QPR will not become another Portsmouth

Owning a football club, Tony Fernandes admits, is a "gamble". But it is a "calculated gamble". "No one can guarantee anything in football," the Queens Park Rangers chairman adds. "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."

It is the degree of that gamble that matters and Fernandes has been irked by the criticism he has faced - that he is playing fast and loose with the club's future and its finances, that relegation from the Premier League for the club currently in 20th place could lead to a Portsmouth-style administration.

"People have not seen the balance sheet, have not seen the P and L [profit and loss account], have not seen the five-year plan," Fernandes argues. 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."

The Malaysian entrepreneur knows a lot about both - not least the airline industry as he heads AirAsia. "I started the airline with two planes and we now have 126 planes," he says. "We are the world's most profitable airline now. But it takes time. QPR were an underinvested club. Simple as that.

"Let me explain it another way. Look at [the internet shopping empire] Amazon. Amazon have lost money for 10 years but they have been building a business. 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. Of course when you buy a small club you are going to incur some losses at the beginning. That was well understood. Yes, we didn't want to be at the bottom of the division and, yes, if we go down it will hurt. But we are businessmen who are prepared for all eventualities. I'm not building a team for one year otherwise we will be constantly in this situation.

"We, QPR, have to move out of the small club syndrome and for constant security have to build a bigger stadium, a better infrastructure. So far it hasn't worked but we won't be the first club for whom everything hasn't gone exactly to plan."

But what of that spending, not least in the January window when 19.5 million pounds was committed to buy Christopher Samba and Loic Remy with both on high wages, following a huge turnaround last summer? "We inherited a squad where every single player who has left is no longer playing in the Premier League, doesn't that say something?" Fernandes claims. "We have replaced and replenished the squad at a very low cost because most of them were free transfers. This is the first window that we have spent big money [last January Bobby Zamora was bought for 4.5 million pounds and Djibril Cisse for pounds 4m]. One is Chris Samba who we've wanted for three transfer windows. It has been our problem from day one - a centre-back. We've tried to get Michael Dawson and all sorts of people. Chris is a good guy, he's 28 and whether we go up or down he will be with us. We are building a team around him.

"We paid 12 million pounds for Samba but West Ham paid close to that for Matt Jarvis [10.75 million pounds] and Sunderland did for Adam Johnson [pounds 10m]. I think every club has an pounds 8-9million player. In Remy's case we paid 7 million pounds for a very good striker who is 24 and has a resell value. If you go on [the website] transfermarket.com we have one of the best valued squads but our squad has not performed well.

"All the other players have been on frees or very low transfer fees. Our wage bill is less than most clubs, ironically. We've also let eight players go on loan [in January] which has taken a massive chunk off the wage bill. And there may be one or two more going in the Russian transfer window and the American transfer window. It's gone down. I can categorically state that not a single player is on pounds 100,000-a-week.

"The wage we are paying Loic Remy is the wage Newcastle were offering him. I just persuaded him that our project and London was a better project than Newcastle's. It took me four hours to do and I was the first chairman who had done that with him. I've not made a comment up to this point but I can confirm we paid what Newcastle were offering. I spent a lot of time and effort and he saw something in this project that he wanted to take a risk. If it doesn't work then we can find him somewhere else.

"It's not always about money. QPR are the bottom club and you don't come to the bottom club for the dollar sign. And I'm not going to get players for the dollar signs."

If QPR are relegated Fernandes and his backers - including the Indian steel magnate Lakshmi Mittal - will stay, he insists. Fernandes also clarifies what he meant when he said he might walk away if it was felt he was not doing a good job. "I have to take the responsibility because I appointed the managers, I sanctioned the signing of the players," he says. "But leaving the club didn't mean I was going to take my investment out - it just meant someone else might be better suited to be chairman."