This article is taken from the February 2025 issue of The Critic. To get the full magazine why not subscribe? Right now we’re offering five issues for just £10.
I didn’t see that coming. Queens Park Rangers earned fewer points in the first 15 games of this season than any other club in the Championship. Going into the international break on 7 November, we were heading for the drop. But in the 12 games that followed, we won seven, drew four and lost only one, netting more points than all but two other clubs in the league. What happened?
Talk to the fans, and it’s thanks to our 42-year-old Spanish manager, Martí Cifuentes. Which is a roundabout way of saying it’s all down to them since the supporters believe the only reason Martí wasn’t sacked last year is because they’ve consistently backed him, even during the lean times.
In the post-match press conference after drawing to Stoke on 23 November, Martí paid tribute to the supporters in what sounded like a farewell speech. “I’m not sure that I’ve ever seen a team bottom of the table, 11 or 12 games without a win, and the manager goes out and everyone is singing and supporting the way the fans did,” he said. “This is something that will be in my heart all my life — all my life. I feel amazing support from the players and fans.”
The owners must have noticed that the fans adore him because they decided to give him a stay of execution. We went on to win the following game and then chalk up our first home victory in seven months with the 3-0 defeat of Norwich. At the time of writing, we haven’t lost at home since. Our turnaround has been so pronounced that other clubs have begun to notice, resurrecting fears that one of them will poach him, as they did our last manager to enjoy a good run.
But those fans singing Martí’s praises are overlooking the fact that it was him who got us into the hole that he then dug us out of. If he’s such a brilliant manager, how come he only won one of the season’s first 15 games? I’ve been to nearly every game this season, home and away, and to my untutored eye it doesn’t look like he’s doing anything different. Why, then, have we started winning?
It could be down to luck. I’ve just read a fascinating book called How to Win the Premier League by Ian Graham, Liverpool’s director of research from 2012 to 2023. Graham is an evangelist for the data-driven approach to analysing player and team performance, and one point he made really struck home.
In the 2010–11 Premier League season, there were 295 goals in the first 99 games, an unusually high number, leading to a spate of articles by seasoned sports journalists trying to explain the “goal glut”. Was it caused by the amount of money being spent on strikers? Defensive errors? A more open style of play?
In fact, there was nothing to explain. According to a sophisticated statistical model produced by two academics at the University of Lancaster, the chances of 295 goals being scored in the first 99 games was about 17 per cent. As Graham writes: “All the articles written about expensive strikers and defensive blunders, all the expert testimony lamenting the death of defending, or identifying new attacking tactics, were explaining something that needed no more explanation than rolling a six with a dice.”
So is that the reason QPR’s fortunes have improved? Pure blind chance? No doubt luck has played a part. I can think of at least two drawn games in the past six weeks we were lucky not to lose.
There’s a lot of what statisticians call “noise” in football, more so than in baseball, which is one reason data analytics took so long to cross over. But managers make their own luck, and Martí has been good at playing the cards he’s been dealt.
One of the reasons for our bad start to the season was a spate of injuries to our best players, forcing the manager to rummage around in our development squad for replacements. There he found a gem in the form of Kieran Morgan, an 18-year-old released by Tottenham last summer.
When our number 10, Karamoko Dembélé, got injured last November, Martí took a gamble and played the youngster in his place. He turned out to be creative and quick-thinking. He’s one of those players who can see a pass a split second before his opponents, and that’s been critical to our revival.
We also lost our big summer signing to injury in December, a Slovenian striker who’d only scored two goals at that point. To replace him, Martí reached for 19-year-old Rayan Kolli, another development squad player who joined QPR at the age of eight. He’s been a revelation, scoring five goals and getting three assists. Both Morgan and Kolli are clearly very talented, but it’s a tribute to the manager and his coaching staff that they’ve excelled in their new roles.
Perhaps the thing Martí deserves the most credit for is inspiring such loyalty in the players, just as he has the fans. They seem to genuinely want to play their best for him. There’s a togetherness and self-belief in the squad I haven’t seen in a decade. Carry on like this, and we’ll be in the play-offs at the end of the season.
