QPR, the new **Insert rich successful football club here**
As i have mentioned before, i am a supporter of Queens Park Rangers Football Club and have been for over 20 years. Now for those of you who don’t know QPR, it is a team that has always had it’s ups and downs. 15 years ago we finished the season as top London club (yes that’s right, above Arsenal, Chelsea and Spurs) yet following relegation from the premier league we have gone into administration, our chairman has been held at gun point and our whole team has got into a fight with the China U21 team during a ‘friendly’ at our training ground.
Following a disasterous start to our season and the sad news that Ray Jones (a future star striker) had died in a car accident it seemed that things could not get worse. We were wrong, it soon became public knowledge that if the club didn’t find a buyer before the end of August we would go into administration for a second time….. Then all of a sudden things changed.
We are currently placed at the bottom of the second tier of English football which would usually mean there would be a number of people wondering around West London on a Saturday afternoon wearing blue and white hoops looking depressed, yet this is not the case.
The fact is that our chairman, Gianni Paladini (love him or hate him) did managed to secure investment before the deadline and not just any investment but investment from Flavio Briatore (Formula 1 boss with estemated worth of 500 million) and Bernie Ecclestone (Formula 1 chief with estimated worth of 2 billion).
All of a sudden, a team that has always had to sell it’s best players to make ends meet and could have quite easily gone out of business has rich owners and is being linked with the purchase of all sorts of new players and yet there may be another chapter in the transformation of my club as we are now being linked with another multi billionairre who makes Flav and Bertie’s fortunes seem small.
Lakshmi Mittal has a reported fortune of 26 billion and could turn QPR into the richest club in the world……
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/main.jhtml?xml=/sport/2007/12/20/sfnqpr120.xml
This is great news BUT i have my reservations. While i am forever grateful that the club i love is finally financially secure i don’t want it to turn into Chelsea who i always think of as a team who has the ‘money cheat’ turned on. I would love it to turn into a club that develops it’s youth into top notch players.
Anyway, that is all a way down the line as we still have to get out of the sh*t this season but don’t be surprised if in 10 years you see QPR challenging the big boys in the premier league while supporters of some other unfortunate clubs are watching their teams go out of business.
