QPR thought they’d struck transfer gold with £0 striker - it would soon turn to disaster | OneFootball

When Marc Nygaard arrived at QPR in 2005, it looked for a season as though they'd found themselves a bargain, but then it all started to fall apart.

When Queens Park Rangers came across a giant Danish striker with international caps already under his belt in 2005, they thought they'd got the bargain of the summer. But things didn't work out that way, even after a bright start.

By the summer of 2005, having been relegated in 2001 and taking three years to get back, Queens Park Rangers were established back in the Championship and looking forward. Ian Holloway took them back in 2004 as third-tier runners-up to Plymouth Argyle and consolidated them in 11th place in the table.

Marc Nygaard looked a good bet. He was experienced, having already played in Denmark, the Netherlands, Belgium and Italy, and he was an international who'd created the winning goal for his country against Denmark on his debut against Germany, five years earlier.

Nygaard starts well as Queens Park Rangers flounder

Nygaard's first season was a bit of a disaster for his new club, but it was a pretty decent one for him personally. Rangers laboured all season, eventually finishing 21st in the Championship, but Nygaard did pretty well, ending the season as their joint top scorer alongside midfielder Gareth Ainsworth with nine goals in all competitions, although Nygaard played 13 fewer League games than Ainsworth.

At 6'5" tall, he had a presence up front. He seemed good in the air but equally at home with the ball at his feet. But Holloway had paid for ongoing Leicester interest in him by being placed on gardening leave in February 2006 and replaced by Garry Waddock, who was given the job on a permanent basis that June, when Holloway was finally sacked.

It all starts to go wrong for Nygaard at Loftus Road

Nygaard would soon start to fall out of favour at Loftus Road. A slow start to the 2006/07 season resulted in Waddock also being sacked and replaced by John Gregory, and meanwhile Nygaard's run of decent form was coming to a juddering halt. Over the course of the season he made only 17 appearances, scoring just three goals.

Furthermore, by this time, he was starting to become something of a figure of fun among the club's long-suffering supporters. When he put in an excellent performance for Rangers and scored twice in a 3-1 win at Leicester in March 2007, Nygaard was memorably described by fan site Loft For Words as having "broke character and turned into a world-beating centre forward for the afternoon". Rangers finished the season in 18th place in the Championship.

Things didn't improve the following season. After failing to win any of their first seven league games of the season, Gregory was sacked as well and replaced four weeks later by Luigo di Canio, the club's first-ever overseas manager.

It was during that three-week break that Nygaard scored what turned out to be his final goal for the club. With Patrick Agyemang, Rowan Vine and Dexter Blackstock all preferred and injuries hampering his progress, Nygaard started to slip down onto the bench. In total, he made 17 appearances for them all season and was released in January 2008.

Nygaard returned to Denmark, where he played for Randers FC and retired from playing in 2014 at the age of 37. Injuries didn't help over his three seasons at Loftus Road. Perhaps if he'd had better luck with those, things might have worked out better for both him and the club. But he didn't, and while QPR have had three seasons of Premier League football since his departure, they've been in the Championship now for a decade, and showing few signs of returning.