Football Season Guide

QPR opted to part company with boss Ian Holloway over the summer and replace him with Steve McClaren, the former England manager. It can be considered a strange move but McClaren is regarded as one of the best English coaches and likely to get the best out of a Rangers side expected to be made up largely of young, exciting players. It has certainly been a very disappointing time of it in the transfer market for McClaren, suggesting that his task will be to take Rangers forward based on talent such as Ebere Eze, Ilias Chair, Ryan Manning and Paul Smyth. Only FC Union Berlin defender Toni Leistner has been signed at the time of writing while Jack Robinson has left for Nottingham Forest and keeper Alex Smithies has joined Cardiff. The latter has excelled over recent years but in Matt Ingram and Joe Lumley QPR do have two outstanding goalkeepers capable of ensuring that loss is not felt. This is a tough job for McClaren on seemingly limited resources. Again QPR do not appear to be a side going places and it will certainly be a tough ask to push them towards the top of the table. This club has lacked much in the way of excitement for a number of years and it does not appear as if things will change soon on the evidence of pre-season. McClaren does have contacts though and will be looking to make some late additions to throw their way into the mix.