QPR couldn’t follow up their spirited victory against Blackpool in the week with another positive result against Blackburn, going down 1-0 to a late goal by Reda Khadra.
When Queens Park Rangers played Blackburn Rovers at Loftus Road in October both teams got exactly what they deserved.
Blackburn - despite starting the season promisingly, despite having the division’s next hottest striker behind the Mitrovic Machine, despite having little to lose that early in the season — came for a nil nil. You could see it in their set up, which reduced prolific marksmen Ben Brereton-Diaz to a deeper, wider role which involved him chasing Albert Adomah’s tail all night. You could see it in the behaviour of their players, who were wasting time and clock running from almost as soon as the time and the clock started to run. And you could hear it from their manager Tony Mowbray - genuinely one of football’s few ‘good guys’, and in general a manager who likes football played ‘the right way’ - apparently incredulous that his team would come to QPR on a Tuesday night and attempt to do anything other than drill down for the most oily nil nil they could find. "Get angry”, I said afterwards. If you’ve come from Blackburn to London, at all that that expense, on a Tuesday night, to watch a team capable of better try to grind out a goalless draw from an eminently beatable opponent, fail, and have the manager come out afterwards and wonder aloud what else he could ever have possibly done… get mad. You deserve better.
This isn’t the latter stages of the Champions League. This isn’t Serie A in the early 1990s. This is the Championship. It’s incredibly difficult and challenging, but the problems playing in this league presents are almost entirely logistical. There are too many games played by too few players in too short-a-period of time. The fixture list is a catastrophe. Great big volleys of eight, nine, ten games delivered straight into the gob of the players, staff and supporters in condensed periods, followed by forced international breaks in which nobody is involved. The competition’s host broadcaster is a malignant parasite, moving matches to ridiculously anti-social times at unacceptably short notice to boost the number of people it can send a letter to in a cost-of-living crisis telling them it'll now cost them £137 a month to watch. Bournemouth fans asked to be in Middlesbrough for 12.30 on a Saturday vent their frustration in song, and the microphones get turned down. Mealy-mouthed cliché-merchants employed as Sky commentators stop wanking themselves silly over their pre-prepared lines and narrative only to say it was "an early start” for the few poor saps in the away end, as if the game magically landed in that timeslot through a spell cast on it by a fucking wizard, rather than deliberate vandalism by their employer. The division is spread from Bournemouth to the south; Middlesbrough and Hull to the north east; Blackburn, Blackpool and Preston to the north west; Swansea, Cardiff and Bristol to the south west and basically everything in between. Zero regard is paid to that. Zero. QPR can be asked to play Hull away Saturday, Middlesbrough away Wednesday, and then have their Saturday home game with Barnsley moved to a 12.30 kick off. They can be asked to play Cardiff away Wednesday night, and Blackpool away Saturday at 17.30. Barnsley away at 20.00 on a Saturday night, then straight to Millwall for a Tuesday night. That’s the problem the Championship poses, far and above the off chance you end up playing somebody who’s actually any good. Jed Wallace looks like fucking Eusebio in this league.
Which is why Ilias Chair’s brilliant winner against Blackburn at Loftus Road felt so good, and was celebrated so hard. You came for nil nil, you wasted time, you shithoused, that was the limit of your ambition, your fans came all that way on a Tuesday night to see that, and you got done when it was too late for you to do anything about it in return. The attitude that a point away from home is always a good result in this league is medieval, and deserves any punishment it gets. The sweet, sweet taste of vindication. And then, on Saturday, my alarm went off a little after five in the morning, so I could wrestle extortionate trains all the way up the west coast, to be in Blackburn in time to see QPR do exactly the same in a lunchtime kick off. Exactly the same. Play for play, blow for blow, right down to the vindicated late winning goal which even I - staunchest of staunch QPR fans, gutted as anybody in that away end - couldn’t help but shrug off as no more than Blackburn deserved. Deserved by the player that scored it - the best player on the pitch by a street and a half bar his finishing; deserved by the team who scored it - the only one showing attacking intent, energy and pace; and deserved by the team who conceded it - who were, for want of a fancier adjective, really rather dull.
I made a note after 12 minutes that we hadn’t been out of our half yet. Nor had we really put two passes together in it. By that point the recalled Tyrhys Dolan had skinned Albert Adomah, Sam Field had been carded for fouling him on the edge of the box and Harry Pickering had belted a presentable free kick straight into Hendrick on the end of the wall. The pressure remained on — and on, and on — after that through a succession of corners. Seny Dieng’s two punched clearances were a highlight. QPR’s insistence on handing the ball straight back to their opponent and starting the whole process again was excruciating. Yoann Barbet’s distribution was wild. Even topping it up with all the little balls between the centre backs Barbet completed just 65% of the 60 passes he attempted — 21 times out of 60 attempts he gave the ball back to the home team. At one point play was stopped, after the ball had gone out for a QPR throw, because Sam Gallagher was injured, and when it resumed Barbet received the ball, drew his foot back, and drilled it straight into touch 40 yards hence. Very sporting, you may say, and perhaps it was, but I’ll take some convincing that he did that deliberately. Very difficult to give the Frenchman a player rating here, because several times he bailed colleagues out with crunching, crowd-pleasing covering tackles without which we would have lost by more, but they were only under pressure to this extent because QPR kept giving the ball away and Barbet passed to the home team more than some of the Blackburn players (Nyambe, Gallagher, Van Hecke, Dolan and Kedra all clocked fewer than 21 completed passes to team mates, Lenihan and Travis had 22 each). He played that same stupid ball straight into the first row of the same stand more than once over the course of the morning, and Rob Dickie liked it so much he started spraying them out on the opposite side too.
Everything in the first half hour was Blackburn. One win in seven, no goals in five, President of Chile-elect absent long term, beaten in the last minute by ten-man Sheff Utd on Wednesday, they should have been tired, fragile and bereft. Instead they came out flying and it was QPR who looked weary and leggy. The recall of livewire Dolan after three sub appearances post injury was a masterstroke — so quick he’d do the far end of the pitch and back in the time it took any of these QPR players to do the halfway line. The lack of pace in our team was never more palpable than here. They pressed high, energetically, and with purpose. They were brilliantly set up, effervescent and keen. You could fairly argue the ball had gone out for a throw by the dugouts on the quarter hour, and the lino was then so busy explaining why he thought it hadn’t that he missed what looked a pretty clear offside against Reda Khadra, but Seny Dieng’s superb leg save maintained the deadlock. By my count this was one of four occasions Rovers got clear in one-versus-one on our goalkeeper in the game.
The corners soon started to rack up. Three, four, five. Blackburn would end with nine of them, and QPR waited until stoppage time at the end of the game for their first. Asleep at a short one after 24 minutes, Seny played it safe with a palm behind at the far stick. Bradley Johnson’s early humiliating click and collect around Stefan Johansen was every bit as painful for us high up in the away end as it was for the Norwegian, once he’d regained admission to Ewood Park. In the QPR midfield, three boys trying to do the same job, with nobody left ahead of them. Later Johnson’s foul through the back of Chris Willock on halfway was every inch the yellow card Field’s had been earlier but referee Jeremy Simpson was suddenly feeling lenient. It was about the only time Willock had been played the ball to his feet too. In the time it took me to note that — and this happens a lot at the moment — QPR had given the ball away from their own set piece. I am sick of looking down to note a QPR free kick or a corner, only to look up ten seconds later to find us panicking on the back foot without the ball. Dolan got in behind Dunne and only a determined recovery by QPR’s best outfield player on the day blocked the ball behind for yet another corner.
There was a really lovely period of the first half, just after the half hour, where QPR ventured off the bus and gave it a go. One and two touch, movement, possession with a purpose, probing, moving the opponent around — like we’re meant to be doing. It soon resulted in Hendrick threading Adomah through to be denied by a terrific Kaminski save, and that was followed by Willock’s cut back deflecting to Chair who should have done much better with a presentable chance. Do that. More like that. There’s always going to be criticism of football managers after a poor result and amidst declining form - in pubs, in the stand, on message boards, on social media, on phone ins. The ‘Monday morning quarterback’ routine is almost as old as sport itself. Everybody - with hindsight, no experience, no access to the condition and fitness of the players, no idea how they’ve trained — thinks they might have done something different to the bloke in charge. When Luke Amos played well against Reading but then came out of the team there were calls rom a lot of us for him to be reinstated, which he then was for Hull at home where he was anonymous. The form and fitness of the three strikers has been so poor that there were several on the message board going for the idea of dropping all of them and pushing Chair and Willock further forward, a win against Blackpool with ten men and it looks like genius, now three days later it’s "a failed experiment” and a whole lot of "I didn’t go all that way at that time of the day to see QPR play without a striker”. If he'd switched the team, and lost, it would have been a tidal wave of DON'T CHANGE A WINNING TEAM. Who’d be a football manager? Warburton took responsibility afterwards for not freshening the team up after a quick turnaround, but if his players had started and maintained a performance level like this little ten minute spell here then they would have won and it would have worked again. This was what it was meant to look like, I presume.
Maybe we’d roped a dope, we wondered. If we had, he was on a long leash. Khadra’s cross four minutes from half time put an opening goal on a plate for Sam Gallagher who wasn’t brave enough to put himself on the end of it, and then offered a coward’s late hit on Seny Dieng which would rule him out of the second half. Soon QPR’s sideways, backwards, sideways, backwards routine was back on stage, and Gallagher muscled out Field when we’d pisballed about for so long and got so close to the away end the only passing options left were people who’d paid to get in. Gallagher set up Johnson who had to score — Dieng saved again. Centre back Lenihan hooked a chance wide of the top corner from yet another corner. Only QPR’s keeper, and Blackburn’s lack of confidence in front of goal, was keeping this level. Two added minutes was an obvious joke for a half with three prolonged injuries to Dieng, Odubajo and Gallagher, but Jeremy Simpson was pulling decisions randomly out of the air all morning, and QPR were glad to get back in the sheds at nil nil.
If we’d hoped for better in the second half, disappointment lay in wait. A very harsh free kick awarded against Odubajo for handling the ball on the ground after he’d seemed to have been fouled himself set up a back post cross which Adomah made an absolute hash of trying to head away, Gallagher returned the ball to the red zone and Khadra’s low drive called Marshall into action for the first time. Jimmy Dunne’s firm but fair sliding tackle repelled Nyambe’s raid down the right, but badly injured the Rovers man and a five-minute break in play followed. We wish him the best, I thought he was terrific before he went off and often gives us a problem in this fixture. Immediately after the restart Dolan was able to dribble all the way to the base of the near post before running out of space and options with Rangers crowding the ball out for a corner. Torn between intercepting and hanging back, challenging or jockeying, Rob Dickie was the latest to get himself in a really rather embarrassing tangle and Rovers were away again until Barbet charged across and cleaned house. That side of his game, like I say, was exceptionally good.
Andre Gray replaced Chris Willock, and made precisely zero difference whatsoever. All that physique, all that power, all that muscle, all that aggression, and never once challenging any of Rovers’ immensely comfortable centre backs under a high ball. Willock had every right to feel aggrieved, not only at being asked a plough a lone furrow up front against three good defenders with zero service, but also at then being substituted ahead of several other more pressing cases — Ilias Chair, a player I love, having one of those days where absolutely nothing he tried went right, all the way down to the final second of the game when Sam Field reached a ball he was a distant second favourite for right on the byline and hooked back into the danger zone only for it to hit Chair on the shins and bounce back out for a goal kick anyway. The return of Sam McCallum for the first time since Forest at home, replacing Adomah who’d been run ragged defensively and looked absolutely gassed, made a rather more positive impact. McCallum at least looked fresh, and positive, and with a bit of pace about him, which is more than most of his team mates who, let’s not forget, were playing game 6/6 in 21 days.
Still, too often, Rangers were trapped. You had to admire Blackburn’s aggressive press in wide areas which forced QPR back and inside time and again and stuck the possession between the centre backs and the goalkeeper. Rangers have some difficult away games coming up, and all visiting scouts will have taken notice of Mowbray’s approach. To a certain extent, you have to give that credit where it is due. The home team played very well. That said, it was extremely frustrating to see the ball passed back and side by Rangers quite as much as it was. They needed more options up top, and they needed what options did exist to show for the ball way more than they did, but several times a low pass was worked into Field, Johansen or Hendrick in the midfield and they turned it back to one of the defenders first time without even looking to see whether there might be a forward option. QPR attempted 463 passes in this game and the centre backs and goalkeepers accounted for 215 of those. Barbet, Dickie and Dunne all topped 60 each — Willock (11), Adomah (18), Odubajo (24), Gray (5), McCallum (9) just about got to that collectively. The backwards and sideways stuff became so chronic I was glad of the large stand behind the goal at the far end acting as a barrier otherwise I’d have fancied the team to beat their away fans back down the hill to the railway station.
When Blackburn and Huddersfield and Preston and Swansea have come to Loftus Road and done similar things to this, we’ve called them on it. Would not want to watch that every week. The Johnson chance at the end of the first half summed it up — backwards and sideways and backwards and sideways and backwards and sideways until there was no more backwards and sideways left, Gallagher robbed the ball from Field and Johnson should have scored. Mark Warburton has done a magnificent job at QPR, and for all the slips lately we’re still fifth which we would have taken at the start of the season. But one thing he has preached since he got here is he wants to play a style of football the fans enjoy coming to watch, and that his success will be judged on how full the ground is. This wasn’t it, or us. Three central defenders, three terribly deep central midfielders, a goalkeeper and two wing backs, pissing about with the ball in their own half. This is the sort of stuff we take the mick out of other teams for doing.
I’m sorry, I don’t mean to be negative, my opinion is probably coloured by the ridiculously early start and expense getting to this game. I exaggerate and go over the top when we win because I’m a QPR fan and I’m happy, and I probably do the same when we lose because even after 30 years of following a team that loses as often as ours you still don’t get used to living with the disappointment. I’m a 125% behind this manager, I love him and this team, I think they’ve been terrific, I look at the league table and marvel at the season and the progress made in trying circumstances, I totally get all the mitigation about fixture congestion, small squad, small budget. As we’ll come onto there were three chances late in the game for Rangers to pull off another Coventry or Bristol City-style smash and grab after which I’d no doubt be trotting out some big, flouncy, colour-laden match report about how you never write off this QPR team that fights to the end, riddled with Moneyball refences and song lyrics — but I can only ever call it as I see it and what I saw here was boring. That’s not us. It’s been us lately, but it’s not us. Middlesbrough away, down to ten men, still attacking to win the game, coming away with a 3-2, that’s us. That’s us. That’s what the manager says he wants. Lose playing like that, I’ll bang the drum, but not like this. I’m not saying tear it all up, make sweeping cuts, get rid of this player, change this formation. It is what it is, a narrow 1-0 away defeat late in the game away to a good team who we have a poor record against, that could easily have been 0-0 or 1-1. Nothing more, nothing less. But, I was bored watching it. There’s no other word, it cannot be dressed in any other clothes.
If they’d got the nil nil maybe you shake hands and move on. To a game we’ll never remember. Pragmatism. Blackburn’s waning confidence infront of goal had sent them down a rabbit hole of plenty of possession but few second half chances. But, as Rovers found in the first meeting, when you do that you run the risk of a moment of genius, a mistake by one of your players, or a poor bit of refereeing shafting you. The winning goal had a little of all three. An initial Blackburn attack down the left was driven by sub Ryan Giles and almost deflected into his own net by Rob Dickie but for an improvised save by David Marshall. Rovers played the corner short, Lewis Travis wasn’t expecting it, Sam McCallum stood his ground, Travis fell over, Jeremy Simpson awarded the softest of soft free kicks (think back to the handball he penalised McCallum for after he’d gone down in similar circumstances and you tell me the difference). Khadra took it, whipped it towards the far post, quite what on God’s green Earth David Marshall was doing with it I couldn’t even begin to describe, and that was the game won. Again, I don’t want to be a dick about this, but we don’t concede that goal with Seny Dieng. Blackburn deservedly in front.
There was then a quarter of an hour of chaos in which QPR discovered that if they were to venture forward every now and again, panic was there for the riddling and goals were there for the taking. Andre Gray was into clear space in the right channel of the penalty area literally straight from the kick off but spent too long trying to work out exactly which one of his feet he’d describe as the favoured one and Rovers muscled him out of it. Do feel free to have a shot. Stefan Johansen had been poor all afternoon, he and Jeff Hendrick frequently trying to do the same job in the same part of the pitch, but his chipped ball over the back of the retreating defence and bending away from Kaminski was a thing of beauty and had Gray in for what looked like a certain equaliser until he took too long and a crowd scene smothered the opportunity. Do feel free to have a shot.
In a frantic finale Marshall’s lousy kick gave Dolan a chance to run clean through, the goalkeeper redeemed himself with a save. Chair’s dire give away gave Ryan Giles a chance to run clean through, the goalkeeper bailed his team mate out with a save. QPR, caught in the high press, lost the ball again, Giles ran through one on one, Marshall saved at his feet and smothered the rebound. Like Barbet, Marshall’s is a difficult mark to give, as he’d cost his team the point, but also prevented it from going to two or three nil. More importantly — STOP GIVING THE FUCKING BALL AWAY.
Simpson started the game carding Field for the first foul in the match. Big day, we thought at the time. Lot of paper he’s going to get through. Pray for the rain forest. He then spent 89 minutes pretending that nothing would ever be a yellow card every again. I thought Travis and Johnson might be able to take up arms and get away with a light warning. Suddenly, with 90 minutes up, everything was a card again. Everything. Kaminski was booked for time wasting and lost his shit. Scott Wharton was booked for time wasting and laughed at the ridiculousness of it. If you thought Field was booked because he fouled Dolan in a dangerous area whereas Johnson only got a warning for crocking Willock because it was on the halfway line, then Ilias Chair was booked for a shirt pull in the centre circle to torch that theory. Travis, previously diplomatically immune, cracked into a horrible tackle from behind on Rob Dickie when the player was going nowhere, way past reckless and into excessive force, and should have been red carded. He, too, finally, saw yellow. Four bookings in four minutes after what he’d allowed to go before, Simpson then added six minutes which - with Nyambe down for five - meant he felt a half of five substitutions, a goal, and two yellow cards for time wasting, was worthy of one minute of stoppage time. You can’t spend 96 minutes playing as QPR had and then bitch and moan about getting another couple more to put it right but, once more, this was not a terrific piece of evidence for the defence of Championship refereeing standards.
Rangers’ one and only corner of the day was dangerous, cleared, worked back out to Chair the taker brilliantly by McCallum’s beautifully executed pass, and then glanced just wide of the bottom corner by Hendrick with the keeper beaten. In the final second a long punt down the field was nodded down by Dunne for Hendrick to steam onto, but he was crowded out. The chances for Gray and Gray, Hendrick and Hendrick, crafted out of little at all in a period of hit and hope at the end of the game, showed just how little there was to fear here, and just what might have been possible if we’d been more positive and committed more body and ball to the attack.
Tired, leggy, slow, and beaten, I suspect they’re really rather grateful they don’t have an FA Cup fifth round tie in midweek after all. It was a long, long day on the road for the faithful high up behind the goal.
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Blackburn: Kaminski 7; Lenihan 6, Van Hecke 7, Wharton 6; Nyambe 8 (Zeefuik 58, 5), Travis 6, Johnson 6, Pickering 7 (Giles 71, 7); Gallagher 6 (Hedges 68, 7), Dolan 8, Khadra 8
Goals: Khadra 76 (free kick, won Travis)
Bookings: Kaminski 90+1 (time wasting), Wharton 90+2 (time wasting), Travis 90+4 (foul)
QPR: Dieng 7 (Marshall 46, 5); Adomah 4 (McCallum 67, 7), Dickie 5, Dunne 7, Barbet 5, Odubajo 6; Hendrick 6, Field 6, Johansen 5; Chair 4, Willock 5 (Gray 62, 4)
Subs not used: Amos, Ball, Thomas, Dozzell
Bookings: Field 7 (foul), Chair 90+2 (foul)
QPR Star Man — Jimmy Dunne 7 It was Seny Dieng up to the point he went off injured, and I don’t think we’d have lost the game if he’d stayed on. Dunne did more than most to get us there anyway, hamstrung by the centre backs either side of him persistently giving the ball away and inviting further pressure. Sam McCallum looked good when he came on.
Referee — Jeremy Simpson (Lancashire) 4 Inconsistent, incapable, incompetent.
Attendance 14,293 (1,007 QPR) I think to take that many, that far, with that start time, is pretty magnificent. Fair play to all who made the effort.
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