Don’t despair – QPR’s youth system is beginning to work again

Ultimate success for a youth system is of course producing home-grown players who become first-team regulars.

In QPR’s case, not since Richard Langley, who made his debut nearly 18 years ago, has the club managed to produce such a player.

Marcus Bean’s 76 appearances are often overlooked, perhaps unfairly.

Bean has gone on to have a decent career since leaving Rangers. Still just 31, he is approaching 400 league appearances.

The failings of QPR’s youth system haven’t just been highlighted by the wait for a home-grown first-team regular.

While those kind of success stories have been non-existent at Rangers for so long, they’ve been pretty thin on the ground across the board.

English clubs are generally not producing talent in the way they used to.

But many clubs judge their youth system not just according to how many players it produces for them, but how many it produces generally.

Success isn’t just the odd home-grown player who becomes a first-team stalwart.

Relative success is also producing players who have some market value, are perhaps worth a few hundred thousand quid, and will go on to have careers in the game.

From a club’s perspective, this means some return on investment. Crucially, it also helps them attract prospective academy players.

Bean’s story of relative success is therefore important and it’s the absence of similar examples that most highlights the failure of Rangers’ youth system, not the absence of a top-line youth product.

Here is someone who has had a good career, is regarded as a good professional and who learnt his trade at QPR.

In other words, Bean has been a good ambassador for Rangers’ youth system. And until fairly recently, he was pretty much the only one.

Change takes time

When a youth system is failing that badly, it’s not going to suddenly start churning out first-team regulars without first showing some flickers of life.

Unfortunately, the co-chairman would have you believe otherwise.

Tony Fernandes’ musings, which are often an attempt to deflect short-term, knee-jerk criticism, tend to be inaccurate and misleading.

That is certainly the case when it comes to the subject of Rangers’ academy.

Fernandes’ determination to kickstart the failing production line he inherited is sincere, but he has given the impression that significant change is much closer than it is – or was ever likely to be.

The problem with this, as with Fernandes’ PR in general, is that the definite short-term gain leads to inevitable longer-term pain, because the greater the false optimism generated, the greater the anger – you could even call it hysteria – when the reality becomes apparent.

That was highlighted last week by some of the reaction to the sale of Cole Kpekawa to Barnsley.

Part of the reason for this was that QPR fans were sold a pup.

They were led to believe that the (latest) new era meant there were youngsters waiting for their chance who would now be able to establish themselves.

They were also led to believe that these youngsters on the fringes of the Rangers first team are far better than they actually are.

The shame for QPR is that the sale of Kpekawa has been seen as a sign that the neglect of the youth system continues. It’s not. It’s a major sign that things are improving.

Progress

The sale of a youngster who was rightly regarded as being a long way from first-team material for almost half a million pounds is a positive development – and it continues an upward trend.

QPR’s hot air about their academy, fueled by Fernandes’ claptrap, didn’t do justice to just how bad and how deep-rooted the problem really was.

Forget producing first-team regulars for QPR, until fairly recently the club could barely produce a player capable of seeing out a month on loan somewhere.

That’s how bad it was: on successive occasions Rangers youngsters failed to impress while on loan to the extent they were sent back early.

Since that rock-bottom point, good young players like Michael Harriman, Max Ehmer, Darnell Furlong, Michael Doughty and Michael Petrasso have gone on loan and given a good account of themselves and of QPR.

They’ve been well coached at Rangers, have good attitudes, and there are people in the game who can vouch for their ability and professionalism.

A couple of those players weren’t quite good enough for Rangers and moved on permanently. Others will probably follow.

For QPR, this isn’t failure. It’s very significant progress indeed. But it’s widely seen among the fan base as a negative, not a positive thing.

This significant progress was achieved despite financial, logistical and other challenges.

Of course there has been tragedy too, with the loss of genuine prospects in Ray Jones, who was closely monitored by a number of impressed Premier League clubs, and Kiyan Prince.

Next steps

That progress wasn’t achieved by the current management team spearheaded by Les Ferdinand, for all his achievements so far and the merits of his general strategy,

It was achieved by years of hard work by Steve Gallen, with help from the likes of Marc Bircham, prior to Gallen leaving QPR this year.

Unkind whispers emanating from the club at the time of Gallen’s departure suggested the failure to produce home-grown players in some way reflected on him. That is nonsense.

While Gallen’s years unfortunately didn’t produce the long-awaited QPR first-team regular, given the circumstances he operated in he did superbly to get as many players as close to that standard as he did.

This has been borne out by the QPR production line now, finally, churning out well-schooled players who are capable of having good careers and in some cases are worth six-figure sums.

These are the Bean-like relative-success stories that could be a precursor to something better. Only on Fernandes’ fantasy island could a club go from one extreme to the other without this kind of progress in between.

The question now is whether the current regime can build on this progress and take things to the next level.

Time will tell.