Almost. The Premier League almost fooled us into thinking it could be a picturesque scene of job security. It wasn’t until after Christmas and the flurry of Boxing Day games that Neil Warnock stepped up to the guillotine, Steve Parish poised to execute. The move was accepted with little fuss, Warnock was a quick hire . It was as if everyone had just accepted that someone had to go from around the league and this hiatus of sackings was just a bonus. Then convicted nice guy Alan Irvine fell and all too easily the League is back to its edgy, trigger happy state. Or perhaps not.

A mildly amusing elephant in the room at the time was Pearson. Despite being a fully paid up member of The Relegation Struggle Club, Pearson wasn’t going anywhere. Uninformed writers were scratching their heads as to why he was so safe. (Personally, I believe if he lost the Hull game he might’ve gone, but that’s just a barely educated guess. Can owners put a 100 day winless threshold for managers in their contracts?) After getting Sven out of their system, the owners are committed to Pearson through thick and thin, or so it seems at the moment. Denied their easy target, the press will go searching soon for some more prey. Who won’t be affected in the search? Harry Redknapp.

The QPR manager certainly has his cronies amongst the media, he’s got easy rides for years. Especially the Tabloids, to which he can do what he wants because let’s face it; he’s a bit of a bloke and who cares? QPR sit 16th in the league at the moment, 2 points clear of relegation. On the surface of it Redknapp hasn’t done too much to deserve the sack. But given ‘arry’s aforementioned friends at the papers, no-one else is going to consider it so it’s worth a look.

After Mark Hughes was sacked in the November of 2012, Redknapp arrived on an interesting wave of emotion. Earlier in the year he had left Tottenham in a sour fashion, only for England to plump for the stability of Hodgson. This happened in spite of the red-top fueled surge to put the job on a platter for Redknapp. Taking the QPR job, he inherited one of the most dysfunctional dressing rooms the Premier League had ever seen, it made the Kardashians look cohesive. The hoops also had a wage budget that had spiraled out of control with ‘quality’ signings such as Jose Bosingwa, Julio Cesar and apparently Granero. Although no-one really ever saw him so that can’t be confirmed. Quite how Harry Redknapp of all people, footballing retail therapy practitioner, was meant to solve this mess is another argument for, um, at least a couple of paragraphs later.

Fast-forward to the end of the season. QPR go down with their financial nightmare, common for Redknapp who at this point was not long removed from his tax evasion case. The swirling floodlit pool of teams beginning with B and teams from Yorkshire that is the Championship is waiting for them. To celebrate, Redknapp goes to town and acquired: Danny Simpson, Richard Dunne, Karl Henry, Matt Phillips and Yossi Benayoun amongst others. The squad would go on to add loan signings such as Ravel Morrison, Niko Krancjar, Tom Carroll and Assou-Ekotto (Spurs contacts coming in handy), Mobido Maiga and Kevin Doyle. In terms of transfer fees, Redknapp actually made a profit just be getting a refund on Chris Samba, and an interesting article from 2010 by Willie Gannon investigates Redknapp’s big spender reputation. However the wage bill was still swollen. Jermaine Jenas (who actually seems to be a decent pundit from what I’ve seen) Joey Barton and Shaun Wright-Phillips, brother of MLS all-time great Bradley, remained. QPR go into the season as predictable favourites from most pundits. This was mostly because they had well-known players. Honestly, it’s a factor. Some of these guys have no clue, about the league, and will understandably pick something familiar. The only other thing they can remark on, is the cliché of ‘anyone can beat anyone’. While true in the second tier, it’s tiring to hear repeatedly.

The 2013/14 season does not go quite as planned. Newcastle was what they aimed for, a season to revitalise the club and come back stronger. But QPR are not Newcastle. They fail to romp the league and bounce back easily. New signing Charlie Austin was scoring well, until a shoulder injury put him out of action for a few months. Yet Redknapp’s sides have attacking identities, paired with a relatively talented squad surely the goals would come? They didn’t, QPR instead relied on a solid defence and a very strong home record but they dearly struggled for goals scoring 60 on the season. They toil to 4th place and a spot in the topsy turvy play-offs, where anything can happen. Deeneyyyyyy….. shudder.

The West London club make it to Wembley after beating Wigan, who are drastically less plucky and fun to watch when out of the top flight. There they face Derby. Understand that on this blog, Derby are not a popular group. So it comes as even more of a compliment when I say that this Derby outfit were one of the most fluid and exciting attacking teams I’d seen in the Championship. Teams have racked up goals before in the Championship, but Derby played so well going forward for a perennial second tier team. It had to be a backhanded compliment, it was too uncomfortable to write before that. The final was something out of FIFA Ultimate Team. Derby had 68%, 14 corners(!) and a man advantage for half an hour. They should have won. QPR had Bobby Zamora, and would sneak off with a 1-0. After the game Redknapp looked not unlike a man who has just survived a plane crash, just disbelief and almost bemusement. But nevertheless QPR, bulging squad and all, had made it back at the first time of asking. Just.

So that summer, starting to resemble a fun little car game here…Harry Redknapp went to the market and he bought Steven Caulker, Jordan Mutch, Leroy Fer, Jack Robinson, Alex McCarthy and Sandro. Oh and Rio Ferdinand, who posed a serious dilemma when MOTD guys who had worked with him in the summer had to try not to slate him too badly on the opening weekend against Hull. Mutch has been in and out of the team. Sandro sounded a good pickup until he sauntered into the physio room to never be seen again. Caulker looks destined to jump from club to club until someone realises he’s not a young prospect anymore. God knows what Taarabt does these days. Mauricio Isla was brought in to play as a wingback, because QPR were hopping on this quite bizarre 3-5-2 renaissance the Premier League is having at the moment. That was, until QPR looked horribly vulnerable and Redknapp simply thought ‘fuck this for a game of soldiers’. So now they’re stuck with Isla while not playing the formation they brought him in for. Redknapp subsidised the spending by offloading Granero and Simpson, while also letting Remy go and sit on the bench for a big club like he always wanted to. The squad is still a Portsmouth and Tottenham reunion with a touch of ‘Championship/Relegation candidates – Greatest Hits’. Krancjar is still there, somehow. Like all reunions, everyone’s is fatter, older and the worst thing is Sulley Muntari isn’t there to cheer anyone up.

It’s not so much QPR’s position in the table that warrants scrutiny of his job security. They have a better squad than 5 others by my judgement (Leicester, Burnley, Crystal Palace, West Brom, Sunderland). It cannot be acceptable for Redknapp to spend like this. It simply can’t. As a Leicester fan, Sven did the very same thing just to waltz into a club and blow all this cash on average players. There’s a reason Redknapp been limited to loan signings this January by the owner. And he agrees with it! Triffic!

‘I understand the situation. It is good. ‘We’ve got to be careful haven’t we? I think we will stay up but if the worst comes to the worst you don’t want to leave a situation where you are stuck with a load of players that you can’t shift. ‘I had to get rid of 15 the other year and we had to pay half of them up to go.’

Mark Hughes was the main problem that time, but Redknapp is going down the same course already. You know he wants to sign Defoe. There is no-one more quintessentially QPR at this very moment than Jermain Defoe. Old? Yep. Washed up? Yep. Command a sizeable wage? Yep. Portsmouth/Tottenham link? Yep and Yep. Let’s do it. Also a rumour that surfaces once a week, ‘QPR in for Townsend/Lennon’. It feels too stereotypical to be true. QPR have the title of ‘Charmin team of the season’. It’s awarded to the team that looks softest and the least bothered in defence. For QPR it only really applies away from home, but it applies nonetheless. Last year it was Fulham. The year before that? QPR.

Austin’s admirable attempts to be England’s random breakthrough striker has been a quirky sub-plot. There’s always one dark horse, I’m fairly sure Gary Hooper had the briefest stint of hype ever. Rickie Lambert forged an England career that ran into double figures of appearances of one header. Granted that one header was an absolute classic and well worth embedding towards the end here for no apparent reason. He’s like the ultimate dream for mid table strikers.

So the Premier League will continue to sniff out another instance of club and manager parting by ‘mutual consent’. Tony Fernandes could get fed up of watching his money drain away into Loftus Road each weekend and chuck Harry back into his Range Rover. He looks like an owner who makes his decisions quickly and independently. There’s a real chance of this happening. Don’t sleep on it.