Transcribed from video tape by Justin Pieris. Apologies in advance if anything has got lost in that process.Scene: Hammersmith Town Hall, Assembly Hall. 600-700 QPR fans attend the QPR 1st Supporters Trust Anniversary Public Meeting. It’s 8.30pm and Holloway is presented the first ever QPR 1st Management Excellence Award… [Rapturous applause]
IH : Thank-you so much. I had everything planned here and now you’ve thrown me. People who do know me (my son knows me) [sitting in the audience], know I’m never short of words. I can’t tell you how proud I am to start with, not just receiving this.
Fan in audience: You deserve it
IH : Thank-you. I’m not going to talk about players, I want you to know me. I had three interviews for this job, I’d just lost the other job. I had a dream with that other job and that was to get that club, my club, into the Premier League. I damn-near did it, but some ugly words that are creeping into football these days stopped me. Now, what I mean by that is … Greed, Selfishness and I’m talking about people at the top, because football clubs don’t belong to them, they belong to the people… people like yourselves, who get the club tattooed on their shoulders or on other parts of their body,
[Laughter]
Who spent all their money – all week working hard for their money. Who say to their wives ‘come on love we’re going down the R’s, or going away, or going up to Northampton. I’m gonna spend all this fortune on my team’.
[Applause]
Now I’m a little fella as it happens, but when I was really small I was nothing. Some scout from Bristol Rovers said they want you and Bristol City also want you. My fantastic, proud Father, who unfortunately is not here any more, when I was nine made me interview them both, one after the other.
Bristol City came in first and all they talked about was ‘how brilliant I was gonna be and when you’re sixteen we’ll give you this, and when you’re seventeen we’ll give you that, and when you’re twenty-one you’ll play for us and you’ll never have to buy another pair of boots Mr Holloway. In fact here is his size right now’. And out they go. And in come Bristol Rovers and all the fella says is ‘you did alright today, you were quite fair. Now if you want to be a good player son, you’ve got to want it more than the next fella and all we are guaranteeing you is you got to work hard, you got to be dedicated and it’s down to you and it’s down to you how good you can be. We know you might have a chance, but it’s down to you son.’
Now, who do you think I chose? I chose the people who told me the truth. I wasn’t a big head, I knew what it was all about- you gotta work hard -mould yourself into something.
Now I hate to say what I found when I took over this place. I took over from a fella who taught me what football was all about. I met him when I was twenty-five, Gerry Francis. Up until then, I thought I knew what football was all about. I didn’t know anything, all I did was try learning. I hadn’t the knowledge. The fella taught me a system – zonal system that unfortunately last year he didn’t play for you, because he’d been with Tottenham with much, much better players and they had covered different things, different ideas. He taught me to believe in myself and to help my teammates, and that is what I tried to bring back here.
It’s going to take a while, and unfortunately the club, since I took over the reins, nothing was told to me about that, I don’t think we actually knew ourselves. I think the plan was, if I could rejuvenate after two or three matches, got enough wins that Chris Wright might have had enough confidence to stay on – because that is what Chris Wright has lost – confidence. I can’t believe for the man he is, the money he has got, the lack of confidence he has, because he is in a different field and unfortunately the people he trusted with this, who threw money at it, who promised young lads of fourteen, five/ six years what Bristol City did to me. That’s what this place was unfortunately – big-headed Bristol City.
It’s not gonna be that in the future. Some of the young lads we’ve got – what we’re hoping to do is bring them up with pride and passion to care about the place = who are going to die rather than watch lines for you.
[Applause]
Please believe me, they might not be the best to start with, if you had seen the progress Danny Shittu has made over the last few weeks. He is going to make mistakes. He made two last Monday. But the lad came up to me after the game and apologized. I thought there was something seriously wrong when he said ‘I want to have a word with you’. I said ‘I’m really sorry, what do you mean?’. He said ‘I made a mistake for the first two goals’. And that is what you’re getting and that’s what you’ll get for the future. But hopefully, some of you fans actually bought him for me, and now we’ve had big Mr Noades sticking his nose in complaining,
[Applause]
it doesn’t help. About six weeks ago, we could have done with some loan players we had so many injuries. We were robbed in the wrong places – Andy Thompson with his back situation. Some of the young lads being thrown into the expectation of this year, all your hopes and all your dreams, of us trying to get back quickly at the first step into the First Division. It might be too much for one or two of them. If that lad then goes through and misses an opportunity and costs us a result. I’m afraid you might throw all your hopes and dreams on that boy and they might not be seen again. So, we’ve got to be very, very careful. All I want to try and get through to you is what I’m all about really.
First there were words. I’ve written some important ones down – I’ve probably spelt them all wrong. What they’re about for me is : PASSION, COMMITMENT & OPTIMISM instead of Expectation. I think that’s absolutely vital, particularly for next year.
I asked the players to choose some words that they want to bring to the club. We actually marked them all down and we picked the first few that came out the most. I want to share them with you. They all want to bring HONESTY to the club. They want to bring RESPONSIBILITY for mistakes that they might make. They want to bring HARD WORK/ RESPECT and they want to bring HAPPINESS – they want to enjoy what they are doing.
Now I feel, particularly over the last few weeks, when we’ve had the right sort of blend, being able to pick people who can play in certain areas, they have shown when the chips are down, they can cope with it. And that’s a learning phase. I feel they are getting better.
Hopefully it’s still not over yet, we still might be able to creep into the play-offs. But what’s important is taking this thing forward.
I listened to those passionate words from you, my fella, tonight. I really do feel for you. It’s not been good to sit back and see what you had taken away from you It has been taken away by poor management trying to grasp at something, rather than understand it, put solid foundations down.
It can be done, it will be done, but you have to have the words I’ve been talking about and unfortunately with Chris, I didn’t feel that he had that passion and commitment to get behind the stern and sure all is ok. He didn’t have that time to give. You can’t get rich people picking up these toys and throwing them around and selling them and moving on. It can’t get that, it won’t be like that anymore. And that is why you are making such vital strides out of adversity, out of adness for what you have lost. And sometimes I believe you can get stronger when you’ve really had it taken away. You never really appreciate something when you\re at somewhere. You always appreciate it after. But no-one is gonna take your QPR away, I can assure you of that.
Now, I believe you have to unite on the terraces. If you can unite on the terraces, you – this group and the other group (because you know who I’m talking about). You’ve got to be able to pull together. And once you can do that and trust the people at the top. I trust this man [hand on David Davies’ shoulder], I can tell you. I’ve worked for people before and I didn’t trust them one iota. You talked about Nick Blackburn I felt just now. I trust Nick at the moment. I might not have trusted him when I first came here. He made some horrific mistakes – he was part of that. But he’s lived through that. I don’t’ feel that he will do that again – because I won’t let him.
[Applause]
I think what is important for you people to know, that there was an awful lot of people interviewed for the job. I never had a doubt that this was a job for me. I’m sure a lot of them asked this man who was on the panel [DD], ‘How much they were gonna get?’. I didn’t ask that question. ‘How much I was gonna spend, what am I gonna do?’ I don’t believe it is about money.
I wanna bring some like-minded people who care, like you do, back to this place. Who wear the shirt with pride. And eventually we might have to lose one or two. We lost Peter Crouch this Summer. I had to go on holiday cos I told this man he was worth 4million, but at the time, at the time …
[DD holds his head in his hands, Laughter, Applause]
…AT THE TIME, we had no choice. We got a sell-on. We just got another 400 grand. We lost Jermaine Darlington who could run like young Jerome Thomas can run. Unfortunately, we lost him too cheap, but these things happen. Certain things had to be sacrificed to get us back on an even keel.
And all I can say is, I hope we come out of administration with these people, because they won’t make the mistakes that they have made before. We’ve got to move on. And they are NOTselfish people, they are NOT greedy people. What they want to do is share out – what should have happened at Bristol Rovers. One man owned 51% of the shares – and still does now. And again, over the last five years the wages that they have been paying to average players is frightening. The difference – this money didn’t change, he didn’t suddenly win the lottery, because he wanted control. These people want to share it out, they want to bring more investors in, they want the Wintons to come on board to give me some money, to actually invest, I will invest in young, up-for-it, hungry people who will add sell-on value. It is not in life where you start, it is always where you are gonna end-up that is important. And I feel now – you people have made me feel – worthy. When I went for the first couple of meetings, I didn’t feel worthy to be in the room with Mr Chris Wright. But I had to keep going. And, as you can tell, I’m quite a persistent fella and I’m quite honest cos when I first came here Gerry said to me ‘I’m bringing you here, but I don’t think you’ll play, but you’re an infectious little bugger …’.
[Laughter]
‘… and you might rub-off on the others’. But at the end of the day, he was honest with me, he told me I was not the best player. I realised that, but I tell you no-one wanted it as much as me and I would pass to a good one next to me.
And if I have time here to bring on more talented players than I was and rub-off on them with my personality and my staff that we’ve got. If you are patient with them and take the knocks that they are gonna get, the centre-forwards who are gonna miss those chances to start with, but with your encouragement and with you getting behind them, they might be worth a couple of million pounds in a few years time, then I believe, with the right management, we can do that. Hopefully, one day, I can control when Peter Crouch goes, for how much he goes for, because I already have his replacement in the club. That’s what we’re after, that’s management and that’s what we are aiming to do. Now, if you people can just be patient, you don’t realise how far you’ve come. You really don’t realise that the rest of football is in trouble, but I don’t think for one minute we are. We are trying to build your team and a squad that will do really well at their standard. We will go up, when we deserve to go up, when we are ready to go up and deserve to go up, when all the things behind the scenes are ready to go up. Because the last thing you want is to be a poor team in the one above, hanging-on and hanging-on. When we go, we wanna go how Millwall did it, how Burnley have done, and that takes time and takes commitment.
And all I can say, from the situation we were in at the start of the season, I had no staff left, they were all out of contract, even the Physio, Brian Morris was retiring. I had to find all the coaching staff. Re-jig it because we couldn’t have it how it was before -pay them a lot less money. I had nine players who were eligible for the first team – that was all, no goalie, two of those players (Clarke Carlisle and Richard Langley) were possibly our best. I was glad they were injured because they probably would have been sold.
[Laughter]
It’s true, that is the truth. I’m pleased to say, we’ve got one back, but that left me with seven players. Seven players we started the year with and we stopped the rot, we placed it on, I feel, secure footing – on concrete, when we were sill on a sheet of ice. But, we’re getting there and what we’ve got to do is keep building. And there will be no prouder man than em WHEN we achieve it. And I didn’t say ‘IF’, I said ‘WHEN’. I can’t do it, we can’t do it without your full support. These people can’t do it without your full support.
I’m just going to end-up now, cos I believe I’ve had longer than 10 minutes. Did anybody see the Men in Black? Well I’ve got a little black suit on and so has David. We’ve got a little black bow tie and we’ve got some glasses and every now and again we are going to have to go PHTTTT with this little thing to lose your memory. Because, what you don’t realise is that over the last year, we have been so close to the brink of someone wanting to steal the Galaxy, that were in big, big trouble. All you can feel, all you can sense is ‘What’s happening to my club?!’ and I understand that. But we can’t tell you all the information, because you won’t be able to sleep! That’s true!
[Laughter and applause]
For me, this is another step forward. David has agreed to come here because he wants to share everything. I am a little bit upset that Nick isn’t here as well, because I’d have said those things in front of him – we all have to take responsibility for some of the decisions made then by certain managers.
But all I believe, it’s about the team and all you want is pride in that team. I believe that this year you have started to regain some and hopefully I’ll bring some new heroes, some new Les Ferdinands of the future.
Thank-you very much.
[IH sits after 20 minutes, the speakers and audience rise to give a one minute standing ovation… ‘You Rrrs’]
