Graham Kavanagh on Max Ehmer
Manager Graham Kavanagh spoke more about the one-month loan deal for QPR defender Max Ehmer this afternoon.
“He’s a right or left-sided centre half and he can also play as a holding midfielder,” he said. “He’s accumulated a good number of appearances with Yeovil, Preston and Stevenage and we think he’s a good signing.
“I’ve had a good chat with him and he’s coming for all the right reasons. He’s keen to get as many minutes on the pitch as possible and hopefully we’ll give him that opportunity.”
“He’s one who has been on our radar for three or four weeks now,” he continued. “I was doing a lot of research and due diligence, as you do, when we were still waiting to hear about Troy [Archibald-Henville] and what the situation was with his injury. He had to go for medical treatment so that one was obviously dead in the water for us.
“That meant it was an area where I wanted to get the right type of player in and I’m hoping we’ve achieved that with Max. I spoke to their chief scout, Ian Butterworth – he was assistant manager at Cardiff when I was there – and I also spoke to Marc Bircham, the Elite Development Coach at QPR. They speak really highly of him and we’re looking forward to working with him.”
“A lot of this took place over Saturday night and Sunday morning and we managed to get it all concluded yesterday,” he explained. “We were hoping to get him up here for training this morning [Monday] but the paperwork side of it took a little bit longer than we anticipated.
“That means that we’ll get him up here to meet the group ahead of the game tomorrow and we can take it from there.”
“The role is in one of the key areas of the pitch, as far as I am concerned,” he said. “I have seen a lot of U21 games and sometimes you come away from them with more questions than answers.
“They are played at a much different pace and every player tries to use the ball in a really nice way. You don’t really get a sense of whether the defenders you’ve seen could really handle what happens in a League One football game when balls are being hit over them, between them and down the sides. So, you see players who can handle and play with the ball but it’s hard to judge whether or not they could deal with the other side of it.
“Max has the experience of having played a lot of his football at this level and he has been in and around the QPR first team for a good while. As we all know, they were in the Premier League last season and they’ve signed quite a few players recently, so his chances with them have been limited.
“The good thing is that everyone you speak to has nothing but good things to say about him. His character, temperament and mindset appear to be exactly what we require. Other managers at other clubs have looked at him previously and he has done a job for them. That is a good indication that there is a really good chance that we’ve got ourselves a decent player.
“The centre half position is key to that strong spine we keep talking about and I’m hoping he’ll hit the ground running and enjoy his football.”
And on the ongoing search for new blood, he said: “I think we’re constantly looking at every position to see if we can strengthen or add to the group. I think we have to face up to the fact that the majority of the budget has been spent at this moment in time so any other movement really has to be generated by things like some of our players going out on loan to get games elsewhere.
“Having said that, if you were to say to me that this is the group we have going through to the January transfer window then I would be happy with that. We have lost the last two games but everyone is working hard and they are definitely buying into what we are trying to achieve.
“We have to be patient, at times, but there is a determination to improve and to push this club on.”
