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QPR fans watch pathetic soap opera unfold through their fingers

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Angry Redknapp slams 'unfit' Taarabt (1:41)

QPR manager Harry Redknapp criticised playmaker Adel Taarabt for being unfit while also defending his own position at the club. (1:41)

Anyone interested in Queens Park Rangers, football or the mockumentary style of television and film perfected by "Spinal Tap" and "The Office" should watch "The Four Year Plan."

The film, released in 2012, documented a truly shambolic spell at Loftus Road when co-owner Flavio Briatore ran the club with complete abandon, hiring and firing managers on whims. Sadly it was not a comedic piece of cinema; it was a genuine documentary -- an accurate portrayal that accidentally dipped into moments of farce.

Aside from unintentionally becoming a funny movie, it marked a nadir for Rangers. Things could not have been more inappropriate at times, with Briatore making team selections from the directors' box and verbally abusing his own managers in expletive-laden rants.

So when Tony Fernandes took over in August 2011, it heralded a new dawn. If only.

The club is back in the spotlight for all the wrong reasons, once again. After 89 impressive minutes against Liverpool on Sunday that gave fans a glimmer of hope and appeared to show that manager Harry Redknapp was up for the relegation fight, the club went into an almighty self-destruct mode.

Redknapp, still seething after his tactical errors in the dying seconds led to his side snatching another defeat from the jaws of victory, decided to berate midfielder Adel Taarabt for being overweight, overpaid and unfit.

Chairman Fernandes couldn't stop himself from wading in, despite deleting a selection of tweets after the previous defeat against West Ham.

"Professional players must be fit. If I do a job, I'm ready to do the job. Full stop. The buck stops at you. It's your body and your career," he wrote, before deleting. A few of his 900,000 or so followers had seen this, as had a couple of national newspapers. By now, they are probably monitoring his feed around the clock waiting for his next gaffe.

Anyway, Taarabt then organised a rebuttal with a couple of papers, who took photos of his lean (albeit sucked-in) stomach and he went a step further by criticising Redknapp's tactical nous and accusing him of paying more attention to his phone than the training ground. Just to get everything completely out in the open and in the public domain (where all good in-house disagreements should be, obviously) Redknapp said the only reason Taarabt looked remotely toned was because a bout of tonsillitis had whittled some weight off him.

Finally, absolutely finally, before you get bored of this pathetic soap-opera story, Fernandes apologised to the fans for the childish feud. But the 14 players who worked tirelessly against Liverpool deserve a mention too.

Despite scoring an own goal, Richard Dunne fronted up and spoke to the media about the agony he was going through and Karl Henry admitted he was racked with guilt for not bringing down Raheem Sterling in the build-up to a goal. All that work was later frittered away so a few people could protect their reputations, gain a bit more notoriety and settle a few scores.

Fernandes courts the media and he enjoys the attention he has worked incredibly hard to get, whether that be on "The Apprentice" in Asia where he is an Alan Sugar-esque figure (worrying in itself), his daily tweets about the running of QPR or the posting of photos from family birthdays.

He is a man who wants to be in the public eye and he has employed a very similar man to run his football club. A man who was doing television and newspaper interviews when Fernandes was a young, anonymous accountant. You don't employ Harry Redknapp and then smack his backside when he does too many interviews. In the same way you don't tell Jose Mourinho to play nice or Mark Hughes to smile more. When you dance with the devil, you wait for the song to stop.

QPR is a circus again. The club are rock bottom of the table and could be seven points adrift by the start of next week. Yet instead of having a full-time coach working with players, they have Glenn Hoddle dipping in on a part-time basis. Perhaps the head honchos at Rangers swell with pride when they see "their guy" on television giving his highly regarded opinion on England matches when they should be much more worried about his contribution to a team desperately lacking a plan.

At any other club, this might have been a cathartic experience. It could have been the spark that forced Taarabt to get fit or Fernandes to take another Twitter hiatus -- or maybe Redknapp would give the book-writing a rest while the club was in turmoil.

But that's not the way the club is run. There is a culture around QPR built around blame and celebrity. It started in 2007 when the previous owners let a camera crew film their every move as they blamed other people for their failings.

And seven years later it is still going strong with new protagonists, fresh scapegoats and the same sorry audience coming through the turnstiles and watching begrudgingly through their fingers.