The announcement that Marti Cifuentes is to be the new head coach of QPR sent all of us reaching for our phones to check out Swedish football websites and guides to Spanish pronunciation.
The appointment of someone with so little experience of English football is quite a gamble by the club. But then perhaps desperate times need desperate measures. We have lost our last five games. With more than a quarter of the season gone, we are six points off safety from relegation.
Cifuentes is our fourth manager in seventeen months. (Keeping someone for a whole season would be nice.) He joins us from the Swedish first division side Hammarby.
He started coaching when he was 20 while still playing as a professional. He had a succession of jobs in Spain as well as spells at the youth academies of Ajax and Millwall (no, I can’t spot that connection either). He then moved to Scandinavia.
He says in interviews he believes in controlling games by keeping possession of the ball and reports from his previous clubs suggest that means playing out slowly right from the back, using attacking full backs and launching quick counter-attacks.
His teams have a reputation for being very well drilled. Not perhaps surprising for a coach whose idols include Johann Cruyff and who learned his trade at Barcelona.
All of this will be quite a change from the previous haphazard kick-and-rush tactics under Gareth Ainsworth, but might well suit our current group of players better than the long ball regime. Let’s hope so.
This lurching around in QPR football styles is not helped by the fact that the club has yet to appoint a successor to Les Ferdinand as director of football.
The club is running hard up against the Football League’s Financial Fair Play (FFP) regulations. The Loftus Road cupboard is bare.
But there has been some better news on the financial front this week. The club has announced two new sponsorship deals with companies part controlled by the current owners. (Quite how this doesn’t breach FFP rules I don’t know.)
The club also has a new chairman with the current CEO, Lee Hoos, stepping into that role as well as staying on in his current job. (At this rate of job-sharing he’ll be playing in goal next month). It will almost certainly take our new coach, Marti Cifuentes, some time to find his feet.
It will take us a spell to find the chants that match his name. It’s vital that he is given the time he needs to get the players playing the way he wants.
We supporters will play an important part in giving him the support he needs. But then perhaps Loftus Road will feel more familiar than he realises. To mark his last game in charge in Sweden, his Hammarby side threw away a two-goal winning lead in true QPR style by conceding in the ninety fifth and ninety seventh minutes of added time. A scenario very familiar to us at Loftus Road.
Welcome to QPR, Marti.
The views expressed in this blog are those of the author and unless specifically stated are not necessarily those of Hammersmith & Fulham Council.
