Ollie

by Ian Holloway

  Gavin was my most senior pro and also the highest paid and I swear he went white as a sheet and took a couple of steps backwards till he hit the wall. He was also our PFA rep and he said, “You can’t do that.”

  “Yes I can.”

  “Actually,” I said, “I don’t think you can. You don’t understand football do you?”

  He snapped back, “Well you don’t understand administration,

  do you?”

  “Actually, I do and our PFA will not let you do that – have you spoken to them yet? The PFA have a union and you won’t get away with doing what you say you can do.”

  I told Gavin that he had my permission to leave the room and go and call Gordon Taylor from the PFA. Gordon came down to see the administrators and informed us they couldn’t do what they’d threatened. A deal was cut whereby we got our wages, but not our bonuses. The good thing that came out of it was the lads knew I had known nothing about it and we gelled straight away because of that, I think. It didn’t make any difference to me because I was floating on air that I’d got the job and the fact of the matter was I’d had to work with little or no money for five years at Rovers anyway.

  We had a meeting and I told the lads, “Look, we’re still going to get paid but we’re not earning any bonuses anyway at the moment so let’s win a few games and you’ll get your money at the end of the season. Let’s ban the word administration, it’s all about our product and we have to do well, because if this lot go bust you’re going to need another job anyway.”

  We’d managed to get everything out of the way and in the open in one fell swoop. It turned out Chris had been losing £100,000 per week of his own money so it was inevitable that something would have to give eventually because one man can’t sustain that kind of financial loss on a continued basis.

  We never gave up hope of beating the drop but one game on the run-in illustrated perfectly how fate was conspiring against us. We were 2-0 up away to Crewe and seemingly cruising. I have to take my hat off to Dario Gradi at this point because he is very clever at coaching his side to work within the laws of the game to gain an advantage and I think we were suckered in on this occasion. As Peter Crouch ran past to get in a defensive position, one of their lads booted it up Crouchy’s backside and then held his hands out to the ref to suggest it must have been intentional. He’d already been booked and the ref, showing wisdom and common sense beyond the call of duty, gives him a second yellow. A couple of minutes later Karl Reddy is sent off, so we’re down to nine men and end up just about clinging on to a 2-2 draw. I also had to take Andy Thomson off because a ball hit him in the back of the head and knocked out a contact lens. We were all grovelling around trying to find it in the mud but it was lost and as he had no spare with him that day, he had to come off. With luck like that, we were doomed! We beat Tranmere 2-0 at home but we took a few risks at Huddersfield with the game balanced at 1-1 and we threw caution to the wind because we needed a win, but in going for it, we left gaps and lost to a late Delroy Facey goal – that was the final nail in our coffin and we were down. There were tears in the dressing room but I told the lads they should be proud of their effort and that it would be different the next season. I came out to face the press and as I’m being interviewed in the tunnel, a bloke sticks his head out of a corporate box and starts laughing, “Ha, ha, ha! Holloway’s going down. Bye-bye QPR!” The only thing I was happy about at the end of that season was that Huddersfield went down, too, and I swear it was down to that one bloke, because sometimes, what goes around comes around. I don’t want to upset any Huddersfield fans but that bloke doomed you.

  So with our relegation finally confirmed, I started having meetings with my staff as the big sort-out began in earnest. I called in Warren Neill, Chris Geeler and Gary Waddock from our youth set-up and I said, “Alright, lads. What have you got for me that might help me out a bit?” Warren says, “None of them. This will damage them in the situation we’re in.”

  I said, “Excuse me?” Normally I’d expect at least two or three youngsters to be ready to join the senior squad and that took me back a little. It turned out they had some 19-year-olds in their Under-19 team and I’d always been of the opinion that as the lads got older, you tested them out at a higher level to see if they had what it took, but they wanted to keep them all. They were doing well in their league and had reached the play-off final in their division, but lost to Nottingham Forest. It was like having a club within a club and if the reserves needed cover, they’d send their worst player up, usually the subs who couldn’t get in the Under-19 team.

  I threw about three or four teenagers in for our last home game against Stockport and we lost 3-0 – the kids weren’t good enough after all, but the situation with the Academy would need to be addressed in the summer.

  As we walked around the pitch applauding our fans at the end of the game, I was getting patted on the back by Rangers fans who were saying things like, “Thanks for giving us the spirit back, at least we played with passion” or “It’s not your fault and we’re looking forward to next season.”

  That was pleasing and exactly what I’d hoped I’d hear. The QPR fans understood our predicament and all they’d wanted to see was a bit of passion and players playing for their shirt, which was the very least I demanded of my lads. I had a busy summer ahead and had to get a squad together capable of taking Rangers back to where they deserved to be.

  I was also about to learn why Gerry had been so keen for me not to see what some of the players had been earning…

  Chapter 17: A Bag of Chips

  I sat down and started to sift through all the contracts of the players with my chief Executive and discovered that four or five of the young players had been given four-year contracts – or more – because the Bosman ruling had been due to come in at that time and they didn’t want to lose some of the Academy’s brighter hopes. The club were paying them gross amounts of money – and they weren’t good enough! What really stuck in my craw was these five young lads were all on double what my best player had been on at Bristol Rovers. I’d had a fantastic pro at Rovers called Andy Tilson who’d worked hard all his career to get where he’d got to and these kids were already on more money than he was and they didn’t give a monkey’s about the club. We’d bred these people and they were like lost souls because they had all the trappings of success but hadn’t had to earn it. It was unbelievable.

  During the summer, the administrators didn’t so much as prune my squad – they butchered it with a chainsaw, leaving me seven fit players and two long-term casualties in Clarke Carlisle and Richard Langley who’d both done their cruciates. I didn’t even know if they’d ever come back and play again. There had been people out of contract but I was instructed that I couldn’t re-sign any of them – they all had to go. Some of the lads with longer deals were offered a pay-off to cancel their contract and I had to sit there with my chief executive David Davies, who had helped me greatly since I’d been at the club and was a gentlemen who cared about people, while he spoke to every one of them. They told them the club couldn’t honour their agreements because they’d go bust if they did and would they please accept 25% of what they were owed and then they could go and find another club for nothing. It was heartbreaking to see young lads be told the future they thought they had wasn’t going to happen, at least not at QPR, and it was horrendous. We were both devastated for the lads and it was the worst day of my managerial career up to that point or since.

  I had no staff, no squad and David Davies and I had to go to the administrators and say that we needed to keep functioning and fulfil our fixtures or they’d never sell the club. We needed another striker and we had to prove what we needed and do it one case at a time. We had to keep going so they okayed a player called Mohammed Barr on a free from non-league and Leroy Griffiths from Hampton and Richmond – we were trying to find a few bargains here and there and I could only select from the local populace because I cou
ldn’t pay a relocation allowance. Steve Palmer came on a free from Watford and I brought Kenny Jackett in as my assistant on Pen’s recommendation. Ken was vastly experienced, good at his job and Pen reckoned I’d get on with him like a house on fire. He’d recently lost his job, lived in the area and despite all the problems we had, he agreed to come and work with me.

  Tim Breacker had been helping Gerry with one or two things and Gerry recommended I let him take the reserves, which I was happy to do. It was a fantastic learning curve for me but coming from Bristol Rovers, who’d been run as though they were in administration anyway, it was probably the perfect grounding.

  Sometimes as a manager it’s like you’ve got a tree and some of the branches are fine and some are ugly and need taking off so new shoots can come through. We were dealing with a virtually pollarded tree. I had a trunk and nine short branches and I needed to start building again from scratch.

  Kenny Jackett was proving to be invaluable because he had so much experience and I tried to add Pen to my staff but Bristol Rovers wouldn’t let me touch anybody. Our running costs went from around £5.3m to £2.2m and our skeleton squad returned for pre-season training probably feeling like the survivors of an air crash. Despite everything, we got off to a flyer by beating Chelsea 3-1 at Loftus Road and were using a load of trialists by that time.

  Then we beat Steve Bruce’s Birmingham City 1-0 and made nine changes after the break – five of whom I’d never seen in my life! Steve Bruce asked after, “How the hell did you manage that?”

  We had a great pre-season and the lads were working really hard and we took that into the 2001/02 season by beating Stoke City 1-0 in our first game. Stoke were one of the favourites to go up, so it was a confidence booster for everyone and we followed that up by beating Bury 2-1 away. I couldn’t have asked for more, but we were never going to run away with the league because my squad was so small. When we did get beaten, a few of our fans were still a bit whingey and some were demanding to go back at the first attempt, which I understood, but I needed to get a message across to them that we were where we were and we couldn’t think of ourselves as the famous QPR anymore – we needed to forget that for the time being.

  I couldn’t believe the level of interest there was in QPR from the media compared to Bristol Rovers and it was round this time I started having a little bit of fun with them, I suppose. Having lost my job at Rovers and feeling mentally scarred from the experience, I knew it wasn’t healthy for me to give the job that much emotion any more, so I tried different tactics. Anyone who knows me knows I have to get thoroughly immersed in whatever I do but I couldn’t live it as I had been doing, so basically I was much more relaxed with the press and I wasn’t taking everything as a personal affront. I also had the best excuse in the world – administration – it took the pressure right off in a funny sort of way. I wasn’t in control of what was happening behind the scenes. I needed to galvanise everybody into the same mindset if we were to move forward, but if we lost a couple of players, it weakened us severely. What I now know is that, as a manager, you’re only as good as your weakest link and while I had a team, there was nothing else around it, no support network and we were very inconsistent throughout that season. Injuries meant we could bring players in on loan and after losing one of my centre-halves, I brought in Danny Shittu from Charlton. He met us on the coach on the way to Peterborough, but it turned out to be a debut from hell because we lost 4-1 and while Peterborough were absolutely fantastic on the night, I won’t ever forget their fans goading the R’s supporters by singing “You’re not famous anymore! You’re not famous anymore!” It was ringing round the ground and it broke my heart to hear it. While it was awful to hear, it was also reality and what I needed to do was get our supporters to realise that and all our players, too, but we weren’t quite there yet. The hard work ethic was there and we’d lost the losing mentality I think we had when I first arrived which was important, because we could have kept going down like Bristol City had done in the past. Sometimes you can’t stop the rot, but what we managed to do was ban the ‘A’ word because I thought people might try and use it as an excuse, given the opportunity.

  Danny Shittu was starting to look fantastic at the back for us and one of our supporters, Harold Winton, wanted to buy him for the club. It was a huge bonus for me and we bought the lad for £250,000. One significant game that year was an FA Cup tie at Swansea that we lost 4-0. I knew our fans would be spitting venom because they were in a division below us but we’d had Leroy Griffiths and a French lad called Dudu, who was a two-foot nothing Frenchman whereas they had Paul Williams and Kevin Nugent and they were the difference on the night. I said in the post-match interview that it was alright saying Swansea were a lower league club, but our strikers were inexperienced and we were desperately short of attacking options, and I said, “So if there’s any strikers out there, why don’t you come and sign for us? The boys who played today are great lads, but they need to get more experience. They shouldn’t be playing for QPR at the moment.”

  I’d advertised our plight and everyone thought it was very funny and what have you, but the next day I get a call from Kevin Gallen’s agent, Phil Morrison, asking if I was serious about wanting players. I said I was and he said, “Good, because Kevin’s available.” I went to see Nick Blackburn and David Davies and said, “I know we’re in administration but we need to win promotion. I strongly recommend you bring Kevin Gallen back to this football club.” They agreed and Kevin came in time for our home game against Swindon three days later and if you’ve ever needed an example of an instant impact, it was his debut, because he scored one and made three, giving the fans a massive lift with ‘Super Kevin Gallen’ echoing round the ground throughout the game. That helped me, too, because I’d given the fans one of their heroes back – I couldn’t get them Les Ferdinand, because he was well out of reach, but Kevin Gallen was back. I tried to bring in players and people who cared about the club, and I think that got us through some tough times over the years. We finished eighth in the table, which wasn’t a bad effort considering everything that had happened.

  Nick Blackburn and David Davies were trying get enough money together to buy the club and they managed to do it, paying off all the club’s debts and everyone we’d ever owed a penny to was sorted out in time for the 2001/02 season. We wouldn’t have been allowed to operate in administration again so it had to be done if QPR were going to continue and it was good to have a board and a chairman again. The budget they gave me was nowhere near enough to get us in with a chance of getting out of the division and I said as much, so they managed to find a bit more. I brought in Mark Bircham and Brett Angel to strengthen the team. Kev Gallen’s agent called me again and said another of his players, Paul Furlong was interested in signing for QPR. I told Phil that at this rate he could take over as my striker guru, but I wasn’t complaining. I was uncertain about signing Furlong, though, and Kim, being a spiritual type, just happened to have her Tarot cards out one evening so I jokingly asked her to do a reading regarding bringing the player to QPR. He’d been at Loftus Road before on loan, but hadn’t done that well or been very popular with the fans. Steve Bruce told me he was a great bloke and wouldn’t be a problem and that he could be a useful signing for me. So I asked Kim some specific questions about Furlong – was he still hungry for instance? She dealt the cards and I have to admit, it was unnervingly accurate of his situation! The cards summed him up as being someone who had money around him and played at a higher level, but his main card showed an unbelievable desire to prove himself and Kim said, “If I was going on these cards, I should sign him.”

  I called Phil and said I wanted to speak with Paul before anything else and arranged a meeting. I asked him a series of questions and he gave me all the answers I was looking for. He was exactly the type of player we needed, but I knew I’d have to be patient because it’d been quite a while since he’d played regularly.

  I promised him we’d g
et him fit and also get his mind right and he was more than happy to join us on that premise alone. I now had Furlong and Gallen as my preferred strike pairing – a proper partnership – but when one of them was out, we’d be back to square one, so I was continually on the look out for more forwards.

  We were more consistent that season and also had a bit more about us and were up in the mix going into autumn and then injuries and suspensions started to hit us hard and we began to fall away quite badly. We were losing league games and then we went into the FA Cup First Round tie with non-league Vauxhall Motors with just a bare eleven, and we were very lucky to come back with a 0-0 draw. There were grumblings after that and because of our poor league form, I was starting to feel under a bit of pressure. I was six games without a win and then we had the replay with Vauxhall and go 1-0 up after six minutes through Andy Thomson. The relief around Loftus Road was tangible, but the forward momentum we should have had from that goal never came. We stopped playing and Vauxhall started playing, and when they equalised, it was no real surprise. With our confidence non-existent, the last scenario I’d wanted was a penalty shoot-out, but that’s what we got and they beat us, fair and square. Furlong missed one of the penalties, and try as he might, things just weren’t going for him. If he fell in a barrel of boobs he’d have come out sucking his thumb. The following day there were major ructions – I was hopeless, everything was rubbish – so much so that the day after that, a taxi driver I’d got to know really well as a player and as a manager, phoned me. He was one of the most ardent QPR fans you could ever meet in your life – QPR were tattooed on his heart, so to speak, and he called me up and started having a real go about the way things were going, so I invited him to the training ground because what he was saying didn’t make sense. I couldn’t pick the team he’d wanted, so I took two hours to talk to him, showed him around and went into great detail as to why certain players weren’t available and suchlike. I said, “Vauxhall Motors – it’s embarrassing! But at the moment, we haven’t got a strong enough squad to even beat them. We should have won with the side we put out, but we didn’t – so get on with it. You go to work and you’re going to take some stick and get ribbed on occasion, but so what? I still need you with us. We still need your support. Are you still with us?” He left having calmed down and I think he could see why we were struggling the way we were. Our next home game, against Cardiff, we were drawing 0-0 with 75 minutes gone and we ended up losing