Injuries and illness are biting into QPR's promising early start to the season ahead of tonight's League Cup tie with Oxford.
Rumbelows Cup, second round >>> Tuesday August 24, 2021 >>> Kick Off 19.45 >>> Weather — Dry, sunny, nice >>> Kiyan Prince Foundation Stadium, Loftus Road, London, W12
Just three weeks on from finalising the LFW Season Preview for 2021/22, and already some of it looks very stupid. It doesn’t look like we’re going to be far wrong with Derby, Hull, Preston, Huddersfield and Bristol City at one end, nor Fulham at the other, but the idea an ageing West Brom side would struggle with Valerian Ismael’s murderball already feels like wishful thinking while our call that Sheff Utd’s squad strength allied with Championship promotion specialist Slavisa Jokanovic was a marriage made in heaven seems dead on arrival. The challenge of predicting this most mental of football leagues before a ball is kicked, and a month before the transfer window closes, laid bare by the early results out of Bramall Lane especially.
Of course, equally daft is trying to draw conclusions after little more than a fortnight. At the risk of repeating myself, Barnsley didn’t win for seven matches in 2020/21 and ended up being the division’s team of the season. At this point, really, all you’re looking for is clues. At QPR, there are plenty of indications that our prediction of fifth could come to fruition. Rangers have started well. Eight points from four league games, nine goals scored, five points recovered from losing positions, six different goalscorers, two away wins to make it five in a row on the road… all this and more bodes very well.
Obviously the slow starts to games is less encouraging. While Rangers’ ability to recover — those five points take us to 39 retrieved from losing situations since Warburton took over which is easily the best total in the division — is admirable, Millwall, Boro and Barnsley could all easily have been out of sight before we even started to play in those games. You won’t keep getting away with that, particularly against the better teams in this division. There’s only been one clean sheet, and that was with a degree of good luck against newly promoted Hull who played much of the second half with ten men.
The big worry at the moment though is the depth of the squad. Warbs Warburton prepares a tightknit unit, where everybody is training with a realistic eye on a starting place at the weekend. The club is proud of the work done by its sport science and medical teams, which got us through last season’s truncated seven-month and Covid-afflicted campaign with only really Luke Amos and Lee Wallace out for any serious length of time and one isolation through contact tracing with Lyndon Dykes the only pandemic problem. So much so that QPR have actively gone out and signed players who have struggled with injury previously — Amos, Wallace, Sam Field, George Thomas, Jordy De Wijs, Moses Odubajo — confident that the care they receive here and bespoke training programmes will get them right. Taking on players other clubs may be suspicious of has been a good source of bargains for QPR in their budget shops.
But, even with the best medical team in the world, Rangers were always going to be lucky to go through a season quite as healthily as they did 2020/21 and here we are early in August already in something of a squeeze. Ilias Chair has had Covid, Lyndon Dykes and Sam McCallum continue to struggle with a mystery bug, De Wijs’ has rolled his ankle, Field is out for several months, Odubajo has been suspended and here we are having to call off B Team fixtures to try and get a team together for the pesky League Cup second round tie with Oxford this evening.
I’ve spent 20 years writing this site, bemoaning the attitude of QPR and its managers to cup competitions, particularly this one which represents our only realistic chance of ever winning anything ever again. I’ve pointed out that Newcastle, Bournemouth, Brighton, Leicester and Brentford all combined Championship promotions with runs to at least the quarter finals of this — something Oxford did while also reaching the play-offs and competing in the EFL Trophy the season before last, and Bradford previously saw all the way through to the final while doing likewise. It can be a momentum builder as much as a burden, and we’ve seen several times in recent years, most egregiously when Schteve left everybody out for a third round tie at Blackpool and then got thrashed at Swansea that weekend anyway, that resting the bulk of your side for the midweek can backfire as much as benefit. But given how slim our squad looks at this point, I wouldn’t hammer Warburton too much for rather sacking this one off. The question is, does he really have much of a second string to throw in?
I have to say I was surprised, not that Faysal Bettache and Connor Masterson went out on loan because such spells have been key in the development of Ilias Chair, Ebere Eze and Seny Dieng, but that we didn’t wait another week to do it so they could be involved in this game. I’d be much more comfortable with those two in the side tonight than risking Rob Dickie and/or Stefan Johansen again, especially as Bettache was the pick of the QPR players in the first round at Orient. The priority this week is surely getting through with a win against Coventry under our belts by any means necessary, regather and rejuvenate during the international break, and then attack the slightly lighter fixture workload in September.
Still, Warburton has done more than enough to earn trust in his decision making. Past experience of these games tells us his team selection tonight could easily be the most interesting and exciting part of the whole thing.
Links >>> The Bald Eagle — History >>> Another Oxford rebuild — Interview >>> LFW reciprocal piece for Vital Oxford — Interview >>> Nield makes QPR bow — Referee >>> Oxford official website >>> Oxford Mail — Local Press >>> Last Word on Sport — Contributor Blog >>> Vital Oxford — Contributor Blog >>> Yellows Forum — Message Board >>> The Fence End — Podcast >>> T’Manor — Podcast
Team News: The team selections are often more interesting than the games in the early rounds of this competition, and that could well be the case again tonight where you’d need to be some kind of soothsayer to be able to predict what 11 Mark Warburton will go with. Captain of Glasgow Rangers Lee Wallace (hamstring), Sam Field, Luke Amos (both knee), Jordy De Wijs (ankle) are all definitely out while Sam McCallum and Lyndon Dykes have an ongoing illness which renders them doubtful. Moses Odubajo returns from a one match ban after his red card at Middlesbrough. Faysal Bettache was man of the match for Rangers in the first round at Orient but has since been loaned to Oldham, and Connor Masterson has gone out to Cambridge restricting options further. Jordan Archer will likely replace Seny Dieng in goal and I’d be surprised if there’s any game time at all for Charlie Austin or Stefan Johansen ahead of the weekend game with Coventry. Expect big minutes for Saturday’s fall guys George Thomas and Andre Dozzell, and possibly Charlie Kelman and Stephen Duke-McKenna who scored twice in the U23s 4-3 win against Hull last week. The first fixture for the new B Team has been called off at Wealdstone owing to "injury and Covid-19 in the QPR camp” which either means we’ve got a mini-crisis on our hands early in the season, or a number of players who would have been playing in that fixture will now be going in against Oxford instead. How bad do things have to get before Todd Kane comes in from the cold?
The U’s are promising to field a strong team though will be missing Sam Long and experienced winger James Henry. Manager Karl Robinson said: "QPR are my London team and always a club I look forward to going to. Loftus Road has a great feel about it, a ground built up the right way. I have been lucky enough to have some good results there so it’s a game I can’t wait for.”
Elsewhere: Big clump of 22 fixtures taking place tonight, with some of the Premier League’s lesser lights joining us at this second round stage resulting in such glorious mismatches as Barrow at home to Aston Villa. I’d say Wolves face a tricky task having been drawn away to Nottingham Florist but given Chris Hughton’s side have lost all four league games so far and plunged themselves into one of their thrice-yearly crises perhaps not — maybe they should try sacking the manager again? Sheff Utd, another side enduring surprise early struggles in the Championship, host what remains of Wayne Rooney’s Derby County.
Other Prem vs The Rest ties see Everton head to Sporting Huddersfield, Leeds host Crewe, Norwich host Bournemouth, Spartak Hounslow play Forest Green Rovers and Brighton head to Cardiff while Watford and Palace is an all top-flight affair. There’s a local derby between League One rivals Wigan and Bolton and Preston Knob End’s dire start to the Championship campaign probably didn’t need a trip up the coast to League One newcomers Morecambe right at this moment.
Three games tomorrow with a ropey looking Southampton side heading to perennial giant killers Newport County, an all Premier League game between Newcastle and Burnley that I suspect even they’re struggling to be interested in, and Championship pacesetters West Brom hosting relegation-haunted Super League alumni Arsenal.
Referee: Tom Nield has spent the pandemic fighting Covid-19 from the frontline as a lead nurse in West Yorkshire. It’s his first QPR game tonight though Oxford are unbeaten in five outings with him, including two big away wins. Details.
QPR: Rangers survived a second half scare and penalty shoot out at League Two Leyton Orient in the first round, but will be wary of Oxford having been dumped out (klaxon) of this competition by League One opposition for the last three seasons — Plymouth in the first round in 20/21, Portsmouth in the second in 19/20, and Blackpool in the third in 18/19. Mark Warburton’s side have made an unbeaten start to the season with two draws at home and two wins away in the league to go with the cup progress, but they’ve been behind in three of the four league games coming from one down against Millwall and Boro, and two against Barnsley at the weekend. Charlie Austin’s late equaliser against Barnsley was the eighth goal he’s scored against the Tykes, five for QPR, more than he’s managed against any other club. Rangers are now unbeaten in seven competitive games going back into last season, and if they make it eight tonight it will be the best run since a sequence of ten in March 2011. The R’s last played a competitive fixture with Oxford in 1999 when the teams shared a division for three seasons. Although disastrous defeats at the Manor Ground, including a 4-1 in 1998/99 which cost Ray Harford his job, peppered that time, Rangers did remain unbeaten across four league and cup games with the U’s at Loftus Road. This is the fifth time these sides have faced each other in a cup, most recently QPR winning 3-2 on aggregate across a two-legged League Cup tie in 1995/96. The only time Oxford have come out on top in those ties was in some cup final or other. Alan Wilks’ five goals scored in QPR’s 5-1 win in the League Cup in 1967 remains the club record for goals in a single game.
Oxford: Oxford’s 2-1 defeat at Bolton at the weekend, having taken an early lead, was their first in league and cup this season having beaten Charlton and Crewe at home and drawn with Cambridge and Burton away. There have been penalties scored in three of Oxford’s four league games so far (two against, one for) and their first round tie in this competition was settled on spot kicks 4-2 in their favour after John Mousinho’s 90th minute own goal cancelled out Nathan Holland’s 85th minute opener. Their last three ties in this competition have gone to penalties, with a victory after a 1-1 draw with Wimbledon in round one last year followed by an exit after the same scoreline against Watford. In 2019/20, with Rob Dickie at centre half, they beat Peterborough 1-0, Millwall on penalties after a 2-2, Premier League West Ham 4-0, and Sunderland on penalties after a 1-1 to reach the quarter final of this competition where they succumbed to Man City 3-1 at home. Oxford are unbeaten in five games across four seasons with Tuesday’s referee Tom Nield, a sequence that has seen them concede just once, win 4-1 away at Peterborough, 4-0 away at Southend, and draw 0-0 on three occasions. Last season Oxford made the play-offs in sixth, on goal difference ahead of Charlton, but they did so with a pretty mediocre away record - nine away wins was the lowest in the top eight, while ten away defeats was the worst record in the top half of the table.
Prediction: As I said pre-Orient, these things are often won and lost on the team selections. It could be that injuries and illness force Warbs into playing first team players he would otherwise have liked to rest, in which case we’ve probably got a better chance tonight and a worse chance on Saturday. Or it could veer towards picking an even scratchier team than he was going to already, with some kids involved for big minutes really before they’re truly ready, in which case we could be bang in trouble if Karl Robinson takes it as seriously as he hinted pre-match. Could be a long night.
LFW’s Prediction QPR 1-2 Oxford. Scorer — Charlie Kelman
If you enjoy LoftforWords, please consider supporting the site through a subscription to our Patreon or tip us via PayPal
Pictures — Action Images
The Twitter @loftforwords