QPR must gamble and a Tim Sherwood-Les Ferdinand ticket may be a winner
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Version 0 of 1. On one level, Harry Redknapp has at least been vindicated for his foresight. On plenty of others, though, the former Queens Park Rangers manager must be regretting how a decision he took in November 2008 has come back to bite him. Back then, Redknapp was fresh into the job as the Tottenham Hotspur manager and he moved to add Les Ferdinand and Tim Sherwood to his staff. Ferdinand was the “strikers’ consultant” – his first “stupid” post-playing career title – while Sherwood was simply an assistant first‑team coach. Both began as part-time employees at Tottenham, with Redknapp keen to open a pathway back into the game for two young English guys who he thought had plenty to offer. Redknapp talked at the time of how there was a danger of these kind of men being lost to Premier League football. He was happy to champion them. Cut to October 2014. By then, Ferdinand and Sherwood had climbed the ladder, having risen to greater prominence at Tottenham. Sherwood had been the manager for the final five months of the 2013-14 season, with Ferdinand as one of his assistants. Now, Ferdinand had returned to QPR – the club he once graced as a raging bull of a centre-forward – as the head of football operations. Redknapp was not happy. “It’s a stupid title really, isn’t it?” he said. Redknapp has often been suspicious of director of football-types and he felt miffed at Ferdinand’s appointment. The pair would endure a strained working relationship and it is fair to say that Redknapp’s “stupid title” remark was not lost on Ferdinand. On Wednesday morning, Ferdinand got a better title – that of director of football. It was 24 hours after a worn-out Redknapp had resigned as manager and Ferdinand is now primed to have a loud say in the identity of his successor. As things stand, it is almost certain to be Sherwood, with the other contenders – Steve McClaren of Derby County and Paul Clement, the Real Madrid No2 – not ready to leave their jobs. The Ferdinand-Sherwood ticket would represent a gamble. The former’s new title comes with a broader remit, in that he is now in charge of player recruitment. He will work with the manager to identify potential signings. Previously, Ferdinand had put his efforts into the club’s academy, alongside Chris Ramsey, who had been Sherwood’s other assistant at Tottenham. Ferdinand retains the brief to overhaul the underachieving academy, to instil a coherent philosophy and build for the future. He has not had any input into training sessions at QPR, and nor will he in his new role. Ferdinand has little experience in recruitment but he has completed governance courses and has made a big impression on the chairman, Tony Fernandes. Fernandes has been keen to play up Ferdinand’s status as a QPR legend, someone who “bleeds blue and white”, although emotional factors must surely be of secondary importance. Sherwood, similarly, is callow in managerial terms and he stands to enter an extremely difficult situation, one in which morale is low and QPR are once again in danger of relegation from the Premier League. They have lost all 11 of their away matches this season. With debts to their owners of around £170m, the financial consequences of going down stand to be grave. It could be interesting to see how Sherwood’s brand of man-management is received in the QPR dressing room. At Tottenham, he took no prisoners and put noses out of joint, including that of Sandro, who moved to Loftus Road last summer. The midfielder was angry at having been left out of the matchday squad against Fulham on 19 April and he tweeted that he was not injured. “What he’s stating is correct,” Sherwood said. “He’s not good enough to be in the side at the minute.” Sandro came back on Twitter. “LOL LOL LOL,” he wrote. Sherwood is no respecter of reputations and he made it pretty clear how he felt about Jan Vertonghen, Paulinho and Érik Lamela, for example. To him, young players such as Harry Kane and Nabil Bentaleb deserved equal billing. (Look at how those two are doing at present.) Sherwood’s readiness to speak his mind was hugely admirable and it reflected the strength of his personality but it became a problem to the Tottenham chairman, Daniel Levy, who came to consider him as too loose a cannon. Sherwood’s comments after the 4-0 defeat at Chelsea on 8 March went down particularly badly. He accused his players of lacking “guts” and of there being a “deafening silence” at boardroom level with regard to his prospects. QPR have to gamble and, despite the risks with Sherwood, he has a lot of qualities. Fernandes says that he wants “someone who cares, thinks long term, wants to be involved in developing the academy, has coaching skills, will play young players and is a winner”. Sherwood is all of the above. His results were generally decent at Tottenham, albeit not against the very best teams, while he knew the club from the bottom upwards, having worked to good effect as the youth technical coordinator. QPR’s priority is to put the people and structures in place whereby they can move forward in the longer term – even if it means absorbing another relegation in May. Ferdinand has staged something of a coup. He, and Sherwood, have it all to do. |