Sorry Hoops avoid the grim reality...

GARETH Ainsworth knew what was coming. We all did. It was coming to anyone barmy enough to risk their reputation at QPR.

- Chris Dunlavy

‘Wild Thing’ didn’t have a cat in hell’s chance of success in west London. The club is a wreck, bereft of depth, quality, a director of football and - as of this week - a chairman.

Pep Guardiola could man the dugout at Loftus Road this season and he’d still wind up crying into his polo neck. So what chance has poor old Marti Cifuentes got?

A catastrophic overspend during the close-but-not-quite reign of Mark Warburton, compounded by historic debt and an ongoing failure to produce saleable assets, has left Rangers in a lopsided arm wrestle with Financial Fair Play.

Last season was win or bust for QPR; promotion or destitution, and we all know how that turned out.

Ainsworth kept them up - just - but the writing was on the wall and a tenth defeat from 14 Championship games this season brought the curtain down on the 50-year-old’s brief, pointless tenure.

The football was poor. The results even worse. Cifuentes, a devotee of Johan Cruyff, has promised to change all that, but unless he’s planning on signing the Dutch World Cup squad of 1974 then the idea of QPR playing their way out of trouble is pie in the sky.