Friday, November 25, 2005
WELCOME TO QPR ISSUES
Welcome to QPR Issues.
As of November 24, this is just a very lengthy semi-chronological compilation of statements by, Q&A with and articles about the people running Queens Park Rangers (QPR). It's focused on the OFF-The-Field activities of QPR.
As is self-evident, most of the material comes from the LSA website http://www.qpr-lsa.co.uk Also the QPR1st website. http://www.qpr1st.co.uk/ And some additional material to come!
This is very much a work-in-progress. Hopefully some of the material will be deleted to make it slightly more accessible. I just thought it would be a useful exercise to combine all the various interviews and statements made by QPR's Officials.
IF there are any other interviews or articles you are aware of please send them to me at QPRReport@hotmail.com
Thanks
As of November 24, this is just a very lengthy semi-chronological compilation of statements by, Q&A with and articles about the people running Queens Park Rangers (QPR). It's focused on the OFF-The-Field activities of QPR.
As is self-evident, most of the material comes from the LSA website http://www.qpr-lsa.co.uk Also the QPR1st website. http://www.qpr1st.co.uk/ And some additional material to come!
This is very much a work-in-progress. Hopefully some of the material will be deleted to make it slightly more accessible. I just thought it would be a useful exercise to combine all the various interviews and statements made by QPR's Officials.
IF there are any other interviews or articles you are aware of please send them to me at QPRReport@hotmail.com
Thanks
Other Links
Antono Caliendo's World Champions Club http://www.worldchampionsclub.com/index2.htm
Some Port Vale Fans Discussing Paladini in light of his new position at QPRhttp://www.onevalefan.co.uk/forum/index.php?showtopic=13161 Also old Paldini Discussion on a Port Vale Fans Sitehttp://www.onevalefan.co.uk/forum/lofiversion/index.php/t943-0.html
Some Port Vale Fans Discussing Paladini in light of his new position at QPRhttp://www.onevalefan.co.uk/forum/index.php?showtopic=13161 Also old Paldini Discussion on a Port Vale Fans Sitehttp://www.onevalefan.co.uk/forum/lofiversion/index.php/t943-0.html
Thursday, November 24, 2005
QPR EVENTS - November
Holloway on Loan Signing Possibilities Before Transfer Deadline
ClubCall - Q.P.R. - Holloway targets new additions 23 Nov 2005
Ian Holloway is hoping to add to his Queens Park Rangers squad before Thursday's emergency loan deadline as he battles a crippling injury-list at Loftus Road.The Rangers boss saw his injury-hit side slip to a fourth straight defeat on Tuesday night but Holloway went into the game without eight injured players and Paul Furlong suspended.With the transfer deadline looming large Holloway will now be working to try and add to the squad."I have got two days and I will talk to the board and see if there is anything we can do. I don't know what we have got but I'll see what we can do," said Holloway."We have a boat-load of injuries. I think we are short defensively and we are letting in too many goals at the moment. We might be ok up front if we get everyone back but we shall see."http://www.clubcall.com/vsite/vcontent/content/transnews/0,10869,5034-169529-19728-36699-212401-13916-5024-layout104-186747-news-item,00.html
QPR's Possible Transfer Moves
Holloway on the Official SiteMORE GOALS REQUIREDTalking to QPR World about his sides start to the season, Holloway pinpointed his sides main area for improvement.As usual, Ollie wasn't keen to give too much away at this point of the season, choosing instead to focus on that position Rangers find themselves in next April.Of course the Rangers boss was keen to see more action up front and he has already set his sights on improving that area."We need to score more goals, we are lacking a few from the chances we created. I want to work on that, getting more goals in that column."Ian Holloway and his staff will take advantage of the free weekend by going out on a scouting mission.Holloway told QPR World: "I'll be giving my players the weekend off and I'll be off with my staff looking at players. We also have some exciting prospects waiting to come over.""It's exciting times, I feel we are stabilising. We are now on top of the water - ready to sail off into the sunset."With the transfer window opening in less than two months Holloway will be talking to the board regarding the playing budget."I might be close to taking a player in on loan with a view to taking over his contract. I wouldn't mind some more defensive cover too."When we were in the second division we had the better players becuase we had the biggest budget."Ollie was also keen to clear up some other business. In a recent Q&A on QPR World Holloway referred to a quote in a Newspaper attributed to QPR fan Paul Finney."Typical me, I said some things I shouldn't of said. It turns out the guy I spoke about had some threats from other fans."I didn't want that - this guy is a QPR fan! He explained things to me and I apologised to him. If my words got him that kind of abuse I am ashamed of myself."Elsewhere, after only three starts this season Martin Rowlands was a welcome sight as he started back in full training."I thought I had a new signing today some little lad with blonde hair. It's great to have him back although I'm not sure whether he will be match fit for the game at Plymouth because he has been out quite a while." http://www.qpr.premiumtv.co.uk/page/News/NewsDetail/0,,10373~739623,00.html
Dunga (supposedly) buys £1.1million stake in QPR
The SunBRAZILIAN World Cup winner Dunga has bought a £1.1million stake in QPR.Hoops chairman Gianni Paladini hopes the move will help end rumours that Dunga is just a figurehead.Dunga has been on the Rangers board since last year — but fans have accused him of having no interest in the club.He has seldom been seen at Loftus Road but has now bought ex-chairman Bill Power’s 17.6 per cent stake in the club.Paladini said: “Dunga’s investment shows he is more than a good advert for QPR. He would like to come to more games but he has business interests in Japan and Brazil.”http://www.thesun.co.uk/article/0,,2002390000-2005520366,00.html[And then the story is repeated here "QPR receive £1.1million Brazilian stake"http://www.worldfootballers.com/news.php?id=10698
Paladini Promises Holloway Funds for January
Ben Kosky/ Kilburn TimesFunds ready for HollowayQPR chairman Gianni Paladini has promised funds to help Ian Holloway pep up his forward line when the transfer window opens in January.Rangers have looked short of firepower all season, despite having five senior strikers on their books and Holloway is eager to add another face in the new year.And Paladini, who took over as chairman in September, confirmed that the club are 'keeping tabs' on several possible targets, including a promising youngster in South America and another in Japan."It's up to Ollie who he wants and, provided it's the right player for this club and he fits into our wage structure, we will definitely try to bring him in," Paladini told the Times."As long as it's not silly money, there shouldn't be a problem. We've already brought in seven or eight players this year and if we need to get someone else, it would probably be a striker."Kevin Gallen is Rangers' top scorer this season with four goals, despite spending the majority of his time in midfield, while summer signing Marc Nygaard has banged in three in five starts.But Paul Furlong has struggled to reproduce the form that saw him voted Player of the Year last season, while Dean Sturridge has been wrestling with fitness problems ever since joining the club in March.Speculation has suggested that Holloway may make another move for Millwall striker Barry Hayles, a player he once managed at Bristol Rovers and attempted to bring to Loftus Road 18 months ago.Hayles has hit five goals - including one against QPR - for the troubled Lions this campaign, but turns 34 in the spring and might represent too much of a gamble.Meanwhile, Paladini plans to build on the recent upturn in attendances at Loftus Road by offering a regular £1 ticket concession for juniors.The scheme was initially launched for next month's clash with Coventry and remains in place although the match has been switched to a Monday night for TV coverage.Attendances dropped by around 2,000 earlier in the season, but Rangers' last two home games, against Norwich and Reading, have both topped the 15,000 mark."It's been much better again and if we had 15,000 plus every week, we'd be laughing," said Paladini. "Having a full ground is the most important thing."We might try to sell at half-price for Christmas and we'll make it £1 a head for the kids another time as well - maybe we'll do it for every single game until the end of the season."http://www.camdentimes.co.uk/content/camden/camdentimes/sport/story.aspx?brand=KLBTOnline&category=sportboxing&tBrand=northlondon24&tCategory=sportcamt&itemid=WeED08%20Nov%202005%2020%3A00%3A39%3A490
Lengthy Profile/Interview with Ian Holloway in the IndependentIan Holloway: In a league of his ownAnger management, mixed metaphors, gun threats and the odd game of football are all in a day's work for Queens Park Rangers' colourful manager Ian HollowayInterview by Robert ChalmersPublished: 06 November 2005Is there anything that has happened at your club recently, I ask Ian Holloway, that has surprised you? "Surprised?" The Queens Park Rangers manager leans forward and cradles his chin in his hands, his elbows resting on his knees. "Surprised? No. Surprised is not the right word. You would need a different word. Like shocked," he says. "Or stunned. Or amazed."Holloway's use of language, like his view of the world, is bold and distinctive to the point that - like Eric Cantona, Ron Atkinson or the late Bill Shankly - he has become familiar to a constituency which has no interest in football. In June he came 15th in Time Out magazine's list of the 50 funniest Londoners - ahead of Paul Merton and Ali G, among others - no mean feat when you consider that Ian Holloway neither comes from, nor lives in, the capital."They say every dog has his day," Holloway declared, after Queens Park Rangers were promoted to the Coca-Cola Championship. "And today is Woof Day. I want to go out and bark."And yet, when he discusses recent events at Queens Park Rangers, it's clear that even the small man from Bristol knows Woof Day is definitely over.A few minutes before the kick-off of QPR's home game against Sheffield United in August this year, one of the club's directors, Gianni Paladini, had a gun held to his head, in the boardroom, by a gang allegedly seeking to persuade him to sign a letter of resignation. Four men have been charged with conspiracy to commit blackmail, and joint possession of a firearm with intent to commit GBH.Gianni Paladini has since been appointed chairman of Queens Park Rangers - the latest in a bewildering series of upheavals at board level. Paladini, a former footballers' agent who was once a wine waiter in Birmingham, recently issued a writ against a newspaper which alleged improprieties in his transfer dealings. He inherits a club with debts of around £10m.I ask Holloway when it was that he first heard about the supposed firearm incident. "After the game. We're walking off the pitch. We've just won, 2-1. The ref's given us a goal that was blatantly offside, so I'm absolutely elated. Neil Warnock, the Sheffield United manager, is going ballistic. Anyhow," he continues, "I am shouting at Neil, as we walk off: 'I always supported you. But now I see I was wrong. Everybody else in football is right. You are a twat.'"In the dressing room afterwards, "I'm saying congratulations to my team..." Holloway searches for a way to summarise his speech and settles - perhaps unfortunately - for the phrase: "Well done lads... bang, bang, bang."Then, he adds, "Bill Power [former QPR chairman] gets hold of me. He's in a daze. He says: 'Er... something... has...' I said: 'What?' He said: '... ah... happened. I don't know quite how to tell...' So I'm like: 'Bill, do us a favour. Don't tell me.' That way, when I met the press after the match I didn't know what had - allegedly - gone on."Since then, the CID have been regular visitors to Loftus Road, the club's west London stadium. "It has," says the manager, "been absolutely horrendous."The whole thing sounds like a surreal black comedy."Yes," says Holloway. "I kept expecting Harry Potter to fly in."In a precarious and hostile trade, the general run of football managers tend to espouse the kind of haughty machismo perfected by Jose Mourinho. Ian Holloway is not like this. Holloway paints huge, abstract canvases. He has wept on camera, talking about his love for his wife. He has difficulties with reading and says so in public. Though fiercely combative by nature, he meets life head-on with a frank and disarming vulnerability.In his photograph in the club programme - one place where even the most thoroughly tormented manager can usually strike a pose of imperious tranquillity - Holloway's expression is a mixture of determination and foreboding: he has the look of a man who has just led a breakout from Colditz, and is glancing back to the perimeter wall, only to see that all of his fellow escapees have been machine-gunned.When I arrive at his house in St Albans, Holloway, wearing a blue dress shirt and jeans, answers the door and leads the way to his living room, talking to a colleague on his mobile. I sit on the sofa, under the scrutiny of his rottweiler, Nathan, while the manager, who is 42, discusses the club's situation. (omega)Holloway's end of the phone conversation is the usual blend of candour and mixed metaphors; he has a tendency to start one sentence before he has completed the last, and speaks in a strong West Country accent which lends a kind of poetry to the most banal phrase."Directors are calling me for advice," he says, the last word rhyming with "choice". "It's like they're holding on to my shirt tails. It should be the other way round. It's getting to the point where other managers would start thinking bugger this, I'm off into the river and joining another boat... the tail," he adds, "cannot wag the dog."There are whole web sites devoted to so-called "Ollyisms". Invited to analyse one hard-fought victory, over Chesterfield, he responded as follows: "To put it in gentleman's terms, if you've been out for a night and you're looking for a young lady and you pull one, some weeks they're good-looking and some weeks they are not the best. Our performance today," he went on, "would not have been the best-looking bird, but at least we got her in the taxi. She was not the best-looking lady we ended up taking home, but she was very pleasant and very nice, so thanks very much, let's have a coffee."When a journalist enquired about his health, following a leave of absence, Holloway told him: "My arms withered and my body was covered with puss-like sores, but no matter how bad it got I consoled myself by remembering that I wasn't a Chelsea fan."He shares his tastefully decorated, large modern house with his wife Kim, son William, 17, and three younger teenage daughters - Chloe, Eve and Harriet. Each of the girls - for reasons doctors have been unable to explain - was born deaf. The family moved to St Albans to be close to a state school that teaches British sign language.On the wall is Promotion, Holloway's abstract canvas in the style of Jackson Pollock. He painted it while being filmed for the 2004 BBC programme Stress Test. The documentary addressed the fits of rage which were disrupting his home life, with the help of psychologists and an anger management expert - who, Holloway recalls, "was constantly trying to get my goat up". The experience might have destroyed some people. Ian Holloway emerged as a national treasure.I tell him that I honestly believe that going on that show is the bravest thing I've ever seen a footballer do, on or off the pitch."Bravest?" Holloway asks, "or most stupid?"It's probably true that Sir Alex Ferguson, say, might have taken some persuading before he consented - as Ian Holloway did - to have his stress levels monitored while he performed an a cappella version of "Why Do Fools Fall in Love?""But if I hadn't done that programme," Holloway says, "I wouldn't be sitting here now. Before I did it, I believed that I was a person who was kind, considerate, and believed in free speech. The anger management expert showed me I was a jumped-up, obnoxious little get who wouldn't listen at home because of what happened at work. If I'd carried on the way I was," he says, "I would have destructed everything I had."Stress Test showed him addressing his players before a game."One of their staff was as rude as [beep] to us," he said. "So [beep]ing get on your [beep]ing toes. All my life I've been on a [beep]ing crusade. I want us [beep]ing focussed. Because you can [beep]ing win without being [beep]ing rude."To his deaf daughters, Holloway's furious gesticulations must have made him look like James Finlayson, the bald, apoplectic straight man to Laurel and Hardy, in one of their silent shorts. The painting was part of his therapy."I said, 'But I always have an original to copy.' They said, 'That's your problem.' I sprayed something on the paper and I thought, 'Oh God, I've ruined it.' By the end, I was throwing paint at it. Doing that picture set me free. I had always worried whether I was doing the right thing; always believed that nothing I did would ever be good enough. I realised all of that is bullshit. Most of my life," he adds, "is bullshit."You mean your life in football?"No, I'm talking about that perception I once had of what I ought or ought not to say. Now I feel I have got to tell it how it is."In one scene he faced the camera alone, talking about the effects of his explosive anger."Kim," Holloway said, in one scene from the programme - facing the camera alone, in an emotional state - "don't love the fella I am. A lot of things used to scare me. None of them do now. Only the fact that I might lose her. Without your family," he adds, "you've got nothing. I wouldn't want to carry on living without them. There would be no point."Kim, who has been his girlfriend since she was 14 years old, appears with coffee. "I used to shout her down," Holloway says. "I used to be vile."Has anyone mocked you for appearing on that programme?"Not to my face."Holloway - 5ft 8in tall and not heavily built - has had to rely on passion, integrity and commitment to gain the respect he commands in his dressing room, and throughout the game. Before he went into management nine years ago, he was a midfield player who gave devoted service to both Bristol Rovers and QPR - admired, it has to be said, for full-blooded endeavour rather than grace and flair.Was his anger worse, I ask Kim, when he became a manager?She laughs. "Just a bit.""Am I better now?" he inquires."Yes," she says."I nearly lost her twice," Holloway tells me. She was briefly engaged to someone else, when she was in her teens. Shortly after they married, Kim developed lymph cancer, from which she has fully recovered.Some years ago, I tell Holloway, I was having lunch with a group of football writers, when the conversation turned to the question of why Bobby Charlton never succeeded as a manager. "Because," somebody said, "he is not a bastard.""I don't believe that you need to be a shit," Holloway counters. "You have to be consistent, and strong, and your values need to be right. I live the way I want my players to be. I keep things in the open."If the fans love this eccentric, inspirational figure - and most do - it's because he embodies the kind of fierce loyalty usually associated with the terraces."I remember meeting him years ago, when he'd just taken over as manager at Bristol Rovers," says Steve Tongue, this newspaper's football correspondent. "I was early and I sat down to wait for him in his office. When he arrived, he made me exchange chairs with him because mine was blue and his was red [the colour of loathed rivals Bristol City]."Holloway also banned red vehicles from the training ground."When I was at Bristol Rovers," he says, "there was a journalist who wrote a match report where he said that if Bristol City had my two strikers - who, in that game, were rubbish - then City would be a team Bristol could be proud of. Oooof!""So," Kim calls through from the next room, "you dragged the poor sod in, didn't you?""I got him to the training ground. He didn't know why. I said: 'You are going to apologise to my team, you bastard.' I sat all my players down. I had the two centre halves stand up. I said: 'Right, now tell these two - who you only gave five out of 10 each - just how well you think they played, you asshole.'"Did that ensure more sympathetic coverage?"Well, he started killing me in the paper every week. From then on I said, 'OK, I'll laugh at myself. And I'll try to be honest.'"Holloway grew up in Cadbury Heath, near Bristol; his mother still lives in the same council house now. His father Bill, an outstanding amateur footballer, was a seaman, then a factory worker. Family, Holloway says, was everything to him."He never knew who his father was. When he was 14 he'd just lost the man he believed was his dad, in the Blitz. The life assurance rep knocked on the door and said: 'Is your step mum in, Bill?' That's how he learned he was adopted."Bill died of a heart attack aged 59, when Ian was 25."He never made a lot of money and at the end he was thinking: 'Oh God, I am a failure.' He actually said that on his death bed. He was so wrong. The destructive side I used to have that would not accept anything that wasn't perfect, I saw that in my dad."Holloway was due to play a match on the day his father died."I got in the car to go to the ground. I just sat there with the engine off, staring ahead of me, gripping the steering wheel. I decided not to go. Then I looked across, and I saw an indentation in the passenger seat. I swear to you that it was there. I put the key in the ignition."During the match, he says, "It was as if my dad was there alongside me. We won 4-0. It was the best game I'd had for years."At another critical stage in his life, he recalls, "I was driving along, and 'One Sweet Day', that Mariah Carey song about light 'shining down on you from heaven' came on the radio. The volume went up to the maximum. My car was full of light, and the tears were just pouring down my face. I was like a bloody river and yet I had never felt so good. It was as if someone had opened up my head, poured a load of love in, then put the top of my skull back down. When the song finished, the volume fell again. I swear to you on my kids' lives, that that happened." Again, he says, "it was as if Dad was there, looking after me."If ever Ian Holloway has needed the help of his spirit guide, it is now. The predominant theme in his life has been the struggle to fulfil his responsibilities as head of a household he cherishes. But, while his own domestic arrangements have stabilised, at Queens Park Rangers he has found himself presiding over an increasingly wild and dysfunctional family.Holloway became manager of an ailing QPR side in the spring of 2001, and was unable to save them from relegation to the game's third tier, then League Division Two. The club spent the following season in financial administration and survived by taking out a £10m loan from a Panamanian-registered company. In the summer of 2004 Holloway led Rangers back up into the Coca-Cola Championship. From their current position in the top-half of the table, QPR's more optimistic supporters have started to eye the Premiership above them.Holloway believes the only way he will become a manager at that level is to get QPR promoted. "Nobody," he says, "is going to want to hire a bumpkin from Bristol."Within the game, Holloway's achievement is recognised as extraordinary: if clubs were ranked by their financial means, QPR would be in the bottom four of the Championship. What success they have achieved is the result of the manager's ability to communicate his own galvanic commitment to his players.The £10m loan from the ABC Corporation of Panama carried a 10 per cent interest rate and the resulting annual payment of £1m horrified some directors. The deal was concluded under the reign of former chairman Nick Blackburn, who resigned in the summer of 2004. He was replaced by Bill Power, who was ousted by Gianni Paladini in August this year. Over the past two years, board members have departed with a frequency that is staggering. The surreal preliminaries to the Sheffield United game are indicative of the turmoil within the club, which at the time of writing has no chief executive."We had two people," Ian Holloway explains, "Gianni Paladini and Bill Power, in the highest positions and they had a great relationship. I liked them both. Their relationship has broken down and things aren't stable any more. I have never been a child who has been in a divorce. But now I feel like their kid."Until last year, Gianni Paladini was a Fifa-registered football agent, who represented high-profile players such as Benito Carbone and Fabrizio Ravanelli. He bought a 22 per cent stake in QPR for around £650,000, but is also closely linked to two Monaco consortiums, Wanlock and Barnaby Holdings, that have invested £1.7m in the club; together, they own 46 per cent of QPR.Paladini, now 60, was a striker on Napoli's books until injury forced him to retire at the age of 22. He settled in the Midlands in 1968, and build up a portfolio of restaurants and clubs. Certain aspects of his CV - the fact that he's a Neapolitan, who went from waiting on tables to owning nightclubs, and brokered many football deals in southern Italy - have led some to leap to stereotypical judgments. As Paladini said recently, "People must think there is Mafia involvement. But I want the best for QPR and I'm getting the right people to achieve this." The chairman describes allegations that he has signed players to QPR with a view to enriching his agent friends as "stupid".I ask Holloway how he gets on with Gianni Paladini."His personality is electric. You want to be in his company." At the same time, he says, "You wouldn't want to do anything wrong. He loves you or he hates you. When he loves you, there is no better company in the world. You can talk about Gianni being a waiter. You can talk about Gianni being Italian. You can talk about Gianni being an agent. But Gianni is a bloke. Gianni is a fella. A nice fella."What if you "do something wrong"?"If you upset him," Holloway explains, "he will hurl abuse at you. He doesn't mean it the following day. Hopefully I can help him learn from my experience of how I used to scream at deaf children."Does he swear in Italian?"Normally in English."Last year, Holloway recalls, he was at home, suffering from chronic diarrhoea, when he answered a call from Paladini."I was sat on the toilet - actually I couldn't leave the toilet. I had this virus. There had been rumours about me going to Wolves. Three days before, I'd bought flowers for some ladies in the office. Gianni assumed they were a leaving present."So you were on the toilet..."And Gianni was going: 'You fucking bastard I am going to kill you. I am going to kill you, you fucking bastard... where are you, you fucking... fucking hell where are you.'"And you said..."I am on the toilet. My wife is in the house. Ask her. He said: 'She could be at fucking Wolves with you.'"In the end, Holloway says, he had to drive up to Leeds, to reassure the Italian. It was a journey he remembers."It was a terrible virus. It was coming out of both ends. I had to stop at every service station. I shouldn't have gone. It was horrendous. I was totally dehydrated. My lips were stuck to my teeth. I ended up in hospital, the following day. I was in for a week. I had six drips put into me."It wouldn't be reasonable to invite any manager to criticise his chairman in public, but..."Well I have seen people saying Holloway 'supports' Gianni Paladini. Holloway supports QPR. But I am a man of principle. If I thought there was any just cause for [the unease some have voiced about the Italian], I wouldn't be here."Scotland Yard, Holloway points out, "has been looking into everything that's happened at the club. If there was anything untoward Mr Paladini had done, would he still be where he is?"It can't be pleasant to be under such scrutiny."It isn't. As a football manager you are like... a doorstop."A doorstop?"You are in between the floor and the door. There's the board of directors, and the fans and the players, trying to push the door."So who does the door represent - the board?"Sorry?"Is the board the door?"Well you've got the door and the floor. I am the wedge. And someone is trying to force the door. But really it needs to be the other way round, because the board are above me."But who is the door? (omega)"Er... OK... forget the door." Holloway draws a triangle in the air. "I am in a three-way struggle involving the fans, the players and the board. I don't know of anybody else who has been in this situation, ever."You did once say that you can never have complete harmony at a football club."Yes. But there is a difference between complete harmony and complete chaos."And at QPR is it complete..."Everybody out there makes it look like it's complete chaos." Gianni Paladini, says Holloway, "is Caesar and at the minute the old thumb is wobbling. The crowd are going wait a minute. I want to be Maximus. But I get a bit of a waft of fish sometimes."This is a volatile situation that can communicate itself to the players via the fans - that's what you're saying?"Yes. Normally you need support when things are going wrong. That is what I've found in my own life. I've needed the support of my wife and family. To me, if you're a football supporter, your love should be unconditional."I'd expected to talk to Ian Holloway for 90 minutes. In the end we are together for four hours, during which time he covers - as well as such topics as the 4-5-1 formation, Sven Goran Eriksson and QPR's increased season ticket prices - the questions of divine fallibility and the theory of evolution."We are an offshoot of apes - allegedly - but who knows? We don't really, do we? How long have we been on this planet?" Holloway muses. "How long are we going to be here? What is it all about? We reproduce. Our offspring carry on. But that will only happen for a limited time. Before the whole thing blows up and we are sucked into a black hole. You know what I mean?"The QPR manager will explore such themes further in his forthcoming autobiography, titled Thanks, Steve."I went to Southampton the other week, with Kim. These kids shouted, 'Oh Holloway, you're a legend. Sign this.' Then they said, 'Thanks, Steve.' It was the same in the Chinese chip shop when I was at Bristol Rovers. They started off by calling me 'Horroway'. But before long it was: 'Salt and vinegar, Steve? How much you earn, Steve?' Why," Holloway asks, "is it always Steve?"At various points during our conversation he speaks of his admiration for Jose Mourinho who - with his inexhaustible transfer budget and terse, supercilious manner - is, in many respects, everything Ian Holloway isn't."Even to be in Mourinho's company must be amazing," he says. "When he gets doubts, how long do they stay in his head? What support does he have to help him banish those doubts?"About £2.1bn and a club with more power than any in the history of the game, I suggest."But he still has to get those grossly paid players to perform."Of the two, I know whose history I find more inspirational, and who I'd rather have as a dinner companion, manager, or friend, and he wasn't born in Setubal. There's no doubt which of the managers is going to have the more captivatingly unpredictable season. It could, I suggest, be a very long year for Ian: there will be little or no money for fancy signings, and the ongoing police inquiry, like the Paladini libel suit, is guaranteed to keep the club in the headlines for the least enviable reasons."The things that matter to me," he says, "are commitment and trust. So the last few months haven't been easy. I don't know what to trust, or what to think, or what to do. It might turn out that certain alleged facts are true. I don't know yet. But I do know that I won't work without trust. I have to believe."What can he teach his players from his own experience?"That winners are made, not born. And that winners are made by not fearing. I can sense fear in the eyes of players. I could see it in Kim's eyes when she had cancer. I have dealt with fear," Holloway adds, "all my life. My own fear has been a selfish dread that I might not be good enough."But life, he continues, "is like the The Emperor's New Clothes. Don't you think that story says it all? I think part of all of us has doubts. Because of the animal that we are. You can't take away from the fact that we are an animal. Aren't we? This is a sofa," Holloway continues. "I am an animal. But we have evolved into sitting by the fire, and thinking, and to be fair when you see a fire... it does make you... you know if chimps had done that, maybe they would be the ones..."Hang on - if chimps had done what?"They'd found fire before... it was us that found fire, wasn't it?"I think Holloway can see that his Emperor's New Clothes monologue has left me slightly perplexed."My main ambition," he goes on, "is to leave this planet knowing that I gave my best and that I was there for my children. And I am trying to make them independent and able to live happily, for many years after I have gone. By the way," he adds, as I'm getting up to leave. "You're stark, bollock naked, mate."Is there anything that has happened at your club recently, I ask Ian Holloway, that has surprised you? "Surprised?" The Queens Park Rangers manager leans forward and cradles his chin in his hands, his elbows resting on his knees. "Surprised? No. Surprised is not the right word. You would need a different word. Like shocked," he says. "Or stunned. Or amazed."Holloway's use of language, like his view of the world, is bold and distinctive to the point that - like Eric Cantona, Ron Atkinson or the late Bill Shankly - he has become familiar to a constituency which has no interest in football. In June he came 15th in Time Out magazine's list of the 50 funniest Londoners - ahead of Paul Merton and Ali G, among others - no mean feat when you consider that Ian Holloway neither comes from, nor lives in, the capital."They say every dog has his day," Holloway declared, after Queens Park Rangers were promoted to the Coca-Cola Championship. "And today is Woof Day. I want to go out and bark."And yet, when he discusses recent events at Queens Park Rangers, it's clear that even the small man from Bristol knows Woof Day is definitely over.A few minutes before the kick-off of QPR's home game against Sheffield United in August this year, one of the club's directors, Gianni Paladini, had a gun held to his head, in the boardroom, by a gang allegedly seeking to persuade him to sign a letter of resignation. Four men have been charged with conspiracy to commit blackmail, and joint possession of a firearm with intent to commit GBH.Gianni Paladini has since been appointed chairman of Queens Park Rangers - the latest in a bewildering series of upheavals at board level. Paladini, a former footballers' agent who was once a wine waiter in Birmingham, recently issued a writ against a newspaper which alleged improprieties in his transfer dealings. He inherits a club with debts of around £10m.I ask Holloway when it was that he first heard about the supposed firearm incident. "After the game. We're walking off the pitch. We've just won, 2-1. The ref's given us a goal that was blatantly offside, so I'm absolutely elated. Neil Warnock, the Sheffield United manager, is going ballistic. Anyhow," he continues, "I am shouting at Neil, as we walk off: 'I always supported you. But now I see I was wrong. Everybody else in football is right. You are a twat.'"In the dressing room afterwards, "I'm saying congratulations to my team..." Holloway searches for a way to summarise his speech and settles - perhaps unfortunately - for the phrase: "Well done lads... bang, bang, bang."Then, he adds, "Bill Power [former QPR chairman] gets hold of me. He's in a daze. He says: 'Er... something... has...' I said: 'What?' He said: '... ah... happened. I don't know quite how to tell...' So I'm like: 'Bill, do us a favour. Don't tell me.' That way, when I met the press after the match I didn't know what had - allegedly - gone on."Since then, the CID have been regular visitors to Loftus Road, the club's west London stadium. "It has," says the manager, "been absolutely horrendous."The whole thing sounds like a surreal black comedy."Yes," says Holloway. "I kept expecting Harry Potter to fly in."In a precarious and hostile trade, the general run of football managers tend to espouse the kind of haughty machismo perfected by Jose Mourinho. Ian Holloway is not like this. Holloway paints huge, abstract canvases. He has wept on camera, talking about his love for his wife. He has difficulties with reading and says so in public. Though fiercely combative by nature, he meets life head-on with a frank and disarming vulnerability.In his photograph in the club programme - one place where even the most thoroughly tormented manager can usually strike a pose of imperious tranquillity - Holloway's expression is a mixture of determination and foreboding: he has the look of a man who has just led a breakout from Colditz, and is glancing back to the perimeter wall, only to see that all of his fellow escapees have been machine-gunned.When I arrive at his house in St Albans, Holloway, wearing a blue dress shirt and jeans, answers the door and leads the way to his living room, talking to a colleague on his mobile. I sit on the sofa, under the scrutiny of his rottweiler, Nathan, while the manager, who is 42, discusses the club's situation. (omega)Holloway's end of the phone conversation is the usual blend of candour and mixed metaphors; he has a tendency to start one sentence before he has completed the last, and speaks in a strong West Country accent which lends a kind of poetry to the most banal phrase."Directors are calling me for advice," he says, the last word rhyming with "choice". "It's like they're holding on to my shirt tails. It should be the other way round. It's getting to the point where other managers would start thinking bugger this, I'm off into the river and joining another boat... the tail," he adds, "cannot wag the dog."There are whole web sites devoted to so-called "Ollyisms". Invited to analyse one hard-fought victory, over Chesterfield, he responded as follows: "To put it in gentleman's terms, if you've been out for a night and you're looking for a young lady and you pull one, some weeks they're good-looking and some weeks they are not the best. Our performance today," he went on, "would not have been the best-looking bird, but at least we got her in the taxi. She was not the best-looking lady we ended up taking home, but she was very pleasant and very nice, so thanks very much, let's have a coffee."When a journalist enquired about his health, following a leave of absence, Holloway told him: "My arms withered and my body was covered with puss-like sores, but no matter how bad it got I consoled myself by remembering that I wasn't a Chelsea fan."He shares his tastefully decorated, large modern house with his wife Kim, son William, 17, and three younger teenage daughters - Chloe, Eve and Harriet. Each of the girls - for reasons doctors have been unable to explain - was born deaf. The family moved to St Albans to be close to a state school that teaches British sign language.On the wall is Promotion, Holloway's abstract canvas in the style of Jackson Pollock. He painted it while being filmed for the 2004 BBC programme Stress Test. The documentary addressed the fits of rage which were disrupting his home life, with the help of psychologists and an anger management expert - who, Holloway recalls, "was constantly trying to get my goat up". The experience might have destroyed some people. Ian Holloway emerged as a national treasure.I tell him that I honestly believe that going on that show is the bravest thing I've ever seen a footballer do, on or off the pitch."Bravest?" Holloway asks, "or most stupid?"It's probably true that Sir Alex Ferguson, say, might have taken some persuading before he consented - as Ian Holloway did - to have his stress levels monitored while he performed an a cappella version of "Why Do Fools Fall in Love?""But if I hadn't done that programme," Holloway says, "I wouldn't be sitting here now. Before I did it, I believed that I was a person who was kind, considerate, and believed in free speech. The anger management expert showed me I was a jumped-up, obnoxious little get who wouldn't listen at home because of what happened at work. If I'd carried on the way I was," he says, "I would have destructed everything I had."Stress Test showed him addressing his players before a game."One of their staff was as rude as [beep] to us," he said. "So [beep]ing get on your [beep]ing toes. All my life I've been on a [beep]ing crusade. I want us [beep]ing focussed. Because you can [beep]ing win without being [beep]ing rude."To his deaf daughters, Holloway's furious gesticulations must have made him look like James Finlayson, the bald, apoplectic straight man to Laurel and Hardy, in one of their silent shorts. The painting was part of his therapy."I said, 'But I always have an original to copy.' They said, 'That's your problem.' I sprayed something on the paper and I thought, 'Oh God, I've ruined it.' By the end, I was throwing paint at it. Doing that picture set me free. I had always worried whether I was doing the right thing; always believed that nothing I did would ever be good enough. I realised all of that is bullshit. Most of my life," he adds, "is bullshit."You mean your life in football?"No, I'm talking about that perception I once had of what I ought or ought not to say. Now I feel I have got to tell it how it is."In one scene he faced the camera alone, talking about the effects of his explosive anger."Kim," Holloway said, in one scene from the programme - facing the camera alone, in an emotional state - "don't love the fella I am. A lot of things used to scare me. None of them do now. Only the fact that I might lose her. Without your family," he adds, "you've got nothing. I wouldn't want to carry on living without them. There would be no point."Kim, who has been his girlfriend since she was 14 years old, appears with coffee. "I used to shout her down," Holloway says. "I used to be vile."Has anyone mocked you for appearing on that programme?"Not to my face."Holloway - 5ft 8in tall and not heavily built - has had to rely on passion, integrity and commitment to gain the respect he commands in his dressing room, and throughout the game. Before he went into management nine years ago, he was a midfield player who gave devoted service to both Bristol Rovers and QPR - admired, it has to be said, for full-blooded endeavour rather than grace and flair.Was his anger worse, I ask Kim, when he became a manager?She laughs. "Just a bit.""Am I better now?" he inquires."Yes," she says."I nearly lost her twice," Holloway tells me. She was briefly engaged to someone else, when she was in her teens. Shortly after they married, Kim developed lymph cancer, from which she has fully recovered.Some years ago, I tell Holloway, I was having lunch with a group of football writers, when the conversation turned to the question of why Bobby Charlton never succeeded as a manager. "Because," somebody said, "he is not a bastard.""I don't believe that you need to be a shit," Holloway counters. "You have to be consistent, and strong, and your values need to be right. I live the way I want my players to be. I keep things in the open."If the fans love this eccentric, inspirational figure - and most do - it's because he embodies the kind of fierce loyalty usually associated with the terraces."I remember meeting him years ago, when he'd just taken over as manager at Bristol Rovers," says Steve Tongue, this newspaper's football correspondent. "I was early and I sat down to wait for him in his office. When he arrived, he made me exchange chairs with him because mine was blue and his was red [the colour of loathed rivals Bristol City]."Holloway also banned red vehicles from the training ground."When I was at Bristol Rovers," he says, "there was a journalist who wrote a match report where he said that if Bristol City had my two strikers - who, in that game, were rubbish - then City would be a team Bristol could be proud of. Oooof!""So," Kim calls through from the next room, "you dragged the poor sod in, didn't you?""I got him to the training ground. He didn't know why. I said: 'You are going to apologise to my team, you bastard.' I sat all my players down. I had the two centre halves stand up. I said: 'Right, now tell these two - who you only gave five out of 10 each - just how well you think they played, you asshole.'"Did that ensure more sympathetic coverage?"Well, he started killing me in the paper every week. From then on I said, 'OK, I'll laugh at myself. And I'll try to be honest.'"Holloway grew up in Cadbury Heath, near Bristol; his mother still lives in the same council house now. His father Bill, an outstanding amateur footballer, was a seaman, then a factory worker. Family, Holloway says, was everything to him."He never knew who his father was. When he was 14 he'd just lost the man he believed was his dad, in the Blitz. The life assurance rep knocked on the door and said: 'Is your step mum in, Bill?' That's how he learned he was adopted."Bill died of a heart attack aged 59, when Ian was 25."He never made a lot of money and at the end he was thinking: 'Oh God, I am a failure.' He actually said that on his death bed. He was so wrong. The destructive side I used to have that would not accept anything that wasn't perfect, I saw that in my dad."Holloway was due to play a match on the day his father died."I got in the car to go to the ground. I just sat there with the engine off, staring ahead of me, gripping the steering wheel. I decided not to go. Then I looked across, and I saw an indentation in the passenger seat. I swear to you that it was there. I put the key in the ignition."During the match, he says, "It was as if my dad was there alongside me. We won 4-0. It was the best game I'd had for years."At another critical stage in his life, he recalls, "I was driving along, and 'One Sweet Day', that Mariah Carey song about light 'shining down on you from heaven' came on the radio. The volume went up to the maximum. My car was full of light, and the tears were just pouring down my face. I was like a bloody river and yet I had never felt so good. It was as if someone had opened up my head, poured a load of love in, then put the top of my skull back down. When the song finished, the volume fell again. I swear to you on my kids' lives, that that happened." Again, he says, "it was as if Dad was there, looking after me."If ever Ian Holloway has needed the help of his spirit guide, it is now. The predominant theme in his life has been the struggle to fulfil his responsibilities as head of a household he cherishes. But, while his own domestic arrangements have stabilised, at Queens Park Rangers he has found himself presiding over an increasingly wild and dysfunctional family.Holloway became manager of an ailing QPR side in the spring of 2001, and was unable to save them from relegation to the game's third tier, then League Division Two. The club spent the following season in financial administration and survived by taking out a £10m loan from a Panamanian-registered company. In the summer of 2004 Holloway led Rangers back up into the Coca-Cola Championship. From their current position in the top-half of the table, QPR's more optimistic supporters have started to eye the Premiership above them.Holloway believes the only way he will become a manager at that level is to get QPR promoted. "Nobody," he says, "is going to want to hire a bumpkin from Bristol."Within the game, Holloway's achievement is recognised as extraordinary: if clubs were ranked by their financial means, QPR would be in the bottom four of the Championship. What success they have achieved is the result of the manager's ability to communicate his own galvanic commitment to his players.The £10m loan from the ABC Corporation of Panama carried a 10 per cent interest rate and the resulting annual payment of £1m horrified some directors. The deal was concluded under the reign of former chairman Nick Blackburn, who resigned in the summer of 2004. He was replaced by Bill Power, who was ousted by Gianni Paladini in August this year. Over the past two years, board members have departed with a frequency that is staggering. The surreal preliminaries to the Sheffield United game are indicative of the turmoil within the club, which at the time of writing has no chief executive."We had two people," Ian Holloway explains, "Gianni Paladini and Bill Power, in the highest positions and they had a great relationship. I liked them both. Their relationship has broken down and things aren't stable any more. I have never been a child who has been in a divorce. But now I feel like their kid."Until last year, Gianni Paladini was a Fifa-registered football agent, who represented high-profile players such as Benito Carbone and Fabrizio Ravanelli. He bought a 22 per cent stake in QPR for around £650,000, but is also closely linked to two Monaco consortiums, Wanlock and Barnaby Holdings, that have invested £1.7m in the club; together, they own 46 per cent of QPR.Paladini, now 60, was a striker on Napoli's books until injury forced him to retire at the age of 22. He settled in the Midlands in 1968, and build up a portfolio of restaurants and clubs. Certain aspects of his CV - the fact that he's a Neapolitan, who went from waiting on tables to owning nightclubs, and brokered many football deals in southern Italy - have led some to leap to stereotypical judgments. As Paladini said recently, "People must think there is Mafia involvement. But I want the best for QPR and I'm getting the right people to achieve this." The chairman describes allegations that he has signed players to QPR with a view to enriching his agent friends as "stupid".I ask Holloway how he gets on with Gianni Paladini."His personality is electric. You want to be in his company." At the same time, he says, "You wouldn't want to do anything wrong. He loves you or he hates you. When he loves you, there is no better company in the world. You can talk about Gianni being a waiter. You can talk about Gianni being Italian. You can talk about Gianni being an agent. But Gianni is a bloke. Gianni is a fella. A nice fella."What if you "do something wrong"?"If you upset him," Holloway explains, "he will hurl abuse at you. He doesn't mean it the following day. Hopefully I can help him learn from my experience of how I used to scream at deaf children."Does he swear in Italian?"Normally in English."Last year, Holloway recalls, he was at home, suffering from chronic diarrhoea, when he answered a call from Paladini."I was sat on the toilet - actually I couldn't leave the toilet. I had this virus. There had been rumours about me going to Wolves. Three days before, I'd bought flowers for some ladies in the office. Gianni assumed they were a leaving present."So you were on the toilet..."And Gianni was going: 'You fucking bastard I am going to kill you. I am going to kill you, you fucking bastard... where are you, you fucking... fucking hell where are you.'"And you said..."I am on the toilet. My wife is in the house. Ask her. He said: 'She could be at fucking Wolves with you.'"In the end, Holloway says, he had to drive up to Leeds, to reassure the Italian. It was a journey he remembers."It was a terrible virus. It was coming out of both ends. I had to stop at every service station. I shouldn't have gone. It was horrendous. I was totally dehydrated. My lips were stuck to my teeth. I ended up in hospital, the following day. I was in for a week. I had six drips put into me."It wouldn't be reasonable to invite any manager to criticise his chairman in public, but..."Well I have seen people saying Holloway 'supports' Gianni Paladini. Holloway supports QPR. But I am a man of principle. If I thought there was any just cause for [the unease some have voiced about the Italian], I wouldn't be here."Scotland Yard, Holloway points out, "has been looking into everything that's happened at the club. If there was anything untoward Mr Paladini had done, would he still be where he is?"It can't be pleasant to be under such scrutiny."It isn't. As a football manager you are like... a doorstop."A doorstop?"You are in between the floor and the door. There's the board of directors, and the fans and the players, trying to push the door."So who does the door represent - the board?"Sorry?"Is the board the door?"Well you've got the door and the floor. I am the wedge. And someone is trying to force the door. But really it needs to be the other way round, because the board are above me."But who is the door? (omega)"Er... OK... forget the door." Holloway draws a triangle in the air. "I am in a three-way struggle involving the fans, the players and the board. I don't know of anybody else who has been in this situation, ever."You did once say that you can never have complete harmony at a football club."Yes. But there is a difference between complete harmony and complete chaos."And at QPR is it complete..."Everybody out there makes it look like it's complete chaos." Gianni Paladini, says Holloway, "is Caesar and at the minute the old thumb is wobbling. The crowd are going wait a minute. I want to be Maximus. But I get a bit of a waft of fish sometimes."This is a volatile situation that can communicate itself to the players via the fans - that's what you're saying?"Yes. Normally you need support when things are going wrong. That is what I've found in my own life. I've needed the support of my wife and family. To me, if you're a football supporter, your love should be unconditional."I'd expected to talk to Ian Holloway for 90 minutes. In the end we are together for four hours, during which time he covers - as well as such topics as the 4-5-1 formation, Sven Goran Eriksson and QPR's increased season ticket prices - the questions of divine fallibility and the theory of evolution."We are an offshoot of apes - allegedly - but who knows? We don't really, do we? How long have we been on this planet?" Holloway muses. "How long are we going to be here? What is it all about? We reproduce. Our offspring carry on. But that will only happen for a limited time. Before the whole thing blows up and we are sucked into a black hole. You know what I mean?"The QPR manager will explore such themes further in his forthcoming autobiography, titled Thanks, Steve."I went to Southampton the other week, with Kim. These kids shouted, 'Oh Holloway, you're a legend. Sign this.' Then they said, 'Thanks, Steve.' It was the same in the Chinese chip shop when I was at Bristol Rovers. They started off by calling me 'Horroway'. But before long it was: 'Salt and vinegar, Steve? How much you earn, Steve?' Why," Holloway asks, "is it always Steve?"At various points during our conversation he speaks of his admiration for Jose Mourinho who - with his inexhaustible transfer budget and terse, supercilious manner - is, in many respects, everything Ian Holloway isn't."Even to be in Mourinho's company must be amazing," he says. "When he gets doubts, how long do they stay in his head? What support does he have to help him banish those doubts?"About £2.1bn and a club with more power than any in the history of the game, I suggest."But he still has to get those grossly paid players to perform."Of the two, I know whose history I find more inspirational, and who I'd rather have as a dinner companion, manager, or friend, and he wasn't born in Setubal. There's no doubt which of the managers is going to have the more captivatingly unpredictable season. It could, I suggest, be a very long year for Ian: there will be little or no money for fancy signings, and the ongoing police inquiry, like the Paladini libel suit, is guaranteed to keep the club in the headlines for the least enviable reasons."The things that matter to me," he says, "are commitment and trust. So the last few months haven't been easy. I don't know what to trust, or what to think, or what to do. It might turn out that certain alleged facts are true. I don't know yet. But I do know that I won't work without trust. I have to believe."What can he teach his players from his own experience?"That winners are made, not born. And that winners are made by not fearing. I can sense fear in the eyes of players. I could see it in Kim's eyes when she had cancer. I have dealt with fear," Holloway adds, "all my life. My own fear has been a selfish dread that I might not be good enough."But life, he continues, "is like the The Emperor's New Clothes. Don't you think that story says it all? I think part of all of us has doubts. Because of the animal that we are. You can't take away from the fact that we are an animal. Aren't we? This is a sofa," Holloway continues. "I am an animal. But we have evolved into sitting by the fire, and thinking, and to be fair when you see a fire... it does make you... you know if chimps had done that, maybe they would be the ones..."Hang on - if chimps had done what?"They'd found fire before... it was us that found fire, wasn't it?"I think Holloway can see that his Emperor's New Clothes monologue has left me slightly perplexed."My main ambition," he goes on, "is to leave this planet knowing that I gave my best and that I was there for my children. And I am trying to make them independent and able to live happily, for many years after I have gone. By the way," he adds, as I'm getting up to leave. "You're stark, bollock naked, mate."http://news.independent.co.uk/people/profiles/article324844.ece
Thursday, November 03, 2005
Barnaby Holdlings Buys ex-Chairman, Bill Powers' Shares
QPR Official Site - BARNABY HOLDINGSBarnaby Holdings have increased their shareholding in Queens Park Rangers.The consortium, which already enjoyed a 10% stake in the Club, have purchased the shareholding of former Chairman Bill Power for a sum in the region of £1.1million.This now takes their overall stake in the Club to 27.8%.QPR Chairman Gianni Paladini is delighted with the news and believes it underlines Barnaby's commitment to the Club."Barnaby are investing in both the short and long term future of Queens Park Rangers and I am very pleased to know that they share my optimism about the prospects for this great club."I would also like to personally thank Bill Power for everything he has done and although he is no longer financially involved, he will always be a big part of the club and someone I will always love and respect."http://www.qpr.premiumtv.co.uk/page/News/NewsDetail/0,,10373~736268,00.html
BP on Wanlock and Board power (from last year)
Posted on This Board last year...Watcher_of_the_game Posted on 7/2 12:54 re: FAO Bp one quick question though BP.How much power (no pun intended) do you really have at QPR? We know that you invested into the club but it was, by football standards, quite minimal. As the board is heavily influenced by the Monaco consortium who I presume are all quite rich and probbally more waelthy than yourself, how is the power divided?If the Monaco boys wanted something to happen and said they would withdraw all thier money if they didn't get it, would they get what they want? bp650 Posted on 7/2 13:07 frightening as it may seem....... to some and in particular me. The answer to that question is I am where the buck stops, we do talk thru' things but if its down to a vote that is divided it is me.I actually posted this when asked about board meetings very recently on here following an item by Billy Rice on the offish site.Board meetings are held at the club monthly and normally involve Kevin, Mark, Chris P and myself.Wanlock is a pure investment group who having looked at the way the club is now run and with its potential for growth invested. They have never involved themselves with the running of the club although we send them monthly reports including the minutes of board meetings.If they want to get their money out it is up to them to sell their shares. If you're interested I can let them know?
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Tracy_S Posted on 16/10 10:51
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re: BP on Wanlock and Board power (from last year)
bp also posted the following in January of this year."Board meetings are held monthly, the decision makers are always there, whether it is of any comfort to some I'm not sure but those people and them alone, Myself, Kevin McGrath, Mark Devlin and Chris Pennington discuss and decide all topics regarding the workings of QPR.I can categorically state that Moorbound, Barnaby and Wanlock have not interfered on a single occasion, but have continually offered any assistance they can including financially way beyond the recent offer that was fronted by Ross Jones."How things change eh?
http://boards.rivals.net/default.asp?sid=925&p=16&style=2&forumId=3672&action=1&replytoid=533519295
October 13, 2005
Paladini Interviewed
Paladini on his plans on Holloway, on BP, etcExclusive Gianni Paladini interviewKilburn Times/Camden Times nwl.sport@archant.co.uk12 October 2005 QPR chairman Gianni Paladini NEW QPR chairman Gianni Paladini has revealed his plans for the club in an exclusive interview with the Times, writes Ben Kosky.Paladini, who was already Rangers' majority shareholder, took over last month after winning a boardroom battle with previous chairman Bill Power.The Italian explains why he has adopted a 'hands-on' role in the day-to-day running of the club since the departure of chief executive Mark Devlin.Paladini also believes he can make Rangers a profitable company - and pledges that if he fails, the shortfall will be made up by himself and fellow major shareholders.And the Rangers chairman plans to reintroduce a family section at Loftus Road, possibly as soon as next week, to counter falling attendances since the summer rise in ticket prices.Read the full interview in this week's Times.Full article posted at http://www.qpr.org/forum/viewtopic.php?topic_view=threadsandp=119508andt=36750
Link : Paladini Interviewed
Among the interesting comments...!"... I've had discussions with Ian Holloway about his new contract - .... Ian can be my best friend and I love him to bits, I'd do anything for him and he does the same for me, he's been sticking with me through the tough times."He knows I back him 100 per cent,... "Opinion among fans was divided as to whether Bill Power or yourself should be chairman of QPR. How would you convince the doubters?"I must tell the truth - since I've been here there isn't one fan who's come to me with a bad word to say. .. If you talk to Bill now, he enjoys coming to watch a game and knowing it's not his responsibility."I had a fantastic relationship with Bill Power and Kevin McGrath, I respect them and that will always be the same. .."
http://boards.rivals.net/default.asp?sid=925&p=16&style=2&forumId=3672&action=1&replytoid=533539409
call spin control if you want, but at the moment he is the only thing we have > TO say the Loftus Road boardroom has seen a degree of turbulence so far > this > season would be a severe understatement.Three chairmen, the departure of > the club's chief executive and a police > investigation give off the odour of Dream Team or Footballers' Wives plot > lines rather than real-life events at Queens Park Rangers.But the dust > appears to be settling, with majority shareholder Gianni > Paladini now installed as QPR chairman and keen to discuss the future of > the > club.Here the one-time Napoli youth team player and former agent > exclusively > reveals to the Times his thoughts on managing and financing the club, his > plans to bring back its' 'missing' fans and keep Rangers in their > traditional heartland.Attendances have dropped by around 2,000 since > ticket prices went up in the > summer - what can you do to reverse this?"Right now I'm trying to work out > the best thing to do, to facilitate people > who are not coming to the ground without upsetting people who already > bought > the tickets. We have to be fair to them - they paid a lot of money."Maybe > we can do something next season to make it up with people who feel > they've been overcharged and we definitely need to do something for the > children. I'm trying to work out a way that we can use one section of the > ground as a family section."If we have one section where we can > exclusively sell to families and kids, I > will do it, guaranteed. I don't know if we can do that in time for > Plymouth, > but I'll see if I can do something for the game after that."Presumably > your ambition is to be a Premier League chairman in the near > future. Have you set a timescale for achieving that?"I don't put any > pressure on anybody. At the start of the season, we felt we > had a chance to improve on last year and when all the players come back > fully fit, we are a decent team, competitive enough to be in the > play-offs."If it's not this year, we'll try again next year until we get > there. I've > had discussions with Ian Holloway about his new contract - we've been > together for the last 18 months and we are moving forward. Ian can be my > best friend and I love him to bits, I'd do anything for him and he does > the > same for me, he's been sticking with me through the tough times."He knows > I back him 100 per cent, he knows the way I think and he knows > there is only one way - to be successful."I try to help him as much as I > can and we will get in the Premier League > together."Opinion among fans was divided as to whether Bill Power or > yourself should > be chairman of QPR. How would you convince the doubters?"I must tell the > truth - since I've been here there isn't one fan who's come > to me with a bad word to say. Bill Power is a fan. What's the dream for a > football fan? To have one of them at the helm of a football club."But > sometimes it doesn't work because you can be personally affected. If you > talk to Bill now, he enjoys coming to watch a game and knowing it's not > his > responsibility."I had a fantastic relationship with Bill Power and Kevin > McGrath, I respect > them and that will always be the same. Bill and Kevin didn't do anything > wrong, but things change and it was time for us to have a go ourselves."My > way is different - I look at this as a business, to be successful and if > I don't do that, I fail, I put my hands up and goodbye. If there's someone > out there who thinks they can do a better job, buy us all out."But why > didn't they come before, when the club was in a lower division and > they'd have had to pay the taxman's bill or the club would be closed down > and forget about promotion?"QPR have been losing money for several years. > Can you see the club breaking > even or even making a profit in the near future?"Forget the past - it's up > to us now and there's no more sweet sugar daddy, > it's all on the shoulders of myself and my other partners, Barnaby and > Wanlock. I'm protecting my own investment and by doing that, I'm > protecting > QPR as well, simple as that."We'll try to take this club forward and make > sure that, in a year or two, we > run it as a profit-maker. If we lose money at the end of the season, there > won't be the old situation where I need to borrow this or that - it's our > fault and we put in money out of our own pockets."If we are successful, > QPR are successful, the fans will be happy and there's > no secret agenda, no skeletons. I couldn't get any help in England, so I > relied on one of my best friends, someone I'd known for years, > [businessman] Antonio Caliendo."I asked Antonio to help me out and he came > up with Dunga, he found > [Monaco-based consortia] Barnaby and Wanlock and they put in money to help > QPR survive."It's no secret that Dunga put money in out of his own pocket > to help me, > because I've known him for many years, as well as Juninho, Branco and lots > of players from Brazil."How is the club being run since Mark Devlin was > made redundant?"We got rid of the chief executive position because I think > we couldn't > afford it. I don't follow the idea of a chief executive or managing > director > or general manager - it's our money, it's our job to be here and make sure > the club is run properly."When I came here there were 54 people on the > staff and the wage bill was > bigger than the wage bill of the playing staff - how can you sustain that? > Now everything functions okay and the club is under control."I've been 30 > years in football and I'm here every day. There are others who > are employed by the people from Monte Carlo and they pay their own way - > it > doesn't cost QPR anything."Long-term, do you see QPR staying at Loftus > Road or moving to a new stadium?"If you've got no money and you're driving > a Mini, you always see someone in > a Rolls Royce and you wish you could buy that. When I go to Southampton, > Leicester and Coventry, then I come to White City and I see workmen > building, I wish they were building a new Loftus Road."We can't build > anything at Loftus Road - we already tried that and there's > no chance to make this football ground bigger, it's impossible. So the > only > alternative would be to move and if not, we stay here and that's not so > bad."If someone said 'I'll give you a brand new football ground down the > road for > 50,000 people, pay off the loan and give you some spare money to buy > players' - then it would be good business and you'd be a fool not to agree > to that."But it must be not far away. The moment you move QPR to a > different area, > there's no more QPR and then it's just like Wimbledon."This football club > has a fantastic history and I cannot come here and change > all this by moving the club to Hyde Park - it's a lovely park, but I don't > think you can play football there. The fans can rest assured, this will > never, never happen as long as I'm alive."
http://www.qpr.org/forum/viewtopic.php?topic_view=threads&p=119508&t=36750
ClubCall - Q.P.R. - Holloway targets new additions 23 Nov 2005
Ian Holloway is hoping to add to his Queens Park Rangers squad before Thursday's emergency loan deadline as he battles a crippling injury-list at Loftus Road.The Rangers boss saw his injury-hit side slip to a fourth straight defeat on Tuesday night but Holloway went into the game without eight injured players and Paul Furlong suspended.With the transfer deadline looming large Holloway will now be working to try and add to the squad."I have got two days and I will talk to the board and see if there is anything we can do. I don't know what we have got but I'll see what we can do," said Holloway."We have a boat-load of injuries. I think we are short defensively and we are letting in too many goals at the moment. We might be ok up front if we get everyone back but we shall see."http://www.clubcall.com/vsite/vcontent/content/transnews/0,10869,5034-169529-19728-36699-212401-13916-5024-layout104-186747-news-item,00.html
QPR's Possible Transfer Moves
Holloway on the Official SiteMORE GOALS REQUIREDTalking to QPR World about his sides start to the season, Holloway pinpointed his sides main area for improvement.As usual, Ollie wasn't keen to give too much away at this point of the season, choosing instead to focus on that position Rangers find themselves in next April.Of course the Rangers boss was keen to see more action up front and he has already set his sights on improving that area."We need to score more goals, we are lacking a few from the chances we created. I want to work on that, getting more goals in that column."Ian Holloway and his staff will take advantage of the free weekend by going out on a scouting mission.Holloway told QPR World: "I'll be giving my players the weekend off and I'll be off with my staff looking at players. We also have some exciting prospects waiting to come over.""It's exciting times, I feel we are stabilising. We are now on top of the water - ready to sail off into the sunset."With the transfer window opening in less than two months Holloway will be talking to the board regarding the playing budget."I might be close to taking a player in on loan with a view to taking over his contract. I wouldn't mind some more defensive cover too."When we were in the second division we had the better players becuase we had the biggest budget."Ollie was also keen to clear up some other business. In a recent Q&A on QPR World Holloway referred to a quote in a Newspaper attributed to QPR fan Paul Finney."Typical me, I said some things I shouldn't of said. It turns out the guy I spoke about had some threats from other fans."I didn't want that - this guy is a QPR fan! He explained things to me and I apologised to him. If my words got him that kind of abuse I am ashamed of myself."Elsewhere, after only three starts this season Martin Rowlands was a welcome sight as he started back in full training."I thought I had a new signing today some little lad with blonde hair. It's great to have him back although I'm not sure whether he will be match fit for the game at Plymouth because he has been out quite a while." http://www.qpr.premiumtv.co.uk/page/News/NewsDetail/0,,10373~739623,00.html
Dunga (supposedly) buys £1.1million stake in QPR
The SunBRAZILIAN World Cup winner Dunga has bought a £1.1million stake in QPR.Hoops chairman Gianni Paladini hopes the move will help end rumours that Dunga is just a figurehead.Dunga has been on the Rangers board since last year — but fans have accused him of having no interest in the club.He has seldom been seen at Loftus Road but has now bought ex-chairman Bill Power’s 17.6 per cent stake in the club.Paladini said: “Dunga’s investment shows he is more than a good advert for QPR. He would like to come to more games but he has business interests in Japan and Brazil.”http://www.thesun.co.uk/article/0,,2002390000-2005520366,00.html[And then the story is repeated here "QPR receive £1.1million Brazilian stake"http://www.worldfootballers.com/news.php?id=10698
Paladini Promises Holloway Funds for January
Ben Kosky/ Kilburn TimesFunds ready for HollowayQPR chairman Gianni Paladini has promised funds to help Ian Holloway pep up his forward line when the transfer window opens in January.Rangers have looked short of firepower all season, despite having five senior strikers on their books and Holloway is eager to add another face in the new year.And Paladini, who took over as chairman in September, confirmed that the club are 'keeping tabs' on several possible targets, including a promising youngster in South America and another in Japan."It's up to Ollie who he wants and, provided it's the right player for this club and he fits into our wage structure, we will definitely try to bring him in," Paladini told the Times."As long as it's not silly money, there shouldn't be a problem. We've already brought in seven or eight players this year and if we need to get someone else, it would probably be a striker."Kevin Gallen is Rangers' top scorer this season with four goals, despite spending the majority of his time in midfield, while summer signing Marc Nygaard has banged in three in five starts.But Paul Furlong has struggled to reproduce the form that saw him voted Player of the Year last season, while Dean Sturridge has been wrestling with fitness problems ever since joining the club in March.Speculation has suggested that Holloway may make another move for Millwall striker Barry Hayles, a player he once managed at Bristol Rovers and attempted to bring to Loftus Road 18 months ago.Hayles has hit five goals - including one against QPR - for the troubled Lions this campaign, but turns 34 in the spring and might represent too much of a gamble.Meanwhile, Paladini plans to build on the recent upturn in attendances at Loftus Road by offering a regular £1 ticket concession for juniors.The scheme was initially launched for next month's clash with Coventry and remains in place although the match has been switched to a Monday night for TV coverage.Attendances dropped by around 2,000 earlier in the season, but Rangers' last two home games, against Norwich and Reading, have both topped the 15,000 mark."It's been much better again and if we had 15,000 plus every week, we'd be laughing," said Paladini. "Having a full ground is the most important thing."We might try to sell at half-price for Christmas and we'll make it £1 a head for the kids another time as well - maybe we'll do it for every single game until the end of the season."http://www.camdentimes.co.uk/content/camden/camdentimes/sport/story.aspx?brand=KLBTOnline&category=sportboxing&tBrand=northlondon24&tCategory=sportcamt&itemid=WeED08%20Nov%202005%2020%3A00%3A39%3A490
Lengthy Profile/Interview with Ian Holloway in the IndependentIan Holloway: In a league of his ownAnger management, mixed metaphors, gun threats and the odd game of football are all in a day's work for Queens Park Rangers' colourful manager Ian HollowayInterview by Robert ChalmersPublished: 06 November 2005Is there anything that has happened at your club recently, I ask Ian Holloway, that has surprised you? "Surprised?" The Queens Park Rangers manager leans forward and cradles his chin in his hands, his elbows resting on his knees. "Surprised? No. Surprised is not the right word. You would need a different word. Like shocked," he says. "Or stunned. Or amazed."Holloway's use of language, like his view of the world, is bold and distinctive to the point that - like Eric Cantona, Ron Atkinson or the late Bill Shankly - he has become familiar to a constituency which has no interest in football. In June he came 15th in Time Out magazine's list of the 50 funniest Londoners - ahead of Paul Merton and Ali G, among others - no mean feat when you consider that Ian Holloway neither comes from, nor lives in, the capital."They say every dog has his day," Holloway declared, after Queens Park Rangers were promoted to the Coca-Cola Championship. "And today is Woof Day. I want to go out and bark."And yet, when he discusses recent events at Queens Park Rangers, it's clear that even the small man from Bristol knows Woof Day is definitely over.A few minutes before the kick-off of QPR's home game against Sheffield United in August this year, one of the club's directors, Gianni Paladini, had a gun held to his head, in the boardroom, by a gang allegedly seeking to persuade him to sign a letter of resignation. Four men have been charged with conspiracy to commit blackmail, and joint possession of a firearm with intent to commit GBH.Gianni Paladini has since been appointed chairman of Queens Park Rangers - the latest in a bewildering series of upheavals at board level. Paladini, a former footballers' agent who was once a wine waiter in Birmingham, recently issued a writ against a newspaper which alleged improprieties in his transfer dealings. He inherits a club with debts of around £10m.I ask Holloway when it was that he first heard about the supposed firearm incident. "After the game. We're walking off the pitch. We've just won, 2-1. The ref's given us a goal that was blatantly offside, so I'm absolutely elated. Neil Warnock, the Sheffield United manager, is going ballistic. Anyhow," he continues, "I am shouting at Neil, as we walk off: 'I always supported you. But now I see I was wrong. Everybody else in football is right. You are a twat.'"In the dressing room afterwards, "I'm saying congratulations to my team..." Holloway searches for a way to summarise his speech and settles - perhaps unfortunately - for the phrase: "Well done lads... bang, bang, bang."Then, he adds, "Bill Power [former QPR chairman] gets hold of me. He's in a daze. He says: 'Er... something... has...' I said: 'What?' He said: '... ah... happened. I don't know quite how to tell...' So I'm like: 'Bill, do us a favour. Don't tell me.' That way, when I met the press after the match I didn't know what had - allegedly - gone on."Since then, the CID have been regular visitors to Loftus Road, the club's west London stadium. "It has," says the manager, "been absolutely horrendous."The whole thing sounds like a surreal black comedy."Yes," says Holloway. "I kept expecting Harry Potter to fly in."In a precarious and hostile trade, the general run of football managers tend to espouse the kind of haughty machismo perfected by Jose Mourinho. Ian Holloway is not like this. Holloway paints huge, abstract canvases. He has wept on camera, talking about his love for his wife. He has difficulties with reading and says so in public. Though fiercely combative by nature, he meets life head-on with a frank and disarming vulnerability.In his photograph in the club programme - one place where even the most thoroughly tormented manager can usually strike a pose of imperious tranquillity - Holloway's expression is a mixture of determination and foreboding: he has the look of a man who has just led a breakout from Colditz, and is glancing back to the perimeter wall, only to see that all of his fellow escapees have been machine-gunned.When I arrive at his house in St Albans, Holloway, wearing a blue dress shirt and jeans, answers the door and leads the way to his living room, talking to a colleague on his mobile. I sit on the sofa, under the scrutiny of his rottweiler, Nathan, while the manager, who is 42, discusses the club's situation. (omega)Holloway's end of the phone conversation is the usual blend of candour and mixed metaphors; he has a tendency to start one sentence before he has completed the last, and speaks in a strong West Country accent which lends a kind of poetry to the most banal phrase."Directors are calling me for advice," he says, the last word rhyming with "choice". "It's like they're holding on to my shirt tails. It should be the other way round. It's getting to the point where other managers would start thinking bugger this, I'm off into the river and joining another boat... the tail," he adds, "cannot wag the dog."There are whole web sites devoted to so-called "Ollyisms". Invited to analyse one hard-fought victory, over Chesterfield, he responded as follows: "To put it in gentleman's terms, if you've been out for a night and you're looking for a young lady and you pull one, some weeks they're good-looking and some weeks they are not the best. Our performance today," he went on, "would not have been the best-looking bird, but at least we got her in the taxi. She was not the best-looking lady we ended up taking home, but she was very pleasant and very nice, so thanks very much, let's have a coffee."When a journalist enquired about his health, following a leave of absence, Holloway told him: "My arms withered and my body was covered with puss-like sores, but no matter how bad it got I consoled myself by remembering that I wasn't a Chelsea fan."He shares his tastefully decorated, large modern house with his wife Kim, son William, 17, and three younger teenage daughters - Chloe, Eve and Harriet. Each of the girls - for reasons doctors have been unable to explain - was born deaf. The family moved to St Albans to be close to a state school that teaches British sign language.On the wall is Promotion, Holloway's abstract canvas in the style of Jackson Pollock. He painted it while being filmed for the 2004 BBC programme Stress Test. The documentary addressed the fits of rage which were disrupting his home life, with the help of psychologists and an anger management expert - who, Holloway recalls, "was constantly trying to get my goat up". The experience might have destroyed some people. Ian Holloway emerged as a national treasure.I tell him that I honestly believe that going on that show is the bravest thing I've ever seen a footballer do, on or off the pitch."Bravest?" Holloway asks, "or most stupid?"It's probably true that Sir Alex Ferguson, say, might have taken some persuading before he consented - as Ian Holloway did - to have his stress levels monitored while he performed an a cappella version of "Why Do Fools Fall in Love?""But if I hadn't done that programme," Holloway says, "I wouldn't be sitting here now. Before I did it, I believed that I was a person who was kind, considerate, and believed in free speech. The anger management expert showed me I was a jumped-up, obnoxious little get who wouldn't listen at home because of what happened at work. If I'd carried on the way I was," he says, "I would have destructed everything I had."Stress Test showed him addressing his players before a game."One of their staff was as rude as [beep] to us," he said. "So [beep]ing get on your [beep]ing toes. All my life I've been on a [beep]ing crusade. I want us [beep]ing focussed. Because you can [beep]ing win without being [beep]ing rude."To his deaf daughters, Holloway's furious gesticulations must have made him look like James Finlayson, the bald, apoplectic straight man to Laurel and Hardy, in one of their silent shorts. The painting was part of his therapy."I said, 'But I always have an original to copy.' They said, 'That's your problem.' I sprayed something on the paper and I thought, 'Oh God, I've ruined it.' By the end, I was throwing paint at it. Doing that picture set me free. I had always worried whether I was doing the right thing; always believed that nothing I did would ever be good enough. I realised all of that is bullshit. Most of my life," he adds, "is bullshit."You mean your life in football?"No, I'm talking about that perception I once had of what I ought or ought not to say. Now I feel I have got to tell it how it is."In one scene he faced the camera alone, talking about the effects of his explosive anger."Kim," Holloway said, in one scene from the programme - facing the camera alone, in an emotional state - "don't love the fella I am. A lot of things used to scare me. None of them do now. Only the fact that I might lose her. Without your family," he adds, "you've got nothing. I wouldn't want to carry on living without them. There would be no point."Kim, who has been his girlfriend since she was 14 years old, appears with coffee. "I used to shout her down," Holloway says. "I used to be vile."Has anyone mocked you for appearing on that programme?"Not to my face."Holloway - 5ft 8in tall and not heavily built - has had to rely on passion, integrity and commitment to gain the respect he commands in his dressing room, and throughout the game. Before he went into management nine years ago, he was a midfield player who gave devoted service to both Bristol Rovers and QPR - admired, it has to be said, for full-blooded endeavour rather than grace and flair.Was his anger worse, I ask Kim, when he became a manager?She laughs. "Just a bit.""Am I better now?" he inquires."Yes," she says."I nearly lost her twice," Holloway tells me. She was briefly engaged to someone else, when she was in her teens. Shortly after they married, Kim developed lymph cancer, from which she has fully recovered.Some years ago, I tell Holloway, I was having lunch with a group of football writers, when the conversation turned to the question of why Bobby Charlton never succeeded as a manager. "Because," somebody said, "he is not a bastard.""I don't believe that you need to be a shit," Holloway counters. "You have to be consistent, and strong, and your values need to be right. I live the way I want my players to be. I keep things in the open."If the fans love this eccentric, inspirational figure - and most do - it's because he embodies the kind of fierce loyalty usually associated with the terraces."I remember meeting him years ago, when he'd just taken over as manager at Bristol Rovers," says Steve Tongue, this newspaper's football correspondent. "I was early and I sat down to wait for him in his office. When he arrived, he made me exchange chairs with him because mine was blue and his was red [the colour of loathed rivals Bristol City]."Holloway also banned red vehicles from the training ground."When I was at Bristol Rovers," he says, "there was a journalist who wrote a match report where he said that if Bristol City had my two strikers - who, in that game, were rubbish - then City would be a team Bristol could be proud of. Oooof!""So," Kim calls through from the next room, "you dragged the poor sod in, didn't you?""I got him to the training ground. He didn't know why. I said: 'You are going to apologise to my team, you bastard.' I sat all my players down. I had the two centre halves stand up. I said: 'Right, now tell these two - who you only gave five out of 10 each - just how well you think they played, you asshole.'"Did that ensure more sympathetic coverage?"Well, he started killing me in the paper every week. From then on I said, 'OK, I'll laugh at myself. And I'll try to be honest.'"Holloway grew up in Cadbury Heath, near Bristol; his mother still lives in the same council house now. His father Bill, an outstanding amateur footballer, was a seaman, then a factory worker. Family, Holloway says, was everything to him."He never knew who his father was. When he was 14 he'd just lost the man he believed was his dad, in the Blitz. The life assurance rep knocked on the door and said: 'Is your step mum in, Bill?' That's how he learned he was adopted."Bill died of a heart attack aged 59, when Ian was 25."He never made a lot of money and at the end he was thinking: 'Oh God, I am a failure.' He actually said that on his death bed. He was so wrong. The destructive side I used to have that would not accept anything that wasn't perfect, I saw that in my dad."Holloway was due to play a match on the day his father died."I got in the car to go to the ground. I just sat there with the engine off, staring ahead of me, gripping the steering wheel. I decided not to go. Then I looked across, and I saw an indentation in the passenger seat. I swear to you that it was there. I put the key in the ignition."During the match, he says, "It was as if my dad was there alongside me. We won 4-0. It was the best game I'd had for years."At another critical stage in his life, he recalls, "I was driving along, and 'One Sweet Day', that Mariah Carey song about light 'shining down on you from heaven' came on the radio. The volume went up to the maximum. My car was full of light, and the tears were just pouring down my face. I was like a bloody river and yet I had never felt so good. It was as if someone had opened up my head, poured a load of love in, then put the top of my skull back down. When the song finished, the volume fell again. I swear to you on my kids' lives, that that happened." Again, he says, "it was as if Dad was there, looking after me."If ever Ian Holloway has needed the help of his spirit guide, it is now. The predominant theme in his life has been the struggle to fulfil his responsibilities as head of a household he cherishes. But, while his own domestic arrangements have stabilised, at Queens Park Rangers he has found himself presiding over an increasingly wild and dysfunctional family.Holloway became manager of an ailing QPR side in the spring of 2001, and was unable to save them from relegation to the game's third tier, then League Division Two. The club spent the following season in financial administration and survived by taking out a £10m loan from a Panamanian-registered company. In the summer of 2004 Holloway led Rangers back up into the Coca-Cola Championship. From their current position in the top-half of the table, QPR's more optimistic supporters have started to eye the Premiership above them.Holloway believes the only way he will become a manager at that level is to get QPR promoted. "Nobody," he says, "is going to want to hire a bumpkin from Bristol."Within the game, Holloway's achievement is recognised as extraordinary: if clubs were ranked by their financial means, QPR would be in the bottom four of the Championship. What success they have achieved is the result of the manager's ability to communicate his own galvanic commitment to his players.The £10m loan from the ABC Corporation of Panama carried a 10 per cent interest rate and the resulting annual payment of £1m horrified some directors. The deal was concluded under the reign of former chairman Nick Blackburn, who resigned in the summer of 2004. He was replaced by Bill Power, who was ousted by Gianni Paladini in August this year. Over the past two years, board members have departed with a frequency that is staggering. The surreal preliminaries to the Sheffield United game are indicative of the turmoil within the club, which at the time of writing has no chief executive."We had two people," Ian Holloway explains, "Gianni Paladini and Bill Power, in the highest positions and they had a great relationship. I liked them both. Their relationship has broken down and things aren't stable any more. I have never been a child who has been in a divorce. But now I feel like their kid."Until last year, Gianni Paladini was a Fifa-registered football agent, who represented high-profile players such as Benito Carbone and Fabrizio Ravanelli. He bought a 22 per cent stake in QPR for around £650,000, but is also closely linked to two Monaco consortiums, Wanlock and Barnaby Holdings, that have invested £1.7m in the club; together, they own 46 per cent of QPR.Paladini, now 60, was a striker on Napoli's books until injury forced him to retire at the age of 22. He settled in the Midlands in 1968, and build up a portfolio of restaurants and clubs. Certain aspects of his CV - the fact that he's a Neapolitan, who went from waiting on tables to owning nightclubs, and brokered many football deals in southern Italy - have led some to leap to stereotypical judgments. As Paladini said recently, "People must think there is Mafia involvement. But I want the best for QPR and I'm getting the right people to achieve this." The chairman describes allegations that he has signed players to QPR with a view to enriching his agent friends as "stupid".I ask Holloway how he gets on with Gianni Paladini."His personality is electric. You want to be in his company." At the same time, he says, "You wouldn't want to do anything wrong. He loves you or he hates you. When he loves you, there is no better company in the world. You can talk about Gianni being a waiter. You can talk about Gianni being Italian. You can talk about Gianni being an agent. But Gianni is a bloke. Gianni is a fella. A nice fella."What if you "do something wrong"?"If you upset him," Holloway explains, "he will hurl abuse at you. He doesn't mean it the following day. Hopefully I can help him learn from my experience of how I used to scream at deaf children."Does he swear in Italian?"Normally in English."Last year, Holloway recalls, he was at home, suffering from chronic diarrhoea, when he answered a call from Paladini."I was sat on the toilet - actually I couldn't leave the toilet. I had this virus. There had been rumours about me going to Wolves. Three days before, I'd bought flowers for some ladies in the office. Gianni assumed they were a leaving present."So you were on the toilet..."And Gianni was going: 'You fucking bastard I am going to kill you. I am going to kill you, you fucking bastard... where are you, you fucking... fucking hell where are you.'"And you said..."I am on the toilet. My wife is in the house. Ask her. He said: 'She could be at fucking Wolves with you.'"In the end, Holloway says, he had to drive up to Leeds, to reassure the Italian. It was a journey he remembers."It was a terrible virus. It was coming out of both ends. I had to stop at every service station. I shouldn't have gone. It was horrendous. I was totally dehydrated. My lips were stuck to my teeth. I ended up in hospital, the following day. I was in for a week. I had six drips put into me."It wouldn't be reasonable to invite any manager to criticise his chairman in public, but..."Well I have seen people saying Holloway 'supports' Gianni Paladini. Holloway supports QPR. But I am a man of principle. If I thought there was any just cause for [the unease some have voiced about the Italian], I wouldn't be here."Scotland Yard, Holloway points out, "has been looking into everything that's happened at the club. If there was anything untoward Mr Paladini had done, would he still be where he is?"It can't be pleasant to be under such scrutiny."It isn't. As a football manager you are like... a doorstop."A doorstop?"You are in between the floor and the door. There's the board of directors, and the fans and the players, trying to push the door."So who does the door represent - the board?"Sorry?"Is the board the door?"Well you've got the door and the floor. I am the wedge. And someone is trying to force the door. But really it needs to be the other way round, because the board are above me."But who is the door? (omega)"Er... OK... forget the door." Holloway draws a triangle in the air. "I am in a three-way struggle involving the fans, the players and the board. I don't know of anybody else who has been in this situation, ever."You did once say that you can never have complete harmony at a football club."Yes. But there is a difference between complete harmony and complete chaos."And at QPR is it complete..."Everybody out there makes it look like it's complete chaos." Gianni Paladini, says Holloway, "is Caesar and at the minute the old thumb is wobbling. The crowd are going wait a minute. I want to be Maximus. But I get a bit of a waft of fish sometimes."This is a volatile situation that can communicate itself to the players via the fans - that's what you're saying?"Yes. Normally you need support when things are going wrong. That is what I've found in my own life. I've needed the support of my wife and family. To me, if you're a football supporter, your love should be unconditional."I'd expected to talk to Ian Holloway for 90 minutes. In the end we are together for four hours, during which time he covers - as well as such topics as the 4-5-1 formation, Sven Goran Eriksson and QPR's increased season ticket prices - the questions of divine fallibility and the theory of evolution."We are an offshoot of apes - allegedly - but who knows? We don't really, do we? How long have we been on this planet?" Holloway muses. "How long are we going to be here? What is it all about? We reproduce. Our offspring carry on. But that will only happen for a limited time. Before the whole thing blows up and we are sucked into a black hole. You know what I mean?"The QPR manager will explore such themes further in his forthcoming autobiography, titled Thanks, Steve."I went to Southampton the other week, with Kim. These kids shouted, 'Oh Holloway, you're a legend. Sign this.' Then they said, 'Thanks, Steve.' It was the same in the Chinese chip shop when I was at Bristol Rovers. They started off by calling me 'Horroway'. But before long it was: 'Salt and vinegar, Steve? How much you earn, Steve?' Why," Holloway asks, "is it always Steve?"At various points during our conversation he speaks of his admiration for Jose Mourinho who - with his inexhaustible transfer budget and terse, supercilious manner - is, in many respects, everything Ian Holloway isn't."Even to be in Mourinho's company must be amazing," he says. "When he gets doubts, how long do they stay in his head? What support does he have to help him banish those doubts?"About £2.1bn and a club with more power than any in the history of the game, I suggest."But he still has to get those grossly paid players to perform."Of the two, I know whose history I find more inspirational, and who I'd rather have as a dinner companion, manager, or friend, and he wasn't born in Setubal. There's no doubt which of the managers is going to have the more captivatingly unpredictable season. It could, I suggest, be a very long year for Ian: there will be little or no money for fancy signings, and the ongoing police inquiry, like the Paladini libel suit, is guaranteed to keep the club in the headlines for the least enviable reasons."The things that matter to me," he says, "are commitment and trust. So the last few months haven't been easy. I don't know what to trust, or what to think, or what to do. It might turn out that certain alleged facts are true. I don't know yet. But I do know that I won't work without trust. I have to believe."What can he teach his players from his own experience?"That winners are made, not born. And that winners are made by not fearing. I can sense fear in the eyes of players. I could see it in Kim's eyes when she had cancer. I have dealt with fear," Holloway adds, "all my life. My own fear has been a selfish dread that I might not be good enough."But life, he continues, "is like the The Emperor's New Clothes. Don't you think that story says it all? I think part of all of us has doubts. Because of the animal that we are. You can't take away from the fact that we are an animal. Aren't we? This is a sofa," Holloway continues. "I am an animal. But we have evolved into sitting by the fire, and thinking, and to be fair when you see a fire... it does make you... you know if chimps had done that, maybe they would be the ones..."Hang on - if chimps had done what?"They'd found fire before... it was us that found fire, wasn't it?"I think Holloway can see that his Emperor's New Clothes monologue has left me slightly perplexed."My main ambition," he goes on, "is to leave this planet knowing that I gave my best and that I was there for my children. And I am trying to make them independent and able to live happily, for many years after I have gone. By the way," he adds, as I'm getting up to leave. "You're stark, bollock naked, mate."Is there anything that has happened at your club recently, I ask Ian Holloway, that has surprised you? "Surprised?" The Queens Park Rangers manager leans forward and cradles his chin in his hands, his elbows resting on his knees. "Surprised? No. Surprised is not the right word. You would need a different word. Like shocked," he says. "Or stunned. Or amazed."Holloway's use of language, like his view of the world, is bold and distinctive to the point that - like Eric Cantona, Ron Atkinson or the late Bill Shankly - he has become familiar to a constituency which has no interest in football. In June he came 15th in Time Out magazine's list of the 50 funniest Londoners - ahead of Paul Merton and Ali G, among others - no mean feat when you consider that Ian Holloway neither comes from, nor lives in, the capital."They say every dog has his day," Holloway declared, after Queens Park Rangers were promoted to the Coca-Cola Championship. "And today is Woof Day. I want to go out and bark."And yet, when he discusses recent events at Queens Park Rangers, it's clear that even the small man from Bristol knows Woof Day is definitely over.A few minutes before the kick-off of QPR's home game against Sheffield United in August this year, one of the club's directors, Gianni Paladini, had a gun held to his head, in the boardroom, by a gang allegedly seeking to persuade him to sign a letter of resignation. Four men have been charged with conspiracy to commit blackmail, and joint possession of a firearm with intent to commit GBH.Gianni Paladini has since been appointed chairman of Queens Park Rangers - the latest in a bewildering series of upheavals at board level. Paladini, a former footballers' agent who was once a wine waiter in Birmingham, recently issued a writ against a newspaper which alleged improprieties in his transfer dealings. He inherits a club with debts of around £10m.I ask Holloway when it was that he first heard about the supposed firearm incident. "After the game. We're walking off the pitch. We've just won, 2-1. The ref's given us a goal that was blatantly offside, so I'm absolutely elated. Neil Warnock, the Sheffield United manager, is going ballistic. Anyhow," he continues, "I am shouting at Neil, as we walk off: 'I always supported you. But now I see I was wrong. Everybody else in football is right. You are a twat.'"In the dressing room afterwards, "I'm saying congratulations to my team..." Holloway searches for a way to summarise his speech and settles - perhaps unfortunately - for the phrase: "Well done lads... bang, bang, bang."Then, he adds, "Bill Power [former QPR chairman] gets hold of me. He's in a daze. He says: 'Er... something... has...' I said: 'What?' He said: '... ah... happened. I don't know quite how to tell...' So I'm like: 'Bill, do us a favour. Don't tell me.' That way, when I met the press after the match I didn't know what had - allegedly - gone on."Since then, the CID have been regular visitors to Loftus Road, the club's west London stadium. "It has," says the manager, "been absolutely horrendous."The whole thing sounds like a surreal black comedy."Yes," says Holloway. "I kept expecting Harry Potter to fly in."In a precarious and hostile trade, the general run of football managers tend to espouse the kind of haughty machismo perfected by Jose Mourinho. Ian Holloway is not like this. Holloway paints huge, abstract canvases. He has wept on camera, talking about his love for his wife. He has difficulties with reading and says so in public. Though fiercely combative by nature, he meets life head-on with a frank and disarming vulnerability.In his photograph in the club programme - one place where even the most thoroughly tormented manager can usually strike a pose of imperious tranquillity - Holloway's expression is a mixture of determination and foreboding: he has the look of a man who has just led a breakout from Colditz, and is glancing back to the perimeter wall, only to see that all of his fellow escapees have been machine-gunned.When I arrive at his house in St Albans, Holloway, wearing a blue dress shirt and jeans, answers the door and leads the way to his living room, talking to a colleague on his mobile. I sit on the sofa, under the scrutiny of his rottweiler, Nathan, while the manager, who is 42, discusses the club's situation. (omega)Holloway's end of the phone conversation is the usual blend of candour and mixed metaphors; he has a tendency to start one sentence before he has completed the last, and speaks in a strong West Country accent which lends a kind of poetry to the most banal phrase."Directors are calling me for advice," he says, the last word rhyming with "choice". "It's like they're holding on to my shirt tails. It should be the other way round. It's getting to the point where other managers would start thinking bugger this, I'm off into the river and joining another boat... the tail," he adds, "cannot wag the dog."There are whole web sites devoted to so-called "Ollyisms". Invited to analyse one hard-fought victory, over Chesterfield, he responded as follows: "To put it in gentleman's terms, if you've been out for a night and you're looking for a young lady and you pull one, some weeks they're good-looking and some weeks they are not the best. Our performance today," he went on, "would not have been the best-looking bird, but at least we got her in the taxi. She was not the best-looking lady we ended up taking home, but she was very pleasant and very nice, so thanks very much, let's have a coffee."When a journalist enquired about his health, following a leave of absence, Holloway told him: "My arms withered and my body was covered with puss-like sores, but no matter how bad it got I consoled myself by remembering that I wasn't a Chelsea fan."He shares his tastefully decorated, large modern house with his wife Kim, son William, 17, and three younger teenage daughters - Chloe, Eve and Harriet. Each of the girls - for reasons doctors have been unable to explain - was born deaf. The family moved to St Albans to be close to a state school that teaches British sign language.On the wall is Promotion, Holloway's abstract canvas in the style of Jackson Pollock. He painted it while being filmed for the 2004 BBC programme Stress Test. The documentary addressed the fits of rage which were disrupting his home life, with the help of psychologists and an anger management expert - who, Holloway recalls, "was constantly trying to get my goat up". The experience might have destroyed some people. Ian Holloway emerged as a national treasure.I tell him that I honestly believe that going on that show is the bravest thing I've ever seen a footballer do, on or off the pitch."Bravest?" Holloway asks, "or most stupid?"It's probably true that Sir Alex Ferguson, say, might have taken some persuading before he consented - as Ian Holloway did - to have his stress levels monitored while he performed an a cappella version of "Why Do Fools Fall in Love?""But if I hadn't done that programme," Holloway says, "I wouldn't be sitting here now. Before I did it, I believed that I was a person who was kind, considerate, and believed in free speech. The anger management expert showed me I was a jumped-up, obnoxious little get who wouldn't listen at home because of what happened at work. If I'd carried on the way I was," he says, "I would have destructed everything I had."Stress Test showed him addressing his players before a game."One of their staff was as rude as [beep] to us," he said. "So [beep]ing get on your [beep]ing toes. All my life I've been on a [beep]ing crusade. I want us [beep]ing focussed. Because you can [beep]ing win without being [beep]ing rude."To his deaf daughters, Holloway's furious gesticulations must have made him look like James Finlayson, the bald, apoplectic straight man to Laurel and Hardy, in one of their silent shorts. The painting was part of his therapy."I said, 'But I always have an original to copy.' They said, 'That's your problem.' I sprayed something on the paper and I thought, 'Oh God, I've ruined it.' By the end, I was throwing paint at it. Doing that picture set me free. I had always worried whether I was doing the right thing; always believed that nothing I did would ever be good enough. I realised all of that is bullshit. Most of my life," he adds, "is bullshit."You mean your life in football?"No, I'm talking about that perception I once had of what I ought or ought not to say. Now I feel I have got to tell it how it is."In one scene he faced the camera alone, talking about the effects of his explosive anger."Kim," Holloway said, in one scene from the programme - facing the camera alone, in an emotional state - "don't love the fella I am. A lot of things used to scare me. None of them do now. Only the fact that I might lose her. Without your family," he adds, "you've got nothing. I wouldn't want to carry on living without them. There would be no point."Kim, who has been his girlfriend since she was 14 years old, appears with coffee. "I used to shout her down," Holloway says. "I used to be vile."Has anyone mocked you for appearing on that programme?"Not to my face."Holloway - 5ft 8in tall and not heavily built - has had to rely on passion, integrity and commitment to gain the respect he commands in his dressing room, and throughout the game. Before he went into management nine years ago, he was a midfield player who gave devoted service to both Bristol Rovers and QPR - admired, it has to be said, for full-blooded endeavour rather than grace and flair.Was his anger worse, I ask Kim, when he became a manager?She laughs. "Just a bit.""Am I better now?" he inquires."Yes," she says."I nearly lost her twice," Holloway tells me. She was briefly engaged to someone else, when she was in her teens. Shortly after they married, Kim developed lymph cancer, from which she has fully recovered.Some years ago, I tell Holloway, I was having lunch with a group of football writers, when the conversation turned to the question of why Bobby Charlton never succeeded as a manager. "Because," somebody said, "he is not a bastard.""I don't believe that you need to be a shit," Holloway counters. "You have to be consistent, and strong, and your values need to be right. I live the way I want my players to be. I keep things in the open."If the fans love this eccentric, inspirational figure - and most do - it's because he embodies the kind of fierce loyalty usually associated with the terraces."I remember meeting him years ago, when he'd just taken over as manager at Bristol Rovers," says Steve Tongue, this newspaper's football correspondent. "I was early and I sat down to wait for him in his office. When he arrived, he made me exchange chairs with him because mine was blue and his was red [the colour of loathed rivals Bristol City]."Holloway also banned red vehicles from the training ground."When I was at Bristol Rovers," he says, "there was a journalist who wrote a match report where he said that if Bristol City had my two strikers - who, in that game, were rubbish - then City would be a team Bristol could be proud of. Oooof!""So," Kim calls through from the next room, "you dragged the poor sod in, didn't you?""I got him to the training ground. He didn't know why. I said: 'You are going to apologise to my team, you bastard.' I sat all my players down. I had the two centre halves stand up. I said: 'Right, now tell these two - who you only gave five out of 10 each - just how well you think they played, you asshole.'"Did that ensure more sympathetic coverage?"Well, he started killing me in the paper every week. From then on I said, 'OK, I'll laugh at myself. And I'll try to be honest.'"Holloway grew up in Cadbury Heath, near Bristol; his mother still lives in the same council house now. His father Bill, an outstanding amateur footballer, was a seaman, then a factory worker. Family, Holloway says, was everything to him."He never knew who his father was. When he was 14 he'd just lost the man he believed was his dad, in the Blitz. The life assurance rep knocked on the door and said: 'Is your step mum in, Bill?' That's how he learned he was adopted."Bill died of a heart attack aged 59, when Ian was 25."He never made a lot of money and at the end he was thinking: 'Oh God, I am a failure.' He actually said that on his death bed. He was so wrong. The destructive side I used to have that would not accept anything that wasn't perfect, I saw that in my dad."Holloway was due to play a match on the day his father died."I got in the car to go to the ground. I just sat there with the engine off, staring ahead of me, gripping the steering wheel. I decided not to go. Then I looked across, and I saw an indentation in the passenger seat. I swear to you that it was there. I put the key in the ignition."During the match, he says, "It was as if my dad was there alongside me. We won 4-0. It was the best game I'd had for years."At another critical stage in his life, he recalls, "I was driving along, and 'One Sweet Day', that Mariah Carey song about light 'shining down on you from heaven' came on the radio. The volume went up to the maximum. My car was full of light, and the tears were just pouring down my face. I was like a bloody river and yet I had never felt so good. It was as if someone had opened up my head, poured a load of love in, then put the top of my skull back down. When the song finished, the volume fell again. I swear to you on my kids' lives, that that happened." Again, he says, "it was as if Dad was there, looking after me."If ever Ian Holloway has needed the help of his spirit guide, it is now. The predominant theme in his life has been the struggle to fulfil his responsibilities as head of a household he cherishes. But, while his own domestic arrangements have stabilised, at Queens Park Rangers he has found himself presiding over an increasingly wild and dysfunctional family.Holloway became manager of an ailing QPR side in the spring of 2001, and was unable to save them from relegation to the game's third tier, then League Division Two. The club spent the following season in financial administration and survived by taking out a £10m loan from a Panamanian-registered company. In the summer of 2004 Holloway led Rangers back up into the Coca-Cola Championship. From their current position in the top-half of the table, QPR's more optimistic supporters have started to eye the Premiership above them.Holloway believes the only way he will become a manager at that level is to get QPR promoted. "Nobody," he says, "is going to want to hire a bumpkin from Bristol."Within the game, Holloway's achievement is recognised as extraordinary: if clubs were ranked by their financial means, QPR would be in the bottom four of the Championship. What success they have achieved is the result of the manager's ability to communicate his own galvanic commitment to his players.The £10m loan from the ABC Corporation of Panama carried a 10 per cent interest rate and the resulting annual payment of £1m horrified some directors. The deal was concluded under the reign of former chairman Nick Blackburn, who resigned in the summer of 2004. He was replaced by Bill Power, who was ousted by Gianni Paladini in August this year. Over the past two years, board members have departed with a frequency that is staggering. The surreal preliminaries to the Sheffield United game are indicative of the turmoil within the club, which at the time of writing has no chief executive."We had two people," Ian Holloway explains, "Gianni Paladini and Bill Power, in the highest positions and they had a great relationship. I liked them both. Their relationship has broken down and things aren't stable any more. I have never been a child who has been in a divorce. But now I feel like their kid."Until last year, Gianni Paladini was a Fifa-registered football agent, who represented high-profile players such as Benito Carbone and Fabrizio Ravanelli. He bought a 22 per cent stake in QPR for around £650,000, but is also closely linked to two Monaco consortiums, Wanlock and Barnaby Holdings, that have invested £1.7m in the club; together, they own 46 per cent of QPR.Paladini, now 60, was a striker on Napoli's books until injury forced him to retire at the age of 22. He settled in the Midlands in 1968, and build up a portfolio of restaurants and clubs. Certain aspects of his CV - the fact that he's a Neapolitan, who went from waiting on tables to owning nightclubs, and brokered many football deals in southern Italy - have led some to leap to stereotypical judgments. As Paladini said recently, "People must think there is Mafia involvement. But I want the best for QPR and I'm getting the right people to achieve this." The chairman describes allegations that he has signed players to QPR with a view to enriching his agent friends as "stupid".I ask Holloway how he gets on with Gianni Paladini."His personality is electric. You want to be in his company." At the same time, he says, "You wouldn't want to do anything wrong. He loves you or he hates you. When he loves you, there is no better company in the world. You can talk about Gianni being a waiter. You can talk about Gianni being Italian. You can talk about Gianni being an agent. But Gianni is a bloke. Gianni is a fella. A nice fella."What if you "do something wrong"?"If you upset him," Holloway explains, "he will hurl abuse at you. He doesn't mean it the following day. Hopefully I can help him learn from my experience of how I used to scream at deaf children."Does he swear in Italian?"Normally in English."Last year, Holloway recalls, he was at home, suffering from chronic diarrhoea, when he answered a call from Paladini."I was sat on the toilet - actually I couldn't leave the toilet. I had this virus. There had been rumours about me going to Wolves. Three days before, I'd bought flowers for some ladies in the office. Gianni assumed they were a leaving present."So you were on the toilet..."And Gianni was going: 'You fucking bastard I am going to kill you. I am going to kill you, you fucking bastard... where are you, you fucking... fucking hell where are you.'"And you said..."I am on the toilet. My wife is in the house. Ask her. He said: 'She could be at fucking Wolves with you.'"In the end, Holloway says, he had to drive up to Leeds, to reassure the Italian. It was a journey he remembers."It was a terrible virus. It was coming out of both ends. I had to stop at every service station. I shouldn't have gone. It was horrendous. I was totally dehydrated. My lips were stuck to my teeth. I ended up in hospital, the following day. I was in for a week. I had six drips put into me."It wouldn't be reasonable to invite any manager to criticise his chairman in public, but..."Well I have seen people saying Holloway 'supports' Gianni Paladini. Holloway supports QPR. But I am a man of principle. If I thought there was any just cause for [the unease some have voiced about the Italian], I wouldn't be here."Scotland Yard, Holloway points out, "has been looking into everything that's happened at the club. If there was anything untoward Mr Paladini had done, would he still be where he is?"It can't be pleasant to be under such scrutiny."It isn't. As a football manager you are like... a doorstop."A doorstop?"You are in between the floor and the door. There's the board of directors, and the fans and the players, trying to push the door."So who does the door represent - the board?"Sorry?"Is the board the door?"Well you've got the door and the floor. I am the wedge. And someone is trying to force the door. But really it needs to be the other way round, because the board are above me."But who is the door? (omega)"Er... OK... forget the door." Holloway draws a triangle in the air. "I am in a three-way struggle involving the fans, the players and the board. I don't know of anybody else who has been in this situation, ever."You did once say that you can never have complete harmony at a football club."Yes. But there is a difference between complete harmony and complete chaos."And at QPR is it complete..."Everybody out there makes it look like it's complete chaos." Gianni Paladini, says Holloway, "is Caesar and at the minute the old thumb is wobbling. The crowd are going wait a minute. I want to be Maximus. But I get a bit of a waft of fish sometimes."This is a volatile situation that can communicate itself to the players via the fans - that's what you're saying?"Yes. Normally you need support when things are going wrong. That is what I've found in my own life. I've needed the support of my wife and family. To me, if you're a football supporter, your love should be unconditional."I'd expected to talk to Ian Holloway for 90 minutes. In the end we are together for four hours, during which time he covers - as well as such topics as the 4-5-1 formation, Sven Goran Eriksson and QPR's increased season ticket prices - the questions of divine fallibility and the theory of evolution."We are an offshoot of apes - allegedly - but who knows? We don't really, do we? How long have we been on this planet?" Holloway muses. "How long are we going to be here? What is it all about? We reproduce. Our offspring carry on. But that will only happen for a limited time. Before the whole thing blows up and we are sucked into a black hole. You know what I mean?"The QPR manager will explore such themes further in his forthcoming autobiography, titled Thanks, Steve."I went to Southampton the other week, with Kim. These kids shouted, 'Oh Holloway, you're a legend. Sign this.' Then they said, 'Thanks, Steve.' It was the same in the Chinese chip shop when I was at Bristol Rovers. They started off by calling me 'Horroway'. But before long it was: 'Salt and vinegar, Steve? How much you earn, Steve?' Why," Holloway asks, "is it always Steve?"At various points during our conversation he speaks of his admiration for Jose Mourinho who - with his inexhaustible transfer budget and terse, supercilious manner - is, in many respects, everything Ian Holloway isn't."Even to be in Mourinho's company must be amazing," he says. "When he gets doubts, how long do they stay in his head? What support does he have to help him banish those doubts?"About £2.1bn and a club with more power than any in the history of the game, I suggest."But he still has to get those grossly paid players to perform."Of the two, I know whose history I find more inspirational, and who I'd rather have as a dinner companion, manager, or friend, and he wasn't born in Setubal. There's no doubt which of the managers is going to have the more captivatingly unpredictable season. It could, I suggest, be a very long year for Ian: there will be little or no money for fancy signings, and the ongoing police inquiry, like the Paladini libel suit, is guaranteed to keep the club in the headlines for the least enviable reasons."The things that matter to me," he says, "are commitment and trust. So the last few months haven't been easy. I don't know what to trust, or what to think, or what to do. It might turn out that certain alleged facts are true. I don't know yet. But I do know that I won't work without trust. I have to believe."What can he teach his players from his own experience?"That winners are made, not born. And that winners are made by not fearing. I can sense fear in the eyes of players. I could see it in Kim's eyes when she had cancer. I have dealt with fear," Holloway adds, "all my life. My own fear has been a selfish dread that I might not be good enough."But life, he continues, "is like the The Emperor's New Clothes. Don't you think that story says it all? I think part of all of us has doubts. Because of the animal that we are. You can't take away from the fact that we are an animal. Aren't we? This is a sofa," Holloway continues. "I am an animal. But we have evolved into sitting by the fire, and thinking, and to be fair when you see a fire... it does make you... you know if chimps had done that, maybe they would be the ones..."Hang on - if chimps had done what?"They'd found fire before... it was us that found fire, wasn't it?"I think Holloway can see that his Emperor's New Clothes monologue has left me slightly perplexed."My main ambition," he goes on, "is to leave this planet knowing that I gave my best and that I was there for my children. And I am trying to make them independent and able to live happily, for many years after I have gone. By the way," he adds, as I'm getting up to leave. "You're stark, bollock naked, mate."http://news.independent.co.uk/people/profiles/article324844.ece
Thursday, November 03, 2005
Barnaby Holdlings Buys ex-Chairman, Bill Powers' Shares
QPR Official Site - BARNABY HOLDINGSBarnaby Holdings have increased their shareholding in Queens Park Rangers.The consortium, which already enjoyed a 10% stake in the Club, have purchased the shareholding of former Chairman Bill Power for a sum in the region of £1.1million.This now takes their overall stake in the Club to 27.8%.QPR Chairman Gianni Paladini is delighted with the news and believes it underlines Barnaby's commitment to the Club."Barnaby are investing in both the short and long term future of Queens Park Rangers and I am very pleased to know that they share my optimism about the prospects for this great club."I would also like to personally thank Bill Power for everything he has done and although he is no longer financially involved, he will always be a big part of the club and someone I will always love and respect."http://www.qpr.premiumtv.co.uk/page/News/NewsDetail/0,,10373~736268,00.html
BP on Wanlock and Board power (from last year)
Posted on This Board last year...Watcher_of_the_game Posted on 7/2 12:54 re: FAO Bp one quick question though BP.How much power (no pun intended) do you really have at QPR? We know that you invested into the club but it was, by football standards, quite minimal. As the board is heavily influenced by the Monaco consortium who I presume are all quite rich and probbally more waelthy than yourself, how is the power divided?If the Monaco boys wanted something to happen and said they would withdraw all thier money if they didn't get it, would they get what they want? bp650 Posted on 7/2 13:07 frightening as it may seem....... to some and in particular me. The answer to that question is I am where the buck stops, we do talk thru' things but if its down to a vote that is divided it is me.I actually posted this when asked about board meetings very recently on here following an item by Billy Rice on the offish site.Board meetings are held at the club monthly and normally involve Kevin, Mark, Chris P and myself.Wanlock is a pure investment group who having looked at the way the club is now run and with its potential for growth invested. They have never involved themselves with the running of the club although we send them monthly reports including the minutes of board meetings.If they want to get their money out it is up to them to sell their shares. If you're interested I can let them know?
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Tracy_S Posted on 16/10 10:51
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re: BP on Wanlock and Board power (from last year)
bp also posted the following in January of this year."Board meetings are held monthly, the decision makers are always there, whether it is of any comfort to some I'm not sure but those people and them alone, Myself, Kevin McGrath, Mark Devlin and Chris Pennington discuss and decide all topics regarding the workings of QPR.I can categorically state that Moorbound, Barnaby and Wanlock have not interfered on a single occasion, but have continually offered any assistance they can including financially way beyond the recent offer that was fronted by Ross Jones."How things change eh?
http://boards.rivals.net/default.asp?sid=925&p=16&style=2&forumId=3672&action=1&replytoid=533519295
October 13, 2005
Paladini Interviewed
Paladini on his plans on Holloway, on BP, etcExclusive Gianni Paladini interviewKilburn Times/Camden Times nwl.sport@archant.co.uk12 October 2005 QPR chairman Gianni Paladini NEW QPR chairman Gianni Paladini has revealed his plans for the club in an exclusive interview with the Times, writes Ben Kosky.Paladini, who was already Rangers' majority shareholder, took over last month after winning a boardroom battle with previous chairman Bill Power.The Italian explains why he has adopted a 'hands-on' role in the day-to-day running of the club since the departure of chief executive Mark Devlin.Paladini also believes he can make Rangers a profitable company - and pledges that if he fails, the shortfall will be made up by himself and fellow major shareholders.And the Rangers chairman plans to reintroduce a family section at Loftus Road, possibly as soon as next week, to counter falling attendances since the summer rise in ticket prices.Read the full interview in this week's Times.Full article posted at http://www.qpr.org/forum/viewtopic.php?topic_view=threadsandp=119508andt=36750
Link : Paladini Interviewed
Among the interesting comments...!"... I've had discussions with Ian Holloway about his new contract - .... Ian can be my best friend and I love him to bits, I'd do anything for him and he does the same for me, he's been sticking with me through the tough times."He knows I back him 100 per cent,... "Opinion among fans was divided as to whether Bill Power or yourself should be chairman of QPR. How would you convince the doubters?"I must tell the truth - since I've been here there isn't one fan who's come to me with a bad word to say. .. If you talk to Bill now, he enjoys coming to watch a game and knowing it's not his responsibility."I had a fantastic relationship with Bill Power and Kevin McGrath, I respect them and that will always be the same. .."
http://boards.rivals.net/default.asp?sid=925&p=16&style=2&forumId=3672&action=1&replytoid=533539409
call spin control if you want, but at the moment he is the only thing we have > TO say the Loftus Road boardroom has seen a degree of turbulence so far > this > season would be a severe understatement.Three chairmen, the departure of > the club's chief executive and a police > investigation give off the odour of Dream Team or Footballers' Wives plot > lines rather than real-life events at Queens Park Rangers.But the dust > appears to be settling, with majority shareholder Gianni > Paladini now installed as QPR chairman and keen to discuss the future of > the > club.Here the one-time Napoli youth team player and former agent > exclusively > reveals to the Times his thoughts on managing and financing the club, his > plans to bring back its' 'missing' fans and keep Rangers in their > traditional heartland.Attendances have dropped by around 2,000 since > ticket prices went up in the > summer - what can you do to reverse this?"Right now I'm trying to work out > the best thing to do, to facilitate people > who are not coming to the ground without upsetting people who already > bought > the tickets. We have to be fair to them - they paid a lot of money."Maybe > we can do something next season to make it up with people who feel > they've been overcharged and we definitely need to do something for the > children. I'm trying to work out a way that we can use one section of the > ground as a family section."If we have one section where we can > exclusively sell to families and kids, I > will do it, guaranteed. I don't know if we can do that in time for > Plymouth, > but I'll see if I can do something for the game after that."Presumably > your ambition is to be a Premier League chairman in the near > future. Have you set a timescale for achieving that?"I don't put any > pressure on anybody. At the start of the season, we felt we > had a chance to improve on last year and when all the players come back > fully fit, we are a decent team, competitive enough to be in the > play-offs."If it's not this year, we'll try again next year until we get > there. I've > had discussions with Ian Holloway about his new contract - we've been > together for the last 18 months and we are moving forward. Ian can be my > best friend and I love him to bits, I'd do anything for him and he does > the > same for me, he's been sticking with me through the tough times."He knows > I back him 100 per cent, he knows the way I think and he knows > there is only one way - to be successful."I try to help him as much as I > can and we will get in the Premier League > together."Opinion among fans was divided as to whether Bill Power or > yourself should > be chairman of QPR. How would you convince the doubters?"I must tell the > truth - since I've been here there isn't one fan who's come > to me with a bad word to say. Bill Power is a fan. What's the dream for a > football fan? To have one of them at the helm of a football club."But > sometimes it doesn't work because you can be personally affected. If you > talk to Bill now, he enjoys coming to watch a game and knowing it's not > his > responsibility."I had a fantastic relationship with Bill Power and Kevin > McGrath, I respect > them and that will always be the same. Bill and Kevin didn't do anything > wrong, but things change and it was time for us to have a go ourselves."My > way is different - I look at this as a business, to be successful and if > I don't do that, I fail, I put my hands up and goodbye. If there's someone > out there who thinks they can do a better job, buy us all out."But why > didn't they come before, when the club was in a lower division and > they'd have had to pay the taxman's bill or the club would be closed down > and forget about promotion?"QPR have been losing money for several years. > Can you see the club breaking > even or even making a profit in the near future?"Forget the past - it's up > to us now and there's no more sweet sugar daddy, > it's all on the shoulders of myself and my other partners, Barnaby and > Wanlock. I'm protecting my own investment and by doing that, I'm > protecting > QPR as well, simple as that."We'll try to take this club forward and make > sure that, in a year or two, we > run it as a profit-maker. If we lose money at the end of the season, there > won't be the old situation where I need to borrow this or that - it's our > fault and we put in money out of our own pockets."If we are successful, > QPR are successful, the fans will be happy and there's > no secret agenda, no skeletons. I couldn't get any help in England, so I > relied on one of my best friends, someone I'd known for years, > [businessman] Antonio Caliendo."I asked Antonio to help me out and he came > up with Dunga, he found > [Monaco-based consortia] Barnaby and Wanlock and they put in money to help > QPR survive."It's no secret that Dunga put money in out of his own pocket > to help me, > because I've known him for many years, as well as Juninho, Branco and lots > of players from Brazil."How is the club being run since Mark Devlin was > made redundant?"We got rid of the chief executive position because I think > we couldn't > afford it. I don't follow the idea of a chief executive or managing > director > or general manager - it's our money, it's our job to be here and make sure > the club is run properly."When I came here there were 54 people on the > staff and the wage bill was > bigger than the wage bill of the playing staff - how can you sustain that? > Now everything functions okay and the club is under control."I've been 30 > years in football and I'm here every day. There are others who > are employed by the people from Monte Carlo and they pay their own way - > it > doesn't cost QPR anything."Long-term, do you see QPR staying at Loftus > Road or moving to a new stadium?"If you've got no money and you're driving > a Mini, you always see someone in > a Rolls Royce and you wish you could buy that. When I go to Southampton, > Leicester and Coventry, then I come to White City and I see workmen > building, I wish they were building a new Loftus Road."We can't build > anything at Loftus Road - we already tried that and there's > no chance to make this football ground bigger, it's impossible. So the > only > alternative would be to move and if not, we stay here and that's not so > bad."If someone said 'I'll give you a brand new football ground down the > road for > 50,000 people, pay off the loan and give you some spare money to buy > players' - then it would be good business and you'd be a fool not to agree > to that."But it must be not far away. The moment you move QPR to a > different area, > there's no more QPR and then it's just like Wimbledon."This football club > has a fantastic history and I cannot come here and change > all this by moving the club to Hyde Park - it's a lovely park, but I don't > think you can play football there. The fans can rest assured, this will > never, never happen as long as I'm alive."
http://www.qpr.org/forum/viewtopic.php?topic_view=threads&p=119508&t=36750
QPR EVENTS - OCTOBER
October 2005 - QPR's Communications Manager, Phil Harris is departing...various other internal changes
QPR Official SiteHARRIS DEPARTS
Queens Park Rangers Communications Manager Phil Harris is to leave the club.Harris has enjoyed overall responsibility for the management of the Club's PR and media relations and all publications, including the official website and matchday programme.But after eight years at Loftus Road he has taken the decision to move on."It is a huge wrench to leave QPR and I will never forget the friends I have made both inside the club and in the wider QPR community," he said. "This is both a wonderful football club and a truly fantastic place to work and I will leave with a host of great memories."Nevertheless, my wife and I have decided to return to my native Norfolk to bring up our young daughter and get our weekends back!"I would like to thank everyone who has helped to make this such an enjoyable eight years. I am very proud of our department's achievements both in terms of quality and also the significant revenue generated for the club by one of the Football League's flagship websites."I will truly miss not being involved in the club on a day to day basis and I depart knowing that Queens Park Rangers will be forever in my heart."Chairman Gianni Paladini admits that the Club will be sorry to see Harris go."Phil has done a wonderful job here at Loftus Road, sometimes in very difficult circumstances, and I am genuinely sad that he is leaving," he said. "He will be greatly missed and I would like to wish him and his family the very best for the future."Harris's departure will lead to a restructuring of Queens Park Rangers' Communications Department. Jackie Bass is to assume overall responsibility for media and public relations as well as continuing to edit the matchday programme, while Billy Rice takes over as the Club's official webmaster.His remit will also incorporate developing and enhancing the club's extensive new media portfolio and the organisation of associated supporter events such as the popular Fans Forums and live internet Q&As.Meanwhile, a Publications Officer has been appointed to provide editorial support to the website, programme and all official club publications.http://www.qpr.premiumtv.co.uk/page/News/NewsDetail/0,,10373~735006,00.html
Wednesday, October 26, 2005
Highlights of Holloway's Q&A
QPR OFFICIAL SITE- QPR World Interview with Ian HollowayWhat’s Going on With Richard Langley I didn't want to lose him and I'm the one who brought him back because I believe he will be, in the future, a fantastic ball playing midfielder.I want him to be able to go forward and back as I want the right balance. Chelsea have got people like Frank Lampard who can do both jobs.Richard isn't as fit as he should be both physically and mentally. Sometimes he can be a bit hesitant and that's not the Richard I know. He had a slight calf strain before the Preston game so he couldn't take part, but he had been involved before then and has been on the bench since.Can you play Langley and Rowlands together?There's no reason why I can't see it in the future. I think Rowlands is sadly missed at the moment. He gives us balance and closes better than anyone I've got when we haven't got the ball. Sometimes my other midfielders don't do that.My choices in midfield are something to be proud of. As long as I've got one or two of them on the bench they will put pressure on those out there.Why do you make substitutions so late on in games?I wanted to bring Georges Santos on the other day against Plymouth, but by the time I got him on there wasn't any time left as the fourth official had told me a bit of a porkie.If we're getting back in the game and creating chances, then I like to change it and I've got good help in my coaches.A lot of the team who is playing didn't have a complete full season. Dean Sturridge is trying to get fit by playing games, which isn't ideal.I've never picked a team that I don't believe is right for the team we are playing against. If it doesn't work I have to sit back and put my hands up and take responsibility.Has Georges Santos got a clause in his contract that says he has to play?No he hasn't, he's a fantastic war horse for us. He's been a great player for us, for nothing, but I think that's very unfair and harsh.He does make mistakes and when he does they are glaring. But I think he's performing above some of the others I've got here at the moment.Do you get a stiff neck talking to all the tall players we've got now?I make sure they all sit down first! But I am trying to increase the size of my players. Our back line used to be far too small. You've only got to look at the Premiership boys to see how big they are.In the modern day game you have to win the ball in both boxes. Peter Crouch has proved that you can have the height and a great touch.Is there a possibility that we could play a more attacking midfield?It depends who we're playing, who's fit, the report I get on the opposition and it depends on the week we're having on the training ground. I need a creative midfield but they need to be able to defend as well.You have to be fit to play the way I want, which is high tempo and a lot of closing down. Having just seen the video of our game against Norwich, I must say I thought our passing game was very good.I think Tommy Doherty will get better, but this is all about having options and being unpredictable for your opposition.What is your footballing philosophy and have you ever sent out a team to express it?I'd want to play similar to Chelsea but in Arsenal's formation. Vieira used to go forward for them but they're lacking that now. I love the way they get the ball down and pass it.You're only as strong as your weakest link and sometimes you break down, but I think we're getting better.Paul Furlong hasn't really been on form, why are you persevering with him?The fact is he hasn't scored as many, but his link play is still there. He was hated when he came here and then became a legend last season. But for me he's proving irreplaceable.If Swansea can turn down £1m for Lee Trundell how am I going to replace Paul Furlong?Yes we need to move past Paul Furlong eventually, but I need to have everybody fit. Have we got enough strength in depth? No, I don't think so.Scott Donnelly shouldn't have to be playing on a regular basis at the age of 16, I'll bet there isn't someone that age anywhere else in the Championship playing at that age.It's the most expensive place on the field and look at how much we've had to spend on it. If Furlong was still 26 how much would he be worth?I'll drop players as I see fit, and I'll stand and fall on my decisions.Do you feel under pressure?That's part of the job, but I don't like it when I hear people saying not to believe me because I'm just trying to get a new contract. I don't control the board I just pick the side.I've had four chairman, two Chief Executives and now I don't have one. But at the end of the day, QPR fans still have a club and that's one thing I'm proud of - totally.I have got the hump from the weekend because I believe certain things aren't right, there are rumours. But this will all take care of itself. You'll all know what happened, it will all be there. All you have to worry about is judging our players fairly.If I had to leave today I'd be very proud of what my team and staff, past and present, have achieved.Who has been a major factor for this club?It's everyone who buys a ticket - so don't leave us. If you don't agree with team selection, no problem. But don't pick sides in an argument you don't know anything about.Will we see any players coming in or out in the next transfer window?The board are trying to sort out all the bills at the moment. But I've been told I can look for some signings in the January transfer window, I just don't know how much I've got.As for letting people go, there are some who aren't happy and have been out on loan and might not like having to fight for a place here.What is the situation with Shabazz Baidoo?We had the chance to send him to Lincoln, but you can't loan scholars out. When he's 17 we can make him a pro and he can go out on loan then. He's working on his finishing and improving very quickly.It's hard to say how close he is, but that's up to him. We nicked him from Arsenal but he's been brought up our way and he seems very positive.There was a rumour that West Ham wanted him but that was just a rumour. I spoke to Alan Pardew and he assured me it wasn't the case.What's the latest on your future with the club?Gianni said he wanted to give some stability to the club, but I feel the most important thing is that the board get sorted and I get some direction regarding the future because that's what matters to the fans.My focus is on the team more than myself. If the board wants to talk to my agent that's fine, but I want to put that on the back burner. I'm more than happy to work for the new board in the same way that I was happy to work for the last board.As long as whoever is in charge is happy to pick up the baton and run with it, I'm happy to work for them.Do you want to increase the size of the squad and in what position?I've got some loan signings lined up if people get injured and we're also looking at some targets. The most I've ever spent was borrowed from a fan and that was £250,000Do you think Marc Nygaard can be a replacement for Furlong eventually?Well he's a different sort of player to Furs, it may be that I need two players to replace him when that day comes. But he's a great player, he's fresh and he's hungry.What did you think of the booing directed at Georges Santos last Saturday?Some players are liked and some aren't, but I don't understand it. If they were booing when he scored then they have a serious problem.What's the latest with the loan signings?Adam Miller and Aaron Brown have been sent back but Marcus Bean is still at Swansea and is doing very well. His contract is up at the end of the season but for now I think it's good for him to be there getting some experience.Have you ever considered watching the game from the Director's Box to get a different view?I have done it before, but I'm a bit superstitious and we've never done well when I'm up there. Plus I feel that the team need the encouragement of the coaches being down there on the touch line.http://www.qpr.premiumtv.co.uk/page/News/NewsDetail/0,,10373~732152,00.html
# posted by Administrator @ 11:44 AM 0 comments
Holloway's Q&A - Summary
Ian Holloway had a Q&A on QPR World, October 25: Dave B has posted a lengthy summary (but NOT a transcript) on the QPR.ORG Message Board. It can be read athttp://www.qpr.org/forum/viewtopic.php?topic_view=threads&p=123958&t=37892
# posted by Administrator @ 8:54 AM 1 comments
Tuesday, October 25, 2005
QPR 1st's Meeting with Paladini & Caliendo - Report
Minutes/Report from Meeting with QPR Board reps Friday 21st October 2005http://www.qpr1st.co.uk/documents/GandAminutes.docIn attendance:QPR Holdings Ltd Reps:Gianni Paladini (GP) Chairman; Antonio Caliendo (AC) Monaco groups’ consultant; Chris Pennington (CP) Chief financial officerQPR 1st Reps:Geoff Gibbs (GG) Treasurer; Tracy Stent (TS) ChairpersonOther: Tony Altieri; Italian translatorVenue: The Chairman’s office, QPR FC.http://www.qpr1st.co.uk/documents/GandAminutes.doc
The ABC of boardroom intrigue at Loftus Road -(David Conn/The Guardian)
The ABC of boardroom intrigue at Loftus RoadDavid Conn, sports news reporter of the year Wednesday October 19, 2005 The GuardianWe know plenty more now about how Chelsea were airlifted from Ken Bates' debt mountain by the billionaire from nowhere, but for their near-neighbours, Queens Park Rangers, no such outrageous fortune has delivered them from turmoil. QPR were threatened with expulsion by the Football League in 2002, having been in administration for a year, and staggered out only by clutching a £10m loan from the mysterious Panama-registered ABC Corporation, which has burdened them ever since. Now, after a string of boardroom showdowns, the club is run by Gianni Paladini, an Italian former players' agent and, increasingly, Antonio Caliendo, the one-time Mr Big of Italian agents who in 1991 received a 10-month suspended prison sentence for attempted corruption. QPR are mostly owned by two New York-registered companies, Barnaby and Wenlock, who operate from Monte Carlo. "I have fallen in love with Queens Park Rangers, its name and history," Caliendo told me, through an interpreter, this week. "We want to rebuild it both as a team and a business." Caliendo, 61, found early success selling encyclopaedias door-to-door, rose up the ranks of the De Agostini publishing group, then in 1979 fixed what were thought to be the first personal endorsements by an Italian footballer, for the international playmaker Giancarlo Antognoni. Caliendo claims that in the 1990 World Cup final between West Germany and Argentina, he represented 12 of the 22 players on the pitch, but he also dates his troubles in Italy from the same year, after his client Roberto Baggio's move from Fiorentina to Juventus, which provoked riots by Fiorentina fans. In 1991, officers from the Italian tax authorities raided Caliendo's offices, he was arrested, then on May 30 he did a deal, accepting a 10-month suspended prison sentence for attempted corruption. Caliendo told me he is intensely proud of his record and defends his reputation for "moral integrity" absolutely. He said he accepted the conviction only on his solicitor's advice, to secure a quick release from prison, and considered suing the government. A year later, in July 1992, an investigation into the collapse of the Italian club, Hellas Verona, led to Caliendo, among others, being arrested and remanded in custody, but, after a long investigation, he was not prosecuted. "I was never convicted of anything in relation to Verona," Caliendo said. "Several high-profile figures were attacked by the Revenue in Italy at that time." Caliendo said he is ready to "accept new challenges", and, like Paladini, a long-term associate, has given up his agent's licence to become fully involved at Loftus Road. Caliendo is shortly expected to become the club's new chairman. It is expected he will pass the Football League's "fit and proper person test" for directors, because his criminal conviction dates from long enough ago to be regarded as spent. QPR are still reaping the consequences of their version of living the dream, after they were taken over and floated on the stock market in 1996 by Chris Wright, the Chrysalis music entrepreneur. He invested £10m but, in April 2001, with QPR having lost £27m, Wright put QPR into administration. A month later they were relegated to the then Second Division. In May 2002, with the Football League insisting the club could not start the new season in administration, QPR accepted the £10m loan from the ABC Corporation, at 10%, £1m, annual interest, secured on Loftus Road. ABC's owners cannot be officially identified, but sources at QPR believe the man behind the company is Michael Hunt, the former Nissan UK director who in 1993 was sentenced to eight years in jail for his role in what was then Britain's largest tax fraud. In July 2003 a QPR fan and businessman, Bill Power, born and bred in Shepherd's Bush, bought some unissued shares and joined the board; QPR rallied and, with Ian Holloway their manager, won promotion to the Championship. Gianni Paladini told me that, like Caliendo, he was looking for a new challenge, and examined Port Vale and Derby - which also has a loan from the ABC Corporation, £15m - then eventually offered £670,000 for 10% of QPR. The club, facing another red tax bill, accepted the investment hungrily. This barely staunched the financial problems, however, so then, arranged by Caliendo, the two New York-registered vehicles, Barnaby and Wenlock, paid £1.7m for 29.9% of QPR, most of which went straight to the tax man. In August, following boardroom upheavals, Power quit, Mark Devlin was made redundant as chief executive, and the last London-based director, Kevin McGrath, resigned last month. QPR's directors now are Paladini, the former Brazil captain Dunga, representing Barnaby, and Gualtiero Trucco, a 34-year-old based in Monte Carlo, representing Wenlock. The club and its fans are reeling from a series of revelations, particularly about ballooning agents' fees paid out since Paladini became more closely involved. In the six months to June 30 2004, the Football League's list of agents' payments show QPR paid just £12,000 altogether. Then, from July 1 2004 to June 30 this year, QPR paid £320,935 in fees. Many of the payments were to agents who are friends or former associates of Paladini. Brian Hassall, a Midlands-based agent, was involved in a long-running legal claim against Paladini, which was eventually settled, and he was paid the highest single fee, £60,000, when QPR signed the Danish striker Marc Nygaard at the beginning of this season. Paladini told me the payment was absolutely legitimate and not connected to his legal battle: "Brian and I settled it, now we are friends, and of course I deal with people I know. Ian Holloway was looking for a big lad, Nygaard was at Brescia, I checked him out with Roberto Baggio, who said he would be perfect for English football. When you sign a player, you pay agents, that's how football works. Now, after all this fuss, we will try not to do it in future, but all the deals were above board and in the best interests of QPR." All the agents' payments are understood to have been registered with the League, as required by the rules, except one, £10,000 paid to Paladini's close friend Mel Eves when QPR signed Dean Sturridge from Wolves. Paladini explained that Eves was acting for QPR as a dealmaker and so the payment did not need to be registered. The League is understood to have discussed QPR's situation with the FA's financial advisory unit, but neither the FA nor the League is taking any action currently. "We are monitoring the situation," a League spokesman said. Paladini told me that he, Caliendo and the investors, are the only game in town: "What have we done wrong? Put money in to save this club? We want the club to succeed, then everybody, including the investors, will be happy." Talks have begun with a developer about possibly relocating from Loftus Road and building a new stadium in White City, which may clear QPR's financial problems and make them money. Paladini said he could understand, "100%", fans worrying that, in the hands of former agents, their club might be used to make money by moving players in and out. But he said: "Nothing under the table is going on. If anybody thinks there is, let them bring the evidence. But, actually, isn't it better to have people in who know football and have made a living out of it? Clubs got into a mess partly because rich people, who knew nothing about football, put money in - and they got ripped off." davidconn@guardian.co.uk.Additional research: John Hooper. Burns' Hoop nightmare When Lord Terry Burns was appointed last year to undertake the "structural review" of football's governing body, the FA, we were told he was a Queens Park Rangers fan; he was also a director of the club through its troubles, appointed by his old university friend, Chris Wright, in 1996, staying on the board until March 2001. QPR went into administration a month later and has still not recovered. Surprising, then, that Burns' mind-numbingly dull report, delivered in August, which focused on bureaucratic minutiae, seemed so uninformed by what might have been a formatively traumatic experience at QPR. "Football in general," he wrote, "continues to enjoy very good health in England." The next day at QPR's first match of the season against Sheffield United, Gianni Paladini was allegedly held up at gunpoint, an incident over which four men have been charged. Burns did not want to talk publicly this week about his time at QPR. As a non-executive director of the football club, it is understood he was largely "meeting and greeting" opposing clubs' directors on matchdays, but he was consulted on financial issues, the appointment of managers and major signings. Burns' structural review, however, deals only indirectly with clubs' financial management, and not at all with the financial gap between the Premier League and Football League, so damaging for clubs such as QPR. And his main answer to the FA's struggles to govern the game? Ah yes: appoint non-executive directors to the board. http://football.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,9753,1595541,00.htm l?gusrc=rss
QPR1st on QPR's Remaining Directors & Wanlock & Barnaby Consortiums
QPR1st -Kevin McGrath officially resigns as a directorOctober 16, 2005 - Whilst doing one of our regular checks on the companies house website towards the end of last week, we were interested to note that Kevin McGrath's official resignation as a director on the board of QPR holdings ltd had been filed....This means that following the departures of Bill Power and Mark Devlin, the board representation now consists purely of those representing Moorbound ltd and the overseas consortiums of Wanlock and Barnaby LLC's. .... http://www.qpr1st.co.uk/main/newsarticle.asp?id=34QPR1st News Update -Latest news update October 15, 2005.....The most recent annual return is up to May 13th 2005 .....The addresses of Wanlock and Barnaby are both in the financial district of New York [Albany, NY]. Barnaby holdings is based at the offices of USA Corporate Services Inc. Wanlock's address has several offices, including a law firm and an accountant. Both companies are LLC's (Limited Liability Companies).http://www.qpr1st.co.uk/main/newsarticle.asp?id=35
Gianni Paladini Interviewed
Kilburn TimesExclusive -Gianni Paladini interviewKilburn Times/Camden Times nwl.sport@archant.co.uk12 October 2005 QPR chairman Gianni Paladini NEW QPR chairman Gianni Paladini has revealed his plans for the club in an exclusive interview with the Times, writes Ben Kosky.Paladini, who was already Rangers' majority shareholder, took over last month after winning a boardroom battle with previous chairman Bill Power.The Italian explains why he has adopted a 'hands-on' role in the day-to-day running of the club since the departure of chief executive Mark Devlin.Paladini also believes he can make Rangers a profitable company - and pledges that if he fails, the shortfall will be made up by himself and fellow major shareholders.And the Rangers chairman plans to reintroduce a family section at Loftus Road, possibly as soon as next week, to counter falling attendances since the summer rise in ticket prices.Read the full interview in this week's Times.http://www.kilburntimes.co.uk/content/camden/kilburntimes/sport/story.aspx?brand=KLBTOnline&category=sportfootball&tBrand=northlondon24&tCategory=sportklbt&itemid=WeED12%20Oct%202005%2013%3A11%3A32%3A930Full Interview/Article posted at http://www.qpr.org/forum/viewtopic.php?topic_view=threadsandp=119508andt=36750
Holloway on Injuries, Crystal Palace Loss & Evening Standard Assertions
Kilburn Times - Injuries threaten to dent Holloway's plansnwln@inuk.co.uk05 October 2005IAN Holloway believes QPR's current injury crisis could hamper his side's push for the play-offs, writes Mike Anstead.Rangers' lack of strength in depth has not been highlighted better than in Monday's 3-1 defeat to Crystal Palace, where late injuries to Steve Lomas, Dean Sturridge and Marc Nygaard threw Holloway's pre-match plans into chaos.The Rangers boss was forced to deploy 17-year-old Shabazz Baidoo from the bench with captain Kevin Gallen still to return following a hamstring problem. Lloyd Dyer, on loan from West Brom, was again played out of position at left-back with Mauro Milanese, Matthew Rose and Matthew Hislop also in an increasingly overcrowded treatment room."We changed the team from what we practiced on Sunday because of a few injuries," said Holloway."Marc Nygaard hurt his ribs, Dean Sturridge should have stepped in but was injured after training, and Steve Lomas was too ill to come."All of a sudden your plans go out the window and you're two goals down. I've had easier days in my management career so far. I had to change everything we did, scrub it out and start again."Our lack of strength in depth hurt us. We were chasing the game against a team that was in the Premiership last year and I had to put a 17-year-old kid on."If we were two, three-nil up, he can go on there and enjoy himself. If you're 2-1 down, it's difficult."A free weekend offers a valuable recuperation period for Holloway's wounded, and the Rangers manager is keen for as many of them to return in time for his side's game away to Preston on October 15.He added: "I think we need everyone back because when we have everyone fit, we have quite a strong squad."When everyone isn't, we are weakened quite dramatically. If you lose at home twice in a row, it's not a nice feeling and we're not used to it."Holloway offered few words about Gianni Paladini's decision to take legal action against the Evening Standard newspaper after a series of articles questioning the club's dealings with agents.However, the boss is firmly backing the chairman. He said: "One certain paper should just shut up because their facts are so wrong. So wrong, it's scary. "You do not quote five years' worth of agents' fees and call it a year. That's what's presumed, so it'll be very interesting to see what happens with that."http://www.kilburntimes.co.uk/content/camden/kilburntimes/sport/story.aspx?brand=KLBTOnline&category=sportfootball&tBrand=northlondon24&tCategory=sportklbt&itemid=WeED05%20Oct%202005%2011%3A36%3A33%3A130Ealing Times -Paladani takes control of QPRBy Staff ReporterGIANNI Paladini has been named as the new chairman of Queens Park Rangers Football Club.He was the unanimous choice of the board after Interim chairman Gualtiero Trucco stepped down.Paladini said: "I am deeply honoured that the directors have allowed me this opportunity. I believe these are wonderful times to be a QPR supporter."We have a wonderful manager in Ian Holloway, an exciting and improving squad and a real opportunity to push for the play-offs."I believe we now have the right people in place, both on the pitch and behind the scenes, to take the club forward."But the new man in charge has not had the easiest of baptisms with an FA charge landing in his lap and a 3-1 home defeat against Crystal Palace following soon after.Rangers and opponents Leicester City, have been charged by the FA with failing to control their players during their Championship match at the Walkers Stadium on September 24.There was a mass brawl during the game, which QPR won 2-1, and referee Colin Webster showed two red and seven yellow cards during the match, with Paul Furlong grabbing the decider just before he was sent off.The two clubs have until October 12 to respond to the charge.Then on Monday, Rangers live television jinx struck again as they crashed at home to Palace in a London derby.They were undone by a four-minute brace from German Marco Reich.Gareth Ainsworth's header reduced the deficit but Palace added a third late on through Tom Soares.QPR boss Ian Holloway said: "Palace were a little bit stronger than us in every department."We have lost our last two matches at home. It's not a nice feeling and we are not used to it. I wasn't very pleased in the dressing room after the game.""Our lack of strength in depth hurt us."We were beaten by the slightly better side. But when we get our players back, we will have a better chance.He also blamed the Sky TV cameras as Rangers failed to produce in front of the armchair audience again.He said: "It's happened before. There's too much stuff going on and it distracts the players."Rangers are without a game this weekend because of the World Cup qualifiers.http://www.ealingtimes.co.uk/sport/qpr/rangers/display.var.638671.0.paladani_takes_control_of_qpr.php
