QPR were robbed blind by Real Madrid – Tony Fernandes must’ve cringed | OneFootball

Queens Park Rangers made a major error with the £9 million signing of Real Madrid midfielder Esteban Granero.

In an era of haphazard transfer dealings and eye-catching business, Queens Park Rangers were no strangers to hyped-up incomings failing to perform at Loftus Road.

Having gained promotion back to the top-flight in the 2010/11 campaign, QPR were the subject of a takeover in August 2011, just after the season had got underway, with Tony Fernandes becoming the majority shareholder of the club and replacing Flavio Briatore as the chairman.

His takeover almost immediately saw an influx of new signings, but the Hoops struggled badly and only just survived on the final day of the season due to Bolton Wanderers’ slip-ups at the back end of the campaign.

The following season saw QPR fail to learn any lessons from that and, under the management of Mark Hughes, again embark upon an aggressive summer transfer window that had seen the likes of Park Ji-sung, Jose Bosingwa and Julio Cesar arrive at Loftus Road. To put it charitably, though, they were very much beyond their peak.

One man that really shouldn’t, and it turns out wasn’t, beyond his peak but still majorly flopped in west London was the £9 million signing of Esteban Granero just before the close of the transfer window in the summer of 2012.

Esteban Granero arrived at QPR with a lot of expectation

Madrid-born, Esteban Granero began his professional career with both Real Madrid C and then up to Real Madrid Castilla before being sent out on loan to Getafe, in the Community of Madrid, and joining them permanently in 2008.

After just a season at the Coliseum, Granero was poached back by Madrid in a summer transfer window like no other as Los Blancos became rampant in their pursuit of their so-called ‘Galacticos’.

In the summer of 2009, Granero moved to the Bernabeu alongside, in position order, Antonio Adan, Raul Albiol, Ezequiel Garay, Alvaro Arbeloa, Xabi Alonso, Kaka, Cristiano Ronaldo, Alvaro Negredo and Karim Benzema.

Despite the enormously competitive fight for a spot and some minutes in the first-team, Granero made 31 La Liga appearances that season and remained useful, albeit more on the fringes, for the next couple of years.

Still, at the age of 25, Granero was young but coming into his own and on the periphery of the all-conquering Spanish national side with his next move pivotal if he was to continue to thrive – and QPR being that next move was an enormous coup for the R’s.

He went straight into the team, too, and predictably so. However, it wasn’t a great start for him as he joined a team that were going to set the all-time Premier League record for the longest wait to win a game in a season.

QPR didn’t record their first victory until mid-December when they defeated Fulham by two goals to one at Loftus Road and, worryingly for Granero, it was the first game he didn’t feature in after joining at the end of August.

Despite being an unused substitute, just a few weeks after the appointment of Harry Redknapp, Redknapp opted to bring Granero straight back into the side, but he was substituted after just 56 minutes in a 1-0 defeat to Newcastle United.

Hughes had played the creative and technically superb midfielder across the middle of the park, even as a defensive midfielder, while Redknapp was keen to use him in the so-called ‘number ten’ position quite often.

Things never turned around for Esteban Granero at QPR

That start in the defeat away at Newcastle was not a sign of things to come for Granero, with Redknapp eventually edging the Spaniard further towards the periphery of things.

The frustrating thing will be that Granero did start in the attacking midfield position on two occasions over the festive period, and he played well in both games as QPR won 1-0 at Stamford Bridge against Chelsea, before holding reigning champions Manchester City to a goalless draw.

Injuries and Redknapp’s decision to not show patience and persist with what appeared to be working saw Granero be an unused substitute in seven of QPR’s final ten games of the season as they finished rock-bottom.

Granero returned to Spain to join Real Sociedad in the 2013/14 season, but an ACL injury cut his season short to just four La Liga appearances after he had played 70 minutes for QPR against Huddersfield Town in the Championship.

Granero eventually returned to La Real on a permanent basis and, in the Basque Country as well as then at Espanyol, his style of play, much more suited to the technically astute and perhaps physically forgiving Spanish top-flight, Granero flourished again and is fondly remembered as a bit of a cult hero in La Liga.

In England, though, Tony Fernandes will still be reeling from the £9 million outlay on the Spaniard, who failed to have any sort of impact on his chaotic capital city club.