Good luck Iain
It feels like a long time ago now since we had just one manager in charge for an entire season and I was hoping that we’d get ourselves back on track in this campaign, but the dreaded 15 games in struck again for Iain Dowie.
I’m really sorry it didn’t work out for him, because he’s a bright young man who does a lot of good scientific work on the training pitch to prepare players physically for a long hard season.
What he really needs though is a right-hand man who knows the game inside out from a tactical perspective. A bit like how Ian Holloway made such great use of Kenny Jackett. It may be that Tim Flowers is every bit as capable, but I didn’t really see enough of him to pass such judgement, but that’s the feeling I had looking in from the outside.
Where the hell do we go from here now? It’ll be interesting to see what type of person the club go for to replace Dowie. Will they continue the strategy of finding somebody who knows this division inside out or will they go for a different approach?
Whatever we do, and this is no disrespect to Gareth Ainsworth, but I don’t think we should be leaving him in charge for too long. He’s a terrific guy and a great motivator, but he’s not ready for this level of pressure and expectation and in many ways it’s not fair on him either.
As for Dowie, well, I have to say that I still miss Luigi De Canio’s style and flair. He brought a tactical intelligence to Loftus Road that I’d never seen before in my time as a QPR fan and I felt spoiled by that. I always felt he would have done the job the longer he had with the players and the more he acclimatised to the country.
It’s left me aching and dreaming for more of the same, so whoever comes in, I hope they can do something similar - except this time, I hope the person coming in is a man who is able and capable of sticking around much longer than our last four or five. It’s an expensive and dangerous job to continuously replace the manager and his coaching staff and it’s important to find stability as quickly as possible.
The Board also need to be careful now, because the last thing they need is to give off the impression that they are trigger-finger happy, which presently it seems that they are. A manager and his backroom team need time, and in reality, 15 matches is not a great deal of time when the big picture of reaching the Premier League is supposed to be over a 4-year plan.
But good luck to Iain too and thanks for the time you’ve put into the club as a player and a manager - I hope he stays in the game and finds himself back in work soon enough again.
