Are Queens Park Rangers cursed?

A dark cloud has descended over Queens Park Rangers, my beloved football club. On 22 October last year, when we beat Wigan Athletic 2-1 at home, we were top of the Championship table. Under our new manager, Michael Beale, we had won nine of our first 16 games, drawn three and lost four. Since then, it’s all gone Pete Tong – and not just a bit pear-shaped, but disastrously, catastrophically wrong. In the 23 games that followed, we have won twice, drawn six and lost 15, meaning we’ve only chalked up 12 points, the lowest tally in the division. We’re now just three points off the bottom three and look likely to be relegated. What in God’s name has happened?

For the fans, the main culprits are the club’s owners – Tony Fernandes, Ruben Gnanalingam and Lakshmi Mittal. When Fernandes, who owns AirAsia, became the majority shareholder in August 2011, QPR had just been promoted to the Premier League, Brentford was in League One and Luton Town was a non-league side. (I single them out because they’re both rivals of ours.) Today, Brentford is in the top half of the Prem, Luton is fourth in the Championship and we’re 19th. At Loftus Road, QPR’s west London home, it’s now routine to see fans holding up banners saying ‘Sack the Board’, which would mean finding new owners, since the chair is Mittal’s son-in-law, Amit Bhatia, and the other two owners are vice-chairs.

But that’s easier said than done, partly because the shareholders have done what the fans wanted and poured money into the club. According to the latest set of accounts, it owes £11.5 million on its new £20 million training ground, £6 million to the EFL for Covid bailouts, £10.2 million in fines for over-spending in previous seasons, £2.1 million