The costly £6m transfer QPR can’t forget | OneFootball

Queens Park Rangers splashed out £6 million on Jordon Mutch in 2014, but all they got for him was 9 Premier League appearances and £1.25 million loss.

Queens Park Rangers have a history of misjudged transfer decisions, but forking out £6 million on Jordon Mutch must rank among the worst.

Promoted back to the Premier League through the play-offs at the end of the 2013-14 season, Queens Park Rangers were in need of reinforcements. They had a busy summer in the transfer window, spending £35 million as they brought in six new players, on top of a pile of loan signings and free transfers, including the former Manchester United star Rio Ferdinand.

Far from all of these signings would work out for the club, but one £6 million signing would stand out as an object lesson in the club's excesses of the time. Jordon Miutch arrived at Loftus Road having just won promotion and completed a full Premier League season with Cardiff City in his two previous seasons, and there were high hopes for the midfielder. But by the time he left the club just a few months later, QPR had lost more than £1 million on him, with almost nothing to show for it.

Jordon Mutch had been a hit at Cardiff City in the two years prior to his QPR move

Jordon Mutch almost became a record-breaker with his first senior appearance in the game in August 2007. Having come through the academies at Derby County and Birmingham City, he was due to become Birmingham's youngest-ever player before the FA stepped in with their rules on welfare for young players.

Mutch eventually made his first-team debut for them a year later and ended up at Birmingham for five years, including spells on loan at Hereford United, Doncaster Rovers and Watford. But he was unable to command regular starting place in the Birmingham team, and by the time he transferred to Cardiff City in 2012 he'd managed just 36 appearances for them in all competitions in five years.

His two seasons with Cardiff were a success. The Bluebirds were promoted at the end of the 2012-13 season, their first season of Premier League football and their first in the top-flight since 1962, and although they were relegated straight back the following season, Mutch was a hit, running up 35 appearances in the division and scoring seven goals from midfield, along with a further five assists.

The Englishman had a particular penchant for scoring spectacular long-range efforts, but the R's would not see what Cardiff were treated to.

Queens Park Rangers made a loss of £1.25 million on Jordon Mutch

Queens Park Rangers paid £6 million to prise Jordon Mutch from Cardiff in the summer of 2014, and he played in each of their first three games of the season, defeats to Hull City and Tottenham, and a win against Sunderland. But thigh problems would keep him out for most of the next two months, a period during which he could only manage 62 minutes on the pitch for them.

By the time he returned following the injury, Rangers were one place off the bottom of the Premier League and struggling. And by the January 2015 transfer window opened, he'd only made 9 appearances for them, of which three had come from the bench. Of those nine appearances for them, three had ended in wins. Rangers only won eight all season.

If anything, QPR got lucky with Mutch in the January 2015 transfer window. After an offer to loan from Crystal Palace was rejected, they offered £4.75 million to sign him permanently, though a hamstring injury would limit him to seven appearances for the Eagles. The season ended with Palace in 10th place in the Premier League table. Queens Park Rangers were relegated in bottom place, with just 30 points, having lost £1.25 million on the player.

But Jordon Mutch's career was by this time in a downward spiral from which it would never really recover. He only made 24 appearances for Crystal Palace before being released in 2019, some two years after his last appearance for the Eagles. He has barely played in England since then. He had spells in the USA, South Korea, Norway and Australia before returning to Crawley Town in March 2023, but only made four appearances for the club before leaving again at the end of that season. He returned to Australia after to this, but has been without a club since 2024.

QPR haven't returned to the Premier League since, and over those ten seasons they've only finished above halfway twice. But how disastrous a transfer this was is very much a matter of perspective.

On the one hand, paying £6 million for a player who only makes nine League appearances for your club is clearly not good business, and neither is losing £1.25 million on the player over all. But on the other, they managed to sell him for £4.75 million, more than three-quarters what they paid for him; they certainly didn't lose as much on him as Crystal Palace did. It's not much of a consolation, but it's something.