Chris Ramsey has returned to Queens Park Rangers as technical director. He will be responsible for a variety of roles surrounding coaching and player development at Loftus Road.
The 53-year-old was only sacked as first-team manager of the R’s in November, but has quickly found himself back on the payroll with the football club. The Queens Park Rangers official website clarified some of the roles that he will have, they include:
- Oversee all aspects of coaching and coaching education within the academy
- Responsible for developing and implementing player development strategies
- Oversee the integration between academy, development and first-team squads
- Monitoring and reporting on players who are out on loan with other clubs
- Develop and implement the scouting strategy to help sign new players
- Develop and implement club partnership programmes domestically and internationally
- Development and exit opportunities for players
Director of Football Les Ferdinand explained the reasoning behind Ramsey’s return to the football club and feels his knowledge at academy level is a great attribute,
“Whilst we were disappointed things didn’t work out for Chris at first team level earlier in the season, we were determined to retain his services at QPR.
As such, we actually put a clause in his contract which allowed us to retain Chris’ services in a player-development role should things not work out for him as head coach.
Chris knows academy football inside-out and having put the building blocks in place for a lot of the good restructuring work that’s been done here over the past 11 months, he can come in and make an instant impact in an environment he has helped build.”
Although Ramsey clearly wasn’t a success as manager of the first-team, it is clear that he has a special touch when it comes to player development in the grassroots/academy area. This should be seen as a positive move for the football club and hopefully they’ll reap the benefits in the next few seasons in the form of quality academy graduates playing in the first-team.
