Tuesday, 26th March, 2013
Queens Park Rangers owner and chairman Tony Fernandes has slammed the English media for false reports regarding the club’s debt situation and wage bill, citing they are very near to operating within the Premier League’s Financial Fair Play scheme and that reports about their alleged financial crisis are "ludicrous".
The airline mogul became majority stakeholder of the Rs in August 2011, taking over from predecessor Bernie Ecclestone. Since then, he has invested heavily at the club and approved the breaking of the club’s transfer record twice last January to acquire defender Christopher Samba and French forward Loic Remy.
Fernandes also helped QPR build a whole new team last summer, bringing in the likes of Park Ji-Sung from Manchester United, Esteban Granero from Real Madrid and Julio Cesar from Inter Milan. Despite the heavy investment, QPR find themselves bottom of the Premier League, needing seven points to get out of the relegation zone; there are just eight games to go.
"There’s no fear at all", Fernandes told the BBC. "I’ve been in the airline business where we have had [to deal with] Sars, bird flu, earthquakes, and an oil crisis – so relegation is just another thing that would have happened. And we learned. We know what we need to do and we’ve put the right foundations in place."
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The multimillionaire adds that QPR won’t be crippled by relegation. "No, I don’t think so", Fernandes retorted. "If we went down, we would just have to come back up."
He also rubbished the media reports of a ballooning wage bill and risky high-priced signings. "The press have blown it out of proportion. We are not that far away from FFP anyway.
"[The reports] on Samba and stuff is just ludicrous", Fernandes added.
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