Last Updated: Sun, 03 Feb 2013 17:04
QPR chairman Tony Fernandes has launched a strong defence of his club's January spending policy as they bid to beat the drop.
Fernandes has admitted that Rangers have taken a gamble with some of their big-money deals in the last transfer window, but he is convinced the strategy will ultimately pay off with Harry Redknapp now running first-team affairs.
The R's drafted in Tottenham duo Jermaine Jenas and Andros Townsend on loan on deadline day after securing the signatures of South Korean Yun Suk-Young and Christopher Samba from Anzhi Makhachkala.
Earlier in the month, Fernandes sanctioned the signing of Loic Remy from Marseille for a then club record transfer fee before breaking it again at the end of the window with the £12.5m deal to bring in Samba.
He accepts that he has taken a risk given the team's perilous position at the foot of the Premier League table, but denies the accusation that he has put the club's future in jeopardy.
Fernandes told the Telegraph, he said: "If you analyse it we haven't spent that much money on transfers and as for our wage bill, when I look at other clubs when they put their results out then ours is not too bad and there is now value in the squad. I don't think there is any recklessness there.
"No one can guarantee anything in football, but you try to minimise the risk as much as possible and that's where the expertise of the management comes in and they say 'this is what we need to survive' and you look at it and if it makes sense then the board and myself support it.
"Anyone who says we are gambling then, of course, we are. There are no debts like at other clubs. We've put in a lot of money and it's no different from setting up a car business or an airline.
"But it takes time. QPR were an under-invested club. Simple as that. I'm not in it for one year, I'm investing for the future. I'm investing to build a stadium, to build a training academy, to build a proper business."
The Rangers chairman has also refuted claims that he is paying Samba £100,000 a week, with the Malaysian entrepreneur adding: "It is not right for me to say, but it is nothing like £100,000 - it is more around the £65,000 mark. You would be close (with that).
'If we go down, we are prepared for it and we know what we have to do to come back up.
'Everything that has been done has been thought of in a long-term way."
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