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| (Courtesy of Chris Green - Flickr) |
The manager:
I don’t
like Mark Hughes, largely because I can’t remember the last time he smiled. Not
that he has got much to smile about these days; he bought a new team of players
over the summer, including some good ones, and has still only managed to get
three points from 9 games. But still, every time you see the game finish he
stands on the touchline, seemingly refusing to move, as if his team, or even
he, has been done some great injustice (to be fair that Arteta goal this
weekend was offside, but no one likes a cry-baby). Every game he poses the kind
of stance that is shown on Sky Sports News when a manager is first sacked, this
cannot bode well. Despite my personal feelings towards Mark Hughes he is not a
bad manager. He got Blackburn into the top 6 of the Premier League for goodness’
sake. He did slightly less well with Man City in the era just after the money arrived,
which is a difficult time to be a manager. This slight dip in status is what
has led him to become Fulham and then QPR manager.
Will he be
the first manager of the season to be sacked? It’s not looking good
for him. If you look at the teams in and around the danger zone they are teams
that are newly promoted who don’t seem that inclined to sacking their managers
this season (Reading, Southampton), teams with new managers, (Norwich, Villa)
and Wigan, and Dave Whelan said he would never sack Roberto Martinez. That said
I don’t think Tony Fernandes will really want to see Mark Hughes go because
when you get a new manager in in the middle of a season he is stuck with a
squad of players that he didn’t buy. Of course there is January but will
Fernandes want to dig into those deep pockets again? We shall see
Does he
deserve to be sacked? Well, after bringing in so many new faces over
the summer he might claim that his team needs a bit of gelling-together time.
That time has passed. If your team needs 9 games to gel together in one
Premiership season then there’s a good chance that they’re going to play badly
all season. And let’s not forget he did
spend a lot of money. Most of these new transfers were ‘undisclosed’ but we can
assume that Stephane Mbia, Esteban Granero and David Hoilett didn’t come too cheap,
especially as everyone knew that money-bags Fernandes was willing to splash the
cash.
The Team:
Key
Players: There are some really good players in here. Personally if I was
Mark Hughes I would say to Adel Taarabt “Do whatever you want.” The boy’s a bit
special. Yes he’s arrogant, yes he can be a bit over the top sometimes and no I
probably wouldn’t want to be his mate but he is the best natural football
player in this team so let him do his thing. One of the benefits of living
abroad is that I can watch a 3pm kick off on TV so I saw Adel Taarabt against
Arsenal on Saturday, he was shunted out to the left wing and didn’t have that
much influence on the game. He made 26/30 passes, which is a great success rate
but the fact that he only made 30 passes shows that he is not being given the
leading role he deserves. That role is being given to Esteban Granero who I believe
to be a lesser player than Taarabt and is only being given the lead role
because of the fact that he has come in from Real Madrid (reportedly for £7m).
Julio
Cesar, while a bit eccentric, seems to have been a good pick-up, a great
shot-stopper and good distribution to boot. Makes you wonder why they bought
Rob Green.
Stephane
Mbia should be a good signing too, once they get him back from suspension. The
Cameroonian does have a reasonably bad disciplinary record though, 24 yellows
and 3 reds in just 3 seasons at Marseille and now another red to add to his
collection. QPR fans will have to hope that this doesn’t become a regular
occurrence.
David
Hoilett is a danger, there were rumours towards the end of last season that he
would be going to a bigger club, such as Chelsea, and having seen Man City sign
Scott Sinclair I wonder why Mancini didn’t have a look. He is the kind of
player, like Taarabt, who doesn’t need his whole team to be playing well for
him to grab a goal; as he proved last season with 7 goals for relegated
Blackburn.
Bobby Zamora
absolutely needs to be at least a 15 goal player this season if QPR are going to
stay up. He is the spearhead of the attack and, providing he gets the right service
from his midfield, he has the talent to reach this.
Players
who need to do better: Ryan Nelsen is not looking the kind of
commanding centre-back he was when playing for New Zealand in the World Cup a
couple of years back. He lost Giroud for the Frenchman’s powerful header against
Arsenal which eventually led to the goal and looked almost clown-like while he
was spinning around trying to stop Arteta, although that can’t be entirely
blamed on Nelsen.
Shaun
Wright-Phillips still looks like every time he does something well it was
because he was trying to do something else and got a bit lucky. Definitely very
pacey and because of this still a nightmare to defend against but his delivery
is so poor. He put four crosses in against Arsenal and none of them found a man
in the middle, and his one shot was wildly off-target.
Verdict:
I’m going
to stick my neck out and say that QPR will survive, there just seems to be too
much quality here to go down, although I said that about West Ham a few seasons
back. If Mbia and Nelsen can get a decent partnership going at the back and
Hughes can find enough space in his midfield to get the best out of Taarabt and
Granero together they should have just about enough to stay up. 17th
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