A tough ask for QPR to continue their recent improved run, and the better performance against Bristol City on Tuesday, when they visit promotion-chasing Sheff Wed on Saturday.
Mercantile Credit Trophy >>> Saturday October 22, 2016 >>> Kick Off 15:00 !!!!!! >>>> Weather — Cloudy, chilly, dry >>> Hillsborough, Sheffield, S6
As brow-beaten dads across the city reluctantly agree to reach for the central heating switch for the first time it may be too much to bear to cast your mind back to the point of the year when we didn’t all go to work and come home in the dark but if we can stand it briefly, for just a moment, together, let’s consider this.
What if, during that glorious four-day summer we had, I’d said to you that come the change of clocks QPR would be ninth in the Championship, unbeaten in five and just two points shy of the play-offs. That we would already have won three away matches, having managed only four in the whole of last season and just six in the previous two years, including a last minute 2-1 success at Fulham where we’d been 3-0 down by half time on our previous three visits. That we would be above Aston Villa, Derby, Leeds, Wolves, Forest and Ipswich. That a hugely promising and exciting West London-based winger would have emerged from the youth team to become a regular first team player on merit, and two full backs from the same junior team wouldn’t be far behind and also getting game time. That Denzel Washington would start to find his feet and look like a Championship player, and Idris Elba would already have three goals to his name having only made three starts and five sub appearances for his new club, in a new league, in a new country. That we would win two cup games and run a Premier League team close in the third.
I suspect, and there’s the comments section below to set me straight if it’s not true, you’d have been reasonably happy with that and taken it if offered.
Especially given — and this is persistently ignored by the critics of the football management side of our club — that this team is currently being built while budgets are being drastically reduced. And also knowing that the summer signings, for reasons of logic and economy as Aston Villa and Newcastle skew the Championship transfer market horribly, had to come from Poland, Belgium, Germany and Italy with no prior experience of English football and all it’s delicate eccentricities — a game every other day, balls pumped into the channels, Tony Pulis and what not.
And yet some people aren’t happy. Not happy at all.
It strikes me that the perception of how we’re doing, and how we’re actually doing, are quite different at the moment. Let’s take goal scoring for instance. It seems to be the general consensus that the current QPR team struggles to score goals, doesn’t pose an attacking threat, isn’t positive enough and so on. But, accepting that a good few have come from set pieces and penalties, the league table doesn’t back this up at all.
QPR have scored 16 goals this season which is only one fewer than third-placed Brighton, and their much-vaunted striker Glenn Murray who we’d so dearly have loved QPR to sign this summer — something we’re not afraid to remind the club about. It’s one more than fourth-placed Huddersfield and indeed sixth-placed Sheffield Wednesday who most are, nevertheless, expecting to beat us quite easily at Hillsborough tomorrow. In fact, it’s more than 11 teams in this league, and two others have managed 16 as well so only ten teams in the division have more goals than us and, of those, two have scored one more and another two have scored three more. Two of the others are Newcastle and Norwich who look all set to piss the division and go straight back up.
That’s not bad for our toothless, negative, shot-shy team with no goals in it really is it? Just the 21 shots on goal in the midweek win against Bristol City.
Now here’s where that saying about proving anything you like with statistics becomes relevant I suppose because anybody who’s been even semi-regularly to QPR this season would be able to tell you it really hasn’t been very good to watch (outright boring for long periods of time, and I’ve seen some bad football in my days) and, Leeds at home apart, QPR do seem to struggle scoring more than once in a game and killing teams off.
If I’d told you back in the summer that we would only have won twice at home in the league in the first seven matches, and that a team would already have come to Loftus Road and won 6-0 by this stage you’d no doubt have said that wasn’t good enough. Likewise us twice failing to beat the bottom of the table team at home, scoring only once in the process and losing one of them very comfortably 2-0.
The trick is to try and stop passing judgements about whether we’re doing well enough or not after every match this early in the season at all. Five games ago we hadn’t won a match in six attempts, and that was no reason to sack Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink. Now we’re unbeaten in five with two wins from three, and that’s no reason to be commissioning a statue of the guy for Batman Close. We’re 13 matches into a 46 game season of many ups and downs owing to form, fitness, momentum, confidence, inconsistency, fixture lists and so on. Why rush to judge?
Washington is a fantastic microcosm of QPR at the moment. When he arrived everybody was massively over-the-top delighted. We’d spent a few million quid, it was a striker, he’d scored loads of goals at his previous club, he was at Peterborough who we’d seen other clubs plunder for great strikers we wished we’d signed in the past, he was young, he had it all to prove. Brilliant. Photographs, YouTube videos, Vines of Denzel’s first day at training abounded.
By the end of the season — or, put another way, four months, seven starts and eight substitute appearances at a level he’d never played at before — Washington was widely and generally written off. "Not good enough”, "League One player”, "buy League One players end up in League One”, "Ferdinand signing, Hasselbaink didn’t even want him” and so on. Now, last few games — or, put another way, a whopping 25 games into his Championship career — Washington is starting to do bits and pieces and look quite promising. Gosh I mean it’s almost like… it’s almost like seven starts (mostly as a lone striker away from home in an out of form team) and four months into the lad’s first ever attempt at Championship-level football was a bit soon to be reaching any conclusions about a 24-year-old who was playing for St Neots and delivering fucking letters for a living five years ago.
It’s like the surprise that greeted the improvements in Tuesday night’s game with Bristol City really. Who would have thought a team that signed half a dozen players from all over Europe during the summer, and I reiterate is trying to keep building a team and moving forwards while drastically reducing its playing and transfer budget, might need a dozen matches to start finding its feet? Especially considering several players one would think Hasselbaink and Ferdinand consider key to their plans this season — Borysiuk, Cousins, Ngabokoto, Bidwell, Lynch, Mackie even maybe — have been injured for big chunks of the campaign so far.
Hopefully Neil Warnock and Kenny Jackett no longer being freely available will calm the rabid hunger of some for yet more sweeping change, though I suspect when the results inevitably take a dip again — potentially starting tomorrow — we’ll just have that weird thing where QPR fans delight in the results of Cardiff and Rotherham making us look bad (and, presumably, them right, which one suspects is what really matters).
Anyway, game 14 of this nonsense is away at Sheffield Wednesday. Win, we can go above them into the play-offs. Lose, we can go as low as sixteenth. Either way, not greatly important in a league of 46 games where the final play-off spot and the final relegation spot are currently separated by just 11 points.
Links >>> Hillsborough promotion — History >>> Wednesday’s Wembley hangover — Interview >>> Kavanagh in charge — Podcast
Here’s eight minutes of QPR porn for your Friday night.
Team News: The improvements against Bristol City on Tuesday evening were, by all accounts (I’m fairweather these days) down to a change in formation, and the introduction of a midfield three with the energy, legs and positivity of Jordan Cousins, Massimo Luongo and Ariel Borysiuk. Some bad news then, because firstly Cousins limped out of Tuesday’s game along with Joel Lynch and neither are likely to be available here. And secondly, Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink doesn’t seem to be one for keeping the same team.
Team selection this season, apart from specific details like moving Nedum Onuoha to man mark Tammy Abraham (masterstroke), seems to be based around rotating the defence depending on opponent, and then further forward picking whoever the sports science guys say is fittest and freshest. I suspect people would be very disappointed if the likes of Sylla, Luongo, Borysiuk, Washington and others aren't included tomorrow and people’s champion Karl Henry and others are. I’d say prepare to be disappointed, then we won’t get the exaggerated howls of anguish across social media when the team sheet goes up.
Injuries elsewhere — Jack Robinson is, permanently, three weeks away and Jake Bidwell remains out so the Lynch injury means we’re either throwing Nico Hamalainen in from the start for the first time in the league or moving Perch to the left, Onuoha to the right and Hall back into the middle alongside Caulker. Intriguing call that one. Yen Ngbakoto has been filming himself in the gym this week — video just in time for Christmas — saying he’ll be back soon from whatever undisclosed problem he has. Jamie Mackie is a long termer.
What can I tell you about Sheffield Wednesday? Goalkeeper Cameron Dawson is ready to stand in if Keiren Westwood doesn’t recover from measles but Steven Fletcher (mumps) and Barry Bannan (rubella) are back in contention.
Elsewhere: Ah yes it’s this bit again where I have to try and make round 14 of 46 sound tremendously exciting and important. Nigel Clough’s Burton Albion v Brum has been laid on as an opening night cocktail to whet the appetite this evening with Gary Rowett returning to his previous club.
The televised match on Saturday night sees the Seventh Annual Neil Warnock Farewell Tour roll into Nottingham to face the troubled Trees who seem absolutely determined to tear themselves limb from limb this week. Head coach Philippe Montanier is on the verge of the sack, the players are revolting and threatening a strike amidst a row about unpaid bonuses, and chairman Fawaz Al-Hasawi is said to be asking potential buyers of the club for £50m for 80% while he retains the chairmanship, a 20% stake and a salary of up to £1m a year while no longer financially contributing to the club.
Anyway let’s rattle through the rest of this less we start eating into the two-minutes of silence planned to mark the death of the King of Thailand prior to our match tomorrow (no, for once, not kidding).
Tarquin and Rupert are searching for the first class compartment in the Aston Villa Train Wreck, Ipswich are at Newcastle in the Bobby Robson derby, Preston are at Norwich, Brighton go to Wigan Warriors and Wolves host the Champions of Europe. The Mad Indian Chicken Farmers are away to Bristol City this weekend and it’s a case of know your hoops (or, more pointedly, what a hoop is) on East Midlands Trains tomorrow as Waitrose follow us up to South Yorkshire to face Rotherham.
Brentford v Barnsley is this week’s thrilling encounter between two teams beginning with the letter B.
Referee: Chris Kavanagh from Manchester is in charge of this one and given we won 1-0 at Wigan earlier in the season with him I can’t make my mind up whether this is a good omen or if we’ve used up all our credit for the campaign with him. Probably neither. More largely pointless ponderings here.
Sheff Wed: Wednesday suffered a little Wembley hangover with one win from their first six games in all competitions but have kicked on since, winning five and drawing one of the last eight. There have been four draws (one was lost at Cambridge after extra time) this season but all have been away from home with three victories (Villa 1-0, Wigan 2-1, Bristol City 3-2) and two defeats (Leeds 2-0, Brighton 2-1) at Hillsborough so far. A good week with four points from two away matches, including a 1-0 at early pace setters Huddersfield last weekend, suggest the Owls may be starting to click. The 15 goals scored by Wednesday so far is the joint lowest in the top nine.
QPR: Rangers have won more than they’ve lost away from home as it stands, and I cannot remember the last time that was the case. Three victories (Cardiff 2-0, Wigan 1-0 and Fulham 2-1) are offset by two defeats (Barnsley 3-2, Huddersfield 2-1) and a 1-1 draw at Burton. QPR only won four away matches in the league in the whole of last season and have only won six in the last two seasons combined. After failing to win in six, they go into this one unbeaten in five and with two wins from the last three games.
Prediction: Haven’t heard from Prediction League champion Dylan Pressman as yet (to be fair he did file for the Bristol City game where time beat me to writing a preview) but in his absence and buoyed by the optimism that comes with not being at work for the first time in 11 days and 10 nights, I wouldn’t be massively surprised to see us grind out a draw. I’d be less surprised to see us lose 2-0 but anyway…
LFW’s Predicition: Sheff Wed 1-1 QPR. Scorer — Tjaronn Chery
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