Neil Warnock was fuming in his post match interviews after Saturday’s draw with Blackburn because a supporter posted details of the QPR team selection on a message board in advance of the match.

Face palm

Oh foie gras I tried to resist you. There we all sat last week in the Frenchest restaurant in France ordering our starters, the French people ordering foie gras and the English people ordering mussels. I don’t even like mussels, but the mere sight of foie gras on the menu had my mother’s face flashing before me, indignant as she drives along with her RSPB membership badge swinging from the rear view mirror. She’d never have forgiven me.

For the uninitiated foie gras is made by force feeding a goose until it explodes, then salvaging its bulging liver and smearing it on toast. It is unimaginably cruel, something only the French could ever possibly come up with, and absolutely delicious. I wilted on night two and had some, and by the end of the week I found myself retrieving a day old bit of garlic bread from the bottom of the kitchen bin and brushing the hair off it just so I had something to spread the delicious animal cruelty all over. It’s hard to find in this country, we’ve tried a pork liver pate since I returned home but it looks like something you might find blocking a drain in a mortuary and tastes much the same. I like foie gras, I know it’s bad but once you’ve got a taste for something you can’t help yourself.

QPR have a taste for farce and controversy. They love it. Sometimes, like when the French girl next to you at the table orders foie gras just when you’re trying to be good and have something else, the farce and controversy finds its own way to QPR. But at other times it almost seems as if QPR are actively looking to cause themselves problems. Only Newcastle United seem to relish embroiling themselves in deeply damaging PR disasters in quite the same way and with quite the same frequency but even they seem to have calmed down a bit this season. And so we arrive at the latest chapter in the seemingly never ending saga of QPR’s face palm moments.

You’re probably aware of Neil Warnock’s post match comments on Saturday, they’re available here if not, but to summarise he was not in the least bit impressed that his team selection for the match had been revealed in advance on a supporter’s message board. This goes back to a thread on the We Are The Rangers Boys message board at the end of last week, linked elsewhere including on LoftforWords, that stated Jamie Mackie and Heidar Helguson were set to start, Adel Taarabt had been dropped and DJ Campbell had broken a bone in his foot. All of this turned out to be true.

Warnock said: “What an advantage for the opposition. Obviously he has got a contact, hasn't he? But if he thinks he is helping me, if he is a QPR fan, it is exactly the opposite.”

Now to this point we have three people involved, and none of them come out of the situation particularly well. First there is the source at the club who is leaking information about the team to the supporter who posted it – Neil Warnock seems to believe this is one of the fringe players unhappy about his current lack of action and according to the Fulham Chronicle has immediately changed the training regime on a Friday so that only players directly involved in the Saturday matchday squad will be involved in the session and the announcement of the team. The only player who was not included in our 25-man squad who can feel even a little bit hard done by is Hogan Ephraim, who has a tremendous attitude and would have brought more to our team than Jason Puncheon ever could. If he’s the leak I’ll eat my shoes, given Ephraim’s previous exemplary attitude to the club and his profession, which means if Warnock is right then it’s coming from a player who only has himself or his own lack of ability to blame for his current predicament.

Then we have the poster himself, a QPR fan of many years standing we’re told and certainly a prolific poster on the We Are The Rangers Boys website. Posting under the name Ric Roc he had, after the Fulham debacle, posted another leak from a source within the squad detailing several highly damaging allegations including claims of ructions within the squad with specific troublemakers named. I’m in little doubt that it’s actually this post that angered Warnock, rather than the leak of his team sheet for Blackburn, and the manager has been waiting for his moment ever since.

I mean let’s be fair here, what are the chances of anybody from Blackburn trawling the QPR message boards the night before a game in the hope of uncovering some secret team news? Even if they did have time on their hands to do that would they believe it? That would be a hell of a ruse if so, I’d expect LFW to frequently be sent requests from the club asking us to put out fake threads about injuries to Shaun Wright Phillips if it actually happened like that. Steve Kean flying a drone over the Harlington training ground to take pictures of our pattern of play work sounds more likely than him looking on We Are The Rangers Boys in my opinion.

Indeed the Rovers manager admitted after the match that Jason Lowe had started in a deep lying midfield position with the specific task of marking Adel Taarabt – so he clearly still believed he would start. That Lowe then played for the full 90 minutes marking nobody very much will merely be added to the prosecution file in the case of Blackburn Fans v Steve Kean which is due for another sitting at Ewood Park on Saturday.

The post-Fulham revelations Warnock has every right to be angry about. They should never have been posted, and they should have been immediately deleted. The question came up over food and alcohol at LoftforWords Towers on Saturday night whether or not LFW would publish an article that was damaging to the club, even if it was the scoop of the century. Given that this site has, even this season, come into possession of numerous stories and documents from Loftus Road that have never seen the light of day after being handed to me I can confidently say that we wouldn’t. This site is independent of the club, and to some extent has a role to play in holding it to account, but we want QPR to win at the end of the week like everybody else so when we hear something damaging about Rangers we tend to keep it to ourselves.

Had a player told me the stuff about dressing room rows after the Fulham game it would have gone no further, and it certainly would have come nowhere near LFW or the message board. Sadly the idea that we are QPR fans who want QPR to do well seems to drain out of some supporters who come into possession of such information and often cannot wait to spunk it all over the first message board they can get to in some crazed thirst to be first with the news and genuinely ‘in the know’.

We Are The Rangers Boys has form for this sort of thing. Paulo Sousa’s grizzly end at Loftus Road came not solely because of his post match comments about the loan of Dexter Blackstock to Nottingham Forest as reported, but because of comments made to a supporter outside the ground about, among other things, the medicals (or lack of them) given to several key signings. Again it’s the sort of thing that should never be passed on under any circumstances, again it was blasted immediately onto the internet, and the 50-times capped Portuguese international lost his job because of it.

This isn’t me being deliberately high and mighty by any means. Back in 2006, on the pre-season tour of Italy where Gary Waddock had left Marc Bircham and several other transfer listed senior players at home, I was fed lines from senior people at the club that those left back in the UK were proving to be a troublesome presence on the training ground. Thinking I had a scoop I reported it back in the daily LFW report from Sorrento and was, rightly, immediately lambasted by all. Stephen Dedridge, a good friend of mine and long time QPR First volunteer, said a line at the time that has stuck with me: “you’ve gone a bit OK Magazine on us Clive.” Sometime later a post appeared on our message board about a QPR player who had been spotted out and about smoking something he probably shouldn’t have been doing. We deleted it immediately. Lesson learnt.

But in this latest case there’s a real feeling of ‘there but for the grace of God go I’ because at the end of the day on this occasion it was just team news. We carry team news in our match previews, it appears in all of Saturday’s newspapers, it’s all over the television - it’s just team news. Had the post been made on LFW I would have left it where it was just as the moderators on We Are The Rangers Boys did and had I seen it before I wrote Friday’s preview I’d have included its contents.

For Warnock to protest so vehemently about it smacks rather of a man who has been waiting for a chance to get stuck in since the (totally different and bloody stupid) post-Fulham message appeared, and also of somebody adopting the old Alex Ferguson technique of deflecting attention away from the failings of him and his team onto a third party. Usually it’s a referee, this time it’s a QPR fan. A QPR fan who was here before Warnock arrived and will be here long after he’s gone.

But things didn’t end there. The text version of Warnock’s comments appeared on the official website with the personal e-mail address of the message board poster responsible. This, it turns out, was handed to the club voluntarily by We Are The Rangers Boys site owner Peter Davies who currently watches QPR Premiership matches from the press box at Loftus Road as part of his job voluntarily co-hosting the club’s pre-game radio show.

Whatever the rights and wrongs of that situation this latest incident cannot be allowed to pass without mention of two things.

Firstly, for a message board owner to willingly hand over a member’s personal e-mail address that is then published on the club’s official website is against the laws of the Data Protection Act and a clear breach of the trust people place in people like him and me when they sign up with personal details to use our sites. I cannot believe Mr Davies thought this was acceptable, I cannot believe the club asked him to do it, and I’m astonished that they then published it on the official site. Even in the face of Neil Warnock’s demands to reveal the address publicly the QPR Media Team is experienced enough to know that it wasn’t a good idea and probably legally questionable as well. Should Ric Roc want to take this further I’d back even Lionel Hutz to win the case easily, costing the club more money. Former Sheffield Wednesday chairman Dave Allen had to take his club’s equivalent site all the way to court to get them to reveal contact details of their posters, and on that occasion he only succeeded because they’d said something libellous about him. Had QPR gone through legal channels to request Ric Roc’s e-mail address for revealing a football starting line up it’s likely to have been politely refused, and that’s exactly what Davies should have done.

Secondly it later transpired that within half an hour of posting the message in the first place, Ric Roc then telephoned Davies and asked him to remove the thread immediately. He did initially, but then reinstated it. Despite this Davies’ continued role at the club, and with his ‘independent’ website, doesn’t seem to be in question as the club’s media manager Ian Taylor made a point of retweeting his Chelsea rallying cry today. So it seems that Warnock isn’t bothered enough about the leak of his team to remove the press box access of the man who could have deleted the post but chose not to. Ric Roc meanwhile has been besieged by interview requests from the national press.

It’s another one of those “Only at QPR” moments basically. Ric Roc should have thought twice before passing on the information he did, particularly the stuff he said after the Fulham match. Even so Neil Warnock’s anger should be more with the player leaking the information than the supporter passing it on. The subsequent decision to release Ric Roc’s e-mail address publicly reflects horrendously on our club and its media department – it’s the sort of behaviour you wouldn’t even see from an Essex Senior League club.

Still, give it three weeks and we’ll have done something else I’m sure.

In other news

The only positive of the whole thing is it’s distracted at least some of the attention away from our verbose captain Joey Barton who has been prolific with his outbursts this weekend even by his standards. Adel Taarabt’s performances and attitude were the first to come under fire in an interview with Absolute Radio and then in a speech at the Professional Players Federation today he spoke about the behaviour of the England Rugby Team and Ryan Giggs. Throw in the usual Tweets about the ongoing parliamentary situation about the Hillsborough disaster and it’s not been a bad weekend all in all.

This is all well and good, but Barton was nothing more than ok himself on Saturday against Blackburn. He’s absolutely right in what he says on Taarabt, and the other issues, but he’s yet to get anywhere close to the form he showed for Newcastle last season in a QPR shirt since he moved here. That’s not to say he’s playing badly, because he’s certainly not, but I’d question whether he’s doing enough to justify commenting on his team mate’s performance at the moment. Even if he was tearing the place apart, the comments on Taarabt should have been said face to face in the dressing room and not on public radio.

Perhaps when he’s meeting his own full potential then is the time to be speaking out, but until then a little more concentration on performance and less on the various ills of the world wouldn’t go amiss.

Tweet @loftforwords

Photo: Action Images

SomersetHoops added 22:46 - Oct 17 I don't think its healthy for players to be publicly criticising each other as Barton did and furthermore I agree with many who said Warnock's public criticism of Traore is equally unhealthy. This is deteriorating into a bad atmosphere and will get worse unless it is stopped now. In the past there have always been rumours about player injuries and suchlike from people in and around the training ground and club - its just that now with message boards they can be spread further and faster than ever before. No player is perfect although the massive wedge some of them get they should be. Constructive critical discussion should take place in private between the manager and players as a group and individually if necessary after each game as I'm sure it does and this should be enough to resolve any issues that exist. Warnock was able to keep quiet about the terrible way Briatore and Ecclestone were providing too few resources to the club and treating the fans with contempt and the players would need to do much worse than any have so far to deserve less.

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jo_qpr63 added 22:56 - Oct 17 We should ban Ric Roc from the stadium for life, he is not a football fan, he's just out to make trouble. Its getting as bad as in the 80's.By the way i just heard through the grapevine that Keith Curle is a curly wurly addict and there has been a ban on chocolate in the dressing room.
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johann28 added 23:34 - Oct 17 "For Warnock to protest so vehemently about it smacks rather of ... somebody adopting the old Alex Ferguson technique of deflecting attention away from the failings of him and his team onto a third party. Usually it’s a referee, this time it’s a QPR fan. " Spot on, and a quite superb article. Agree also with Somersethoops about players publicly criticising each other - does no one any good

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18StoneOfHoop added 04:25 - Oct 18 Absolutely masterly exposition and wise analysis of the whole sorry mess. I concur with every word. Neil Warnock,RicRoc,Pete Davies and Joey Barton should all catch on to themselves.They are all at fault for seeing things through their own selfish personal prisms and not thinking hard enough of the wider greater QPR good.
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JB007007 added 08:31 - Oct 18 Really good article Clive. Worryingly, its appears that the dressing room is pulling in different directions and needs to be sorted out fast. Everything that needs saying should be kept in house and stay in house. NW is going to have to be strong here. Like Somerset, I was disappointed with his comments on Traore. If he needs a bollocking, do it behind closed doors. He's an experienced Manager and a good one. With all the changes and new signings, he's going to do well to keep everything tight.

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YorkRanger added 09:03 - Oct 18 A really balanced article Clive - couldn't disagree with anything you have said. Overall no one comes out with any credit over the WATRB incident. I have to say that it is difficult to see how running an unofficial website and at the same time holding an "official" position at the club can create anything other than potential conflicts of interest - It feels like an untenable position to me...

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AshteadR added 09:51 - Oct 18 Good article Clive. The odd bust up in the dressing room is nothing new and arguably can be a good thing. But only if it stays behind closed doors, a line is quickly drawn under it and we move on, stronger for it.
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Neil_SI added 12:52 - Oct 18 I've not really kept up to date on this, because it's not really important to me and the club can't cry wolf for someone leaking details when they have used fans and websites in the past as a vehicle for doing the same. It is a shame what's happened though, and the disappointing aspect about all of this is that there are obvious loopholes that have been taken advantage of and have probably made certain culprits exempt from blame. The club have posted this fans email address on their website, which is unprofessional, but it's not necessarily illegal as they've not signed an agreement with the fan in question. That fan, who posted this information, has signed an agreement with the website and forum he's posted to. Now, it may be that the person who handed his details to the club, didn't actually hand over the account details he signed up with on their site, hence the loophole. But they've still identified this person and passed on a form of contact, and which is probably still questionable by law. From the club's perspective, the public nature of their approach means the source will know who has leaked the information and will have to think twice about what they say to that person in the future. The club and its fans has a responsibility to protect itself at all times, and handle all information with the utmost respect and care. Whenever you come across a piece of information, however exclusive, good, bad or harmless it seems to be, it's better to say nothing at all.

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N12Hoop added 13:34 - Oct 18 What's concerning is that we are only a few games in and the optimism and excitement are waning and there appears to be trouble behind the scenes. Warnock's public rebukings of players and fans is not on; Joey Barton's daily obession with getting his name in the papers is not on; and given Saturday's toothless performance and the lack of passion on the field, coupled with the Fulham debacle and the rumours about dressing room unrest, could we be destined for a very unhappy and unsettled period? If so, it's a crying shame after everything we have gone through to get ourselves into this position.

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dixiedean added 18:24 - Oct 18 Agree with N12Hoop. Barton in particular has no business mouthing off about any team-mate in public. If he had convinced me on his performances so far that he's worth 8 grand a week never mind 80, he might have a case. Even then, it's not great for team spirit, esp from the supposed captain. Maybe some senior players have had enough of Adel's nonsense ( and who could blame them) but don't wash dirty linen in public. A lot of it comes down to performance. People get away with a lot if they do it on the pitch ( eg Adel last year) but when you don't perform, eg Adel now, Barton to name but 2,then other off-the-field stuff comes into play.I get the impression of Barton as a playgorund bully who thinks he runs the place after being here a month and expects people to bow to him as he is who he is. If he doesn't knuckle down I don't see him being around very long before he poisons the place with his Tweeting nonsense.We all thought he was a tiresome pratt before he came to us and he's done nothing so far to convince me otherwise, either on the pitch or off it. I do hope he doesn't prove to be a big gamble which backfires.

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qblockpete added 21:54 - Oct 18 Couple of things as you seem willing to pull any kind of trigger and fire the bullets. The club did not publish his real email on the web-site at all, it was completely different to one Warnock announced in the after Press Conference. Secondly I was called at 3.52 pm by the club and asked for ricrocs details I initally declined, they said he has some "eerily factual information" and we need to to have a chat to find his source as Warnock is not very happy a day before the game and within 2 hours of training finishing, that the team and Campbell were being published on a web-site. We just need to get in touch. I asked it would be best if I pm'd ric Roc and got him to call me or the club. Within about 10 minutes ricroc rang me an said he did not mean any harm and that could I please take the post down. Straight away I did that, picked up the phone and rang the club to say exactly word for word what he told me. Meanwhile a new post had started up asking why a particular post had been deleted and therefore the story must be true. The club did not want it deleted as it would have seen obviously true, so I restored it. Should I have restored it? Thats the question and action I have to live with. It was a tough call to make and a split second decision. This is not a decision that can be made over 24 hours. Would it have made any difference to Warnock going live in the press room with RicRocs email details of course not, it would though have led to many posting where had the original post had gone NorthernR you know best as anyone that running a forum is not an easy job and you have been very quick in the past to be on the attack when i used to give information early on saying how wrong it was. Now, with this incident you play more on the fact of the resulting actions than the post itself. If a player continues to reveal inside info than to me that does our chances of survival no good at all. After all, this came after another leak which was on every forum about a half-time bust up at fulham. This by recollection was not taken down by any administrators of any forum. Instead supporters were bombarding players with twitter messages asking if it was true. You used to say Gianni Paladini was wrong to leak information and that he should be gone and never give that information to supporters. Now it seems you take the moral ground, as if a player of ours is doing that its okay. or at least, not playing much emphasis on that Could it be the player simply passed on the information, without the knowledge of football forums like WATRB's and loftforwords and simply posting info on to a mate. Thats something I have thought of too. If the manager just goes by a "username" and says RicRoc who then would have attacked verbally and through messageboards? Its clear as day his username we all have one. Its the fact he said out loud his email which gives everyone the perfect opportunity to now switch to the person who supposedly gave it. This now means that the player who gave the information is forgotten, manager comments are forgotten and the original poster posts forgotten and instead attack the person with the email address details. I can categorically say the email passed on by me was not correct, that is what led to the phone call. I wanted to deal with the matter by phone and hopefully ricroc would call them, after all I gave him both our numbers. He decided to call me with a with held number, not the club. If i wanted to do something behind someones back as portrayed why would I give him both my number and the clubs? I wanted the matter resolved and in truth, have nothing to do with it. I was enjoying the day off, winning a few quid on the horses and had not even visited WATRB's that afternoon. YYou mention about ties with the club. I remember that you were very quick to post when i said I would stop posting on websites, that " he will be back in the next few days, just you watch" Well, the only time I have been on here is to defend myself and I have not posted at all on my site anything controversial, instead focusing on reports and previews. That has been it. So to say, I have a conflict of interest when I don't post any QPR rumour stories or even hardly post at all now is somewhat strange. I suspect its just another bullet to fire,as you know over the last 2-3 months I have hardly posted anything, anywhere. You are conscious of what goes on your messageboard and questioned my moderating team and myself for setting up some kind of "family forum" yet you have allowed damaging and unwarranted attacks on an indivdual on your forum, without any knowledge of the events or circumstances around what happened on friday. Its left to second guessing than coming up with a meaty report on your findings, having a go at everyone whilst not knowing the facts. End of the day, I guess all this is to prevent anything happening again as Warnock knows we have some very important games coming up. We should be talking about a rather tepid performance against Blackburn, but we are talking about this stuff NorthernR, I have no axe to grind with you and I know what you think of me, I have no problem with that too. We all support QPR at the end of the day, this is simply another story that has been blown out of all proportion and has no bearing on current league position or the upcoming game against Chelsea. So whilst its a talking point now, I suspect alot more important things will happen between now and the end of the season.

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Northernr added 22:29 - Oct 18 What a load of complete bollox Pete. In brief.... 1 - "The club did not publish his real email on the web-site at all..." How did Ric Roc receive 37 requests from the press for interview by e-mail then? 2 - "Now it seems you take the moral ground, as if a player of ours is doing that its okay. or at least, not playing much emphasis on that." Factually incorrect, if you'd care to read the article you'll see some criticism for the player doing this who I say "only has himself or his own lack of ability to blame for his current predicament." 3 - "gives everyone the perfect opportunity to now switch to the person who supposedly gave it." There's no supposedly about it. You gave it. Two of your sites moderators have posted saying as much. 4 - "This now means that the player who gave the information is forgotten, manager comments are forgotten and the original poster posts forgotten and instead attack the person with the email address details." Factually incorrect, please read the article again, including the headline. 5 - "I can categorically say the email passed on by me was not correct" Again, how did Ric Roc receive 37 requests for interview then? Did they come via carrier pigeon? 6 - "So to say, I have a conflict of interest when I don't post any QPR rumour stories or even hardly post at all now is somewhat strange." But you remain the owner of a message board that is supposed to be independent. You retain the ability to delete and reinstate posts as we have seen this week. It's an obvious conflict. If the club contact me and say "delete that post" or "give me the details of that poster" I can say no without fear that it will affect any press box access. You want to do the pre-match show and sit in the press box then good for you, but you can't have an 'independent' website at the same time. 7 - "You questioned my moderating team and myself for setting up some kind of "family forum"... Where did I?

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qblockpete added 22:36 - Oct 18 His email on the official; web-site was completely different, not the one Warnock read out in his press conference.
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qblockpete added 22:40 - Oct 18 Northern R you have added 2 plus 2 and got 5. He got emails from the one i presume Warnock read out in his press conference !! I normally go to the Press conferences, don't you think I would have gone there if i knew this was going to happen. Do you think in a million years he would he read an email out. Anyways I have said my piece. I'm focused on playing Chelsea and to me it deflects from a poor perfomance against Blackburn. Hopefully we have no excuses come Sunday

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qblockpete added 22:46 - Oct 18 Just for the record, I will have no admin or moderatng rights on my board in the next 24 hours. That i agree with you on
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Northernr added 22:50 - Oct 18 Where did Warnock get the one he read out at the press conference?
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qblockpete added 23:31 - Oct 18 They had the wrong one from me, so who knows. As you can appreciate I want to move on. This is something that deflects away from performances on the pitch which recently have not been great. Our failings or successes are not dependent on what team was giving out on a friday or not. Yes your right, I did have a couple of mods write that, but they did not read my mini-statment that i made late on Sunday night after I finished ny radio programme.

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BazWoT added 08:58 - Oct 19 Well, you would be the expert on deflecting things from performances, you've done so enough years with all your rumour mongering and muck spreading! Given that you admitted on this site that you lied to your posters how on earth is anyone on here expected to believe you now?
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Aunt_Nelly added 09:28 - Oct 19 Pete Say one was stupid enough to believe your cock 'n bull story and one accepts that you you did pass on RicRoc's personal details but gave them a different email address. Who at the club is to blame for publishing RicRoc's email and how did they get it?
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