Martí Cifuentes

Well, I wasn’t expecting that. Instead of Neil Warnock, whom the Telegraph had confidently reported would be our next manager, QPR has appointed a 41 year-old Spaniard called Marti Cifuentes, formerly the head coach of Hammarby, a Swedish club currently sixth in the country’s top tier.

As Clive Whittingham points out in his piece about this unexpected turn of events, he’s the polar opposite of Gareth Ainsworth:

I thought Redknapp to Ramsey, Hasselbaink to Holloway, Holloway to McClaren were extreme changes, but this is like setting off for a holiday at Butlins Bognor and ending up at a party at Elton John’s House, on the moon.

Cifuentes is from the Cruyff school of European football, so immersed in the latest trendy tactics – this podcast about him is called ‘The Principles of Counter Pressing’ – that he makes Mick Beale look like… well, Gareth Ainsworth. Will he be able to get any of this across to QPR’s disenchanted squad? Not without finger puppets, says Whittingham, although his English is said to be perfect.

On paper, he seems impressive – far more so than Warnock. A quick glance at his Wikipedia entry reveals a win rate this season of 52.7%, quite a contrast to Ainsworth’s 17.86%. He’s never managed a team in the EFL before and the closest he’s come to taking on a challenge like this was being appointed manager of Sandefjord in 2018 in the middle of the season when they’d only secured five points in their first 12 games. In spite of his efforts – they only lost six of their next 18 – Sandefjord were relegated. But he rebuilt the team in the lower division, finished second to secure automatic promotion at the end of that season and then steered them to 11th place in the top tier, the club’s best result in 11 years.

Unlike Ainsworth, he likes his teams to play it out from the back, pass it around tiki-taka style, keep the ball on the floor and retain possession. You can see this more progressive style suiting Reggie Cannon and Kenneth Pall as dynamic right and left backs, as well as Ilias Chair and Chris Willock, who briefly thrived when Mick Beale had the team playing in a more European style last year. Dykes may end up getting better service, too, with diagonals into the box instead of long balls over the top, and Dozzell and Smyth may thrive under Cifuentes’ tutelage.

But can the 36 year-old Asmir Begovic play as a sweeper keeper? Where does Sinclair Armstrong fit in? And what about the dogged but limited spine of our team – the likes of Jimmy Dunne, Osman Kakay, Morgan Fox, Steve Cook, Jack Colback, Sam Field and Albert Adomah? If he’s going to get them playing a fluid, passing game, he’s going to have his work cut out.

All in all, a bit of a gamble. But I’m a lot more excited that I would be if Warnock or Nathan Jones had been given the job, particularly if Cifuentes is in it for the long haul and doesn’t do a Beale as soon as he chalks up some wins.

He had his last game in charge of Hammarby yesterday evening and supposedly flew to London overnight so he could be at the training ground this morning. He has four days to lick the team into shape before we travel to the AESSEAL New York Stadium to take on Rotherham. I hope he can do it.