Neil Warnock Sacked By QPR

Tony Fernandes: "This decision has been made in the very best of interests of the club and I can assure everyone that this is not a decision that was taken lightly. Neil Warnock has acted with honesty, professionalism and integrity throguhout his time at the club and I would personally like to thank him for his significant contribution to QPR over the last twenty two months. I genuinely wish him all the very best for the future, and he will always be welcome at Loftus Road. Sadly a recent run of poor form has seen us slip down the table, and the board felt that it was the right time to make a change." QPR Vice Chairman Amit Bhatia: "It is with a heavy heart that we make this announcement. I played a key role in brining Neil to Loftus Road and consider him to be a close personal and a great professional. I would like to place on record my thanks for transforming us from a Championship club to a Premier League club." Neil Warnock: "Obviously I am very disappointed, but having achieved so much I leave the club with a great sense of pride. I have enjoyed my time here more than anywhere else and the QPR fans have been brilliant with me. They deserve success. My biggest regret is that the takeover didn't happen earlier, because that would have given me the chance to bring in the targets I had pinpointed all last summer and that would probably have given us a better chance to succeed in the Premier League. The board at QPR are hugely ambitious and I wish them every success for the future." Joey Barton's Twitter based response is expected as soon as he's read up on some new quotes to make him sound terribly clever. Warnock had been in charge of the club for almost two years, having taken over in March 2010 with the club struggling and the threat of relegation looming in the background. He successfully steered the club away from the drop that season, and the next year guided his team to runaway victory in the league, but that success now counts for very little as he and his backroom staff have now been sacked. His record reads as follows: Games: 84 Won: 33 Drawn: 27 Lost: 24 Win Rate: 39% So, Fernandes has lost patience with recent results, despite confirming that Warnock's job was safe recently,and it seems all was not well between the entrepreneur and his former manager, who was also said to be unhappy with the lack of control he was allowed in making signings. It seems that yesterday's insipid draw with MK Dons in the FA Cup third round was the final straw, and Fernades took advantage of his Twitter account to issue the following ominous warning: "Driving back to london. Lots to think about." The bookies will inevitably make Mark Hughes the immediate favourite, with more left-field choices of Alan Shearer, Gianfranco Zola and probably Paulo DiCanio also likely to pick up some bets in the coming days and weeks. Personally, I'd say Fernandes could do worse than look to Huddersfield Town's Lee Clark, though he will probably turn the opportunity down at this stage. There is a strange similarity between what has happened here and what happened last season at St James Park when Mike Ashley sacked Chris Hughton. After a number of uninspiring though not catastrophic results, the billionaire owner, with something of a cut-throat reputation sacks a talented manager to the general disbelief and disgust of the fanbase, with the ominous shadow of unrealistic expectations, rumblings of discontent over transfer dealings and the short-term ignorance of the outgoing manager's Herculean achievement in lifting the club out of the Championship in impressive fashion. If fans are to take any comfort from that similarity, it will come from the current state of affairs in the North East, where the sacked manager's replacement has worked wonders and transformed the team, but at the minute the light at the end of the tunnel might seem a very distant thing, with Newcastle United coincidentally the next match on QPR's radar next Sunday.