Football: Wright to right the wrongs

QUEEN'S PARK RANGERS go into today's match with Crystal Palace knowing that defeat could cost them their First Division status - and perhaps much more. Their millionaire chairman, Chris Wright, is making no guarantees that he will continue to dip deeply into his own pocket to maintain a club that, he says, has already cost him "millions and millions". "I'm not saying I'll not continue to support them," Wright said, "but if we do go down, we will need to spend a fortnight just getting over the trauma before sitting down and analytically looking at the way forward. The fans think that you just wave a magic wand and you get money. I don't know where they think the money comes from."

Even if money can be found, it is not always the answer, as Wright said. "The fans may think we spend money unwisely." The unwise decisions? "Paying pounds 2.75m for Mike Sheron and putting him on the best part of half a million a year, or pounds 2.25m for John Spencer makes the fans say we should never have spent that sort of money." They are also unhappy about the pounds 500,000 paid for the now departed Vinnie Jones.

So was Wright, who called it "a desperate measure that far exceeded our financial means". He added, though: "The funny thing is, all fans want you to spend money, and if they were in my position they would have spent all that and more anyway. But when the money is gone, you can't get more. You don't just snap your fingers and the money appears. QPR has cost me millions and millions and there comes a point when there aren't any more millions."

Wright, who is chairman of the Chrysalis multi-media group, has spent and loaned his own money heavily. Reports of his underwriting a new QPR shares issue last February to the extent of pounds 2m were off the mark, he said. "It was in excess of that." It was all done to ensure that Rangers stay within reach of the Premiership, but five successive defeats seem likely to condemn the club to the Second Division. "In future," he said, "we are going to have to run the club more prudently. I'm not saying there's no more money - there's always a little - but there isn't the money to attract the kind of players we were trying to bring in a year or two ago."

He continued: "We've got a lot of young talent coming through. Clearly, next season, whatever division we are in, we are going to need a few new players, and we will do that. The problem in the First Division is that you need to spend a lot to compete but if you don't get into the Premier League it's money all wasted. That's unless you take the long-term view, which is what we should have done when we came down from the Premier division. We should have known the whole squad needed a re-vamp. That didn't happen".

Wright, who invested pounds 3m in Wasps rugby club when they moved to Loftus Road in 1996, also owns the Sheffield Sharks basketball club. At present, he is more satisfied with the rugby club than the on- and off-field work of QPR. In spite of the administrative mess in which rugby union finds itself, he believes that having Wasps play almost in the centre of London has proved highly popular. "I'm more optimistic than some about the rugby situation. Some strong personalities have come into the game and been at loggerheads, but a middle line is now being taken. As for Wasps, we are beginning to attract a loyal following. We're getting 5-10,000. We feel we are the London rugby team."

QPR, in contrast, have strong local competition from Chelsea and the now highly ambitious Fulham. Another big problem is one the club shares with others - wage contracts which were drawn up in the hope that the players would bring success, or at least safety. Wage capping has been suggested as a way of overcoming rugby union's over-ambitious payments, but Wright is not convinced it can work.

"In basketball wage capping is difficult to police. In football the deals are so complex that, good as the idea might be, it would be complicated. Even if you did have it, what would you do at clubs like ours where you still have players on Premier League wages? Players under contract can't suddenly not be under contract."

The combined QPR and Wasps company, Loftus Road plc, should have benefited from the sale of parts of the old Wasps ground that are no longer used, but the planning application has been turned down. "That was a severe blow," he admits. But an appeal is taking place which he is hopeful of winning.

Wright's financial involvement in basketball is small (an estimated pounds 1m) compared with his investment in QPR but he says: "My pleasure is in direct relationship to the success of the three teams: the basketball team have lost about five games all season, Wasps have lost nine and QPR a lot more, but nothing would give me more pleasure than to see QPR win regularly."

Basketball provides a release from his other pressures. "If you win, it's fantastic; if you lose, it's terrible. But when you wake up the next morning, you know what, nothing is different. With football, if you win or lose you wake up and everything is different. There's millions at stake this weekend."