Ex-Chelsea star 'summed up' Tony Fernandes era at QPR - he was 'completely past it' | OneFootball

Jose Bosingwa's time at QPR is remembered for all the wrong reasons

This article is part of Football League World's 'Terrace Talk' series, which provides personal opinions from our FLW Fan Pundits regarding the latest breaking news, teams, players, managers, potential signings and more…

Queens Park Rangers' recent history has been extremely mixed, with the club hoping to return to its previous position as Premier League regulars.

Between 2011 and 2015, the Hoops spent three seasons back amongst the elite of English football after Neil Warnock was able to end a previous 15-year hiatus by winning the Championship title with a side still remembered for boasting talents such as Adel Taarabt.

However, once in the Premier League, it's no surprise that the club's end goal was to make great strides of progress and be involved in several relegation battles.

That proved to be far from the case, with then-chairman, Tony Fernandes, and fellow members of the Loftus Road hierarchy most known for making several transfer mishaps under managers such as Warnock, Mark Hughes and Harry Redknapp, with resulting sanctions for posting remarkable accounting losses ultimately playing its part in the stagnation the club endured after falling back into the EFL a decade ago.

Whilst not all the high-profile transfers from this particular era in W12 have been remembered for all the wrong reasons in the eyes of supporters, the vast majority have.

Therefore, Football League World asked our resident QPR fan pundit, Louis Moir, to pick out the worst transfer in his opinion from the aforementioned four-year period.

Despite the West London side continuously breaking their transfer record during said timeframe, with the highest of those being the deal which brought Christopher Samba to Loftus Road from Anzhi Makhachkala for £12.5m plus an obscene wage cost, Moir stated that, ironically, the worst deal was a free transfer for ex-Chelsea right-back, Jose Bosingwa.

The Portuguese defender had won four major honours at Stamford Bridge, including the UEFA Champions League in his final season with the club under Roberto Di Matteo.

However, his time across West London couldn't have been more contrasting, with supporters still remembering the full-back for a lack of consistent performances and effort in 24 appearances throughout Rangers' eventual relegation season of 2012/13.

"I think, during that time, there was a lot of money spent on players who, for one, shouldn't have been at QPR in that time and didn't care less about anything other than wages in their back pockets ," Moir stated.

"Although he signed on a free, for me, the worst one has to be Jose Bosingwa. I haven't ever seen a player that looked so detached from the club he was playing at," he added.

"On a free from Chelsea, if he wasn't going to do well it was going to turn sour pretty quickly after coming from Chelsea.

"You look at his career, Premier League winner, did well in Europe. You thought 'OK', that's a pretty solid signing for a club in our position at that time, looking to strengthen at right-back," Moir explained.

"But, my word. Not only was his attitude beyond dreadful but, ability-wise, completely past it. Couldn't tell you anything positive that he did.

"I remember one home game, the players were warming up before the game, and he was warming up on his own. When do you ever see that?," Moir continued.

"The whole thing was bizarre with so many signings, but especially him.

"It didn't help once we got relegated after drawing at Reading, and he was seen laughing off the pitch and that summed everything up in the years of Tony Fernandes and co.

"Regardless of if he didn't cost us money, his wages were enough."

QPR will hope to put Tony Fernandes era behind them and move forward

Despite seeing their club compete amongst the very best in the country on several occasions, acquiring so many high-profile players who had minimal impact had a disastrous one on the club in the long haul.

In 2014, it was revealed that the Rs had posted the biggest accounting loss in English football between 2012-13 with a figure of over £65m, which saw debts rack up to over £177.1m.

As such, many of these players left making the club significant losses on their initial investments, or in Bosingwa's case, failing to justify wages of £65,000 per week, which was evidenced by his conduct once relegation to the Championship was confirmed back in 2013.

However, the club is hoping such failures are now behind them, having made several shrewd incomings across Julien Stephan's first pre-season in charge, as they look to achieve a play-off berth for the first time since their dramatic Wembley success over Derby County in May 2014.