Labelled a barrel scraping appointment in the summer by this very website, how has Jim Magilton won us all over and can it possibly continue long term?

It’ll never last, will it?
Well this is all rather jolly isn’t it? QPR up to fourth now, nose-bleed territory, and everybody is feeling good. Isn’t it amazing how the complaints and in fighting about everything else stops when the team is playing well? All this with a manager described on LFW during the summer as a “bottom of the barrel” appointment made simply because nobody else would touch us “with a shitty stick” after the way we treated Iain Dowie and Paulo Sousa last season. Ahem, yeh, well when did I ever get anything right?

Let’s not get too carried away. It is November and we are only fourth - if it was April and we were running away at the top of the league then it may be time to start looking into the cost of bunting but we’ve done nothing and gone nowhere yet. At the moment, personally, I think it’s just really nice to be looking forward to QPR games again, and being entertained while there. Even against Palace last week when we weren’t quite at our best and didn’t win the game I enjoyed the game, I liked watching us, and I came away feeling I’d had a really good night. It could all go wrong - I think the loss of Rowlands will be felt more keenly as the season goes on, especially if Watson goes back to Wigan in January, we could easily lose Taarabt, Simpson, Buzsaky or Routledge to injury which would really inhibit our attacking, and players like Faurlin and Mahon are in terrific form at the moment which may not last. I see no reason at the moment to upgrade my pre-season prediction of seventh, but all the signs are that it’s going to be much better than that.

I wrote recently in A Kick Up The R’s about why that might be, but focusing now solely on our manager who I gave such a bashing in the summer why are things going so well for Jim Magilton a man whose CV prior to arrival at Loftus Road showed him spending money at Ipswich and failing to make the top six?

Without wishing to sound bitter after slating him all summer and now being made to look like a bit of a tit, I do think he has been quite lucky. QPR’s location and profile at the moment means we have been able to plunder Tottenham and Arsenal for Adel Taarabt and Jay Simpson, the former who would almost certainly be with a Premiership side but for our “special relationship” with Spurs cultivated over the transfer of youth team prospect Dean Parrett and our Sporting Director’s friendship with Harry Redknapp, and the latter who was all set for Sheffield Wednesday on loan until the opportunity to stay in London was presented to him. Add in Ben Watson who was drawn back to the lights of the city from Wigan and it’s clear to see that a combination of the London location, rich owners and big wages paid is more of a draw than Ipswich for players. Where Magilton postured and never quite succeeded in the transfer market at Portman Road, naming targets and then babbling on about them for months on end without ever nailing them down, he is now able to attract players to his club.

He is also very fortunate that a massive gamble earlier in the season paid off for him. We didn’t actually start that well, the football was good and we should have taken more from games with Blackpool, Plymouth and Bristol City but we came to the last match in August without a league win to our names and there was already talk of pressure building. Just before the Scunthorpe away match we played Accrington Stanley at home in the cup and beat them by the skin of our teeth despite a dire performance. Afterwards Magilton was furious, tearing strips off the players in the dressing room and then going into the post match press conference and singling out individual players for criticism - most notably Akos Buzsaky. It was all very Phil Brown, and had recipe for disaster written all over it.

A combination of signing mediocre players on long lucrative contracts and the constant changeover of managers has created a poor attitude amongst the squad that was there for all to see at the club’s farcical player of the year dinner at the end of last season. There was a lack of effort and commitment last year from players that should have done much better, there seemed to be a feeling that they could just stop playing for a manager because another one would be along in a minute. To publicly lambast a group of players with that mentality was, well, like I say, all a bit Phil Brown.

We won at Scunthorpe on the Saturday and haven’t looked back since - just two defeats and seven wins from 12 games. Strange how footballers work.

I think John Gorman is very important as well. Magilton seems quite fiery and abrasive with his players, Gorman compliments that perfectly with a ‘good cop’ routine and I sensed that while Magilton was reeling off his list of culprits post Accrington Gorman was probably downstairs putting his arm round a few shoulders and giving them little things to improve on. Gorman is very experienced, tactically astute, and hugely likeable. He’s already massively popular at Loftus Road and there were a few hearts in mouths when the Wycombe job came up again a month or so ago. Magilton and Gorman seem to be a good team, and I’m not sure I’d want one without the other.

The football that Magilton likes to play seems to suit our players better than the ones he had at Portman Road, and has impressed the board enough to give him some time. It’s entirely possible that had he played a dull, long ball style he wouldn’t have even made it to the end of August. Flavio likes to bring his D-List celebrity friends to Loftus Road and be entertained, so that probably bought Jim some time to start with. Playing the total football style, building from the back, in the Championship is very risky but at QPR Magilton has a number of players comfortable on the ball in attacking areas and defenders like Gorkss and Connolly who are able to bring the ball out from the back and pass it reasonably well. Personally I think there is only really Jon Stead and possibly David Wright who I would have from the Ipswich squad in ours so, in my opinion at least, he’s got better players to work with at Loftus Road. Ipswich would walk over broken glass in bare feet to get their hands on Kaspars Gorkss, Matt Connolly, Adel Taarabt, Wayne Routledge, Ben Watson, Martin Rowlands, Akos Buzsaky and Jay Simpson.

Flavio’s recent brush with various governing bodies has probably helped as well. When he’s focussed on QPR he’s a right pain in the arse - interfering with team selections, forcing signings on managers, watching training sessions, sacking managers etc. He’s had a lot more on his plate this season away from football and has kept a much lower profile - that’s a benefit Magilton has had that his predecessors were not afforded. His entertaining brand of football and success in the transfer market has meant that Flavio has finally left a manager to it while he has been off fighting his corner in the motor sport world. Again, without that distraction, it’s entirely possible Magilton would have been sacked in August.

Magilton’s one real gamble in the transfer market, the signing of Alejandro Faurlin from the Argentinean second division, has worked out. Having lost Martin Rowlands for the rest of the season, something that finished our season last term, we have found in Faurlin somebody who can lead us around the park equally well. It makes such a change from the foreign players we signed last year who basically came because Flavio was mates with their club’s owner and couldn’t cut it at all. Faurlin looks very good at the moment, has settled into the Championship well, and we may be benefiting from the scouting Jim, Gorman and the people at Ipswich did last year. It must also make a nice change for Jim who signed players like Norris and Kevin Lisbie at Ipswich only for them to suddenly stop producing what they had for Plymouth and Colchester. Faurlin looked good when we scouted him, and he is good.

He is probably also benefiting from a fresh start. I got the impression that at Ipswich he’d been there a long time, had history with a lot of the players, and was tying himself in knots and frustrating himself. He probably had time to assess and calm down a little bit between the jobs, and has no doubt learnt from the mistakes he made.

I’ve said that I won’t apologise to Magilton for what I wrote during the summer until the end of the season because although things are good now, they can turn very quickly - particularly at QPR where patience is thin. All the early signs are very good though and even if we go nowhere this season it’s so nice to actually be enjoying our games again and looking forward to the next one.

Raheem’s Sterling QPR future
Such is the fickle way football works that we are suddenly all talking about a kid that nobody had even heard of a fortnight ago. You cannot pick up a gutter press rag at the moment without hearing all about Raheem Sterling, QPR’s new “wonderkid” (c - Daily Star) who is wowing followers of our junior sides and the visiting scouts with his speed, skill and all round ability.

“TEN THINGS YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT RAHEEM STERLING” screamed the Daily Mirror this week. Here’s one for you, he’s a 14 year old child, leave him the fuck alone you vultures. My apologies, but it does not sit comfortably with me that a young lad who, like I say, nobody had heard of a fortnight ago and may or may not make it in the game is suddenly being touted around like a piece of meat by the national press. Papers have reported that Man Utd, Liverpool and Man City are all set to whisk him away from us, like a 14 year old kid moving out of his family home in West London and being carted off to Manchester and showered with gifts is the most natural and perfectly normal and reasonable thing in the world.

None of these papers have actually focussed very much on facts, more assertions and assumptions that in modern football when one of the so called big clubs in this country clicks its fingers we all have to swoon and fall at their feet. Only the Jamaica Gleaner, bless them, actually thought to ask the boy and his Mum what they thought about it all. Mum Nadine said: “He's not really thinking about other clubs than QPR, the club that he is in,” while Raheem himself added: “I will be staying at QPR for some time because I don't think it's time yet to rush into anything." Christ look at that, direct quotes and everything. There’s been some from youth coach Steve Gallen as well who says Raheem is well liked at the club, is enjoying his football, and wants to stay. Still, where’s the fun in that? Let’s just put a top ten things you can plunder from a Google search about Raheem Sterling in our national newspaper instead.

It seems that young Raheem is pretty level headed and sensible, which is more than can be said for the journalists, scouts and commentators more than twice his age who are already talking about him being better than Theo Walcott and Wayne Rooney despite only being 14 years old and are talking about seven figure transfer fees being paid for him. There are no guarantees of anything at his age and his Mother’s further assertion that she wants her son kept out of the spotlight so he can concentrate on his school work is heartening. I like her already.

In the long run, if he is as good as they all say, I would suggest he is better off staying where he is than rushing to sign for one of these big clubs. At QPR he could be playing first team football at a high level within the next couple of years while still staying in his current home and school. At the bigger clubs he risks being swallowed up into a giant academy with 50 or 60 other boys who all think they’re going to be super stars. Clubs like Chelsea hoard young talent from smaller clubs like ourselves and none of it ever makes their first team, they’re just hoarding it so others cannot have it. Let’s not forget John Bostock who made his Crystal Palace debut aged only 16 the season before last and then played regularly for Neil Warnock’s side thereafter. He was snapped up by Tottenham and hasn’t been seen since. Spurs have now repeated the trick with Kyle Naughton - taking an already established and accomplished Championship footballer, paying him big money, and whacking him in a giant squad never to be seen again. They bought Kyle Walker from the Blades as well but at least had the good grace to loan him back to United where he can continue to play first team football in front of big crowds rather than youth team football in front of 30 people.

QPR though have to make themselves a more attractive option. Games on park pitches against Brighton, Barnet and Aldershot is no incentive for players like Sterling to be here, especially when the reserve team is a complete joke as well - playing once a month against the likes of Crawley. An academy set up, even if it is just a cheap version of one like at Reading, is an absolute must and plans for this should have been in place within a month of the takeover being completed. We don’t need an all singing, all dancing, purpose built, academy training centre - but we do need to be able to offer our youngsters games with the likes of Arsenal, Spurs and Chelsea as Palace and Reading can.

In the meantime best of look to young Raheem and I only hope that the scummier elements of our game and media leave the kid alone to develop both as a footballer and as a young man.

More comebacks than Lazarus, Mark Lazarus
The signing of Tommy Williams, again, on loan, again, from Peterborough this week came quite out of the blue but is, I think, a good move. Of course some QPR fans will never be able to look past the ‘square it’ moment at Cardiff in the play off final, and there has even been suggestions (I hope not serious ones) on some message boards that we shouldn’t touch him for that reason.

That is pretty small minded for my money because we are lacking cover at left back and to pick up a player playing well in that position at this level on the cheap is a shrewd bit of business. Peterborough may be bottom of the table and Williams may not have torn up many trees the last time he was here, while always giving a decent account of himself, but at Loftus Road earlier this season they and he were both very impressive. I would go so far as to say that Williams, along with Aaron McLean, was probably one of the best players on the pitch that day. He was hugely impressive the week before when I watched Peterborough play Crystal Palace as well.

To be completely replaced would be very harsh on Gary Borrowdale who has been a model of consistency this season and done very little wrong so far. However we are lacking cover for him, as we saw at Hillsborough on Saturday when poor Peter Ramage was press ganged into covering for him in a position he looked wholly uncomfortable with. Williams also offers something a bit different to Borrowdale who looks a little lost when he crosses the halfway line. At Loftus Road and against Palace the most eye catching part of Williams’ play came on the attack where his crossing seems to have improved immeasurably since he was last with us - indeed it was his ball in for McLean to score against us in September. If we are going to see teams increasingly coming to Loftus Road with the Leicester tactics of massing ranks across midfield and closing space down restricting Buzsaky, Routledge and Taarabt then it may well be very useful to have a good attacking threat coming from deeper still down the left.

Jim Magilton called it right when he said it was a ‘no brainer’. We needed a new left back and in Williams we not only have that, but we have somebody giving us a different, experienced, reasonably high quality option to the left back we already have. It’s another good move by the club in my opinion.

Photo: Action Images

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