You'll struggle to find anybody tipping QPR for anything other than last place in the 23/24 Championship season as the overspend of 21/22 and lack of player sales bites down hard on their budget, and the apparently impossible job facing increasingly forlorn manager Gareth Ainsworth has a tough start tomorrow at Watford.
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There is a fatalistic masochism to following a poor football team.
The idea that all events are subject to fate, will inevitably conspire against you, and yet you enjoy the pain so much you return week after week, month after month, year after year for another dose. It suits the British sense of humour perfectly. Like all of the Ashes tests being close except for the one that ended in a draw, I’m not sure you could explain to an American sports fan why you’d not only take two days off work and part with several hundred pounds to watch a team on an 18 month losing streak get done 6-1 at Blackpool at the other end of the country on a cold Tuesday, but then get the same train to the same part of the world at the same cost for much the same outcome at Wigan the following week. On top of that, actually quite enjoy it. The camaraderie with your fellow addicts; the gallows humour, dark jokes and songs about how you’re going to win 7-6; the secret pride you take in the incredulity of your work mates that yes that was really the score, yes it really was that bad (could have been even more, in fact), yes you’ve been to every game and yes you’ll be there again next week. The "we’re fucking shit” chant, or the meme of the lad laughing while pretending to drink bleach, but in the form of a lifestyle.
It is also a form of protection. When you’re too invested and have it all out of proportion the pain, anger and sorrow of defeat weighs far heavier than the joy of victory ever lifts you. I hate losing Chad, hate it, I hate losing more than I want to win. If you go in pessimistic you’re either right or happy, still disappointed but more mentally prepared. As Andre Aciman writes of superstitious people, seeing if a willingness to accept the very worst might induce fate to soften its blow. I’ll often put a negative prediction on the end of these previews whether I believe it or not, so as not to tempt said fate or ruin our chances. That won’t be a problem today, or very often this season one suspects, but that’s a good thing – when we’re really in danger is when we think QPR are going to win.
That all said, I can rarely recall going into a season feeling quite as horrendous about QPR’s chances as I do right now. Nor where the mood is so universally aligned – across the QPR support base, pundits, fans of other clubs, experts, social media, message boards and pub chat, with one or two very seldom exceptions, General Consensus reckons we’re all kinds of Dante’s ninth tier of inferno levels of fucked. For our most recent relegations I recall trepidation but some degree of optimism that lessons had been learnt and the summer signings were of a high standard in 2014; that Mark Hughes had promised we’d never be in that position again and the capture of Junior Hoilett in an insane transfer window had me dreaming of European football in 2012; and that Gerry’s cobbled together team of non-leaguers and cheap buys led by Chris Kiwomya and Rob Steiner would be just fine after a midtable finish in 2000. This time I look at our squad and think if that’s not one of the three worst teams in this Championship then I cannot wait to see what is.
Regular readers (hello to both, good summer?) will be well aware how we got here because we write about it every week. You can lose £39m over any rolling three-year period. Our £25m loss (minus the Swiss Ramble estimated £4.5m-£5m for disallowable costs) pushing for promotion in 21/22 remains in our cycle, but the £4m (effectively break even) loss from the year we sold Ebere Eze which mitigated that now rolls out to be replaced by whatever we lose this season. Wrestling your losses down from £25m and your wage bill from £28m down towards the £5m mark in just two seasons is incredibly difficult to do without a major player sale – had Eze not left when he did it would have been another £24mish loss that season, that is just how much QPR costs to run in its current form.
Doing it without torching your team and getting it relegated is some challenge, and you’re seeing that this summer. QPR were horrendous for the final six months of last season, at one point winning just two of 28 fixtures. They’ve won one of their last 15 at home, scored only five times at the Loft End all year, conceded more than 70 goals for the fourth season in six, were booed and heckled by their own fans who told them they weren’t fit to wear the colours. A summer overhaul was desperately needed for football as well as finance reasons, and indeed 15 players who got first team minutes last term have been jettisoned including the sales of Rob Dickie and Seny Dieng, and an unwelcome return to paying players to leave in the form of Stefan Johansen and Nico Hamalainen. Last week at Oxford, however, all ten of the outfield starters were players who were here last season, and once again even the sort of meagre, inconsequential adversity you face when a half decent League One side gets about you in a friendly was enough to have them crumple into a 5-0 defeat. Gareth Ainsworth has been at pains to promote a change in mentality and mood around the place, but no amount of time spent at Go Ape can mask the frailty of this group of footballers.
Improbably, that team we came to loathe so much through the back half of 22/23 has somehow got weaker still in almost every position. Seny Dieng was so wretched that the experience of Asmir Begovic might be a welcome boost but at right back your options have gone from Ethan Laird and Osman Kakay to Kakay and Aaron Drewe; your centre backs from Dickie, Dunne, Balogun and Clarke-Salter to starting tomorrow with left back Morgan Fox and whichever one of the four kids Deon Woodman, Henry Hawkins, Joe Gubbins and Trent Rendall has impressed most in the friendlies; the central midfield options until 33-year-old Jack Colback gets up to speed are Sam Field and Andre Dozell who’s looked as inspid as ever all summer; up front we’ve gone from Lyndon Dykes, Chris Martin and Jamal Lowe (bad enough as it was) to Dykes with one of Sinclair Armstrong or Charlie Kelman. Chair and Willock remain, and Ainsworth has been keen to talk up their form, fitness and attitude, but it's not showing through on the pitch much yet bar one hot ten minutes at Wimbledon. Ziyad Lakerche coming in to cover Paal instead of Travelman is arguably the only outfield position you could say is improved, and if Larkeche is anyway decent may open up the possibility of Paal moving further forwards.
Ainsworth has also thumped the tub about an improvement in medical and sport science at a club where availability of key players has been an enormous issue, but his star summer signing in attack (who was previously released by the club because he couldn’t get fit) has only played 30 minutes in Austria, 22/23 problem child Jake Clarke-Salter lasted a quarter of an hour against Slavia Prague (ring the "bit of a calf problem” bell), and our only other senior centre back Jimmy Dunne’s shoulder has exploded into a thousand pieces.
You cannot help but feel for Ainsworth - who has coveted this job since retiring as a player, and left the most secure position in the whole EFL at a club he’d built in his image for ten years to take it on – getting his dream gig now, at this point, when it’s in this state. His schtick is he’s Mr Positivity, driving those around him onto greater things than they ever believed possibly through the power of upbeat energy and good vibes. He over achieved consistently at Adams Park, but was given time and space to build towards that end – "I’m a builder, not a turn around manager, I had to be a turn around manager here last season but by the end of it I was frazzled, more so than ever before in my career” he said last week. Perhaps in an effort to buy himself that time at a club with far loftier expectations and better resourced owners than Wycombe, to protect his players from a hail of abuse if this season goes as it might, or simply to foster the sort of us-against-the-world underdog mentality he used to great effect in his previous job, positivity has been thin on the ground from him in his more recent interviews. He’s been more like Eeyore with a killer hangover. More Broken Neck Blues than rock and or roll.
There’s been talk of being "scared” of a division gaining three big Premier League names and two of the best sides promoted from League One in many a year. Post Oxford debacle there was talk of us being "up against it” and how "tough” everything is and is going to be. The long, long overdue clampdown on timewasting, injury feigning and general shithousing announced by the EFL last week (the PGMOL sent Keith Stroud to do our presentation to the players at Heston, would you believe) has been slammed by Ainsworth to such an extent it’s difficult not to conclude that was our plan A, B and C for 23/24. I mean, I know, I get it, I feel like I get it more than a lot of people, but still, when can we expect the positivity to start? The Hakas will continue until morale improves.
The thing I’ve been most surprised about is the profile of the incoming players. There is, obviously, zero FFP headroom which means £400k for Chris Forino from Wycombe, £300k for Josh Knight from Peterborough, matching Reading’s contract offer for Lewis Wing and the like, just cannot be done. That we’re trying for these players regardless, and either failing, falling over, delaying, or not getting them over the line, makes me think they’re expecting another sale which may open up a little breathing space. Ainsworth has said he expects "another out or outs still to come”. If that does happen perhaps we’ll see a little more of this but I was personally expecting something of a parade of free transfer and nominal fee buys from Leagues One and Two this summer, divisions which Ainsworth himself has boasted of his in depth knowledge and intent to plunder to build a squad in his image.
So far they’ve added Leyton Orient’s Paul Smyth, who was at QPR until two years ago anyway. You don’t need knowledge of the lower leagues, data analysis or a recruitment team to target Asmir Begovic, Morgan Fox or Jack Colback do you? Like I say perhaps this will change if another sale loosens the purse strings, and maybe they’ve prioritised the obvious lack of voice, experience, leadership and street smarts we’ve long bemoaned first. But for all the talk of "oh God he’s going to turn us into Wycombe MkII" actually there’s been next to none of that at all. There have been some very good free transfers kicking around at that level – a couple of them torched us for Oxford a week ago, another at Plymouth I’ll come onto in a second would have been a wonderful pick up in a position we’re desperate to strengthen. I would actually have preferred a few more of those rough diamond, Eredivisie, League One and Two signings to write about and get behind, potentially finding a new Bright Osayi-Samuel at Blackpool or something like that. Not scratching around trying to make a case for Morgan Fox maybe being not that bad after all and a potential three year contract taking Jack Colback to his 37th birthday a case of needs must.
And yet the reason for optimism is Ainsworth himself, and his erudite, intelligent and thoughtful assistant Richard Dobson. They should have him talk more, I calm down when he speaks. They have consistently, for a decade, achieved results far beyond what should have been possible with the ability of player they had at their disposal and the finance available to do anything about it. Wycombe was a League Two club and team, promoted into the Championship and within a point of staying up in 20/21. They did it through team spirit, togetherness, sports psychology, mentality, resolve, pragmatic and adaptable game plans, dark arts and street smarts – all of which have been painfully lacking at our club for years. The first thing any new manager is going to want to know coming into the building, other than his own salary, is how much money there is to spend on the squad. That will limit the profile and ability of manager who wants to come here. Ainsworth walked out on his job for life to take this, eyes wide open to the task.
He'll need everything he’s learned along the way and more to keep this squad in this league. Statue on Batman Close time if he succeeds in what would certainly be his biggest achievement in management by some distance.
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Team News: Little more than a week ago at the new Heston training facility, Gareth Ainsworth told a group of fan sites and podcasts Paul Smyth had a minor groin problem which they hadn’t wanted to risk in pre-season but that he would be involved at Oxford on Saturday. No more than 48 hours later we arrive in Oxford to find no Paul Smyth. Ainsworth believes he gains some sort of advantage over opponents doing things like this but last year it helped make pariahs of players we were told had nothing much more than a "calf problem” wrong with them but nevertheless missed six months of football.
One of those, Jake Clarke-Salter, remains sidelined once more after lasting 14 minutes of the first friendly against Slavia Prague. There seems to be some suggestion Jimmy Dunne’s shoulder injury picked up in the final friendly isn’t as bad as it first appeared when he left the field on oxygen, but if he’s not fit for the opener then the centre back choices are down to Morgan Fox, who’s completed just 60 minutes of action this summer, and whichever one of Joe Gubbins, Deon Woodman, Trent Rendall or Henry Hawkins has impressed enough out of the creche. Hopes of getting another centre back over the line by Friday’s midday deadline didn’t materialise. Daniel Ayala has been spoken to, and there are deals to be done for Peterborough’s Josh Knight or Wycombe’s Chris Forino if QPR can cobble together funds for either. Ainsworth says he expects "at least one more out or outs” still to come in a close season which has already seen 15 players who got minutes last season depart, perhaps we’ll have to wait for that before any significant new arrivals.
Jack Colback has signed on a chunky two-year contract with an option for a third at 33 years of age (34 two months from now). He hasn’t started a game of any sort since March 5 and has only started four times in 2023 so may take a while to get up to speed. Asmir Begovic will certainly debut in goal.
Watford have worked through three managers in each of their last three seasons. By the end of 2022/23 Chris Wilder felt compelled to castigate the players, culture and dressing room publicly as one of the pre-season tips for promotion slumped to a final finish of eleventh. Big names Ismaila Sarr and Joao Pedro have moved on for the thick end of £50m, two of 15 first team departures this summer. Former Barnsley and West Brom boss Valerian Ismael is the new man in football’s hottest seat and he’s made changing the mentality around the place a top priority as he tries to get buy in for his unique, extreme style of play – five players turned up late for the first day of pre-season training, he said this week.
Whether 33-year-old Jake Livermore, who struggled to keep up with the pace of Ismael’s preferred style two years ago at West Brom, and Reading’s Tom Ince, already injured for this day one clash, are going to help much in this regard we’ll see in time. Tom Dele-Bashiru is also injured. Watford didn’t name a number nine in their squad this week with plenty of potential striker irons still in the fire, although their pursuit of Kieffer Moore appears to have been scuppered by the pull of a return to Cardiff. For now it’s Vakoun Bayo, four goals in six starts and 19 sub apps last year before a loan move to Charleroi, and new arrival Rhys Healey, a former MK Dons prospect who scored 20 goals in 32 appearances as Toulouse won France’s Ligue 2 the season before last, up front. Goalkeeper Dananananananana Bachmann has been made captain and handed a new five year deal, the reaction online to which was so extreme it’s sparked a debate about the abuse of footballers on social media.
Elsewhere: All three of the teams relegated from the Premier League feature in the Sky picks in this opening round of the Mercantile Credit Trophy. That begins tonight when Russell Martin starts life at Southampton away to newly promoted Sheff Wed. The Saints are still in something of a state of flux, with £100m-worth of sales for the likes of James Ward-Prowse and Kyle Walker-Peters still to go through. Wednesday’s promotion, meanwhile, has reawakened owner Derek Chansiri who’s quickly set about repeating all of the mental, megalomaniac bat shitness that got them relegated in the first place. That’s right, the ten year season tickets are back, yours for a cool £8,000 which has to be paid in cash as they can’t process a credit card transaction that large in the box office. You do get a photograph with the Premier League trophy when they win it, mind.
Having a Sky subscription was akin to owning a Leeds season ticket last time they were at this level so no surprise to see their Sunday clash with Cardiff on the box as Daniel Farke starts life at Elland Road and Aaron Ramsey settles back into valleys life. Before that it’s title favourites Leicester in their local-ish derby against losing play-off finalists Coventry, and later it’s been deemed acceptable to make Ipswich Town travel to Sunderland for a 17.00 kick off on a Sunday evening for their first game back in the league after four years away. Host broadcaster starting as they mean to go on there you fear.
Some real, genuine intrigue – and Stoke v Rotherham – among the seven other fixtures kicking off on Saturday afternoon. Middlesbrough arguably lead the fancies among the non-parachute payment clubs but have lost loanees Cameron Archert and Ryan Giles without replacement and Chuba Akpom is making the most of the first hot streak of his entire career by demanding a huge wage increase or transfer. They start at home to Millwall who’ve added Joe Byan and look very solid indeed to me.
Blackburn, having already lost star man Ben Brereton-Diaz, are now on the verge of having excellent goalkeeper Thomas Kaminski carted off by Luton on the eve of their clash at home to cash-strapped West Brom. Bristol City are still wrangling with Wolves, Bournemouth and others over £25m for Alex Scott – the successes of Jarrod Bowen and Ebere Eze apparently still not waking the Premier League up to the idea it’s better to pay that money now than have to shell out £50m for them a couple of years later – while their opponent this weekend Preston Knob End are debating whether they’re short enough to need to pay a £1m loan fee for Everton’s hairy Love Islander Tom Cannon.
There’s rarely been so little optimism around Norwich City ahead of a second tier season. Teemu Pukki is gone, and the additions of Ashley Barnes and Shane Duffy feel like those of a team preparing for a long sit at the Championship table. Hullspor, who travel to Carrow Road, are finding FFP a headache after last summer’s trolley dash through Eastern Europe. Brighton’s Aaron Connolly has joined permanently, but only on a one year deal, and they’re the latest side to try and get a tune out of Man City youngster Liam Delap, who played for Stoke and Preston last year like he’d put his boots on the wrong feet. The Tigers were the hardest call on the coupon in our annual season preview, though Liam Rosenior feels like the real deal to me.
Newly promoted Plymouth have signed well – quite why Swansea and Norwich were in such a rush to ditch Morgan Whittaker and Bali Mumba on the cheap I don’t know, and with QPR potentially starting the season with Joe Gubbins and Trent Rendall at centre back it’s frankly criminal that Twente’s all-action Spanish centre half Julio Pleguezuelo has ended up heading to Home Park on a free transfer when the former Arsenal trainee’s whole reason for returning to the UK was because he wanted to be closer to family in London. What the fuck are we doing, seriously? The Green Army have an ideal chance to get off to a winning start with their home date on the ill-advised Sixteenth Annual Neil Warnock Farewell Tour. If you’re looking for three worse teams than QPR, Huddersfield could be a sound bet.
Michael Duff’s reward for sterling work at Cheltenham and Barnsley is the task of adding some much needed steel and pragmatism to Russell Martin’s idealistic Swanselona project. It’s a tough task to start, Birmingham City have had the takeover they craved for so long, Tom Brady and all, and did some good early business – and Tyler Roberts – in the summer transfer window.
Referee: Thomas Bramall made peculiar decisions and big mistakes in all three of his QPR fixtures in 22/23, but the young Sheffield official has been fast tracked onto the Premier League list – via a couple of appointments in Japan’s J-League bizarrely, regardless. He’s in the middle for this one. Details.
Watford: A pretty dire end to 22/23 for Watford as they rattled through Rob Edwards, Slaven Bilic and Chris Wilder as manager and won just four of their last 20 matches to slump to eleventh. It was the first time in ten years Watford weren’t either in the Premier League or being promoted back to it. All four of those victories came at Vicarage Road (2-0 against Stoke and Bristol City, 3-0 against Birmingham and 3-2 against West Brom) where the form has held up relatively well. They’ve lost three of their last 14 games on this ground dating back to Christmas. Joao Pedro (11), Ismaila Sarr (10) and Keinan Davis (seven) contributed 28 goals to the Hornets total of 56 – none are still with the club. A mixed bag of opponents and scores in Watford’s summer programme – 0-0 with local Conference side Boreham Wood, 1-1 with training ground pals Arsenal, a 2-1 loss to Crystal Palace, and then a 3-0 victory over Peterborough in the final friendly. Right back Joao Ferreira, centre half Christian Kabasele and winger Domingos Quina (who scored a long range winner for lowly Barnsley against QPR in 21/22) have all joined Udinese this summer, making it 69 separate transactions between the two clubs 59 of which have been loans or for undisclosed fees.
QPR: Rangers are actually unbeaten in their last three competitive away fixtures, with an unlikely draw at West Brom, miraculous win at champions Burnley (their only home defeat all season) and hard fought victory at Stoke putting a surprise seven points on the board and rescuing the R’s from what felt a certain relegation. That followed a run of one win in 14 road trips, and two wins in 28 matches overall. One of those victories came against Watford, Rangers’ only win at Loftus Road in their last 15 attempts. The two wins over the Hornets was QPR’s only double of 22/23 and the performance at Vicarage Road at the end of August was rarely matched and never surpassed. The Hoops have won their last two visits here, Albert Adomah with the winner on both occasions, and are unbeaten in seven league meetings. They haven’t lost in four trips here.
Gareth Ainsworth has been at pains to point out this is only his fourteenth game in charge after switching from Wycombe in February. Eight of those have been lost and only three won, but this team had been cratering long before he arrived, losing consistently for 18 months across four different managers. They have lost 19 of their last 30 games, and going all the way back to January 2022 35 of their last 67 with just 17 wins in that time. Only Blackpool (72) conceded more than Rangers’ 71 goals last term and there were just eight clean sheets from 48 games played. It was the fourth time in six years QPR conceded 70+ goals in a season, and in the one before that sequence began they shipped 66.
There hasn’t been much encouragement to be had from Rangers’ pre-season results. A 3-0 defeat to a very good Slavia Prague side was followed by a narrow 2-1 win against Steyr, relegated from the second tier of Austrian football last term. League Two Wimbledon equalised Lyndon Dykes’ fortuitous opener in the first UK friendly before a 2-0 win against a very young Reading side and then a 5-0 debacle at Oxford last Saturday.
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. Last year’s title was a straight shoot-out between Aston Hoop and WestonSuperR with Aston prevailing on the final day. Victory comes with the double-edged sword of writing this bit of the preview each game and that could be a particularly bleak task in 23/24, so let’s see what he thinks of our chances on Saturday…
"Obviously centre back a major issue. No idea how fit Fox is other than that he came through 60 minutes v Hanwell and will almost certainly have to start and play 90 minutes here. For some crazy reason, I'm going Kelman over Richards simply because I liked the hold up man/poacher link-up him and Dykes had against Reading's kids. Plus Kelman looks fit and looks interested which is nice. In reality that won't happen, I reckon Ainsworth starts Adomah and plays Chair more central. I think Smyth and Armstrong won't be ready to start but can have an impact from the bench. Colback not ready to start either but he'll inevitably play instead of Dozzell eventually.
"4-0 home win unfortunately. Lack of any centre backs is going to be a massive problem, cobbling together a half-fit Morgan Fox plus whoever joins in the next few days. I don't think Watford are particularly good or have any kind of confidence coming into the season but don't think it'll matter much for this one.”
Aston’s Prediction: Watford 4-0 QPR. No scorer.
LFW’s Prediction: Watford 2-0 QPR. No scorer.
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