The Four Year Plan – Review

From the moment I laid my eyes on the trailer for The Four Year Plan and eventually worked out it wasn’t some bizarre joke and was actually for real, I just couldn’t wait to see it. I was really pleased with myself for staying away from all of the threads discussing it, as well as from reading any of the reviews posted from critics who had. I didn’t want to spoil anything for myself because I knew it would be compelling to watch. And boy, was it that and more. It was captivating, fascinating and surreal from start-to-finish – these are my thoughts on what I saw.

If you don’t want to read any spoilers, then simply do not read on.

The Four Year Plan first aired in Marbella in Spain at the Marbella International Film Festival, which I contemplated going to see and to throw in a bit of a short break at the same time. But I couldn’t convince anybody from the LoftForWords travelling crew to go that far, nor could I convince the missus that it was a sane idea either!

But fast forward another month and it popped up at the Amsterdam Film Festival in Amsterdam, and low and behold, LoftForWords very own Clive Whittingham was covering the festival as part of his day job and happened to be out there for one of the showings. I didn’t need a second invitation this time around and happily joined him for what would be an incredible 90 minutes plus worth of footage at a packed Pathé Tuschinski theatre.

When I first heard about The Four Year Plan, it didn’t sound like a good idea and I feared we would come out of this as a laughing stock all over again, given that’s what we’ve been at certain points in time throughout the last ten years. But that’s not what I found here though – AdHoc Films have told the story really well and have struck a good balance between being relevant to interested QPR fans and football fans in general, but also made it widely accessible to all and not those just interested in football.

And while the documentary illustrates things that you might not agree with in terms of how the club was run by Flavio Briatore and co, it does give you better clarity and understanding of their thought process and style. I was actually surprised at how dedicated and desperate they all were to succeed and do well, but their inexperience with football was quickly their downfall. I thought their characters were portrayed with fairness and dignity by AdHoc Films, which possibly erred towards the side of safety but in a respectful manner and I expected that really. It still gives you more than enough to draw your own conclusions.

Flavio Briatore

Let’s start with Flavio Briatore. I actually found him hilarious throughout and couldn’t help but laugh at some of the things he said and did, or shake my head in dismay or with a wry grin. It’s easy to do that now in hindsight, now that he’s part of our history and it’s nice to be able to do so, because it certainly wasn’t funny at the time. He’s strangely eminently watchable in this and you’ll chuckle from scene to scene, because whenever he reared his head or you heard his voice, you just knew something crazy was about to happen.

Briatore’s lack of footballing knowledge is clear throughout (which is also true of Alejandro Agag and Amit Bhatia), and is his achilles heel because he just couldn’t help but get involved when he shouldn’t have. There are several scenes with him interfering and doing the manager’s job for him, where he demands changes to the side during matches and getting Gianni Paladini to go and do the dirty work for him. But Briatore (and co) was attending training sessions and even reserve games to run his eyes over the players. There’s a great scene of him standing on the pitch and watching training while telling Paladini to ring Gareth Ainsworth during the upcoming match to make the changes he wanted. Paladini tried to turn this into a joke, which they had a laugh about, but as it was a serious request, Paladini tried to deflect it and it least have it toned down to sending a text message rather than obviously phoning him from the Directors Box above – which he rightly felt would look bad.

There are other scenes from the Directors Box, where they discuss the merits and best method of getting their message across through to Gareth Ainsworth and whether they should do it by text, phone or by the masseuse and ultimately ending with Gianni Paladini being sent down reluctantly to make changes, as well as scenes where Briatore is making Paladini phone a disbelieving and unimpressed assistant manager Bruno Oliviera, to pass instructions onto Paolo Sousa and the reality of the situation is brought home when Paladini hands the phone to Briatore to convey the message directly.

In some ways, Briatore did actually ask fair questions, but his impatience and illogical approach to results was amazing really. After getting rid of Jim Magilton, he’s seen with Amit Bhatia addressing all of the players in the canteen, asking them what the problem was and why they were not playing with the kind of fighting spirit they expected. Hogan Ephraim took the opportunity to speak up and give his version, before Briatore singled out Mikele Leigertwood to talk, as he was the Captain at the time (though he had to ask who the Captain was) and then went on to say how he felt the same way as “you, Ephraim”. He had this habit of calling some of the players by their surnames and it had that funny tone about it, as if they were robots or not really human beings. There are plenty of people who he didn’t seem to know their names, who they were or what they did around the club, which I found strange, given how hands on he tried to be elsewhere.

Then there is plenty of footage of his reaction to results and major events during matches. It’s here that you actually see it’s his Italian nature and passion when things aren’t going well. He’ll mutter that he’ll sack someone, curse them if they’d done something wrong or if he doesn’t think they’re any good, and so on. It’s a bit like watching any old fan shouting at the team at games you go to, except of course, he really did have the power to go and tell the manager to make substitutions. Scary.

There’s one brilliant sequence when we’re playing Cardiff City at home, who were reduced to ten men, and referring to Gareth Ainsworth, Briatore states “If he loses the game I’m getting rid of him” and as he becomes more frustrated by our tactics and inability to score, he demands Gavin Mahon is sent on who ended up scoring the only goal of the game and sending Briatore into ecstasy. He’s so overjoyed and also wildly celebrating his own decision in a *I told you so* fashion and is quick to let all those around him know. You can’t help but laugh wildly at that, and Mahon of all people too!

Briatore often cursed his manager’s, labelling them at times as “idiots”, “prick”, “drunk”, “crazy” and the players didn’t escape either, where there’s a scene of him talking about Jake Cole and saying “This goalkeeper is shit”. Ironically he really believed every word he said, particularly with the manager’s when he’s discussing their lack of luck in an amusing scene with Alejandro Agag where they conclude that they’d somehow found all of the bad and crazy ones and never thought for a minute that it was anything to do with themselves.

But the craziness of Briatore’s temperament is really brought home when Neil Warnock suffers his first loss against Watford after nineteen matches, where you see him on the phone to Gianni Paladini who is trying to explain that these things happen in football and we should forget about it and move on – that’s where Paladini actually does himself some credit, as he tries to tell Briatore numerous times about football matters and media and fan perception throughout. You can see why they felt he was important to them as he really was the only one with any degree of knowledge about the game. Briatore didn’t stop there though, he became increasingly frustrated with Warnock by the end, stating that he “don’t understand this coach anymore” and that “he is afraid to win” when we struggled over the finishing line needing that one point to secure the title (there is also a clip of Paladini shouting “I’m unhappy. F***ing coach” in reference to Warnock in this period – the opposite to his common sense approach earlier). It’s that lack of nous and understanding of sport that shines through as it’s obviously never that simple as much as Briatore felt it ought to be.

Briatore was obviously was meddling in affairs that he didn’t have the expertise to be doing and his circle were no better in this regard either, so it did come across as some kind of millionaires toy. But I did understand him better as a result, and could see some kind of logic in his haphazard thought process or at least why he felt it was okay to go around doing as he pleased.

Gianni Paladini

There was talk that Gianni Paladini came out of this pretty badly and in some ways he does, but in others he doesn’t. He certainly fared better than I expected, but he definitely pandered to his bosses and whoever was in charge, whether it was Briatore or Bhatia.

There were times throughout when he appeared to be tiptoeing a little bit with regards to trying to manage Flavio Briatore’s expectations, but more often than not he was brushed aside and was the one who had to do their dirty work.

As time wore on, he seemed to give in and just do whatever they asked him to do without much resistance. He had a frosty relationship with Paolo Sousa from the outset, and seemed more aggressive towards him, but it’s also possible that Sousa himself was stubborn and not willing to play ball with Paladini and that only led to more friction.

Paladini seemed to struggle with getting Sousa to agree to make substitutions of personnel changes on the orders of Flavio and is seen repeatedly calling them for private chats, often having to go through assistant Bruno Oliveira and the tension continues to build right the way up until the Dexter Blackstock deal that took him Nottingham Forest, where it reached its head.

Paladini didn’t seem to agree with the loan of Blackstock, but didn’t object to it either and the way Blackstock was discarded was incredibly bizarre and lacked professionalism. In the build up to the crescendo, Sousa had not been selecting him even though he was our top scorer. We were playing with one up front and struggling to find the net, much to the frustration of the board and particularly Briatore who cited the lack of goals was like a virus and a disease running through the club. Briatore wanted to see us more bold and attacking at home (sentiments that Paladini shared), and playing 4-4-2 rather than one up front, and he quizzed Sousa about this who tried to explain that he inherited the squad and that they weren’t his players. Sousa’s inexperience shone through in this meeting and he looked out of his depth trying to explain footballing matters to people who didn’t understand.

They eventually offloaded Blackstock and there’s a scene where you see him heading into a small office with Gianni Paladini flashing a piece of paper at him, a contract of some kind with Forest, and ushering him to sign it. There is another man in the room who I didn’t recognise, possibly Blackstock’s agent, who is loudly urging him not to sign. Paladini meanwhile is putting on what I felt was a false display of affection in a bid to convince Blackstock it was a good idea, and would benefit him as he’d play some games and might be able to come back. As the commotion continues, suddenly Fitz Hall emerges at the door, poking his head into the room, and questioning the stupidity of the decision to let the club’s top scorer go, and whether we actually wanted to try and reach the play offs or not, and also telling Blackstock not to sign it.

After this point, Sousa held that infamous press conference where he claimed the board had got rid of Blackstock without his input, as he was away. There’s a scene that follows where Paladini is enraged and on the phone to Briatore telling him all about it and that “this idiot is going to turn all of the fans against us” and then another scene where he confronts Sousa after the Crystal Palace game in front of the Palace coaches. It’s here you see Paladini taking matters into his own hands and is only too happy to stick the knife in Sousa’s back with his feedback to Briatore.

Paladini was often mindful of fan and media perception and knew when circumstances would lead to trouble and much of the advice he tried to give Briatore was in a bid to reduce the damage they were creating. I felt his tears were genuine throughout and he’d been through a lot with the club, for better or worse and that he’d really carried a lot of burden on his shoulders, much you would say was because of his own doing in terms of his competence.

Amit Bhatia

Amit Bhatia comes away from the documentary well, and you might expect that because of The Mittal family’s connections with the AdHoc Film producers, who had worked on other projects for them. But, the positive points are fairly consistent over a long period of time, so while it might be biased in some respects, you can see that Bhatia is a good businessman with good man-management skills.

He clearly has the drive and impetus to succeed and improve things and you do get the feeling he is devoted to the club. There are several key scenes where he is showing support towards the manager and the players and works well with Ishan Saksena.

Bhatia is involved in all the Finance Meeting scenes, which start with him, Briatore and Agag talking big money. But as time progresses and Briatore is less involved, these meetings take a turn to much finer detail where Saksena has been tasked with cost-cutting and you see them discussing cuts to the amount of flowers purchased on match day to reducing the spend on hospitality meals. We go from £700 to £500 on flowers for the executive boxes and sponsors, from £10.80 per head to £9 per head for hospitality meals. Bhatia justified the meal savings and is convinced they are still offering value for money and were perhaps a little over generous with their offerings originally.

These savings are slim pickings when you are paying footballers thousands of pounds per week and spoke volumes about football’s culture in general, but Bhatia is pleased because he doesn’t want to cut the playing budget and mentions that’s what makes him angry the most.

Prior to that scene, he’s in another meeting with Alejandro Agag whereby he tries to outline his vision and plan for the next few years and his desire to ensure we are competitive when we reach The Premier League so that we can stay there. Agag’s response is rather subdued, he’s almost just nodding and agreeing to face but perhaps had a different idea and one more in line with Briatore’s.

Towards the end there are scenes where Bhatia claims that a fifty-fifty deal for ownership that had been agreed on at the weekend had suddenly changed, and that Flavio Briatore and Bernie Ecclestone no longer wanted to sell, which left him terribly confused. He also mentions that shares had simply been transferred from Briatore to Ecclestone.

There is also a scene in the earlier years, where Bhatia is approached by fans who are giving him a bit of their mouthpiece and opinion on matters (when things weren’t going so well), and he doesn’t look particularly impressed by them. But he did handle the fans well, and is seen in a Fans Representative Meeting in another scene trying to amend comments made about us being a boutique club and the context of that phrase.

And he was the same with the players, going into the dressing room after a good victory and praising them, and promising that things would be different and pledging to give them the support they needed to succeed. In contrast, there’s also a point where you see Bernie Ecclestone wandering around the changing room and seeing water and energy drinks piled up and saying in the midst of things going on “we need to cut down on this expenditure”.

The Alejandro Faurlin Saga

The whole topic surrounding the Alejandro Faurlin case is quite incredible. There are several scenes discussing the issue, where you clearly see the likes of Briatore, Agag and Bhatia have absolutely no idea what’s going on or what is going to happen. This goes on right up until the final day when they seem unsure, and almost resigned to the fact that they might lose points and need to go through an appeal process.

Briatore is demanding more wins to secure as many points as possible, ignoring the mathematical win over Watford, whereas Agag leans more towards the whole appeal process if we’re docked points and can go to court and Paladini is simply dodging all the controversy and acting as if everything will be fine, when you can clearly see he is nervous and uncomfortable about what could be as it’s hanging on his neck.

Briatore’s finest moment is his questioning of Paladini about the whole Faurlin episode and FA investigation and he goes to town on him in a one-to-one meeting. Paladini tried his best to suggest everything would be fine, but he had no answer to Briatore’s response saying that if it was, then they wouldn’t be under investigation. Paladini strangely even tries to say that the fans and media all like Faurlin as one of the reasons why everything would be okay, but Briatore is direct and relentless with his simple comebacks.

At some point during this meeting Paladini tries to shift the blame onto “office staff” and his relief when it turns out favourably for Rangers is immense and it was obviously a very close shave. You can tell the pressure really weighed heavily on his shoulders and he looked like a lonely lost man by the end.

The whole blame game definitely leaves you wondering how many other times Paladini shifted the blame onto “other staff” and whether that’s the reason so many good and loyal employees were removed during his time at the club?

Whatever the case, you realise from watching The Four Year Plan that the threat of a points deduction was close and very real and you just sense from the footage that we got away with it by the skin of our teeth.

The Fallen Manager’s

Iain Dowie tried sticking to his principles, and not giving in to the requests made by Briatore. There’s a scene where he is heard complaining to Tim Flowers about Briatore’s demands (who sent him down to the pitch from the Directors Box to make changes he wanted), which generally revolved around playing Damiano Tomassi and having other players pass the ball to him more so we could find out whether he was fit or not. Briatore came to a decision to sack Dowie after a dire run of matches in a chat in the car park at Birmingham City where Amit Bhatia felt the “last four games has been horrible” and then Briatore summed up his execution swiftly by simply saying “We played bad football, finito”.

Paulo Sousa didn’t come out of it particularly well either, and appeared to be completely out of his depth. The scene where Briatore introduces him to the players in the canteen is cringeworthy. Sousa sucks up to Briatore and doesn’t really deliver much inspiration for his first talk to the players. I was surprised by his behaviour as well, where you see him repeatedly saying “Don’t talk to me!” over and over again to a fourth official during a game, and he looked inexperienced and in deep waters at a meeting with the Briatore and co at the stadium about the club’s poor form and league position. He struggled to get his point across to them and appeared to disobey Briatore’s orders to change the side in the next game and that was probably the straw that broke the camel’s back. He had no answer to Briatore’s probing when he states to him “But still, last year we had much worse quality and we had much more points.”

Jim Magilton was brought in under a more clear plan and strategy that he was not going to get financial support and had to make do with the players he had at his disposal, or that he wouldn’t be paid a great wage but would get a big bonus for promotion. Paladini, who you see talking to Magilton for the first time over the phone and saying “Jimmy!” is seen discussing with Briatore and co that Magilton would be told “we won’t break your balls as long as you win”. Paladini, Briatore and Agag seemed genuinely surprised at the incident involving Magilton and Akos Buszaky that ultimately led to his departure.

Neil Warnock

The appointment of Neil Warnock comes at a time when Briatore, Bhatia and Agag all agree that they need a stronger character in charge. There is an acceptance, even on Briatore’s part, that they need to take a backseat and step away from the limelight and they go and chase Neil Warnock.

Warnock’s arrival is obviously pivotal, and he’s reflected well. His imposing character is immediately felt as he walks through the stadium, and upon seeing a sign on the wall that said “Winners only” (which I think was Dowie’s handy work), he’s heard saying that it will have to come down before bumping into “big man” Damion Stewart. He jokes with Stewart and says that he bets he’s shaken a lot of manager’s hands lately. I thought that summed up Warnock’s character and style in thirty seconds – serious and plotting underneath, but always making a light hearted joke of things on the surface.

There’s a scene where Warnock snatches a microphone away from captain Mikele Leigertwood, who when quizzed by the press about the period before Warnock’s arrival described it as “The last three years has been a nightmare to be honest” with Warnock then putting his own sugar coating on it to appease the situation and move forward.

In other scenes, you see him meeting with the owners in The Tony Ingham Suite after games, and being congratulated. It was unusual that they had informal but serious chats here, while there were plenty of other people in an around the place. He has one discussion with Amit Bhatia about player requirements where Warnock outlines what he does and doesn’t need, and where Bhatia states “you can’t afford to f*** this up and I can’t afford to f*** this up, let’s both not f*** this up.”

Overall

Obviously I have only seen this documentary once, and it’s hard to remember everything and in the order it happened. I hope that I’ve got the majority of my points across accurately but there might be the odd occasion where it’s not so apologies in advance if that’s the case. You can only imagine what the footage was like that didn’t make the cut either and suspect that many a golden nugget was omitted from the final edit too, which is fascinating but hopefully they’ll do a DVD with some extras on it.

I was really curious to see how a football club might be run behind the scenes, and while our club may be a special case and you might not find too many run in the way ours has been, it was still fascinating and I’m sure there are many areas that other clubs can relate to. It didn’t really tell us anything we didn’t know, but confirmed what many of us suspected.

What I found really interesting was the divisions in the hierarchy within the club. You had the board of directors, who didn’t really communicate very well with the manager or his staff, and then you have the same kind of effect between the management and his players and it’s like a triple layer that makes everything open to a lot of politics, but also makes you feel like that none of them really know each other as well as they should do.

Seeing inexperienced football guys like Amit Bhatia and Ishan Saksena discussing strategies for man-managing Neil Warnock’s expectations, who is a man at his age who has seen it all in the game, spoke volumes about the different wavelengths these people are on. They tell him not to sell any players to raise funds unless absolutely necessary, but between themselves when he’s away just seconds later Bhatia says come Thursday when they’re next back together, they will tell him he has to sell one.

While on one hand man managing people is a skill, and this might be done well in some context, the lack of transparency between key people at the club will only cause problems at some point down the line and it’s an area that needs revitalising if we want to truly become a great club.

I also found it peculiar where important meetings took place, such as in a box overlooking the pitch to car parks, inside helicopters, cars, on a couch in The Tony Ingham Suite, corridors, open offices, the canteen and so on. That extended to other areas, such as the PR department, where you see press releases and statements being written by the staff and being edited by Ishan Saksena on behalf of Neil Warnock. There was a lack of business and professional formality about it all, but it made for great viewing all the same.

As for The Four Year Plan – it’s brilliant. If you get the chance to, go and see it!