QPR's new owner Tony Fernandes calls for fans to be realistic

11 April 2012

New owner Tony Fernandes has vowed to transform QPR but has advised against overly-ambitious expectations.

Malaysian airline entrepreneur Fernandes yesterday completed his takeover when his company Tune Group bought a 66% stake.

The 47-year-old founder of AirAsia and his business partners will work alongside the Mittal Family, who have retained their 33% stake.

Fernandes has been delighted with the response from fans so far and has pledged to do what is best for the club.

"What made my day actually was there were four kids that came up to me and just said how happy they were," he said.

"They couldn't have been more than 14 or 15 years old and you kind of felt 'wow, it was worth doing it'.

"I'll do my best and leave no stone unturned but I want everybody to be realistic.

"The key thing is we will do it together. We will either win together or lose together but the key thing is we will do it together.

"I will be as transparent as I can be, give me as many suggestions as you want and we'll try make this place a better place over the next few years."

Fernandes, who is also the team principal of Formula One's Team Lotus, has promised to bring in new faces to the Premier League club before the transfer window closes in a couple of weeks.

QPR's start to life back in the top flight after a 15-year absence got off to the worst possible start last weekend with a 4-0 home defeat to Bolton.

Fernandes was at the game and has promised to support Neil Warnock's bid to strengthen the team, but was keen to temper short-term expectations.

"I think my major issue is dampening down everybody's enthusiasm that tomorrow everything is going to change. This will take time," he said.

"It is not that the previous owners were wrong, it is just they knew they were going to sell so they had a different investment paradigm.

"Having said that, they picked up some great players. The one great thing out of the Bolton game was our strike force looked as good as anybody's.

"DJ Campbell looked fantastic, Jay Bothroyd looked great and up to about 40 minutes we outplayed Bolton.

"The previous owners did good on a lot of things and I am just here to strengthen it."

Create a FREE account to continue reading

eros

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Create Account you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy policy .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in