Neil Warnock reveals story about "magical" Adel Taraabt at QPR | OneFootball

Neil Warnock has told the story of how he managed to get the best out of Adel Taarabt at Queens Park Rangers, and how he helped save them from relegation.

The veteran manager was the one who unlocked the eventually obvious, endless ability of the Moroccan midfielder.

Warnock's man management excellence inspired the best out of the flair player, and the R's managed to avoid relegation that season, in large part because of the now 34-year-old.

Neil Warnock's brilliant Adel Taarabt story

Warnock has revealed how he was able to get the best out of the former Tottenham Hotspur man, and how his teammates felt about him during his time at Loftus Road

He said on the No Tippy Tappy Podcast: "On my first day at any club I like to get the players to have a match between them in training so I can see what they’re really about. On my first day at Queens Park Rangers it was red hot, but Adel was still wearing gloves!

"The staff told me that I didn’t want anything to do with him and that he’d get me the sack. I watched the game and some of the things he did were unbelievable.

"I called him over and told him that the coaches had told me he was going to get me fired. On the Saturday we were playing West Brom who were top of the Championship at the time, and I told him he was going to play.

"Then I told him that if he was bad in that game, he’d still play the next game, and the next game after that even if he was poor again. I told him that no matter what, he would play, and that he was going to save us. That is how it happened, and from then on he made or scored nearly every goal and we stayed up.”

"I had the likes of Clint Hill and Shaun Derry at QPR. One day I told them, ‘you should all be captains, but I’m going to make Adel Taarabt the captain’," said Warnock.

"I knew it was insane but the thinking behind it was that if he was the captain, then he might think twice about being stupid on the ball. I thought that would get us 10 percent more out of him, which meant we had 10 percent more chance of getting promotion.

"Adel used to go to the centre-backs, pick the ball up, nutmeg someone in his own half and then lose the ball and not even care. I told the lads that when Adel was playing, if anyone passed him the ball in our own half it was a £50 fine – if he went back into our half and touched the ball, then I fined him £50 as well.

"He was a nightmare in his own half, but when you gave him the ball in attack he was magical. He was the best player in the Championship and the most skillful player I’ve ever managed.

"There were certainly two or three times during the season where Shaun Derry would’ve liked to have chinned Adel, but we got through it and played some great football. That was one of my best seasons."

2010/11 Adel Taarabt is one of the best Championship players ever

40 goals and assists in 44 league games: that was the Moroccan's direct goal contributions in the league in that campaign, which is just astonishing, given the career that he'd had prior to Warnock arriving at Loftus Road.

Of the 71 goals that the side scored that season, over 56% of them involved the attacking midfielder either finding the back of the net, or passing to someone that did.

He was just unstoppable. Defenders could not handle his creativity and brashness on the ball.

Taarabt was someone that brought joy to the stands of Loftus Road, and everyone who continues to watch back his highlights on YouTube to this day.