? Rangers manager turns round struggling club in 13 months
? 'It's incredible how the lads have responded,' says Warnock
No manager since Graham Taylor has polarised opinion quite like Neil Warnock, but there is nobody better when it comes to gaining promotion, and a win at home to Hull City on Monday will see his QPR team back in the Premier League with two games to spare. They will then face another battle over alleged malpractice in the recruitment of Alejandro Faurl�n.
In 25 years in management Warnock has made as many enemies as he has friends, and he gets called combative and mouthy in equal measure, but what is beyond dispute is that when (rather than if) he takes his latest charges up it will be his seventh promotion with six clubs, and none of his peers have bettered that.
This latest success is all the more creditable in that it has been achieved so quickly and at minimal cost. When Warnock replaced Paul Hart in March 2010 (becoming their 10th manager in as many years), the demoralised team he inherited had lost six of their previous seven matches and sat 20th in the Championship. The improvement was instantaneous. His first two games brought wins against West Bromwich Albion and Plymouth Argyle, an unbeaten run of eight dispelled the threat of relegation and they finished a respectable 13th.
After a parsimonious spend on reinforcements, QPR defied the odds to become the Championship team of the season, front-runners virtually from first to last. Rivals all expected them to falter at some stage, but they have never cracked ? their indefatigable spirit evident on Saturday when they were twice behind against third-placed Cardiff City but fought back for a deserved draw.
Two well-matched teams produced a rollercoaster ride that was a credit to the second tier, illuminated by goals of the highest class from Jay Bothroyd and Adel Taarabt, and both clubs could yet be promoted, albeit by different routes.
In contrast to Warnock's quick fix, Dave Jones has spent six years fending off creditors and patiently assembling the best team Cardiff have had since John Toshack was sold to Liverpool, in 1970. Beaten by Blackpool in the play-off final last season, they are stronger this time for the loan of Craig Bellamy, whose partnership with Bothroyd, backed up by Michael Chopra, ought really to have matched Rangers point for point over the season. Instead, Taarabt eclipsed them as Championship player of the season, his supremacy underlined by these two goals.
For those of us of a certain age, Warnock's quotes are reminiscent of another QPR manager from yesteryear, Tommy Docherty. His post-match dissertation ranged from the heat and his factor?15 sun cream through the merits of women's football to Barnsley's "manslaughter" tackling.
On a less esoteric level, Warnock said: "I thought it was a fantastic match. Dave [Jones] has been building towards this for six years, my team has come together in 13 months. It's incredible how the lads have responded. It's not all down to me, it's down to the bread-and-butter Shaun Derrys, Clint Hills and Heider Helgusons. They've done superbly. 'Taarbs' [Taarabt] is our shining light but we haven't really got any stars as such. Team spirit and determination has got us where we are."
The elephant in the room, which nobody brought up, was the FA hearing which finishes on 6 May which could see QPR docked points over alleged third-party ownership of Argentina's Faurl�n.
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/2011/apr/25/neil-warnock-promotion-qpr-championship
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