Rangers fight Fulham for Jones

29 November 2006

Ray Jones

By Ben Kosky

QPR have warned clubs chasing Ray Jones they will go to a tribunal if anyone attempts to poach the teenager on the cheap.

Jones, 18, has already attracted a cheeky £50,000 bid from Premiership neighbours Fulham after breaking into the Rangers first team and scoring five goals so far this season.

And Rs' chairman Gianni Paladini believes the young striker's agent has been trying to stump up interest from other clubs after encouraging him to reject several offers of a professional contract at Loftus Road.

"If Fulham think Ray Jones is worth £50,000, they obviously don't think very much of him," Paladini told the Times. "I think it's scandalous and I'm very annoyed with them.

"We offered him a very good contract, six or seven times we've made an offer and his agent doesn't want to know - he just said the boy wasn't signing.

"I'm very disappointed that, now he's played for England, suddenly his agent's offering him to other clubs. When I was an agent, I always said to young players 'go and play first, then worry about the money'.

"He's playing well, he's scoring goals and John Gregory wants to keep him here, but I can't force him to sign a contract if he doesn't want to.

"If there's nothing more we can do, we'll have to go to arbitration. That's what I told Fulham and I'll tell anyone else the same."

The uncertainty over Jones' future mirrors the situation that developed at the end of last season, when it took the club several months to agree a contract with another young striker, Shabazz Baidoo.

But Jones, who made his first-team debut in the penultimate game of that campaign against Watford, has since overtaken Baidoo in the pecking order and scored Rangers' goal in Tuesday's 2-1 defeat by Sunderland.