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Reply | Madsen
at 13:27 21 Dec 2025
He literally is the first name on the sheet.
He has the most minutes of any QPR player this season (1,799)
Equal with Burrell for most appearances (22)
Equal with Dunne for most starts (20)
He has already played more minutes than he did last season.
His only backward step is in goals (2) and assists (2) which haven't yet caught up with last season's 3 goals and 3 assists.
https://fbref.com/en/squads/a7 |
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Reply | So Cifuentes ?
at 22:33 20 Dec 2025
Now who's determined to keep it going.......
So far I've made all the running on this. All you do is put forward facts that don't stand up to scrutiny, so you jump to a different fact, and another, and back to where you started.
Going round in circles with someone who isn't interested in what I say gets a bit tedious after a while.
You're even trying to tell me I'm gullible for believing that Ainsworth keeping us up is a success.
So it should be a piece of cake for you to convince me that Ainsworth keeping us up was actually a failure.
So if you want to keep this going you make the running. Convince me that GA keeping us up was actually a failure. |
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Reply | So Cifuentes ?
at 21:59 20 Dec 2025
"Taken in isolation, one can spin staying up as a PR success story - one that Ainsworth spun himself, and you evidently bought."
Wide-eyed fool that I am 
I get that my view is in the minority on here and I can live with that.
Nothing you said has made me change my mind and clearly nothing I say will change yours.
So let's leave it at that. |
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Reply | So Cifuentes ?
at 14:51 20 Dec 2025
If you compare them on their first 13 games it's GA 0.85 v 1 MF. Not such a great difference.
I will concede your point about 1 point per game being a significant improvement on 0.57. Although it wouldn't have kept us up that season as Birmingham went down with 50 points.
The reason I am labouring the point is that 1JD previously said on this thread:
"It’s not about who succeeded who. It’s about the squad available to the manager, any manager, and what you can achieve with that.
With Beale, the team hit the top heights during his reign. With Critchley and Ainsworth the team hit pretty much rock bottom.
With Cifuentes form was like top 8th. Same squad."
So it's not true that Cifuentes had us on top 8 form with the same players.
I'm not saying GA did a great job for us. But I think he is a better manager than he is given credit for and he doesn't get his due for keeping us up in 2023.
You will get no argument from me that Cifuentes did a better job for us than GA.
Let's just hope Marti has a stinker today. [Post edited 20 Dec 14:55]
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Reply | So Cifuentes ?
at 14:26 20 Dec 2025
If we look at Marti's first 13 league games it was three wins, four draws, six defeats @ 1 point per game.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
Not much better than GA's first 13 games which ensured our survival!
The big hole in your narrative is that Cifuentes did not do much better with the same players GA had to work with.
The big improvement came from the middle of January 2024 when the likes of Hayden, Hodge, Frey, and Andersen were added to the squad. Players who weren't available to GA but did have a big impact on their arrival.
If you want to make it all about the managers then fine that's your choice. But I am sticking with my belief that GA doesn't get enough credit for keeping us up in 2023. [Post edited 20 Dec 14:29]
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Reply | Many happy returns? Preview
at 23:10 19 Dec 2025
Excellent as always.
And I echo your sentiments about goodwill to all. Except that lot on Fulham Broadway. And the Mancs. And Liz Truss - did you have to go there!?
On this:
"It feels like these sorts of things have become fewer and further between since those days. We could probably do the whole preview on that – is it because the sport has become sanitised, more middle class, more family friendly? Is it because there’s a greater focus on mental health? Are we just tired of all the hatred elsewhere and can’t be bothered to bring it into our little Saturday sanctuary any more? Or have the right conditions simply not been met? Let Mick Beale get another Championship job, then we’ll see. That’s your acid test right there."
You missed off - are the average matchday fans too old now and can't manage the necessary venom without a double dose of Sanatogen before the game? |
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Reply | So Cifuentes ?
at 22:28 19 Dec 2025
Fair enough but I disagree.
I think we would have gone down if we hadn't sacked Critchley. And since no one other than GA wanted the job I don't see how we can credit anyone else with keeping us up.
But I did say in one of my earlier posts that it was probably more luck than judgement.
Looking at Ainsworth's career in the round he has a very good record with Wycombe and got off to a flier with Gillingham.
GA's style was never the right fit for us, and maybe he had become so comfortable at Wycombe after ten years that he didn't think through how hard it would be to recreate that here and whether the fans would want to go down that road. |
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Reply | So Cifuentes ?
at 22:18 19 Dec 2025
You're right about me conflating posters.
I wrongly attributed sparkey's comments about a ten point cushion to you.
My bad!
Other than that I stick with what I said about GA not getting enough credit for keeping us up in his first season. And also that GA would almost certainly have relegated us in his second season if we hadn't sacked him.
Viva Marti |
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Reply | So Cifuentes ?
at 20:32 19 Dec 2025
With regards to Beale and his "flash in the pan", his only triumph since his ten game hot streak with us is getting one win in six attempts against Celtic and that was in a game where Celtic had already sewn up the title:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/ar
He failed in Glasgow and he failed again in Sunderland. Regis le Bris had never managed in this country before taking the Sunderland job and got them promoted with the squad Beale could only manage four wins with.
If you look at Beale's record with us and Sunderland in the Championship he has managed 34 games with 13 wins and 14 defeats. Forgive me if I take out my crystal ball for a moment and suggest he ain't going to be the next Carlo Ancelotti.
Beale developed a style of play for us which succeeded for a few weeks until the rest of the league worked us out. Once that happened he didn't have an answer. A similar thing happened with Jim Magilton in 2009. And even Schteeve McClaren had us looking good for a bit in 2018.
I never once said that Ainsworth produced good football. In fact I haven't even said that he did a good job for us!
What I said was that he doesn't get enough credit for keeping us up in 2022/23.
In the seventeen games before Ainsworth was appointed we had one win and six draws. 9 points in 17 games! If we had kept Critchley and that form going until the end of the season we would have gone down.
You wrongly stated that Ainsworth was appointed with a ten point cushion over the relegation places and "a handful of games left". Well you must have bloody big hands because it was thirteen games left to play, and only a seven point cushion.
Ainsworth got 11 points from those 13 games and we finished six points clear of the drop. So in effect he started with a seven points cushion and finished with a six point cushion, a net loss of one point.
Where I will agree with you is that GA completely lost his way after that and we would have gone down the following season if Marti hadn't saved us.
And since Marti is the real focal point of this thread I would suggest he deserves a respectful greeting on his return tomorrow. He did a solid if not spectacular job in very difficult circumstances. |
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Reply | West Ham tickets
at 17:42 19 Dec 2025
To coin an old phrase a camel is a horse designed by committee
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Reply | So Cifuentes ?
at 15:58 19 Dec 2025
And Hearts are now six points clear at the top of the SPL with one defeat in 17 league games.
It will be a while before Critchley gets another good managerial gig
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/fo |
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Reply | Rest of the Championship thread 25/26
at 15:05 19 Dec 2025
That assumes the early December payment was in their contract and not a perk given at the discretion of the club.
The article does say that the staff are normally paid at the end of the month. So really the club are just doing what they would normally do with the payroll.
But I agree with you that the staff should have been given a reasonable amount of notice and it is poor management that they weren't told sooner. |
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Reply | So Cifuentes ?
at 14:59 19 Dec 2025
If we were in such great shape when Ainsworth was appointed then why was Critchley sacked? And why did literally no one other than some romantic with history at the club want to take his place?
We had 1 win in 17 before Ainsworth was appointed. We were in a death spiral.
The players weren't up to much and they definitely weren't motivated.
Critchley wouldn't have halted the slide and we would have gone down.
The revisionism is to suggest Ainsworth lucked into a talented group and somehow dragged them down to his level.
EDIT:
You are incorrect to say we were ten points clear with only a handful of games left.
Critchley's last game was the round 33 game at Boro:
https://www.worldfootball.net/
We were seven points clear of the bottom three with 13 games remaining when Ainsworth got the job. [Post edited 19 Dec 15:24]
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Reply | Rest of the Championship thread 25/26
at 14:19 19 Dec 2025
According to this Leicester normally pay their staff at the end of the month. They have in previous years made an exception for December so that staff could get their pay before Christmas, but they're not doing that this year and the staff will be paid on the 31st.
So not really too much in it
https://www.leicestermercury.c |
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Reply | So Cifuentes ?
at 13:53 19 Dec 2025
Are you seriously suggesting that on the basis of a ten game hot streak Mick Beale is a better manager than Gareth Ainsworth?
An EFL season is 46 games, not eight or ten.
When Beale came to us he had zero managerial experience. But on the back of some nifty PowerPoints and a few progressive YouTube coaching videos he was hailed as a messiah.
Since leaving us Beale has finished third in a two-horse race in the SPL and only managed four wins at Sunderland with a squad that subsequently got promoted to the PL and doesn't look like coming back to the Championship any time soon.
Ainsworth came to us with ten solid years of getting Wycombe punching well above their weight. He got them promoted to the Championship which even Martin O'Neill didn't achieve there, and he would have kept them up if the EFL hadn't taken so long dithering over what to do about Derby overspending.
Since leaving us Ainsworth had a poor stint at Shrewsbury but kicked off his stint at Gillingham with a 21 game unbeaten run and then the wheels started coming off when he had to step back for heart surgery.
Beale's ten game hot streak with us is the pinnacle of his managerial career. Then again it might never have happened since he is adamant he hasn't worked in London for the last decade.
Don't believe the hype. Beale has enjoyed some success as a coach but his managerial career has largely been a car crash. He might yet make a good manager one day but he clearly wasn't ready for it when we gave him the job. |
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Reply | So Cifuentes ?
at 17:31 18 Dec 2025
Ainsworth had a ten point cushion over the bottom three when he arrived because of a purple patch under Beale early in the season.
Another way of looking at it is that we had won 1 in 17 before Ainsworth was appointed.
We were not in a good place when Neil Critchley was sacked and with the players seemingly not having NC I don't think he would have kept us up if we had stuck with him until the end of the season. |
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Reply | So Cifuentes ?
at 17:27 18 Dec 2025
I'm personally of the view that Ainsworth doesn't get enough credit for keeping us up and that a lot of the problems with the squad that season were in place before GA arrived.
But I do agree with you that Marti's rescue job was the bigger achievement. We looked dead and buried that season and GA definitely wouldn't have saved us a second time. |
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Reply | So Cifuentes ?
at 17:17 18 Dec 2025
Apologies if I've misrepresented or misinterpreted your point.
But I think this sentence could be interpreted as suggesting that Ainsworth underachieved with what was a 'promotion' squad, or at the very least a squad that was far better than a relegation scrap:
"xG or no xG the team was literally top of the league after 16 games and nearly went down. Every other team that's been top after 16 games in the last 10 years got promoted."
And to be fair to Ainsworth not many teams top of the league after 16 games burn through three managers in one season! |
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