vallierojas: QPR return to the Premier League amid resentment and rumour

QPR are back in the big time but off the field takeover speculation and rocketing ticket prices have clouded the mood

Queens Park Rangers return to the Premier League on Saturday after a turbulent absence but Loftus Road is unlikely to host the full-throated joy the club's owners must have pictured when conceiving their four-year plan to win promotion back in 2007.

Then, the Renault Formula One team principal, Flavio Briatore, backed by Bernie Ecclestone, that sport's supremo, and soon joined by Lakshmi Mittal, the Indian steel billionaire, took QPR from close to financial collapse to being the club with the richest owners in football. Yet Ecclestone and Briatore, who in May rebuffed a takeover offer by Mittal's son-in-law, the former chairman Amit Bhatia, will find fans not grateful but seething at swingeing ticket price increases, depressed by meagre spending on players over the summer and complaining of alienation from the club.

QPR sources have suggested all week that takeover talks with Tony Fernandes, founder of the Air Asia airline and owner of Formula One's Team Lotus, are serious enough for him to be announced on Saturday as the club's new majority owner. Some fans, though, will be bitter if Ecclestone banks a large personal profit from selling his 62% stake, and take some persuading that things can only get better with Fernandes.

An admitted West Ham supporter, Fernandes proclaimed on Twitter on Tuesday that he was "going to London end of the week, a big day for me", and the proposed deal is understood to be a buy-out of Ecclestone, who has talked of QPR being worth �100m, while Mittal will retain his 33% stake.

Neil Warnock, ebullient about his own return as a manager to the Premier League, has changed his stance after being rebuked by Briatore for complaining he had only �1.25m to spend on players, and said this week that the signings of the strikers DJ Campbell and Jay Bothroyd, the midfielder Kieron Dyer and the defender Danny Gabbidon give Rangers "a fighting chance" of staying in the Premier League this season.

Warnock said he had met Fernandes for an hour on the club's pre-season tour of Italy and "thought he was good to talk to", but the detail of the takeover, the price Fernandes will pay and what plans and resources he will bring are yet to be fleshed out to the bewildered crowd at Loftus Road.

Ecclestone, Briatore and Fernandes were not speaking publicly this week as talks continued, and Bhatia, too, who stepped down as the chairman in May after being credited with securing stability and a more positive culture which led to promotion last season, also declined to comment. The club's chairman, Gianni Paladini, whose survival throughout QPR's boardroom turmoil has been remarkable, said the takeover talks were not his responsibility but he was "very excited" about QPR's re-entry to the top flight with Saturday's match against Bolton Wanderers.

"It is a great day for the club," Paladini said. "The club was within a week of going bankrupt when I owned it in 2007. I begged Flavio and Bernie to take over, and the fans have to remember they saved it, and they have put millions in."

Ecclestone, who has made an estimated �2bn from driving motor racing into the global corporate era, has never explained at length why he bought into QPR. However the spectacle of him discussing selling his stake just as the club reached the Premier League has led many fans to conclude he was interested more in making money from football's gilded era than love of the game.

When he and Briatore took over in 2007, QPR had limped through a desperate administration following relegation from the Premiership in 1996. Under Paladini, who was backed by an Italian football agent, Antonio Caliendo, the club was still saddled with a �10m loan from a Panama-registered company, ABC corporation, charging 11.76% interest a year. Briatore and Bhatia loaned the club �10m to pay that off via a company, Amulya Limited, which charged the club 8.5% interest a year, and the new owners put �15m into QPR in return for new shares.

Ecclestone, Briatore and Bhatia made it clear from the beginning that despite the owners' vast wealth they would not be indulging in the limitless financial extravagance trademarked by the Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich across west London at Chelsea. They have, though, put money in. According to the most recent accounts, for the year to 31 May 2010, �13.6m was loaned to QPR by a company named Santa Capital Investments, believed to be a Briatore vehicle, �2.25m by Sea Dream Limited, thought to be a Mittal company, and �1.4m personally by Ecclestone, all at zero interest. Since then, in December last year, Ecclestone bought out Briatore's stake, making him the 62% owner, with the Mittal stake 33%.

With the tag of world's richest club incongruously tied to Loftus Road, the team struggled as the impatient, impulsive Briatore saw off five managers in three years: Luigi De Canio, Iain Dowie, Paulo Sousa, Jim Magilton and Paul Hart. Running QPR in the Championship was expensive; the club made a �19m loss in 2009 and �14m last year, when it paid more in wages, �17m, than its turnover, �14m.

Briatore finally stepped down as the chairman in February last year, Bhatia took over, and he moved to appoint Warnock, close the managerial revolving door and build good relations with fans. With excellent performances from Adel Taarabt and Alejandro Faurlin, whose "third party ownership" issues ultimately survived censure by a Football Association-appointed disciplinary panel, QPR won promotion in May to gleeful acclaim from long-suffering supporters.

They soured the mood immediately with steepling increases of season ticket prices to between �549 and �999, which Briatore and Ecclestone put at a 22-27% rise "for the majority of fans". Bhatia had offered to buy out Ecclestone but refused to pay a price, which some QPR sources say was �50m, which Bhatia felt to be exorbitant, and he resigned as the chairman, saying he disagreed with the direction the club was now taking. Ecclestone and Briatore derided the offer Bhatia did make, which has not been disclosed, as "insultingly low."

Throughout what should have been a triumphant summer, fans complained, spending was limited, and Ecclestone and Briatore entered negotiations about selling to Fernandes. Steve Dedridge, chairman of QPR1st, the supporters' trust formed shortly after the club collapsed into administration a decade ago, said fans feel alienated and disillusioned. "There was a state of shock about the price increases," he said, "and a feeling the club does not care about the fans. People think Bernie Ecclestone doesn't care about QPR, he just wants to sell and get rid of it. If Tony Fernandes does take over, we hope it will be more positive and bridges can be built."

Paladini faithfully defended Ecclestone and Briatore, and the price increases, saying they have been vindicated because people have paid up ? 11,000 season tickets have been sold, he said, 3,000 more than last season. "Our wage bill has about doubled because players are paid more when they are promoted to the Premier League," Paladini said. "QPR is a small ground, so we could not survive if we did not put prices up."

Such are the economics of the Premier League, even at Queens Park Rangers, "the world's richest club", where the glory of promotion has somehow delivered disillusion and disappointment before a ball has been kicked.

David Conn

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