For me more worryingly is that I’m starting not to care.

Serious about what? is more to the point.

Their involvement is with the holding company, in the form of shares. They sell the shares at a profit, their investment is a success. They acquire a valuable asset - the Ground, say - and that's a bonus.

What else would they be interested in?

They are not the QPR supporters, we are.

And if you had, say, £25 million to spare (many of us have, I know), would YOU plough it into QPR?

With no knowledge of the game. After all, who really knows how to win things? A tiny handful of elite managers. And that's just at the big clubs. At small clubs, nobody. Not since Ramsey and Clough - hard to think of anyone else at a really small club - and the big debts of all the losers has made what they did no longer doable.

Personally, I think Clubs have a fixed size. They may overachieve on the pitch, but their size doesn't change off it. I can't think of one small or medium sized Club which has become a big one in the last 80-100 years.

There's a reason for that. All the other Clubs. The League is like a pyramid, built on failure. That is what nearly every Club achieves nearly all the time. The more failing Clubs there are, the greater the success at the top.

But as in any other pyramid, you can't just take a block from one level and shove it in at another level. It won't fit.

The myth about 'improving' Clubs is based on a misconception about 'investment'. In my view, there is none. Not by 'investors'. They are not putting money in, they are taking it out, that is why Chelsea, United, Liverpool and Arsenal - as well as just about everyone else - shows a loss as the bottom line.

It's the Club's money Abramovich & Co are losing. Not their own. What kind of investment would that be?

And I think you're right about not caring, JJB. I hear that a lot. Not for 'our' QPR, the 'real' QPR, or however we think of the Club. But what is 'out there' doesn't seem to be what is 'in here'.

It is hard to care for something that is so empty of the qualities we admire that it has become all but meaningless.

The supporters, yes. I admire them more and more. But the players, the managers, all coining it at the Club's expense, all pretending they are something we know they aren't? No.

And the directors, PR men, shareholders, moneylenders?

Dear God.

Two very accurate quality posts Ingham, sad as they maybe.... it's not football as we know it.

Funny I was told by a non Qpr person that kingfisher are about to come in after paying off FB for his shares which means haing two billionaires in control
Not sure if I think its true but if that does happen then I would love the powers to be to give already brought seasons ticket holders a bit back some investment in bringing back the bars and also. Give something back to the fans,

Clubs don't necessarily have a fixed size, especially these days. The World is changing. MK Dons went from nowt to a super stadium that puts ours to shame with crowds not much lower than ours. Not yet a 'big club' but where did these people come from? Franchise FC has potential. QPR will always have potential due to location. 20 years ago I'd have agreed with Ingham, but so much has changed.

Back in the day clubs like Rangers could come up from the old league two as we did and make a real fist of it in the top flight as we did.
And the Rangers did more than that we kicked the hole of the so called big boys for years.

I still think that in the 70's - 90's them hoops were iconic and how we stood out at the Anfield and Highbury of this world and on our european games as well.

When the premier league came to be born i recall one hack went on about the death of football and everyone thought he was mad and he said by Rupert Murdoch coming into to the game that it's soul was now sold and it's place as an honest league was also dead.
Looking at it now how true that is but back in the day when we played Man City in the first monday night game we never thought that the game twenty years later would be so changed.

the new grounds made for lego fans with the soul of a mindset that all fans sit in rows clap when told and do not question the owners or they will smash the lego into the ground.

The fact is the FA and FL failed to save our clubs from falling into the hands of the wrong people who came with a promise of dreams only to fill clubs with debts and kick a bit more of "The Beautiful Game"into the ground.

I will take my days of Being a Rangers fan and being at the highs of New years day to the lows of York away into the grave as that is our Rangers we never knew what was going to happen and we had our glory in being a fanbase more a kin of a family than any other club.

This board are so lucky to such fans perhaps one day that will hit them like a bolt from the sky as to me we are still being treated in a manner that does the club no credit.

It's an interesting point Nick. But MK Dons didn't really come from nowhere', did they?

We all know where they came from - Wimbledon FC. And they didn't achieve their present league status. They usurped Wimbledon's.

Wimbledon's rise was the remarkable one, and they achieved it themselves. That is one point.

Another is that - personally speaking - I would exclude Clubs - and franchises - coming into the League, not because I think they don't become 'bigger', but because I don't think they become 'big'.

And also because there are so many of them. Almost every Club must have had some existence before joining the League, certainly all the Division 3 and 4 Clubs from the years when we arrived ourselves.

But leaving that aside, MK Dons are still a small Club to my eyes, so I don't see that they have yet bucked the trend and become a medium-sized or big Club. That is what I mean, of course. And why I suggested the pyramid.

I don't mean Clubs don't do better, rise through the divisions, or get more people at games. I mean the curious fact - if it is a fact, and it seems to me that it is - that their 'size' doesn't change while they do all that.

We were up when Newcastle, Chelsea, United, Spurs, Villa and others were down. But we remained small, they remained big.

I think that is so because the modern 'pyramid' of the League was 'built' 100 years or so ago. It has something to do with 'clout'. We signed Ferdinand, Marsh, Bowles from small or struggling clubs, or as problem or struggling players. By doing that, we reinforced the pyramid. Ferdinand came to us from Yeading, in part at least, because we were bigger. Talent flows one way, money the other, in instances like that. And we sold him to Newcastle because they were bigger.

If there wasn't something like a 'pyramid' locking Clubs like ours into the limitations of our small size, then the League might be far more fluid, with Shrewsbury, QPR, Bognor Regis Town and Chelsea - small Clubs - in the Champions League, and United, Liverpool and Arsenal in the Combined Counties.

And I would suggest that is why Reading, QPR, Fulham and other Clubs with wealthy OWNERS haven't replaced the Big Four. It is the size of the Club that matters more than the wealth of the owner.

We see it most of all in borrowing. Chelsea, Liverpool and United aren't outborrowing and outspending QPR because their owners are wealthier.

They aren't.

But because the Clubs are wealthier. And that is what they are borrowing (and spending) against.

Interesting topic isn't it? Many are surprised that we aren't spending the sort of money Abramovich spent, and maybe one day QPR will just sign world class internationals, build a new 100,000 capacity stadium somewhere VERY expensive to buy - Belgravia, say - because that's no problem.

Our owners have the money. And the money they would EARN by thinking big would cover the cost eventually.

Or would it? But there's the problem again. If doing all that would GUARANTEE massive success, massive earnings, and therefore make the 'investment' worthwhile, all the BIG Clubs would be doing it long before we could, knowing that even if they didn't have wealthy owners, corporate money would back them.

And would back them far more readily than it would QPR. that, I think, is part of the 'locking' mechanism of the 'pyramid'. They earn more, so they can borrow more, invest more, spend more, and we've suffered by trying to compete, as the only benefit has been to make rubbish players more expensive than they are worth.

And there is still only one winner in any competition, making the risk of speculative gambling for even the biggest Clubs enormous. Look at their losses.

What do you think?

Just to touch on Ingham's post, there are a fair few clubs who have shown a good deal of elasticity in their size.

In London, Arsenal and Chelsea - never "historically" big clubs. It took Arsenal a 14 mile move across the water and some 50 years after forming as Dial Square to win a trophy.

Chelsea. Formed solely to fulfill the need to make use of the Stamford Bridge Athletics venue when Fulham turned it down. One title and one FA Cup until Abramovich came along. Sure, they are still only West Ham on steroids but the global perception and reach is one of a massive club.

Both clubs survived on (relatively) small crowds for long long stretches of their existence. Bailed out only by the sheer size of Highbury and Stamford Bridge to pack in post war numbers.

Further north. Liverpool. Perpetually in Everton's shadow. Yo yo'd between the top two divisions until Shankly came in. Leeds - same as Liverpool - replace Shankly with Revie.

What about clubs who have dipped away from the heady heights of previous regimes. Not just in terms of trophies won but also media profile, ambition and scale.

Sunderland - the bankof England club. Huddersfield, Everton, Spurs, Villa etc. Leading lights that have to different extents fallen off the scale.

It can be done. Let's not sell ourselves short.

Depends how you look at it, nodge, and how you define 'size'.

I still can't think of a Club which has changed, myself. Particularly between small and big.

There is a difficulty about attendances, because they were so huge in the 1920s and 1930s, and were more and more restricted after the war. But I wouldn't call Huddersfield a big Club, just temporarily very successful. Just as United remained big when they weren't. And Liverpool are now.

I don't think this way of thinking is narrowing down our options. We can be the best, no doubt about it.

It's just very hard. And of the small or medium sized Clubs who did very well, Huddersfield, QPR, Derby, Forest and Ipswich never kept it up.

I think my definition might be that a club is big if it remains big when it is doing badly. Rather as a small Club like QPR is small even if it overperforms significantly.

After all, that's what overperforming means. And I think the reason why there is very little of it, is that at the Clubs mentioned, it depended on very rare talent. There are few Chapmans (should that be Chapmen?), Jim Gregorys, Ramseys and Cloughs.

The idea is that this serves as a sort of test. It is not just shortage of talent that makes it hard, although that makes it all but impossible - but not quite. It is that you can't predict where the next Clough or Ramsey will appear. If one appears at all.

To me, that makes 'investment' by simply borrowing and spending as much as a Club can absurdly risky. Grotesquely so.

Find Clough first. Then spend a bit. But where would you find him? The next one, I mean.

And how do you stop much bigger Clubs than QPR outspending Rangers? If we can do it to them, won't all the Clubs below us - and there are far more below us than there are above us - do the same to us? Why don't we think Chester or Stevenage will overtake us on their way to the Premiership?

It's just my view. But what is the alternative?

Yes, we can do it. It's hard, and to my mind, we don't seem to recognise that. We talk as if it's a piece of cake. Appoint this manager, sign this player, get this investor, but it doesn't seem to be working. The big three in the Premiership were the most successful Clubs BEFORE the Premiership started, if I'm not mistaken.

And the Readings and QPRs seem to be getting further away from them than ever, not nearer. But with all this investment at just about every Club, you'd think the QPRs and Readings would be in the Champions League placings the way Ipswich were (top 4 in other words) so regularly for 8 years or so under Robson.

Great discussion, interested to hear more views.

Nodge that is an outstanding post.

I was talking to some man city fans on saturday about when they used to come to Rangers and that for some reason it was always a bit of a crack with them in the white horse back in the day.
On how they felt about the takeover and the money coming in and in fairness they did not seem to care or mind.
Forty odd years of pain they hinted at and the money is welcome.
Now they are a huge club even with the lack of trophy space used up in the club and one that always did right by their fans.
Also there prices are still in reach of City fans.

But my fear is that could City become a bigger Portsmouth?

Back to QPR why does one of the richest men in the world need to bring in another billionaire if true that the fella with Kingfisher is about to come in to buy the shares of Bernie and Flavio?

This is a man who makes the people who own Man City look skint, so as i say i do not understand why it is needed to bring someone else to the table and with that again no one has over all control.
And when are they going to start helping back the fans who have been priced out.

My take on it is that it is exactly the same situation as when the Club fell into the lap of David Thompson when Marler and Bulstrode shot their bolt (see what I did there??).

Lakshmi has installed Amit to run the club as a business. To prove himself in exactly the same way David did to Richard.

It's not being run as a cash hole in the way Man City is but as a subsidised business to give Amit a decent heads up in to running a complex yet media hungry industry.

Interesting. I too wondered about Saksena and this being a first job in the Mittal Family Empire. Obviously running QPR as CEO (especially if you do hire competent assistants) is now the full-time big job for someone like Saksena....

Presumably Saksena's dream in life was not to run an English Football Club

Paul, a fair summary of where it all went wrong.
When we were broke, we had to spend what little money we had wisely; as soon as GP got involved, the power went to his head. Then, as soon as Nuclear Tan man hauled his fat a*se on board, the ego trip went into overdrive.

Then, I suspect that,as soon as it became apparent that 'European football in 4 years' wasn't as easy as Flab thought, he lost all interest in the 'project'.