QPR Strike While The Iron Is Cold – Why £15m For Loic Remy And Yann M’Vila May Not Be The Bargain It Should Be

Chris Wright

16th, January 2013

8 Comments

By Chris Wright

“I don’t want to spend the owners’ money really. I’ve got to be honest with you. I don’t want to see the owners have their pants taken down like they have in the past. A lot of agents have made an awful lot of money out of them.

“I fined (Jose Bosingwa) last week and he was earning more than anybody was on at Tottenham, so that tells you everything. We’ve got a stadium that holds 18,000 people and shouldn’t be paying big wages.”

The words of Harry Redknapp there, as quoted by the Daily Mail just a few days before Christmas.

Skip forward a week or three and QPR are on the verge of signing a pair of Ligue 1’s former hottest commodities – Loic Remy of Marseille and Yann M’Vila of Rennes – for a combined fee of around £15 million and combined weekly wages, if the newspapers of this land are to be believed, of around £150,000 (approx £70/80,000-a-week apiece).

Indeed, word has it that Newcastle were on the cusp of signing Remy after agreeing an £8 million fee with Marseille, but QPR blew them out of the water by doubling the wages he was due to agree to sign up for at St James’ Park.

So much for not paying those big wages, eh ‘Arry?

As we alluded to, both Remy and M’Vila are bang out of form at the moment, with M’Vila having been so for a good while following his fall from grace over the past couple of years. There was a point when the combative midfielder, even with a £28 million price tag, had most major European clubs fluttering their eyelashes at him fancifully, but those days are long gone.

“I’ve called this press conference to announce that I’ve really buggered it up this time”

In the intervening months, M’Vila has been banned from the national team until after the 2014 World Cup for making an unauthorized 200-mile round taxi trip to go drinking in Paris while on U21 training duty, with various other extracurricular transgressions – road rage, alleged assault and an altercation with jeering fans – leading him to be exiled to the Rennes’ reserves for a time.

This season M’Vila has found himself on the bench more often than not, and the same can be said for Remy (who, it has been announced this morning, has passed his medical at QPR), with Marseille coach Elie Baup even admitting that the spluttering striker was in desperate need of “rediscovering his touch and his feeling of the game” just a few days ago.

QPR have scrimped (relatively speaking) by striking while the iron is cold but, all in all, it’s hard to envisage the out-of-sorts pair hitting the ground running at Loftus Road which – let’s face it – is exactly what rock bottom Rangers will need their pricey new duo to do if their fairly pricey gamble is to pay off.

£15 million is not an awfully large outlay for one as flush as Tony Fernandes in and of itself, but this is ‘Arry we’re talking about here; if he gets his way then QPR will sign at least four or five players – Livermore, Odemwingie and Jonas Olsson are all said to be concerted targets – this window, whose cumulative salaries will soon start adding up and lingering on the wage bill with all the other dregs as ‘Arry pootles along, doing what he does best: chucking other people’s money at a short-term personal goal.

Forgive the doom-mongering, but we can’t help but feel there’s a subtle touch of the ‘Portsmouths’ to all this quick-fixin’.

Any thoughts Pies fans? We’d certainly like to hear what any QPR fans out there think of their shiny new toys…

Posted in Featured, Ligue 1, QPR, Transfers & Rumours

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8 Comments

  1. James says:

    QPR will be the new Portsmouth and go bankrupt.

    If anyone doubts that, have a quick skim of this – particularly the bits about their wage-to-turnover ratio being 183% in 2010-11 (BEFORE they gave huge contracts to Bosingwa, Cesar, Cisse, Park, Remy et al). For comparison, in the same season Man City’s ratio was a cushy 114%.

    http://swissramble.blogspot.co.uk/2012/04/queens-park-rangers-hoop-dreams.html

  2. JB says:

    Firstly, I wish people would stop saying “a touch of the Portsmouth’s) or “QPR will do a Pompey”. The situations between the two clubs is completely different and not comparable. But hey, nothing like a bit of sensationalism in today’s world of journalism.

    Sure, QPR could go bust but it wouldn’t be for the same reasons as Pompey’s plight.

    They owed something like £18m+ to the HMRC, we don’t. They owed £millions to a number of ex-owners, we don’t. They owe £millions to hundreds of businesses, big & small, we don’t. All our debt is in-house to the owners, just like at Chelsea and Fulham. They only way we’ll go bust is if they decide to fold the club to avoid paying the debts. This is not like Portsmouth.

    Secondly… “So much for not paying those big wages, eh ‘Arry?” Managers don’t set the transfer fees or wages, that is done between the clubs and the agents (who should be outlawed IMO or at very least, the players should pay the fees out of their own pocket for THEIR agent) etc.
    A Manager will identify what players he’s after and it’s up to the club to either back the manager (as we did with Hughes and that backfired) or decline to pay those amounts.

    As for the players themselves, there’s no doubt they have potential and ability but so do dozens of other players who sign for clubs. Either its success or they turn out to be right old lemons who trouser tens of thousands of pounds per week and do nothing.

  3. muppets says:

    Why have I not seen that quote before? Has redknapp ever been to a club and not spent all their money?

  4. Anonymous says:

    People chattin breeze about Demba Ba failing medicals before he joined West Ham.

    http://www.whoateallthepies.tv/transfer_talk/63327/demba-ba-joins-west-ham-likes-to-play-good-passes.html

  5. bozzman says:

    @ anonymous above, chatting breeze? english motherfucker, do you speak it?

  6. SL says:

    The difference is both Remy and Mvila (if he comes) will both have very good sell on value which will be more than what was paid.

    That is the total opposite of every Hughes signing (bar Mbia and Granero) in which old players have come for one last contract. eg Johnson, Zamora, Cisse, Boswinga etc

  7. MilfandCookies says:

    Unless Remy and M’Vila go down with QPR.. I’m sure there are relegation clauses in the contracts

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