Our New Gaffer

Julien Stéphan confirmed as QPR’s new head coach

In my last post, I described Julien Stéphan as a like-for-like replacement for Martí Cifuentes, but having read Clive Whittingham’s magnum opus about him I now think he’s an upgrade.

Martí had a job to do when he arrived midway through the 23-24 season – steady the ship and keep us up – and he did it well. But his stint in 24-25 was disappointing, only managing to secure the same number of points as the previous season despite being in charge for the duration. He had bad luck with injuries in his second season and was saddled with some poor players by Christian Nourry, whose record in the transfer market is a bit hit and miss. But Martí has to bear some responsibility for our failure to make much progress. The fact that he hasn’t been picked up by another club suggests other owners weren’t particularly impressed by his stewardship of QPR.

In terms of what Stéphan has achieved so far, the 44 year-old Frenchman is more impressive. Not only did he win the Coup de France with Rennes in 2019, beating PSG in the final, he progressed to the semi-final of the Europa League, beating Arsenal in the first leg, but getting beaten in the second. He steered Rennes to a third place finish in Ligue 1 in the 19-20 season, securing a place in the Champions League, and in his first season in charge at Strasbourg (21-22) the team finished sixth in Ligue 1, their best performance since 79-80.

Had he left Strasbourg in the summer of 2022, with his reputation riding high, he could have had his pick of Premier League teams. But his career since then has been on a downward trajectory, which is why we’ve been able to pick him up. He was fired from Strasbourg in January 2023 after just one win in 17, returned to Rennes, and got sacked a year later after falling out with the sporting director.

But all the French football pundits Whittingham interviewed for the latest Loft For Words Patreon podcast told him to discount Stéphan’s second stint at Rennes, which is a poorly-run club. And, to be fair, his win percentage second time around (43.9%) was higher than in his first (41.8%).

So, what can we expect? As Ian McCullough pointed out on BBC Sport London, Stéphan has a lot of three-game weeks under his belt, having excelled in tournament football, and QPR has fared particularly badly in three-game weeks in the previous two seasons, almost always losing the last match. More importantly – and every QPR fan must be thinking this – we might actually progress beyond the third round of the FA Cup.

His default system is 4-4-2, but he may struggle to find two strikers good enough to start at the same time in our squad. Michi Frey and Charlie Kelman? Still, playing with just one striker isn’t exactly working for us, so a bit of experimenting with two up front wouldn’t go amiss.

He’s got a reputation for developing talented teenagers, with the list of top players he’s worked with reading like Manchester United’s transfer wish list: Eduardo Camavinga, Jérémy Doku, Ousmane Dembélé, Ismaïla Sarr and Raphinha, among others. That was undoubtedly a factor in Nourry’s recruitment of Stéphan, given how many promising teenagers we’ve got at the club, including the Brazilian Esquerdinha. Don’t forget, our development squad won the Premier League Cup earlier this year. Let’s hope the Frenchman proves to be a magnet for other other young talents hoping to break through.

Another factor in Nourry’s mind must be the success of Régis Le Bris at Sunderland. Le Bris is quite a similar coach to Stéphan, right down to both of them hailing from Brittany. His was a controversial appointment at the beginning of last season, having had a more chequered career than Stéphan, and few pundits tipped the Mackems for promotion. Yet with a similarly youthful squad, he steered the club to a top-six finish and victory in the play-off final. Nourry must surely be hoping his Frenchman will do equally well.

Will he, though? Impossible to predict, but the bar at QPR is so low after the last three seasons that a top-half finish would be judged a success. Throw in a cup run and we’ll be singing his name even louder than Martí’s. But the play-offs? We just don’t have the squad, not unless Nourry pulls off some magic in the summer windows. There’s a strong rumour that Peterborough winger Kwame Poku is heading our way, along with Amadou Mbengue from Reading. Good, solid players, I’m sure, but I can’t see them taking us to the Premier League.

All in all, Stéphan has huge potential and given some of the managers linked to the R’s since Cifuentes was placed on gardening leave two months ago we could have done a hell of a lot worse.