Queens Park Rangers’ director of football has been swimming with the sharks who make the transfer roundabout spin but insists he will not be pushed around

So, Les Ferdinand, has anything during this transfer window led you to believe that you work in a crazy world? “How long is this piece going to be?” the Queens Park Rangers director of football replies. “I could go on for ever.”

The headline figures of Ferdinand’s summer provide the starting point – he oversaw a whopping 30 transfers; 14 into the club and 16 out of it – while there were the deals that rumbled on without being completed, the most high-profile of which was Charlie Austin’s proposed move away. The striker remains a Ranger, until January at least when, Ferdinand says, “It will all start again”.

Then, there was the fiasco over Sandro’s work permit, which led to the midfielder being forced out of the country; the negotiations over the club’s financial fair play penalty and a couple of moves at boardroom level, with Lee Hoos coming in as chief executive and Ruben Gnanalingam assuming the role of co-chairman alongside Tony Fernandes.

Above all, though, Ferdinand has had to drive home changes to the very culture of the club. QPR’s image in recent years has been coloured by bad eggs in the dressing room; players who have done little but collect their inflated salaries and executives that have been foolish enough to pay them. It has been up to Ferdinand to plot a path towards a calmer and more prudent future.

The 48-year-old smiles. He has bounced into the training ground canteen for this interview and he looks in great shape. He is wearing his training kit because he is a director of football with the emphasis on football. He tries to be pitch-side at Harlington as much as possible to watch the manager Chris Ramsey’s sessions.

Charlie Austin will stay at QPR in absence of concrete bids for striker Read more

“A couple of people have said, ‘All you do is come in and sit behind your desk, and you don’t do much until the transfer window happens,’” Ferdinand says. And how might he respond to those folk? “I say that I find that not to be the case,” he replies.

Ferdinand has been swimming with the sharks – the agents, fixers and middle-men, not to mention the directors at rival clubs, who make the transfer roundabout spin. They are the creatures who Fernandes said – in May 2013, after his first relegation from the Premier League – “Would sell their grandmother to do something.” Ferdinand is a gentleman, a knight of the west London realm but, happily, he is not the sort to be pushed around.

“The most interesting part was dealing with the agents,” Ferdinand says. “For a few years, they’ve been used to dealing with executives at this club but they’re now dealing with someone who knows a little bit about football. In fact, I like to think I know quite a lot about football. I say: ‘Don’t try and sell players to me. Tell me who you’ve got and I’ll tell you whether they fit into my team or not. You’re not going to tell me that.’

“I’ve sat down with agents and, because of what’s happened at the club, they have come up with certain figures for their players. It’s what players have earned here in the past and they are going on past reputations. I understand it. If I was sitting in their shoes, I’d do exactly the same. But when they realise where I’m at and where the club’s at, they go, ‘OK. Well, we had to try it.’ They admit it in the end.”

Ferdinand has had to slash the wage bill following QPR’s relegation back into the Championship and some of the high earners were shipped out, although others proved more difficult to shift – such as Junior Hoilett, Armand Traoré and Samba Diakité. After all his tribulations, Sandro and his £50,000 weekly wage also remain at the club.

Of the new signings, seven were taken on free transfers or loans and the remainder cost about £8.5m in fees. None have a contract of longer than three years and none are on massive salaries. “That is fair to say,” Ferdinand says. “Not in comparison to what it was.

Players have come here in the past for the wrong reasons … I want people who are pushing on

“Unfortunately, a few players have come here in the past for the wrong reasons. They’ve thought, ‘I’m not far off retiring, and I can earn good money for a year or two at QPR.’ That’s the mindset we’ve had to change. I want people who are in the midst of their careers, and who are pushing on.

“I went to school around the corner from Loftus Road and I went past QPR every single day of my school life, so I understand what it means to people in the area. These supporters come week in, week out and they just want to see an honest bunch of boys going out there earning their living. That’s all I want to see people do.”

Ferdinand is a persuasive front man for the new QPR and he is helped by his status as one of the club’s playing legends. It also reinforces his sales pitch to prospective new signings. He played for England. He scored loads of great goals. He is Sir Les. It matters.

Ferdinand is a trailblazer, too, in the quest to break down racial barriers in the English game. Apart from Michael Emenalo at Chelsea, Ferdinand cannot think of any other black people who have been entrusted with technical director or director of football positions and the dearth of black managers is similarly vexing.

“Premier League clubs normally know the manager they want before they sack the one they’ve got,” Ferdinand says. “And if you’ve never been on the ladder, you’re never going to get the opportunity.”

Ferdinand is a supporter of the Rooney Rule, which was conceived in American Football and requires NFL teams to interview at least one black or ethnic minority candidate for head coaching and senior football operation jobs. He believes it might be the only way to unlock what looks to be a closed shop.

“It gives us an opportunity to get through the door,” Ferdinand says. “At the moment, we’re not even getting that opportunity. Until you make it compulsory, we will be talking about this in another 10 years’ time.

“It’s no coincidence that I have been given my job by an Asian chairman [Fernandes], rather than perhaps an Englishman. I sit in directors’ boxes every week now and what I do know is that all the owners of football clubs and all the people who sit in directors’ boxes … associate directors, directors of the club or the opposition, or friends … there are not many black people, if any. That tells you what you need to know.”

Ferdinand talks of Fernandes’s enthusiasm and his commitment to QPR, not only for the next year or two but “10 and 20 years down the line”. The vision is to rebuild from the bottom up, so when they are ready to win promotion into the Premier League again, they are equipped to stay there. Youth development is a key part of Ferdinand’s philosophy and he accepts he has to energise the club’s academy.

“It’s 16 years since a player has come through the system and played on a regular basis for the first-team – that was Richard Langley,” Ferdinand says. “For a club like QPR, with the catchment area we are in, that saddens me, it really does. We have to build that academy up. If you’ve been working there for a long time and seen no one come through, they’re just coming into work. They’re not enthusiastic and I understand why. I need to enthuse them.

“Raheem Sterling is the prime example of what there is out there. He came out of a council estate in Wembley, he was here for a while and look at what he went on to be. There has to be more of them and we have just got to go searching. We have to be better.”

Fernandes has taken some big hits during his four years at Loftus Road, chiefly the relegations but also the FFP breach, which relates to the club’s overspend in 2013-14 when they were previously in the Championship. Hoos, rather than Ferdinand, has handled the discussions with the Football League and the club expect to be docked around £8m.

The Sandro affair was a dreadful cock-up. “There’s no other word for it, really,” Ferdinand says. The club forgot to update the Brazilian’s residency paperwork and when the Home Office discovered the blunder last May, Sandro was not allowed to play in the final three games of the season, as QPR went down. “Would he have made the difference? Who knows?” Ferdinand says. “You’d like to think so. We’ve learned a lesson and it will never happen again. We move on. Sandro is back now and he’s raring to go.”

Austin, too, has refocused after a difficult summer when he was expected to leave only for none of the interested Premier League clubs to meet QPR’s £15m asking price. To add to the insult, the West Ham United co-chairman, David Sullivan, suggested that his club had not moved for Austin because of concerns over the state of the player’s knee. Austin has one year to run on his contract.

“For someone in Sullivan’s position to come out like that … to go into details and not get the details right … it was a little bit disappointing and a little bit disrespectful,” Ferdinand says.

“The whole thing did affect Charlie. I’ve been in that predicament as a player and as much as you want to be the right citizen and get your head just around playing football, it’s going to affect you. When I was at QPR, I was going to Liverpool, Man Utd, Tottenham, Arsenal, and there was a lot to each of those links. That will affect you. But Charlie has done his level best to get on with the job.”

So has Ferdinand, and it is a little crazy to think that he has been in the job for under a year. He prepared for it by taking courses in applied management at Warwick Business School and governance at St George’s Park, although he says he continues to learn on it, particularly the financial side.

When Ferdinand joined QPR last October, it was initially as the club’s head of football operations. “It’s a stupid title really, isn’t it?” Harry Redknapp, the manager at the time, said.

“I went to see Harry about that,” Ferdinand says. “I said, ‘What was the reason for calling it a silly title?’ He said, ‘It’s not one we’ve heard before.’ I said, ‘No, but what was the reason for calling it that when you were comfortable with me coming in? I took this job because you were comfortable with me coming in. I wouldn’t have taken it otherwise. You called me. So to now call it a silly title …’

“I suppose managers get a bit paranoid. But this wasn’t done without Harry knowing. I spoke to the owners and made sure Harry was happy with me coming in. I wasn’t here to take Harry’s job or tell Harry what to do. I was here and I am here to help the owners get this football club back to where it wants to be.”