Please stay Flavio..dont leave too soon :(
Its become the worst job in football, the one which most managers involuntarily shudder at being linked with. So is there anyone out there who relishes becoming the next manager of Queens Park Rangers?
Loftus Road has become the madhouse of football, driven and directed by owner Flavio Briatore, who hires with the kind of reckless abandon that highlights his controversial Formula One career.
One manager linked with the job called it “a nest of vipers”, while others turn off their mobiles when they believe they are about to be approached.
Briatore is driven by a restless urge for perfection – a wild, indiscriminate search for success. In his pursuit of the kind of glory that sated his appetite in motor racing, he has become the Italian axe man – a grey-haired guru with, it appears, little or no thought for the consequences of his trigger-happy temperament.
Now the vacant manager’s seat at Rangers is about to be filled until the end of the season by one of the game’s hardest men. Perhaps only a legendary tough nut like Mick Harford has a chance of withstanding the chaos at the club.
Former Luton and Rotherham boss Harford, who earned a fearsome reputation as an iron-hard centre-forward with Luton, Chelsea and Wimbledon, was placed in command after Paul Hart quit on Thursday night, having been in charge for just five games.
Even by the turmoil that is QPR’s normal state of business, Hart’s departure was a shock. Former Portsmouth chief Hart, 56, was in situ for just 29 days, and Harford, who is now set to keep the job until the end of this season, becomes the seventh permanent – possibly – manager in just two-and-a-half extraordinary years at Loftus Road.
It is understood that Hart, who was fired by Portsmouth earlier this season, walked out after rowing with on-loan Spurs midfielder Adel Taarabt and a major bust-up with Briatore.
The bitter disagreement was over not only the funds being made available to Hart to strengthen an ailing team during the transfer window, but also over alleged interference in team affairs by the flamboyant Briatore – and not for the first time.
It is, incredibly, the 11th managerial change at the club – if you include caretaker bosses, of whom Harford has been one – since Briatore arrived back in September 2007.
Iain Dowie was also sacked under similar circumstances in October 2008, after just 15 games in charge. Altogether, Briatore has now seen off a collection of permanent managers including John Gregory, Luigi Di Canio, Dowie, Paulo Sousa, Jim Magilton and Hart.
Alan Curbishley and Steve Coppell have already been linked with the hottest seat in the game, but the Daily Express understands Curbishley is not interested.
Harford, who was Hart’s No2, takes charge for today’s trip to high-flying Blackpool, a side managed by Ian Holloway, who was in charge of Rangers some four years and 12 bosses ago.
“ It is a sad occasion when a manager leaves his post, but that happens in football,” said Harford.
“I have been given what I consider to be an opportunity to stake my claim for the job.
“There has been no timescale put on this. Hopefully I will be here for a long time.”
:drunk:
Flavio Briatore planning to sell stake in QPR
The Italian, who was at one stage so in love with the west London club that he took to walking the Loftus Road corridors in slippers embroidered with the QPR coat of arms, has already begun courting outside investors.
Telegraph Sport can reveal that Briatore has told close friends that he had already planned to leave at the end of the season should the team again fail to qualify for the play-offs.
However, the former Renault principal’s legal issues with world motorsport’s governing body, the FIA, over the 'Crashgate’ scandal, a lingering concern that he could become the first to fail the Football League’s fit and proper persons test, and the rumoured possibility of becoming president of Juventus are thought to have acted as catalysts.
The most popular scenario among supporters would be for Amit Bhatia, the club’s vice-chairman, and his father-in-law Lakshmi Mittal, Britain’s wealthiest man, to relieve Briatore of the burden of his shares and assume total control.
However, Briatore entertained potential American investors during QPR’s FA Cup defeat to Sheffield United at Loftus Road on Tuesday, which in turn has encouraged other as-yet unnamed parties who have the finances, to begin taking soundings as to whether Briatore’s partners, including Bernie Ecclestone, would be prepared to consider a full takeover.
It comes at a time of severe instability for the club, who are 10th in the Championship and again without a permanent manager. Paul Hart became the shortest lived manager in their history when he resigned after just 28 days – one less day than Tommy Docherty in November 1968 – because of the erosion of his influence in the dressing room.
Hart’s assistant manager, Mick Harford, has assumed control for the away trip to Blackpool on Saturday afternoon – the club’s ninth manager since August 2007 – having received a late call from the board on Thursday night once it emerged that Hart did not have the support of the board over his disagreement with Moroccan midfielder Adel Taarabt.
Harford, 50, is now looking at this as an opportunity to stake his claim for the role on a permanent basis, something he failed to do when appointed caretaker after John Gregory was sacked in 2007.
There is speculation that Harford’s friend, former Newcastle manager Joe Kinnear, could take on an advisory role, but whoever is chosen to succeed Hart must have the quality best summed up by Bradley Allen, the QPR striker, who observed on Friday that whatever else, it must be a man “with rhino skin”.
trust me on this glen all this stuff about american investors it total ballparks.its made up from a journo who saw him speaking to randy learners associates at a football bash at the club a few weeks ago.
