Huddersfield Town, bottom of the league, no away wins all season, Queens Park Rangers, enter stage right.
Housekeeping to start with then, shall we?
If you’ve come to tell me to chill out, relax, we’re still sixth in the league, let me save you the bother. I agree. Everything I said in the preview stands: it’s about being in contention and competitive in March, April and May, not getting too up and down with stuff that happens in September, October and November which QPR are way too guilty off way too often. Perspective.
If you’ve come to tell me the referee, Gavin Ward, and his pathetic handling of this football match is not the reason QPR lost, then, again, please stand down. I agree again. There will, nevertheless, be some quite sharp words, some close-to-the-bone criticism, some violent sexual imagery, and a story of somewhere between 500 and 600 words about a recent trip into the toilet that went very badly wrong for me, because frankly if you, your assessor and/or your employer thinks that performance, and more to the point that behaviour, is in any way close to acceptable at this level of professional football, then that’s the very least you deserve. More to the point, if I’m going to be forced to sit through it, then I need to be allowed a turn at some point. And it’s my turn now. My turn.
If you’ve come for all the exaggerated tutting, eye-rolling, shoulder-punching, "typical bloody QPR eh, wharra they like? Wharra they like eh? Wharra. They. Like? QPR eh. Never change” content we usually just copy and paste onto this site whenever our beloved football team work themselves into a position to go second in the Premier League table but instead shit the bed so comprehensively against ten man Swindon Town — who incidentally haven’t won a game since Jordan still had a hymen — the thing becomes more shit than bed then, again, fine, let’s go through those motions quickly now. (93/94 Olly, 93/94 for goodness sake man, you’ve got the wrong season Gromit). How foolish we were to think that coming out of a period of fixtures where we play the whole top ten away and get enough points to be in the play-off picture ourselves, we’d do anything other than then fall in a heap in a week where you play the bottom two teams at home. Ha ha ha. Lloyd Doyley. John Jensen. Partizan fucking Belgrade. Yadda yadda. Box ticked. I would like to add, however, that in 30 years of Loftus Road attendance, and games missed barely amounting to double figures, I can rarely recall one quite as frustrating as this.
Frustrating not only because Huddersfield were bottom of the league, not only because Huddersfield lost their two best players and manager from the team conned out of last season’s play-off final, but also because their squad list resembles the extras list from an episode of Casualty that starts with a train driver walking up to the cab of a packed commuter train, yawning and remarking to the changeover crew that he "didn’t get much sleep last night”. Take a deep breath and dive in with me as we count Yuta Nakayama (divorced), David Kasumu (beheaded), Jonathan Hogg (died), Etienne Camara (divorced), Matty Pearson (beheaded), Tyreece Simpson (survived) as absentees. Tom Lees has the rona, Pat Mustard didn’t fancy it, Tino Anjorin was poorly, Ollie Turton may not live through the night. It’s a goalkeeper away from a reasonable Championship starting eleven. As the brilliant, and excellently named, local reporter Steven Chicken points out in the local Huddersfield paper today, of those that did play Brahima Diarra had never played a game at this level before, Will Boyle had played one, Brodie Spencer two, Ben Jackson eight, and Ruffels 11. There was a late debut for teenager Luke Mbete. Attacker Jack Rudoni, a summer arrival from AFC Wimbledon QPR should have been all over, was a veteran of this side at 15 second tier appearances, playing out of position as a defensive midfielder.
I worried that postponing this game from its original date might rob us of the perfect chance to get a win over what has been something of a bogey side for us in our most recent Championship stint (one win in the previous eight meetings) but if you can’t beat this patched up rabble, the only team in the league without an away win from eight attempts, in this state, then really when can you?
Frustrating because the R’s got a one goal head start. Three and a half matches without a goal blown away inside a minute as Chris Willock got down the left, crossed low, early and accurately, and Lyndon Dykes slammed in the opener from a yard. It really is that simple. There’ll be praise to come for visiting goalkeeper Lee Nicholls, who made three wonderful saves in the second half; centre backs Michael Helik and Will Boyle (two games at this level of football in his entire life at 27 years of age), who were everything our central defenders weren’t; Ruffels The Gentleman Fullback who somehow scored twice; and Sorba Thomas, whose Ted Talks on crossing from wide and dead ball situations were seen as a bit beneath the home side, and steadfastly ignored. But, unlike on Saturday against West Brom where you looked at the team on paper, saw how it played, watched how hard it worked, and came away concluding that’s probably a side in a false position, here the Terriers looked absolutely wide open and ready to be beaten for me, and QPR couldn’t do it. Couldn’t do it, even with a one goal head start.
They couldn’t do it, primarily, because we’re now back in the same situation we were when these sides last met in April and Huddersfield took the lead with the time in single digits through a Yoann Barbet own goal: opposition corners and free kicks are once again almost equivalent to opposition penalties. Five of the last six goals Rangers have let in have been from dead balls, and Huddersfield like West Brom before them were able to leave with all three points on the strength of their set plays. They were level within eight minutes when Jack Rudoni, despite being outnumbered at the back post two-to-one by Ethan Laird and Sam Field, still won his header back across, and with the whole QPR team sucked into the six yard box and static, Ruffels was unmarked seven yards out to fire into the roof of the net. The second was more shambolic still. A free kick that didn’t even make it to the penalty box, dropped on the edge and was able to be hooked high up, over Seny Dieng, and in, by Ruffels again, from 20 yards out with five men around him watching it happen. Flukey? Well, I remember saying that at Blackburn on day one when we half cleared a corner and Lee Travis chipped it back in over Dieng to win that game, and at Birmingham last week when we half cleared a corner and Auston Trusty stuck a leg out and chipped it back in over Dieng to win that game. Three times in 20 games doesn’t feel very flukey to me, and if every dead ball delivered into your penalty box is a goal, you’re not going to win many games of football. Huddersfield went over the halfway line once in the second half, the excellent Thomas forcing a great save from Dieng, and from that corner, lo and behold, we lost the first contact and second ball again and were lucky to get away with a block on the line. This is a mentality issue, plain and simple.
QPR, as QPR are wont to do, and Beale have made a bit of a rod for their own back having spent the summer publicising, trumpeting and hyping the arrival of a "dedicated set piece coach” to try and make the new manager seem like a trendy, modern, progressive type. They've done it in the past with things like hiring of scouts when they thought it would go down well with the fans — Gary Penrice, Mel Johnson returning - and, again, all that happens is if some of the signings turn out to be crap people go "well what's he fucking doing" and if relationships change or sour (as they did with Penrice) then you have to do a story about them leaving, when in reality at most clubs scouts and coaches come and go all the time and nobody's got any idea who they are. Now you’ve publicised the hiring of a set piece coach, everybody knows who Harry Watling is, our set piece defending remains absolutely disastrous, and without Johansen our attacking ones are crap as well. So now the bloke is on the hook and in the firing line, when in reality at most clubs you wouldn't know what he does or who he is. Now, instead, we don’t know what he does, but we do know who he is.
To be fair to Harry Watling, QPR should have been one nil down after ten seconds in open play. Ilias Chair’s flick on halfway, slapdash and arrogant, gave the ball away. Leon Balogun, in ahead of both Rob Dickie and Jimmy Dunne now and in a rapid personal regression, looked every day of his 34-years creaking out of the line into no-man’s land. Danny Ward had a free run at the goal and Dieng saved brilliantly one on one. You have that let off, you go straight to the other end and score yourself, and you still don’t win the game.
The score remained steadfastly locked at two one right through to the bitterest of ends. That was, in good part, down to keeper Nicholls. QPR were at their best on the night when substitute Taylor Richards was on the ball. Too much of everything else was over complicated, took too long, ran into blind alleys, or lacked quality in the final execution. Richards was calm, composed and effective. Thirteen minutes of that made him our man of the match by a street. His shot from the edge of the box on 80 looked goalbound, but Nicholls brilliantly clawed the ball out of the top corner. His back post header moments later had to go in, but Nicholls miraculously got enough on it to skirt it around the far post — as good a save as you’ll see at the level. When Nicholls then improvised a punch from a cross by another sub, Mide Shodipo, Richards let fly, beat the keeper, but found a man on the line.
Of course Nicholls, and every one of his team mates, desperate for that first away win of the season, began time wasting blatantly, ridiculously early in the game. Referee Gavin Ward did what referee Gavin Ward does — a lot of exaggerated pointing, a lot of rolling his hands around in a ‘get going’ motion, a lot of whistling and demanding it be taken relatively soon if you feel like it, a lot of watch tapping (but not a lot of watch stopping as it turns out, five minutes added to this one which is funnier than any comedy that’s been on the BBC in 20 years), and absolutely nothing by way of punishment, deterrent or action at all. In the end, three yellow cards were shown for time wasting, all in the stoppage time period. By that point it’s done its job, there is no deterrent, you’ve been played. Nicholls’ card, just to really rub it in, was handed out after he’d taken the goal kick, so we had to go all the way to the end of the pitch and fetch the ball back for him to go through the whole routine again. Thick as pig shit. When Thomas was booked, Ward held up four fingers to signal he’d been warned four times about it. Why does it need five incidents for a card? Why are referees so happy to decimate their authority in a game and make themselves look like such complete fucking mugs like this? Who is assessing this guy? Why is this acceptable? Why is football just accepting this and letting it happen? Why? I don’t understand. It’s so, so simple to solve. One warning, when it starts, and then a yellow card, early enough for the bloke not to do it again. It cooks my brain. If anybody needs me I'll be in the bath with my toaster.
But, give an idiot a hammer, and he’ll hit you with it. With a whopping 36 shots in the game, and 71% of the ball, QPR should have taken it well out of Ward’s hands long before the end. Of those, though, just six were on target including the goal. Thirty efforts off target. Thirty of them. Adomah, Willock and Chair, starting as a three behind Dykes in a revamped 4-2-3-1, specialised in blind alleys all night. Willock didn’t look fit at all; Chair couldn’t have tried any harder than he did and in fact that actually became the problem in the end because he was just doing too much and giving everything to make it happen himself; Adomah will always give you the effort but he was painfully ineffective here and ran into more cul-de-sacs than a fucking letting agent. Our set plays, in contrast to Huddersfield, were amateurish — 14 corners won and burned through, zero threat posed. The way Helik and Boyle stood up to those versus the havoc Balogun and Clarke-Salter wreaked on us in the first half was really noticeable — first contact, second ball, defend your box, block, tackle, lather, rinse, repeat. Huddersfield had the minerals for the tough stuff, and we simply didn’t.
Down the Wegerle Stairs and away into the night on the first peep of the final whistle. Left to admire the genius of the person who schedules the date for the fans’ forum, wonder whether that Wolves job is still going, and conclude that a mid-season World Cup and the month off it’s about to bring might not have been such a bad idea after all.
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QPR: Dieng 6; Laird 5 (Bonne 71, 5), Balogun 4 (Dunne 46, 6), Clarke-Salter 4, Paal 6; Iroegbunam 6, Field 6; Adomah 5 (Shodipo 83, -), Willock 5 (Richards 77, 7), Chair 6; Dykes 6
Subs not used: Dickie, Archer, Dozzell
Goals: Dykes 1 (assisted Willock)
Huddersfield: Nicholls 8; Spencer 5 (Hayden 45, 6), Helik 8, Boyle 8, Ruffels 8; Diarra 5 (Rhodes 58, 5), Rudoni 7, Holmes 6 (Mahoney 69, 6); Thomas 7, Ward 5, Jackson 5 (MBete 90+1, -)
Subs not used: Bilokopic, Ondo, Ayina
Goals: Ruffels 9 (assisted Rudoni), 26 (assisted Boyle)
Bookings: Spencer 45 (foul), Ward 75 (foul), Thomas 89 (time wasting), Nicholls 90+1 (time wasting), Rhodes 90+5 (time wasting)
QPR Star Man — Taylor Richards 7 Was calm and effective on the ball, posing a goal threat and hitting his shots on target. This made him QPR’s best player by a considerable distance despite only being on for 13 minutes and stoppage time.
Referee (ostensibly) — Gavin Ward (Surrey) 3 So a few weeks back we had Bristol City away, which for our group means a post-match curry at the excellent 4500 Miles From Delhi restaurant. There’s a chicken dish in there comes with a warning from the chef. Hook it to my veins. I had to drive back from there because of the train strikes but there was beer in the fridge when I got home and a long celebratory sit into the night was held to mark the victory. On Sunday I took my other half out for Sunday lunch as we weren’t seeing each other for the following two weeks because of a work trip, and to go with a big thick roast dinner we lashed out on two bottles of wine and then talked about what a big mistake that was for a while. I have a Monday club with my mates after work where we play football and head off to the pub after that, so you can probably stick another half dozen Peronis onto the intake the day after too, along with a reheated sausage casserole that I’d cooked at some point the previous week and didn’t think would go another day so wolfed down in the middle of the night when I crashed in late and drunk. Tuesday was Sheff Utd, which was preceded by an enormous, spicy calzone at Mama and Leonie’s and the usual beer intake for an away win. By Wednesday I was hanging, I don’t remember the journey home at all, which is a concern because I was driving. Shortly after getting out of my car back at home my body gave a very clear signal that it had had enough, and I had 30 seconds to get it up the stairs where it could have enough in a place where I could dispose of the cards it was about to deal me, or else. Well if it isn’t the consequences of my own actions coming back to haunt me. What came out of me over the next half an hour was like nothing I’d ever seen or smelt before on this earth. It was a fucking sentient being, with wild and dangerous opinions of its own, and it made it very clear straight away that it hated me as its creator. At one point I actually found myself praying for it to stop - surely there could be no more. Absolute costume of a man. I got through a whole can of Sure Body Spray for Men, emptied out into the air in one long stream, just so I could stand to be in the same room as myself long enough to clean up and flush the thing away. It knocked £27,000 off the value of the house. I swear to fucking Christ, it glowed in the dark. Had I, instead of pulling the chain and fleeing the neighbourhood, stuck around, got on my hands and knees, scooped whatever in the name of God it was out of the bowl with my bare hands, put it in a leaky bag-for-life from Sainsbury’s, carried it all the way down the Northern Line in the rush hour and around the Hammersmith and City Line to Wood Lane, walked it down to Loftus Road and out onto the pitch, tipped it out onto the centre spot and stuck a whistle in the top of it, not only would it have been a more pleasurable experience than watching Gavin Ward referee this game, but it would have done a better fucking job of it than he did.
Attendance 12,769 (350 Huddersfield approx.) Thoughts and prayers with you all.
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