QPR’s Transfer Window and Match Preview

I was going to transcribe part of Harry Redknapp’s press conference for this posting,  but to my American ear much of what he said was untranscribable.  Certainly, I was not going to spend three hours today trying to understand him to type it up. 

The most interesting piece of news about QPR this week is that their expensive new midfielder, Sandro, is going to miss this game and, perhaps, several more because he is a complete idiot.      Apparently, he seriously injured his knee celebrating a goal in practice.  I know Harry Redknapp isn’t too popular around here, but I think we can all agree with him that it was a “stupid injury” and “absolutely crazy.”  At his pre-match press conference he suggested that the injury might not be as bad as originally thought and Sandro might be able to play on Saturday, but I did not find him too convincing. We shall see.  Also, Sandro apparently claimed that he injured himself some other way, but Redknapp did not find that too convincing.

And that reminds me, I know Pelle looks strong, but he doesn’t really need multiple full-sized adult men jumping on his back every time he scores a goal.  He could get hurt.  In fact, most goal celebrations are unnecessarily dangerous.  Please take this under advisement.

Another interesting QPR story this week is the non-arrest of Steven Caulker who may have committed the serious offense of shopping while black.  Or maybe he accidentally walked out of the store with some cheese—while black.  Fortunately for QPR, he did not celebrate the removal of the handcuffs by sliding across the parking lot on his knees.  At his press conference Redknapp wanted to know who leaked this to the media implying, perhaps, the existence of some kind of police conspiracy.  I am as willing to believe in police conspiracies as anyone, but I doubt this is one.

QPR is also interesting because it faces Financial Fair Play  problems.  In the Championship, teams were only allowed to lose 8 million pounds last season.  Any team that violated those rules faced a transfer ban or, if it got promoted into the BPL, a fine.  Given the amount of QPR’s apparent overspending—possibly around 60 million pounds—they face a fine in excess of 50 million pounds.    QPR has threatened not to pay the fine, but the Football League responded by threatening to refuse to permit them to play in the Football League when they eventually get relegated.  This would drop them all the way down to the fifth tier.   This seems like something that would result in litigation.  However, the penalty seems fair to me—although the Conference National teams that would have to play the newly relegated QPR might feel differently.  Also, would QPR be allowed into League Two when they won promotion or would they still have to pay the fine first?

TRANSFERS

QPR did a lot of transfer business.  Most of it involved unloading Championship Quality players who were not good enough for the BPL and BPL quality players who were too good for QPR.  And they were still dealing with the overspending on bad players from the season before last.  Since my purpose is to evaluate the strength of the current squad and whether it improved during the transfer window, my charts will ignore players such as Julio Cesar who was loaned out to Toronto last season and left on a free transfer and Loic Remy who was loaned out to Newcastle last season and then sold to Chelsea.

As always, I evaluated the transfers using information from Football Manager (FM) 2014 and Transfermarkt.     CA stands for current ability in FM.  PA stands for potential ability.  Both are on a scale of 0 to 200.  Negative PA scores reflect a young player’s potential with -10 being the best and very rare.    I ignored players who with club both at the end of last season and the closing of the transfer window or not with the club both at the end of last season and the closing of the transfer window.

INCOMING TRANSFERS

Player                                   CA                          PA                          Transfer Fee (in millions of pounds)

Sandro                                 157                         167                         11.09

Rio Ferdinand                    155                         180                         free

Eduardo Vargas                 145                         160                         loan

Steven Caulker                  142                         165                         9.46

Mauricio Isla                      142                         155                         loan (1.1 fee)

Leroy Fer                            138                         155                         8.8

Adel Taarabt                      134                         156                         end of loan

Alex McCarthy                  133                         155                         3.33

Jordon Mutch                   126                         143                         6.66

OUTGOING TRANSFERS

Benoit Assou-Ekotte        139                         150                         end of loan

Yossi Benayoun                133                         153                         free

Ravel Morrison                 132                         -9                            end of loan

Ji-Sung Park                       132                         150                         free

Danny Simpson                 130                         140                         2.2

Thomas Carroll                 128                         137                         end of loan

Gary O’Neil                        128                         133                         free

Jermaine Jenas                 125                         150                         free

Modibo Maiga                  124                         138                         end of loan

Andy Johnson                   124                         136                         free

Aaron Hughes                   124                         144                         free

Kevin Doyle                       118                         145                         end of loan

Dellatorre                          118                         135                         end of loan

Hogan Ephraim                116                         128                         free

Luke Young                       115                         139                         free

Will Keane                        109                         -8                            end of loan

Angelo Balanta                  92                          122                         free

Sam Magri                         78                          -7                            free

Mo Shariff                         65                          -6                            free

Emmanuel Monthe         45                          -4                            free

On the surface, QPR’s transfer business looks good.  They brought four to six good BPL caliber players while losing no one they really would have wanted to play—except Remy, of course.  It looks less good with Sandro injured.

Transfermarket values QPR’s entire roster at 78.98 million pounds which is 16^th in the BPL.  We are 8^th at 128.26 million pounds. To the extent this accurately reflects reality, it suggests that we are a much stronger and deeper team.  On the other hand, it is partially reflexive of our ability to pay more for our incoming players and sell our outgoing players for higher prices.

In my preseason prediction, I picked QPR to finish 12^th.  I used a non-discretionary method involving salary, team value, and FM CA ratings.  The changes in QPR’s squad since the transfer window would have lowered where I picked them to finish. However, I am not going to redo the numbers to get an exact result.

QPR'S STARTING ELEVEN

Last year’s starting eleven is based on the players who got the most playing time.  This year’s is based on the best CA’s at each position except where someone else is clearly the starter.

Position                                Last year(CA)                     This year(CA)

G                                             Green 129                           129

LB                                           Assou-Ekotte 139             Traore 123

CB                                           Dunne 133                          Ferdinand 155

CB                                           Hill 125                                  Caulker 142

RB                                           Simpson 130                       Isla 142

LM                                          Hoilett 130                          130

CM                                         Barton 131                          Fer 138

CM                                         Carroll 128                           Sandro 157

RM                                         Krankcar 130                      130

AM/ST                                  Morrison 132                     Vargas 145

ST                                           Austin 136                           136

QPR has lost 16 points of CA at one positions and picked up 100 points at six positions for a total gain of 84 points.  I assume this type of improvement is normal for a newly promoted team.  This means that their FM based first team strength is 1527 whereas ours is 1545. 

However, FM 2014 overstates the quality of QPR.  I have seen Rio Ferdinand play this year and he is no longer a 155.  I saw him play last year and he was not a 155 at Manchester United in February.  In fact, he does not seem to be as good as Fonte, who is rated as a 130.  This is one of the rare cases where I feel confident enough about my personal observations of game play to assert something like this as a fact.  Enjoy it.  It may not happen again for months.

INJURY LIST AND THIS WEEK’S LINEUP

These are the injury lists from the BPL website.

Southampton:  Rodriguez, Isgrove, Gallagher, Ward-Prowse, Yoshida, Alderweireld

QPR:  Joey Barton, Sandro, Adel Taarabt, Jordon Mutch, Alejandro Faurlin

STARTING LINEUP

For QPR’s stating line up, I took last week’s line up and replaced the injured players with the logical replacement.  For us, I took my best guess based upon who played last week—again accounting for injuries.

QPR                                                                       SOUTHAMPTON

POS                        PLAYER                                 POS        PLAYER

G                             Green 129                           G             Forster 138

LB                           Traore 123                           LB           Bertrand 140

CB                           Ferdinand 155                   CB           Gardos 128

CB                           Caulker 142                         CB           Fonte 130

RB                           Isla 142                                 RB           Clyne 140

CM                         Henry 121                            CM         Wanyama 146

AM                         Fer 138                                 CM         Schneiderlin 141

AM                         Krankcar 130                      CM         Davis 135

AM                         Hoilett 130                          LW          Tadic 146

ST                           Vargas 145                          ST           Pelle 132

ST                           Austin 136                           RW         Long 142

QPR’s line up totals 1491 CA.  Ours totals 1518 CA. However, I believe that FM understates our team’s strength and, as I have indicated, it overstates QPR’s strength.  In addition, QPR is not playing very well.  They have earned five points from teams that earned 17 points out of 60 in their other games.  We have earned ten points from teams that have earned 26 out of 60 points in other games. In other words, QPR has played much worse that we have against opponents that are playing much worse than our opponents.  Their goal differential is also worse than ours by 14 goals.  That is nearly three goals a game.  Taken together, I view this as indicating that we should win by 3—most likely 3-0.