While Tuesday's aberration at Blackpool could be written off as the latest horror inflicted on a group missing all of its best players, an utterly devoid of belief and confidence, the manner of the goals conceded was not unusual, has been going on at this club for years, and speaks to a bigger picture.
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"I wish I’d been out there myself, because I wouldn’t have been allowing people free headers like that”. And with that, on Tuesday night, for the first time, Gareth Ainsworth briefly allowed the mask to slip. Ainsworth has been here three weeks, and four games, and the first signs of exasperation with the shambolic group he’s inherited are starting to creep through, just as they did for Neil Critchley at around the same moment of his tenure.
I’ve written a lot about people getting riled up, carried away, or reading too much into pre- and post-match interviews, which managers are required to do up to six times a week, mostly hate, and spend almost entirely saying things that aren’t true. The idea is to get in, say stuff that doesn’t get you fined, tip off an opposition, or create a headline, and get out. Some use it to distract — blaming the referee for all the world’s ills because you’ve lost six in a row and you’re about to get the sack (Dean Smith), telling an amusing story about getting in a taxi with a bird at a nightclub because your alcoholic centre half has fallen off the wagon again (Ian Holloway), saying something absurdly provocative you know will draw headlines in the next news cycle away from the thing they should be talking about (Jose Mourinho, dead cat boss level)... Some just deliberately try and be as boring as possible, so there’s literally no content of any use to anybody to come out of it (Paul Lambert).
Ainsworth’s schtick, so far, has been to be unfailingly positive regardless of what’s gone on. That has, already, at times made him look quite ridiculous. To come out after losing 3-1 at home to Blackburn, and then by the same score at Rotherham, and talk about pride in the boys’ efforts, and how they’d given him everything, is to say black is white, night is day, bad is good, evil is pure and Rob Dickie’s playing well. It’s just a straight up lie, and it’s making these interviews even less worth listening to than normal because being lied to by "I’m a big Chewlsea fan” Mick Beale is one thing, but being lied to by somebody you love and respect is tough to take.
Partly that’s just Ainsworth’s technique, style and philosophy: everything is kept in-house, all external criticism is either absorbed by him or straight batted. It obviously worked very well for him at Wycombe, inspiring immense loyalty in him from his players, and lifting them up to levels they should never possibly have been able to get to. At Adams Park he led one of football’s tightest, most unbreakable dressing rooms, with 100% buy-in from the group, and a small collection of ‘generals’ among the playing squad driving the ethos and upholding the standards for the manager. That’s what he’s been brought in here to generate, and he’s not going to do that by turning into a bloke who abdicates his own responsibility, blames the players for things going wrong, and starts chucking individuals under the bus publicly. It’ll make him look ridiculous to start with, and irritate supporters if he continues to do it through results and performances like he’s had in three of his four games, but cultures like he had at Wycombe aren’t built in a month and he’ll hope and pray the trade off will be worth it when the players "buy-in” and decide they want to play for the guy who has got their back and will go to the well for them whenever they need it.
It’s also partly down to what he’s inherited here. This is a squad that, whatever I’m going to come on and say in this article, is hobbled by a catalogue of injuries to all of its best players. It’s a squad for whom confidence is absolutely rock bottom, after a collapse of a promotion campaign last season, and then the horrible way this one has now gone. Four managers have left in that time, two of whom were allowed to sign their own players resulting, particularly now, in a collection of mostly loans who came here to play for Mick Beale, were abandoned, and now mainly seem to be focused on where they’re going to be next season. To a certain extent you’ve got to ask really what use shouting, screaming, calling them out, criticising them any more than they already have been is going to do. Jimmy Dunne, and particularly Rob Dickie, are just gone. They’ve gone. Wave your hand in front of their face, flash the lights on and off, there’s nobody home there any more. Two haunted boys. We’re relying now on people like Osman Kakay, who’s at least one league above his level, and Aaron Drewe, who (without being too much of a twat) is even more than that as his loan destinations show. Is screaming at them going to make a difference? It’s like howling at the moon/Zesh Rehman.
Ainsworth will also be aware of what happened here with Neil Critchley. I was personally delighted when Critchley came out after the Fleetwood game and said the mentality of this squad stank, that he’d watched their collapse from afar at Blackpool last season and formed an opinion about this group that was now proving wholly accurate, that he wasn’t interested in being part of mediocrity and they would have to step up. Likewise, after the battering at Hull, when he repeated the same sentiment. Finally, a manager saying what a lot of us think. But, where did it get him? It got him one win in 12. It got him the sack. They weren’t having him. Some of them actively hated him, and were happy to say that off mic. As I said during the week, the wins we do get are like trying to shit out a snooker table; they’re tight, tense affairs in which loads and loads of things have to go our way, including every player being on it, the effort levels being at maximum, the refereeing decisions being kind, the good luck being with us… You basically have to run us on take-off power for 90 minutes, and hope we don’t explode or run out of gas before the final whistle. We don’t beat teams easily, or by accident. If anything is slightly wrong with us, or goes a bit awry in the game, we crumple immediately and get trampled. Adversity is not a strong point — one dodgy penalty at Blackpool with 89 minutes still to play is not a valid excuse for a full rectal prolapse. Publicly calling the players out and pissing them off, it turns out, doesn’t help with that. Professional footballers could, should, respond by going out to prove you wrong, which is presumably the response Critchley hoped for. This lot, sadly, as well as not being very good in the first place, are far too pathetically sensitive for that.
Still, Tuesday was so bad that even Ainsworth, whose reaction on the touchline to the sixth goal in particular was one of blind and violent rage, struggled to bite his tongue when the camera was switched on. He also said he’d "learned a hell of a lot about these boys”, which in turn sounded like something we’ve heard before and here’s where I stop buying into the "oh the poor loves are just really low on confidence” chat.
Ironic, really, that it’s John Eustace in town tomorrow, because think back to one of our early chats with Mark Warburton when he said he’d initially intended to come in during his first summer and perhaps do half a dozen in or out, until Eustace had collared him and said that whether he was being retained or not Warburton absolutely should not rely on anything he was inheriting from McClaren and should make as many changes as he possibly could to and shift the "losing mentality and culture” that permeated the group.
There’s been enormous squad churn since then. Warburton did 16 in and out in his first summer alone, including blowing out the previous year’s back four of Darnell Furlong, Toni Leistner, Joel Lynch and Jake Bidwell for his own of Todd Kane, Geoff Cameron, Yoann Barbet and Ryan Manning which later morphed into a back three with the addition of Rob Dickie and Jimmy Dunne among others. Mick Beale’s first action having succeeded him was to try and completely change last year’s first choice defence of Odubajo, Dickie, Dunne, Barbet and Wallace for a four of Laird, Balogun, Clarke-Salter and Paal. And yet what’s still happening? We’re still conceding goals at a frightening rate. Through Holloway, McClaren, Warburton and now the trio we’ve had this season, QPR have conceded 64, 70, 71, 76 (!!), 57, 59 and are already on 58 with nine games left (including Burnley away). We’ve conceded, in particular, throughout this period, from set pieces — 18 this year, once more the division’s worst total. No amount of changing the manager or the defenders has shifted that needle. I was asking Warburton about this to the point of having a row with him in our summer interview of 2020, and we’re still going to Blackpool on Tuesday night three managers, three defences and three years later making opposition corners feel like opposition penalties.
Warbs would only ever say "they’re human” as I pushed him on it, which I guess is the kind way of saying "they’re crap”. One afternoon after I’d turned the mic off he laid out the Nottingham Forest attack he would be facing that weekend, which included Loyal Taylor on £35k a week, and Lewis Grabban on £40k, and pointed out he would be marking them with Conor Masterson who... was not on that much. But the reason even crap sides focus on set pieces and fume when they get them wrong, the reason even Grimsby’s Paul Hurst will say "it’s disappointing to have got done from a set piece” if they lose in that manner in this weekend’s FA Cup quarter final to a team seventh in a league four divisions above them, is because they’re not hard to get right.
You don’t have to be very good, or very confident, to do the basics better than we did on Tuesday night — just mark your man, just win your header, just want it more than he does. This has been going on here for years and years, when the team has been playing well and confident, and when it hasn’t. Players who came in here to be the solution to problems that existed before — Leistner for Baptiste, Barbet for Lynch, Dunne for Hall, Dickie for Leistner, Clarke-Salter for Barbet and so on and on — just regress to being part of the problem themselves, and still every corner we face feels like a goal before it’s even kicked. Set pieces are about training, practising, concentrating and attitude — none of that relies on you being confident, or even very good. You’ve got to concentrate, you’ve got to take responsibility, you’ve got to want to go and win that first header, and that second ball, and we simply don’t.
That losing mentality and culture Eustace spoke of here in 2019 remains today. It’s been going on so long now we — fans and club - seem to have just become resigned and numb to it. I’ve seen QPR execs, players and managers cop fierce abuse from this support base for far, far less than what is going on at the moment. The reason I keep mentioning the regular Saturday night table at Reign for some of our most under-performing, over-paid, frequently absent players; big nights out on the town after we’ve been beaten by Millwall; players mouthing off about managers in pubs; senior players Instagramming days at the golf with Big Racist John, and so on is because I’m struggling to wrap my head around just what is and isn’t tolerated at QPR these days. Do I expect them to live like Monks? No. Do I expect them to be out partying after we’ve just lost at home to Millwall, an eighth home game without a win? Also no.
Gareth Ainsworth comes in and says immediately "we won’t be doing team news or injury updates any more, sorry but that’s closed off now we don’t want to tip off the opposition” — one week later, Tyler Roberts straight onto "the Gram” to say he’s stubbed his toe again, out for the season, focusing on being "the best version of himself”, off back to Leeds, bye Tyler. Neil Critchley - who could have said far, far worse than this- drops an incredibly tame, straight bat comment like "he just can’t get himself going” about Taylor Richards, who’s only been available to start one game all season and played like a fucking tart in that, and he’s straight onto Twitter objecting to it, making life even more difficult for an already dead manager walking. When Richards does then get an outing at Rotherham, he rewards the new manager by stopping slap bang in the middle of a Rotherham attack to do his shoelace, leaving debutant youth team full back Aaron Drewe on his own with two opponents. As usual, the club massively over-hyped Drewe’s decent display against a disinterested Watford side last week, setting him up for an absolute mauling on Tuesday — but at Blackpool he had several more experienced and better players in front of him at various points (Adomah, Iroegbunam, Lowe) who all hung him out to dry with their tracking back and marking. As one message boarder who was there said, you’ve got a situation at Blackpool where Lowe points at Iroegbunam’s unmarked man, Iroegbunam stares straight back at him, so Lowe rolls his eyes and trots over to do the job himself.
Yeh, the injury list is bad. Yeh, the confidence has drained from them completely. And yeh, those two things are lethal when your budget is low and your team isn’t very good in the first place. But so much of what’s going on at the moment is just really basic standards and practices, and we’re just sort of accepting it. Another thing I keep mentioning is the players being applauded off at the end of games. I get not wanting to demoralise them any further, or perhaps wanting to acknowledge the effort of one or two outcasts (Chris Martin and Lyndon Dykes, perhaps, on Tuesday). I get you're not going to boo them back to form, any more than Critchley could shame them into it, and us getting all angry and riotous will just make things worse. But grown men, applauding, and begging shirts from players who’ve just humiliated us 6-1 at Blackpool? It’s about standards isn’t it? Isn’t it? Aren't you just telling these players that you think losing to Blackpool 6-1 is ok? If you caught a bloke fucking your wife are you going to stand there and hand him a towel when he’s done?
Mick Beale comes in during the summer and gives it the big ‘un in every interview about this player and that player he’s bringing in, this agent and that agent he’s talking to. Talks so much about Danny McNamara that Millwall basically resolve they’d rather lose him for free than sell him to us, blowing up what would have been a very good and well identified signing in a position we’ve since had to get a loan in for. Says we won’t be doing loans, then stuffs the team to the gills with loans. Spends a happy Saturday on Instagram in the director’s box at Rangers, with their sporting director, when he should have been scouting our future opposition and/or signings. Being really hot on all of this stuff — the player behaviour, the manager behaviour, the agents, the loans, the standards, the practices, the representing the club - was supposed to be the cornerstone of Les Ferdinand’s pitch for the director of football role in the first place. Now, not only is it running rife again, but when Beale lifts his knickers for first Stoke, then Wolves and finally Rangers, Les and the club’s only comment is that Rangers are a big club, you can’t really blame him for wanting to go, and it reflects well on us that we chose him in the first place.
Similarly Lee Hoos’ whole raison d'etre since he got here was that he wouldn’t always give you the answer you wanted, you wouldn’t always agree with his decision, and you wouldn’t always like him, but the days of the club gambling its future, spending money it couldn’t afford on wanker footballers, breaching FFP, were over and we would have to sell players to live within our means. First chance they got, post Eze sale, and we’ve posted a £24m loss in the accounts which he’s blamed on trying to win a promotion rather than selling players.
All of this eventually comes back to ownership. The people who ultimately call the shots here are benevolent, and we’re immediately dead without them unless they can find an idiot to buy it from them, but they don’t really know what they’re doing and it shows. At the moment it shows in everything we do, right down to fielding that group of players, conceding six goals at Blackpool, five of them from set plays, and having to applaud them off the pitch and be nice to them in the post-match interview because they’re a bit sad and we’re scared of hurting their feelings any more.
For now, Ainsworth has joined outside a transfer window, and so basically has to grit his teeth, bite his tongue, and be nice to these chumps, hoping they do enough to drag him and us over the line still a Championship club. If and when that’s achieved, perhaps we’ll find out what he really thinks of them in the summer’s transfer window. One suspects, it’s not a lot.
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Team News: Come over here with me and let’s see what Bully’s Prize Board has got for you tonight. *Play Jingle Here*. Iiiiiiiiiiin one: "impress your dinner guests, with this complete canteen of cutlery for a sighting of Ethan Laird”. Innnnnnnn two: "mum can sit there and have a good doze, then wake to find she’s got sparkling clothes, with this automatic washing machine, yours if you clap eyes on Kenneth Paal”. Innnnnnnnnnn three: "here’s something to bring you down to earth, it’s a super set of garden tools and wheelbarrow, if you spy a live Jake Clarke-Salter”. Innnnnnnnn four: "aye aye skipper, put it there, in this pine captain’s trunk, yours to take away for a spotting of Chris Willock”. Innnnnnnnnn five: "this complete angler’s kit could be a reel catch, if you can get 90 minutes out of Stefan Johansen”. Innnnnnnnnnn six: "you’ll soon cotton on to this sewing machine, if you can prove the existence of Tyler Roberts”. Innnnnnnn seven: "scare your guests sitless, with this haunted rocking Ilias Chair”. Innnnnnnnnnnnnnnn eight: "for the stews you want to get yourself into, it’s an attractive crock pot and slow cooker, but we’ll need you to match Luke Amos to a real live boy”. And Bully’s Special Prize: "Three into one will go, with this delightful nest of tables, but only if you can ID Leon Balogun”.
Juninho Bacuna, who scored a spectacular free kick (oh God) in the Blues’ recent 1-1 draw at Wigan, returns from a two-game ban for accumulating ten yellow cards. Dion Sanderson, one of a clutch of accident-prone loanees who’ve become a theme of this dire 12 months in the life of our club, misses out on a return to Loftus Road and is done for the season with a back problem. The strain of carrying Troy Deeney around all year has done for Troy Deeney’s hamstring, so he’s not coming either.
Elsewhere: QPR are now nineteenth, with 42 points, and a -20 goal difference. Reading down from there it’s Rotherham with 40 and -10, Cardiff with 39 and -13, Blackpool just the other side of the dotted line with 35 and -15 (note the swing in our goal difference and theirs we caused by falling in a hole on Tuesday), Huddersfield with 33 and -22 and Wigan with 33 and -26.
All five are in action this weekend, with two of them playing each other. The winner of Rotherham v Cardiff, assuming there is a winner, goes above Rangers in the table if we lose. Huddersfield and Wigan have awkward away games at play-off chasing Milllwall and Watford respectively, while Mick McCarthy’s Tangerines look to follow up their rampage on Tuesday with a home fixture against Coventry. The winner of QPR v Birmingham — again, assuming there is a winner of this particular goat rodeo — can climb above Swanselona, who are a point ahead heading into Sunday lunchtime’s TV game with Bristol City, and Reading who have 44 points and face Hull at home.
Potential points deductions hang over several of these teams: Reading have breached their agreed EFL financial plan after a prior breach of FFP regulations — which will happen if you emerge from the hearing in the morning and sign Andy Carroll in the afternoon — which should trigger the suspended six point deduction at least; Birmingham are under two separate EFL investigations into the identity of their owners, and whether Matt Southall and his gang of cowboys were de facto running the club without owning it for at least a portion of this campaign; Cardiff are always up to something; Huddersfield’s takeover by the owners of AZ Alkmaar is apparently being done via pre-packaged administration deal which comes with the standard 12 points off; Wigan have failed to pay their players and staff on time again, a previous similar offence saw the EFL suspend a three-point penalty on the understanding it wouldn’t happen again. Some of these cases — Reading, Huddersfield and Wigan — would seemingly be cut and dried, and yet as ever with the EFL there’s no indication of when the penalty will apply or when we’ll be told about it. If Wigan have a suspended three point penalty for not paying wages, and they haven’t paid wages again, something they’ve already admitted publicly, why the wait to remove the points? The deadline for points coming off this season as opposed to next is this coming Thursday.
Elsewhere, among the more normal clubs, we’re two fixtures down this weekend with second place Sheffield Red Stripe and fifth placed Blackburn playing each other in the FA Cup quarter final. Blackburn were supposed to have their Lancashire derby with Champions Burnley which means, with three of the top five not playing, there’s a great chance for Middlesbrough to close the gap from third with a home game against Preston Knob End, and Lutown to further cement their play-off ambitions away to Sunderland who have done that very QPR thing of looking like world beaters at Loftus Road and then losing every game thereafter. Norwich, four points outside the top six but heading the chasing pack, face Stoke in the only game we haven’t mentioned to this point.
Referee: I’m not sure there’s ever been a refereeing quartet with quite so much previous QPR history coming our way all at once as the four the PGMOL have sent us this week. Not only is the poison dwarf Keith Stroud in charge, but he’s brought with him Mark Dwyer who was the linesman on the Ellerslie Road side of the ground when the pair of them cocked up Charlie Austin’s perfectly legitimate winning goal against Sunderland last season and cost QPR a first League Cup quarter final appearance since the 1980s. On the bench in case of injury is Chuckles Woolmer. Details.
QPR: Tuesday night’s debacle at Blackpool was QPR’s worst defeat since Steve McClaren’s 7-1 at West Brom in August 2018. Rangers have now conceded 58 goals this season, the division’s worst defensive record level with bottom placed Wigan, and torched their goal difference to -20 — only Wigan and Huddersfield have a worse one. The shambolic defending means Rangers have now conceded 18 goals from set pieces along in 22/23, the joint worst total in the division with Swansea. The R’s are now winless in eight games away from home, losing six. Last week’s surprise 1-0 win at home to Watford halted a run of no wins from 13 games, and none from nine at home (one why of the club record), but following it up in that manner at Bloomfield Road means Rangers have now won just twice in 22 games — just shy of half a season of Championship action. That run began with a 2-0 loss at Birmingham in October, when QPR were top of the Championship having won eight and drawn one of the previous 11 games. Rangers have scored one goal or fewer in each of their last ten games, have only scored two goals in a match twice in those 22 fixtures, and haven’t scored three since beating Cardiff on October 19 24 games ago. Having kept a first clean sheet in 13 games against the Hornets, just the eighth shut out all season, the 6-1 loss has restored the recent average of conceding three every time we play — Rangers have shipped 18 goals in their last six outings.
Birmingham: The Blues are above Rangers in the table on goal difference alone, with a near identical record for their 42 points — 6-5-8 at home compared to QPR’s 6-4-8 and 5-4-9 away compared to our 5-5-9. Their goal difference is 11 better than ours, however, following the midweek debacle which saw QPR go from -15 to -20, while Blackpool did the exact opposite and went from -20 to -15, a ten goal swing one hopes will not cost us come May. John Eustace’s side looked very decent in their victory against us at St Andrew’s in October, part of a run of seven wins and just three defeats from 16 games. Their collapse hasn’t been quite as dramatic as ours but they’ve only won three Championship fixtures since Boxing Day, with ten defeats from 15 games including two separate runs of four straight losses. Last weekend’s 2-0 homer against Rotherham snapped a run of one point from five games and was just a second clean sheet in 18, but it was followed up immediately with a 3-0 midweek set back at Watford. Away from home the Blues have won one of their last eight road trips in the league. Scott Hogan is top scorer here with ten, though that’s topped up substantially by an early season hat trick at West Brom — one of seven trebles scored in the Championship this season, three of them by Millwall players.
Prediction: We’re once again indebted to The Art of Football for agreeing to sponsor our Prediction League and provide prizes. You can get involved by lodging your prediction here or sample the merch from our sponsor’s QPR collection here. Our joint predictions of 0-0 on Tuesday lasted 30 seconds, so for what it’s worth here’s what last year’s champion Cheesy and I think this week …
"I've got to the stage that on Tuesday night I laughed out loud twice at our defending. This season and this team can't end soon enough for me. Grapevine is saying Chair and Paal will be back on Saturday. I think Chair will make the difference for us going forward and we could just edge this one.”
Cheesy’s Prediction: QPR 2-1 Birmingham. Scorer — Ilias Chair
LFW’s Prediction: QPR 1-2 Birmingham. Scorer — Chris Martin
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