Dominic Fifieldlooks at the changing times for two of London's great rivals as they meet at Stamford Bridge in today FA Cup third round
Stamford Bridge hosts the richest club in English football this afternoon, a club whose fans plan to brandish £20 notes and gloat at their relatively impoverished opposition. The club is not Chelsea. Queens Park Rangers, from the wrong end of the Championship, travel the short distance across town to resume a local rivalry that has simmered without engagement for 12 years. These two teams have spent most of that time moving in opposite directions, yet many among the swaths sporting blue and white hoops in the away end will hope for not just an FA Cup giant-killing but perhaps a glimpse of the shape of things to come.
West London is experiencing a second footballing revolution. Roman Abramovich may have shifted the landscape of the Premier League by pouring millions into Chelsea, establishing glamorous underachievers as a real force among the elite, but the wealth boasted by the QPR owners sitting in the directors' box dwarfs the Russian's considerable fortune. Bernie Ecclestone and Flavio Briatore, the formula one magnates who purchased a club struggling at the foot of the second tier in September for £1 million and guaranteed debts of £13 million, last month sold a 20 per cent stake in Rangers to Lakshmi Mittal, the world's fifth richest man.
The Indian steel magnate is worth an estimated £19 billion. Two years before Abramovich splashed £30 million on Andriy Shevchenko Mittal lavished the same amount on his daughter Vanisha's wedding. Some £4 million was spent on flowers.
The numbers, presumably like the table decorations, are staggering when Ecclestone's £2.5 billion worth is added to Mittal's and compared with Abramovich's £10.8 billion-odd. Briatore is valued at a mere £110 million and recently admitted he had been seeking to buy a "high end pizzeria or maybe a churrascaria" when he stumbled upon QPR, thinking initially it was a barbecue restaurant. Yet the mind-boggling story slips snugly into the recent history of this club.
Rangers used to be as unassuming as Chelsea were flash. In the years since Simon Barker equalised John Spencer's goal to earn Ray Wilkins' side a point on their last visit to Stamford Bridge, the drama which has enveloped this pocket of Shepherds Bush would have been considered too outlandish for a failing soap opera.
There have been two relegations and a promotion in that time, and seven managerial appointments, but that tells only a fraction of the story. There were the allegations of boardroom gun plots, the 30-man brawl with the visiting China Olympic team, a player accused of rape, the murder of a bright youth team hope and, most recently, the death of a hugely promising striker, all played out in the shadow of administration. Any putative "Westenders" would need a broadcast slot after the watershed.
"It's been a long tunnel and there was never any light at the end of it, until now," said the midfielder Gareth Ainsworth. "To go from those dark days to this is unbelievable. Chelsea in the FA Cup is suddenly a game between potentially two of the biggest clubs in the world." Ainsworth is this team's longest-serving player, having joined from Cardiff in 2003, and he has since witnessed the best and worst of the club. QPR, then in League One, had already suffered one spell in administration with the stop-gap loan negotiated with ABC Corp - at an eye-watering 11.59 per cent interest - stunting the board's attempts to recover fully. The chairman, Gianni Paladini, did well to stave off the administrators. "We were promoted at Sheffield Wednesday four years ago but none of us knew whether we'd be paid the next week," said Ainsworth. "Mr Paladini deserves credit for keeping us going but the threat of administration was always there. When we heard about Mr Ecclestone and Mr Briatore we thought it might be another false dawn. Then again, that's understandable as we've had our fair share of things going wrong." The ugly scrap with the Chinese during a friendly at the club's Harlington training complex - the visiting player Zheng Tao was knocked unconscious and had his jaw broken in two places - was embarrassing, though other traumas were more unsettling.
Paladini was allegedly held up at gunpoint after being ambushed by a fellow director, David Morris, in the boardroom in August 2005. Morris and six other men were later cleared but the scandal was pursued by tragedy.
The stabbing of the youth-team player Kiyan Prince, who had intervened to prevent the bullying of another boy outside his school in Edgware, sent shockwaves through the club. Six months later Tu Quang Hoang Vu, a Vietnamese student, died at Earl's Court tube station after falling under a train. It was claimed at the time that Harry Smart, a 17-year-old QPR youth-team player, had been on a friend's shoulders and fell, knocking the bystander on to the track. Police later deemed the incident to have been an accident but Smart himself was badly hurt.
"At times it was practically unmanageable," admitted the former head of youth, Joe Gallen. "A combination of the China brawl, the Harry Smart incident and the stabbing of Kiyan meant I was dealing with police every day. There was a stage where the police did not leave the building for about three weeks and all I seemed to be doing was giving statements, making sure the players weren't getting into further trouble and arranging solicitors to represent them. I wondered at times whether I was still a coach and not working in a young offenders' institute or a police station." Then, last August, the 18-year-old forward Ray Jones was killed in a road accident after his VW Golf collided with a double-decker bus in East Ham. Two other teenage passengers in the car also died. Jones's death demoralised a threadbare squad, perhaps contributing to a dismal start which saw John Gregory's side take three points from their opening eight games. "What happened to Ray was devastating," said Ainsworth. "Losing a friend like that put football into perspective: his locker's still downstairs and we still think about him all the time. But Ray will be looking down on us and he'll be really pleased by what's happening now at QPR. We've come out of the dark days and there's a massive aim for all of us now." This afternoon it is Chelsea although, ultimately, the aim is a return to the Premier League. Briatore and Ecclestone have been hugely enthusiastic - the latter was in the dressing room after the New Year's Day victory over Leicester - but utterly realistic in their expectations since assuming control. "We were going to buy Chelsea, then Roman came along," admitted Ecclestone recently. "But there's no point buying Ferrari. The only way is down. At QPR we're in Formula Renault. Next we want to move up to GP2 and then GP1." That is putting this sport into a context the 77-year-old perhaps better comprehends, though already huge strides are being made. The former Udinese and Napoli manager Luigi de Canio took over in October. The Italian speaks little English and is still coming to terms with the Championship, but he signed seven new players of genuine pedigree at this level last week with others to follow.
"I took a step back to join this club and, hopefully, realise the dream," said De Canio. "The owners told me it was about laying foundations that can be built on in the future. There is a very long road ahead. They are excellent entrepreneurs and they know how to invest their money and take this team to the level they are aiming for. It is nice to be starting out on this journey with everyone here but I'm not equipped to perform miracles: Chelsea may be suffering in terms of numbers at the moment but they are still a team of champions and we are a Championship team." They are an improving side with De Canio having hoisted them to 18th place, three points from the cut-off, with one defeat in seven. Watford, the division's leaders, were beaten 4-2 at Vicarage Road last week and the arrivals of youngsters such as West Ham's Hogan Ephraim and Matthew Connolly from Arsenal, allied to the experience recruited in Watford's Gavin Mahon, Fitz Hall from Wigan and Patrick Agyemang from Preston, bodes well. All will revel in the creative supply-line offered by Akos Buzsacky, who completed a £500,000 move from Plymouth this week having scored six fine goals in a 13-match loan. The Hungarian played alongside Ricardo Carvalho and Paulo Ferreira, and under Jose Mourinho, at Porto. He is a player who could grace the top flight.
"There is a real sense of optimism that we are growing and going forward, and I wanted to be part of a big club," said Buzsacky. "When I arrived we were bottom of the league but everyone knew things were going to change. We've improved since but the investors here are not thinking about instant success. They first want us to maintain our league position and stabilise, then move forward. If that is to the Premiership, so be it. If it is further, great." "Mr Ecclestone and Mr Briatore have told us in no uncertain terms that the Premier League's where QPR have got to be within two or three years," added Ainsworth. "They're winners. We've got to be winners with them. They've invested emotionally as well as financially in this club, so we know what's expected of us. The fans deserve this game at Chelsea. They've put up with some really bad days and it must have been like a scene out of The Football Factory in some pubs when the draw was made." Rangers have had very little to crow about while their local rivals have been propelled by Abramovich's millions to the pinnacle of the Premiership yet, with the backing this club now boasts, there is hope that they can be caught. "At the moment the chance of QPR being bigger than Chelsea out on the pitch is still a dream," added De Canio. "But there is no law against having dreams." Too much of this club's recent past has been a nightmare. Better times lie ahead.
