There is an interesting debate about Zesh Rehman going on at the moment on the Loft For Words forums.

So, what do I think about it?

We splashed out £300k for Zesh and at the time it was a lot of money for us. He showed great promise on his debut which at the time, made me think we had a bargain on our hands. He’s never quite captured the same form since though and perhaps it was a tall order to be replacing a QPR favourite in Danny Shittu.

With Zesh, it’s quite simple actually. It’s all about confidence and for some reason he suffered a crisis in confidence quite early on. I still don’t understand why or how it happened, because I don’t recall him having a disastrous performance of any kind or making a glaring mistake that would have suddenly brought it on. It just seemed to happen. After that, he had a few stinkers.

What we must understand however is that he’s not a right-back and never will be. I felt sorry for him in the early part of this season because he was played out of position and didn’t really ever look comfortable there. When he finally made it back to the centre, he was so devoid of form and confidence that it took him a little while to get going again.

The stop-start nature, for someone of his character, is not going to be helpful at all, so we have to say that the coaching staff, John Gregory in this case, have to take some responsibility for that and to a lesser degree, Gigi De Canio as well.

From a footballing perspective he lacks in all the key aerobic areas such as mobility, pace, acceleration and agility. These cause him most problems, particularly against nippy strikers who can turn sharply. Mentally he lacks in anticipation, concentration and focus, which leads to the blunderous moments that cause people to vent their frustration.

The positive side however is that despite not being physically powerful, he’s a big lad. He’s not got great accuracy with his headers, but he can get up there and win the ball in the air. He reads the game well enough and more often than not, he’s actually making the right decision but sometimes doesn’t get the execution quite right because he rushes or maybe panics a little bit.

The way he tackles or clears the ball is a prime example. I’ve seen him launching into tackles or making clearances too early. It’s like you can tell what he wants to do in his mind, but he hurries himself and ends up committing before he should actually commit. This timing issue means he often doesn’t get a clean connection on the ball and that means it can end up anywhere or he can miss altogether. The good news is that can be fixed and coached out of him and just having more confidence and being sharper through more games will naturally help too. He’s fine on the ball, although he’s better with it centrally than at right-back. He does cross reasonably from right-back though, although he opts for a percentage based zonal ball rather than pinpoint accuracy.

If he can conquer the confidence issues and work a little more on the weaknesses in his physicality, then he can become a better player and do well. It’s a hard ask though for a man who is vilified by his own fans. My fear for him is that the writing is already on the wall. It’s difficult when thousands of people, those who are supposed to be your own, are not behind you or with you and there’s little chance to get a clean slate.

As fans, we must learn to be supportive and protective of our own. Much of Zesh’s fear is because he looks like he’s desperate to do well and be liked by the crowd, and fair play to the bloke, because he gives 100% and you can bet your life on it that if he does something good or bad, he’ll be in the thick of it the next time too. On that account, he doesn’t hide when he makes mistakes and that’s a good quality to be able to work with.

It may be best that he does move on in the summer, just so he can enjoy his football again but whatever happens, I hope it works out for the best for him.

I said I would dig out the rest of the programmes and track down those “welcome” messages, so here’s a quick update. It turns out that there are 81 welcome messages in the 21 published programmes to date. This averages out at 3.86 welcome messages per issue so far.

There is a pattern and trend with these. Issues 01 and 13 has the most, with five welcome messages and these can be linked to the start of the season (the now discarded Jude The Cat giving a one-off welcome) and when Flavio Briatore and Bernie Ecclestone took control.

Issue 03 has the least welcome messages with just two, but this can be linked to the sad death of Ray Jones.

The majority of the issues have four welcome messages, although interestingly John Gregory’s programme notes were never accompanied with a welcome message, which gives the impression it really was him writing them. Mick Harford always had one, and perhaps to be expected, Gigi De Canio has always done them to date too.

I have three other programmes from away days this season and they are Colchester (3 welcome messages), Charlton (no welcome messages) and Chelsea (1 welcome message).  It has to be said that all three were jam packed with content in comparison to ours too.

God, I must sound really pedantic, but it is £3 after all.

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There is a certain amount of irony attached to the dream. The Board are not talking about promotion, they’re talking about the Champions League. That means somewhere along the line, they are expecting us to break into the elusive “top four” in the country.

Just say it… Manchester United, Arsenal, Chelsea and Liverpool.

If you compare the squad we have today versus the squad we will need to compete against these teams and then the squad we will need to compete and be competitive in the Champions League, it’s pretty safe to say that nobody’s job is safe at QPR.

I wonder how the players must feel? Surely they know that promotion is likely to be the end of their QPR careers? Not for all of them, but quite a few. Could you bare another Derby episode?

Perhaps it will provide them with a justified and somewhat lucrative pay day but is it enough? Is it fair for them to get us up there and then be cast aside? Is it ethical or morally right for the majority of those players who secured long term deals to sit tight on their contracts whilst we’re at it?

If we do manage to secure promotion next season or sometime soon, just how many of these players will be around?

I kind of feel sorry for them because the inevitable will happen if we don’t want to become a yo-yo club, and the Board have already made a lot of noise about ensuring we do not become one of those.

On one hand I would say it’s their right to sit tight, but on the other hand, that reeks of no desire or ambition. I dread to think what might have happened had we made it up this year and am almost thankful we didn’t (and it’s still mathematically possible, although very unlikely now!)

Lee Camp showed us what ambition means when he left Derby to join us. He could have sat out his contract for another year and been handsomely paid. How his decision has been rewarded, so well played and good on him. Only time will tell how many of our players will do the same.

What bothers me most about all of this is the constant need to rebuild the team. We’ve had it when we were deeply in debt, when Ian Holloway had to constantly rebuild the squad for two or three consecutive seasons. I hated that period. It’s so hard to feel associated with the players and identify with them and their pesonalities when so many come and go all at once.

I prefer a more organic approach and while these changes back then, this season and the future were and are all needed, it does make me feel slightly nervous. I’ve taken quite a liking to the bunch we’ve got right now and I enjoy watching them grow - I just hope a fair few of them can reach the dizzy heights we all want them to!

I had to chuckle when I saw we won an award for the matchday programme. I don’t like to take digs at our guys because I’m not like that, but how we can win an award when the opening line of most paragraphs is “Good afternoon [or evening] and welcome back to Loftus Road…” just strikes me as bizarre. More so when it happens on the majority of the first few pages every time.

I was meaning to write about this at the end of the season, because every time I open the programme and see it and it drives me up the wall. It smacks of ghost writing or just regurgitating a template for each issue.

I have all the programmes so far from our home games this season and just found 13 of the 21 currently published. I counted 53 instances (averaging 4.08 per issue), not all unique, but very similar variants. There’s probably enough “welcome back” messages over the course of a season to fill an entire programme!

I may dig out the rest and do a proper count at the end of the campaign, but really, we just need one welcome message and then more content!

Something that amuses me is the banner I made for my blog. I chose to use a photo of Dexter Blackstock and Marc Nygaard from the lap of honour at the last home game of the 2006/2007 season against Stoke City.

At the time, I felt it was an ironic choice because it represented for many the best and worst of QPR. Dexter had an amazing season and scored some vital goals in our fight for survival, whilst Nygaard was a constant target for the boo boys, no matter how he played.

Fast forward almost 12 months and how times change. Dexter hasn’t been in the best of form and has been on the receiving end of criticism from a lot of our fans, but I’ll never forget the amazing effort he put in last season and how vital he was to us hanging on to our Championship status.

I’ve not been pleased with his performances of late too and I’m sure he isn’t either, but more importantly though, he’s got a goal against Wolves to get himself going again. He’s a Daddy now too thanks to the birth of his child! So, congratulations to Mr Blackstock on a fine week all round!

I have been tinkering around with the look and feel of this site in order to make it more consistent and legible across web browsers such as Safari, Firefox and Internet Explorer, which are some of the more popular ones out there.

I’m still messing about with it, so you may notice things going a little bit haywire or some random experimentation going on. I think I’ve sussed out how I want the text to look, but I still need to work a little on the spacing as well as colouring and behaviour of the links.

A sign of things to come?

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