so they have to play or you have to find a way to make them play and that means playing two No 10s. They’re slightly inverted and not necessarily wingers so you’re full- backs become very important, they are bombing on the whole time. He recruited well in getting Ethan Laird in on loan from Man United and Kenneth Powell on a free from a side in the Eredivisie. He likes playing three in midfield, one holding midfielder and the other two slightly more free to roam about a bit more. But based on our limited resources you have to build everything around Willock and Chair which, towards the end of his tenure at least, we became heavily reliant on to perform. If they didn’t perform then we didn’t win.

QPR are winless in their last five matches, what do you put that down to?

Other sides have sussed us out a little bit. We’re reliant on Chair and Willock to do a lot. You’ve got Lyndon Dykes who is a Scotland international but it’s an endless debate as to whether he puts away the chances that are given to

him. I think our crossing is absolutely diabolical. You’ve got a big tall centre forward who’s not getting crosses of any quality into him and most of the time we find ourselves with only one player in the box. You’ve got quite a few midfielders, they’re all talented players but none of them are making runs into the box or at least drawing a centre back away so that Dykes has got an easier run at the ball. The target for the crosses is very obvious and even then we can’t seem to find him.

Teams are sitting deeper in a low block and allowing us to have a fair bit of possession. We don’t move the ball quick enough and then it becomes very stale. We end up having a lot of potshots from outside the box which relates to the fact we have a lowish xG despite having a lot of chances. That’s something that’s become quite frustrating in the last couple of games and it’s really disappointing that he is moving on because this would be his first opportunity to prove his worth as a manager.

You’ve got a big break with the World Cup, he was going to have to do something with the players at his disposal. Prove your mettle as a manager, come back and put us back in the playoffs again.

QPR coaches Neil Banfield and Harry Watling have been mentioned as joining him as part of the backroom team, how important are they to his coaching set- up?

The easy answer is we don’t know. With Banfield, he came in under Mark Warburton and, especially last season, when you were watching the game on Sky and the camera pans round to the dugout Neil Banfield always seemed to be sitting down not actually doing anything and it would be Jon Eustace who would be the one in Warburton’s ear. It’s a little bit more different this season, Banfield seems to be a bit more involved. The one thing we know for sure is that Chris Willock came to QPR because of Neil Banfield. He was a big part in that because of his links to him at Arsenal.

I don’t know whether two and two are going to be put together over the next couple of weeks and we’re going to see stories about Chris Willock heading up to Rangers. Harry Watling is the set- piece coach and he’s come under a little bit of criticism because we’ve had a couple of weeks where we’ve done awful at conceding from set pieces. It’s become a real problem. Losing the first contact and then conceding a goal on the second contact because no one seems to want to challenge.

On the positive side, our set pieces going forward when we’ve had the right players playing we’ve been really threatening. Stefan Johansen putting the balls into the box and then Dykes, perhaps Jimmy Dunne, Leon Balogun, they’ve all been quite threatening when it comes to attacking set- plays but defensively there’ve been some real question marks.

We made a big song and dance about getting a set- piece coach at the start of the season purely because of Beale and when you’re conceding from set- plays you’re questioning what they’re doing to mitigate that and stop that from happening.

Beale put it down to it being a mentality issue which I don’t quite buy.

I guess you can train them to stand in a certain position and if they’re not wanting to put their head in there then you’re never going to stop conceding ... that’s something to keep an eye on.