When you listen to what they want for their club you ask are you aligned with that, do you believe in that and can you give that to them. You’re listening to owners who are really engaged with their club, they’re financially backing the club as much as they can. It was the remit at Rangers and at Aston Villa to buy people with their best days in front of them – that’s the way every club needs to recruit at the moment. After Covid, clubs that haven’t been in the Premier League for the last five years have to have a really clean eye for how they’re going to play with the current playing squad and then bring in two or three people on perhaps lower fees who you think have a higher future potential. In the Championship at the moment there are very few clubs with the finances to go out and buy, and buy, and buy. If you go into a club and start asking about how much you’ve got to spend then it’s clear you’re not thinking about working with the people who are there. A big thing for me was to talk about the current players, the opportunities to improve them and the areas I felt the club might benefit from my work and my staff’s work, before you start talking about budgets. It was 'this is the way I work, these are the things I believe in, does that align with what you want? What exactly is it you want?' If we get to the next stage then we can get down to the nitty gritty. There weren’t really questions from me at that stage, these things when managers get hired are like speed dating - I think you know when you sit down with somebody whether you’re interested. Then it was important that I presented my ideas. The first thing is I listened to what the club wanted, what the owners want from their club, and where they felt the wanted to go, moving to Heston, the environment they wanted to create for the players and staff. Take us inside those conversations, because I presume there has been interest before, what did you ask of QPR and what did they say to you that convinced you this was the right opportunity to take that step? It was a big decision because I was with good people at a good club but it wasn’t a difficult one to make. When I did and I spoke to the owners I was enthused by what everybody had to say.
I wouldn’t say I watched intensely last season but I saw enough of the team to be intrigued and look into it a bit more. My eyes were very much on QPR because of a few players, and I’m a London boy so I know the club, what it can be, where it has been. I wanted things to move quickly and so did the club, firstly because I was in a good job with really good people and I wanted to be honest with them, and also because there was interest from a League One club and another Championship club that was serious as well. We had an initial conversation and things moved quickly from there. The club made contact with Aston Villa, I had quite a sizeable buy-out from the contract there so I knew the interest was serious. I was going on holiday and the day I was travelling I got the first inkling there was interest. It became apparent just at the end of the season.
When did QPR’s interest become apparent? Take us through the process and how you’ve ended up with the job this summer.
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