Then there’s the flamboyant Italian businessman Flavio Briatore. Flavio had been involved with the Benetton team which became Renault. His past was a bit chequered, like the Grand Prix finishing flag, but without Formula One I’d have never met him. He and Bernie Ecclestone at that time owned the majority stake in Queens Park Rangers, the west London football club. He called me one day in late 2010.
‘Hi, Tony, it’s Flavio. I’m sitting here with Bernie. Do you want to buy 30 per cent of QPR?’
10. We Are QPR
Soundtrack: ‘Papa’s Got a Brand New Pigbag’ by Pigbag
On the pitch at Wembley, celebrating our epic win in the final, the world-famous midfielder lifted me on to his shoulders. Around us, more than 40,000 fans chanted and sang our names.
No, it wasn’t a dream. Below me I could hear Joey Barton groan.
‘Jesus, Tony, could you lose some weight?’
He looked back, grinned at me and carried on chanting.
‘WE ARE QPR
SAID WE ARE QPR
WE ARE QPR …’
It was 5.15 on a sunny May afternoon in 2014. Apart from being a bit concerned about Joey Barton’s back, this was probably (birth of children aside) the happiest moment of my life: we’d just been promoted back to the Premier League after a season in the Championship. To win a final at Wembley is any football fan’s dream; as a club owner, it was unreal.
Football has brought me some of the most memorable days. Watching Brazil on television with my dad in the seventies; the first time I saw West Ham play on TV; getting my West Ham jersey at Selfridges with my mum; going to my first game; and then finding myself in my forties travelling on the team bus to the Etihad Stadium for a championship and relegation decider, and that afternoon at Wembley: highs you don’t come down from very fast.
While I was setting up AirAsia and dealing with all the problems that were being thrown our way, I still managed to get to a few West Ham games and became friendly with some of the former players who were involved with the club.
In late 2006, the West Ham legend Tony Cottee and a couple of other people approached me to ask whether I wanted to buy West Ham. The club was eventually sold to the Icelandic pair of Björgólfur Guðmundsson and Eggert Magnússon but that approach planted a seed in my mind. I carried on going to Upton Park, keeping in touch with the key players there.
When the Icelandic financial crisis hit in 2007–8, the owners went bust and the opportunity to buy the club came up again. We started talking to the administrators and were getting close to a deal. As things progressed, Din was called back to Kuala Lumpur but I stayed. Within a few days, I rang Din and told him to get over to London to sign. Just as he landed, the administrators called to say that they’d sold the club to David Sullivan and David Gold. We knew they were in the race but thought we were going to get our noses over the line first. Disappointed, we both flew back to Kuala Lumpur. As it was, we were just getting into Formula One and the financial pressures were pretty intense.
Flavio Briatore famously said of his involvement in football, ‘I will never invest in a football club again – it’s only ever a good idea if you’re very rich and looking for ways to waste your money. In two years, you’ll be very poor and won’t have that problem any more.’
Then again, I find it difficult to say ‘no’ when I’m offered something I care so much about. A couple of years after the close call with West Ham, I got that contact from Flavio. He and Bernie Ecclestone had picked me as a candidate to buy Flavio’s share because they thought I had lots of energy and could help turn things round. He’d been there for about four years and had had a pretty rough time. The fans hadn’t responded well to a number of things, including a redesign of the club’s crest and a hike in season ticket prices, despite the wealth of the owners. Changing the mascot from Jude the Black Cat to a tiger was the final straw (black cats are unlucky in Italy but Jude had been around for ever). And Flavio had had problems off the pitch after a series of scandals in F1 which put him in trouble with the FA, who were questioning whether he was a ‘fit and proper person’ to own a club. It was messy but I was interested. Before I knew it, Bernie Ecclestone said he’d run his course there and I could buy his share too. Once again, I was being offered something and, once again, I thought to myself, ‘If not now, then when?’ The outcome was never really in doubt.
Before I bought it (and I was really keen, what with my QPR history and love of football), I went to the first pre-season friendly with Flavio and met Neil Warnock, the experienced manager, and a few of the players – who didn’t know who the hell I was. We negotiated throughout the summer until the first game of the season, their first game back in the Premiership after fifteen years in the Championship.
We were at home to Bolton – who always seem to play a significant role in my QPR life – and we lost 4–0. An unhappy start to the season and a cold shower on the optimism we’d felt over the summer. I was sitting with Flavio and the board in the directors’ box. About fifteen minutes before the end, with no hope of getting back into the game, most of the others left, leaving me sitting on my own. On Match of the Day that night the camera panned over us all sitting there at the start of the game, all smiles and laughter; and then they cruelly showed another sequence of me sitting alone in the box, hand on chin, looking glumly at the pitch. ‘Welcome to the Premiership,’ I thought.
Despite the result, we signed the deal. Owning a football club felt as surreal as the Formula One experience – another sticker fantasy from my tuck box fulfilled. Amit Bhatia and Ruben Gnanalingam remained involved, while Din and I took over Bernie and Flavio’s shares. The ride of my sporting life began when I walked from the boardroom with a QPR shirt in my hand.
From that day, 18 August 2011, to the appointment of Ian Holloway as manager in November 2016, there hasn’t been a moment to draw breath. Only now do I feel we have some proper control. From really not knowing anything about running a club, I now feel that we are in the most secure situation we have been since 2011 (and possibly, with respect to Flavio and Bernie, a while before then too). It’s taken a long time, and a lot of effort, pain and money, but we’re now at the stage I’d like to have been at the season after I took over: we have a culture that encourages growth from within; players who are passionate about playing for the club and who respect the fans and the crest week in week out; the right people in place to do the right jobs; and a sense of where we want to go and how we’re going to get there. As always in football, it’s not perfect and the trajectory won’t be smooth, but we have the right elements to succeed.
Back in August 2011, things were not so clear. Every game brought a deluge of tension, anxiety which sometimes ended in real joy but more often ended in despair. Football is the most passionate sport and true fans veer from one extreme of emotion to the other – often in every minute of every game. As chairman, you feel each of these and then you add the stress of being responsible for the funding, the security and the direction of the club. It’s a huge weight to carry.
Neil Warnock had done an amazing job in the previous season, getting us promoted from the Championship, and we hoped he would be able to build on that momentum when we started in the top tier of English football. As a new chairman facing your first season in charge in the toughest league in the world, it was a baptism of fire.
The second game, we went up to Everton and we won 1–0. After the previous week’s loss, this felt more like it. I was listening to the game on the radio and it brought back memories of Paddy Feeny and my shortwave radio. This time, though, the fans were singing my name in the background, which was a proud moment.
And then we lost to Wigan away. It was still only August – thirty-five matches to go. We focused on improving the squad and made some significant signings: Joey Barton on a free transfer from Newcastle; Shaun Wright-Phillips for £4 million from Man City; Luke Young from Aston Villa; Anton Ferdinand from Sunderland; and Armand Traoré from Arsenal. It was a pretty good crop of profess
ionals to bring into the club but progress throughout the autumn was uneven – if it could be called progress at all. We drew at home to Newcastle, beat Wolves away and then got hammered 6–0 by Fulham at Craven Cottage.
By early in 2012 it was pretty clear that we were in big trouble: we’d got only seventeen points from twenty games. After a home defeat to Norwich on 2 January we went to MK Dons in the Third Round of the FA Cup on 7 January and drew. Everyone knew it wasn’t good enough.
The pressure was on from the fans and the board and I was faced with my first really big decision as chairman: should I let Neil Warnock go? I agonized over it. Neil is a special guy, he knows how to get the best out of players and he knows the Championship inside out; I liked and respected him. But the feeling on the board was that he had lost the dressing room and so I felt it was right for the club to get someone new in.
At the time our CEO was a guy I’d hired called Philip Beard. I knew Andy Anson, who was commercial director at Man United, through AirAsia’s sponsorship deal with the club and I’d asked him whether he’d take the job when I first bought QPR. Andy declined because the time wasn’t right for him, but he recommended Phil, who was running the O2 Arena in east London. Although he had never run a football club, Phil’s commercial, legal and personal credentials were impeccable. My reasoning was that coming from outside had been a plus for me at AirAsia so I went with Andy’s recommendation.
So, I told Phil to sack Neil. In the meantime, agents had been calling offering various managers to replace Neil even as we were discussing letting him go. Within twelve hours of him going, Kia Joorabchian, a well-known figure in football and the man, amongst other things, at the centre of the controversy surrounding the ‘ownership’ of Carlos Tevez and Javier Mascherano, called about Mark Hughes, the former Man United and Chelsea striker. Mark had made the transition to management successfully at Blackburn and then, under huge pressure, at Man City. After Sheikh Mansour had let him go from City, he’d moved to be one of QPR’s closest neighbours at Fulham but had resigned after just over ten months because he felt that the club didn’t have ambition.
I met him at my house in London. On paper, Mark’s credentials were strong: his record at Fulham and Blackburn was solid. I questioned him at length about his stint at Man City and he was adamant that given time he’d have achieved more, but the new owners had been in a rush for trophies. I asked him what he’d do with QPR and he talked a lot about pre-match preparations, about studying the opposition; he came across as highly organized, methodical and analytical. Added to that, of course, he’d played at the highest level for Barcelona, Man United and Chelsea, so he knew the game inside and out as both a player and manager.
We announced Neil’s departure, and Neil in his professional and gracious way released a statement that touched me:
Obviously, I’m very disappointed but, having achieved so much, I leave the club with a great sense of pride. I have enjoyed my time here more than anywhere else and the QPR fans have been brilliant with me – they deserve success. My biggest regret is that the takeover didn’t happen earlier, because that would have given me the opportunity to bring in the targets I’d pinpointed all last summer and probably given us a better chance to succeed in the Premier League. The board at QPR are hugely ambitious and I wish them every success for the future. I’ve been involved in the game a long time and I will be spending the immediate future with my family and friends before deciding my next career move.
On 10 January 2012, we proudly announced that we had secured Mark Hughes’s services. I was pleased that we’d got through the process so quickly and felt we’d made a good choice. The next thing I knew, I was being whacked on Twitter with abuse from angry fans, accusing me of hiring a Man City reject, of spouting ‘shit’ the whole time, of trying to sell the best players to make a fast buck. I was even denounced for my atrocious spelling. That’s something you don’t get running an airline! I responded as best I could, urging the fans to remain positive and taking criticisms on the chin.
Mark came in and we spent quite a bit of money in the January transfer window, adding Nedum Onuoha (£4.2 million) from Man City, Djibril Cissé (£4.4 million) from Lazio and Bobby Zamora (£5 million) from Fulham. In QPR terms, that was a big investment.
But our poor form continued. Easter approached and it looked like we were really going down. In March 2012, I was in Japan. We were playing Liverpool at Loftus Road. I have an internal body clock which wakes me up whenever we’re playing. So it was 2.00 a.m. or something in Japan when the match kicked off. At that stage of the season, we were level on points with Wigan but one point behind Bolton, who also had a game in hand. Wolves were bottom but only three points behind us. It was tight and things were looking bad. We went one down and then with twenty minutes to go Dirk Kuyt scored a second for Liverpool. Ruben texted, ‘We’re dead, we’re down. We’ll just rebuild and come back.’
I texted back, ‘No, don’t give up. We could just turn it around.’
And then Shaun Derry got one back for us, followed by Cissé, who equalized with four minutes to go, and then Jamie Mackie finished it off in injury time. A stunning comeback. Unbelievable. One of the greatest QPR games I’ve witnessed.
I really thought that we’d turned it around but then we went to Sunderland and got well beaten, so things looked gloomy again. Then Adel Taarabt stepped up – he’d had an incredible last season in the Championship but he had been inconsistent in the Premiership, until he suddenly started dominating games. We went on a bit of a run, beating Arsenal, Swansea and Spurs – games that we had no right to win. We also had some pretty bad results – losing 6–1 to our hated rivals Chelsea was particularly painful – so it was touch and go.
The last home game of the season arrived. The situation was on a knife edge. Wolves were already down but Blackburn, Bolton and us were fighting it out to avoid the remaining two relegation spots. Blackburn were three points behind us and Bolton. We each had thirty-four points; our consolation was that our goal difference was better than Bolton’s but we had two very tough games. The first was this home fixture against Stoke and then away at Man City, who were gunning for the title at the other end of the league. Meanwhile, Bolton were at home to West Brom – a game that was winnable – and then away at Stoke; again, a game they could possibly walk away from with three points. Blackburn were due to play Wigan on Monday night and then were away at Chelsea for the final game of the season. I was less concerned about them. The struggle between us and Bolton was what worried me.
That Sunday was one of the most stressful days I can remember. I tried to focus hard on what was going on on the pitch but was desperate for news of Bolton at West Brom. You could feel the tension around Loftus Road, anxious QPR fans monitoring their phones constantly as the game played out in front of us. After twenty-four minutes a huge sigh went round the ground: Bolton had gone one up through a penalty. Half-time came and we were at 0–0, Bolton were winning and would be two points clear of us if the results stayed that way. Worse news followed. Bolton went two up thanks to a West Brom own goal. My reaction to the goal was a fan’s reaction, not an owner’s – I choked back the tears and tried to focus on giving the team as much support as possible. After all, one goal would put us in the same position as Bolton.
Then things changed. Three minutes after Billy Jones’s own goal, Chris Brunt pulled one back for West Brom. It was 2–1 to Bolton. With five minutes to go, we were still at 0–0 and my positive energy was ebbing away. Then in the eighty-ninth minute Anton Ferdinand headed to Cissé, who poked it in. We all went bananas. At the very least we’d matched Bolton’s win. Then the celebrations got wilder as we heard that West Brom had equalized.
That night in Shepherd’s Bush was some night. The directors and staff went out on the town, ending up at a pub called the Defectors Weld on Shepherd’s Bush Green, which is about a ten-minute walk from the flat I used to rent on the Uxbridge Road. When I woke up the following morning, the reality hit me hard. Altho
ugh we were two points clear of Bolton we weren’t actually safe from relegation. In fact, we were anything but safe given that we still had to go play Manchester City at the Etihad Stadium and pray that Bolton lost to Stoke. In a twist that only football can deliver, Man City had to beat us to win the title. Everything rested on these two results.
These are the kinds of days you live for. The excitement, stress, intensity are life-defining. I’ll never forget the scale of the day and how I felt at the end of it. And football is a game where there’s no in-between emotion; it’s either ecstasy or you’re suicidal.
And so a week later, 13 May 2012, Din and I flew into Manchester overnight from Kuala Lumpur. I didn’t sleep all night. We went to a hotel and then met the players, who were having their pre-match briefings. If we won – highly unlikely – we stayed up; but if Bolton lost, whatever happened, we were safe. The day unfolded in a way that would test the strongest heart. Stoke went one up against Bolton after twelve minutes and we all cheered. But then in the thirty-ninth minute we suffered double agony: City scored against us and Bolton got one back at Stoke. On the stroke of half-time, Bolton got a second and we went into the dressing room knowing that if the results stayed that way we’d be down. Amit, Ruben, Din and I were all super-depressed. All the Man City directors were consoling – ‘Don’t worry, you’ll be back next season.’
Three minutes into the second half, the unbelievable happened: Cissé scored an equalizer. The drama really started. Joey Barton was sent off for a foul on Carlos Tevez after fifty-five minutes, but with about twenty-five minutes left, Jamie Mackie popped up and buried a header to give us the lead. I turned to look at the others and we went crazy. If we could go crazier, we did, when Jonathan Walters equalized for Stoke. As things stood, we were staying up and handing the title to Manchester United. The Etihad was a cauldron. City fans couldn’t believe they’d be robbed of the title on the last day of the season by QPR, while we were going berserk at the prospect of survival.
Flying High, My Story Page 15