Queens Park Rangers - Pre season 2011

Season Expectations

The minimum expectation the board will allow is to finish in the top half of the table. I am confident that we will be able to achieve European qualification through our league position. Higher ambitions do not add much to the transfer budget, so not worth the extra pressure this would me under.

We are expected to reach at least the 6th round of the FA Cup and the Quarter final stages of the League Cup. The board hope that we learn from our participation in the Community Shield, but I'm personally hoping we can achieve a win and claim our second trophy.

My ambitions have allowed me a transfer budget of £38.5 million, and wages of upto £400k per week. This gives me about £110k per week to play with, although the maximum wages I can offer to a key player is £42,500 per week, which will limit the players we can attract.

I have also changed to a 4-4-2 wide diamond formation to make better use of some of the players we have at the club.

Transfer movements in

During the closing stages of the season I spotted Luis Jiminez, from Chile, would be out of contract at the end of the season, and was amazed to be the only team to make him an offer. He will play as a central attacking midfielder, and is better than Buzsaky, so should get to be the first pick the majority of the time.

Sunny is a Spanish defensive midfielder I remember from the previous version of the game, and is fairly similar in quality to Rafa, so will give me excellent backup for that position, and during busy times he will get regular starts.

Debatik Curri is an Albanian left back, who is better than Cedric Varrault, so once he's integrated he may get to become my first choice at left back, and also can play as left sided midfielder. Varrault is also an excellent right back, so this shouldn't prove a massive problem, and during busy times gives me plenty of options to keep the players fitness levels high enough.

Ignacio Scocco is an Argentinian striker who should be able to play well alongside Fatih Yucel. I should be able to play Fatih Yucel as a deep lying attacker, which will better suit his skillset, which is quite scary given how many goals he scored last season.

I spent ages trying to sign a better central defender, losing Daniel Carrico to A.C.Milan after our approach was leaked to the press, which was extremely annoying, as he would probably have come to us. I failed with several others that asked for completely insane prices/wages, or weren't interesting in joining us, or signed for someone else at the last minute. Eventually I tracked down Simon Kjær, a Dane playing in Italy. After a lengthy process of negotiation I managed beat them down to a price several million inside the range my scout advised. This smashes our transfer record by a long way, but I feel his tackling and marking will make him invaluable to us at the back.

My signings for the future are the following regens:

• Tomas Klimek is a 16 year old Czech centre back.
• Carlos is an 18 year old Brazilian defensive midfielder.
• Bretislav Pospisil is a 17 year old Czech defensive midfielder.

These are players that in the worst case I will be able to turn a profit on later in the game.

Tranfer/Loan movements out

Before the end of the season I terminated the contracts of Heidar Helguson and Patrick Agyemang, as I couldn't find a club interested in them, even offering them for free. I decided that they were both taking far too much out of the wage budget, so felt it was worth paying them compensation to go, as they would never get to play in the first team.

I allowed the contracts with Alessandro Pellicori, Fitz Hall and Romone Rose to lapse, and they all left the club on free transfers, and were again not good enough to make first team. Kaspars Gorkss was the only player I managed to sell of the players I'd been trying to sell.

Josh Parker is a young player who will benefit from going on loan, and Damion Stewart will hopefully attract attention by going on loan, and allow me to sell him before his contract comes to an end in 2012.

I am finding it very hard to sell players that I feel are no longer of any benefit to the club, even at severely reduced prices. Maybe nearer the transfer deadline I might be able to offload some, as clubs begin to panic in the last few days.

Pre-Season Friendlies

I feel we may not have played enough friendlies before the start of the season, with only 4 matches. Hopefully this will not hurt us early in the season, which sees us very busy in August, with 7 competitive matches scheduled in the month, including the Charity Shield match against Man City.

The friendlies were a bit mixed, but overall I'm happy enough with what I saw. We had to come back from 2 goals behind in both the drawn matches, so we showed character and determination to achieve that.

The match against Hull was the first after signing Scocco and we looked a lot more dangerous going forward. Balanta came off the bench on the left wing and produced a goal from there after cutting inside, which was good to see, showing how well he can play that role. I was delighted with this performance, and gives the players a lot of confidence heading into the season.

Other Issues

During the break between the seasons I have been approached by Leverkusen, but turned down their offer to manage them. Soon afterwards I was approached by Man United to be manager, which was another job I turned down in favour of staying at the club I love.

I believe that I have now given us enough depth to the squad to be able to cope with the increased number of fixtures that we will be playing this season, all hoping we progress further in the Champions Cup. One disappointment is that Scocco is ineligible to play for us in the Champions Cup matches, due to having already played in a qualifying round for AEK Athens, 3 days before we completed his signing. Kjær also is not regestered for the first matches, as he joined too late on the day I had to register my players.