QPR's unbeaten start to the season faces a stern examination on Saturday as they visit Nottingham Forest, where they have never won.
Npower Championship >>> Saturday, November 13 >>> Kick Off 3pm >>> City Ground, Nottingham
I have never been woken up by Kelly Brook whispering “morning big boy” in my ear while pressing her breasts against me, I have never just given that lottery ticket from three weeks ago a final check before binning it only to find that I actually matched five numbers and the bonus ball and I have never dived full length to my right to push a crucial last minute penalty wide of the post to win the FA Cup for my team and been carried aloft by my ecstatic team mates around the Wembley pitch.
I’ve also never seen QPR win at Nottingham Forest. In fact nobody has, because it’s never happened, and until this season it’s never really looked likely to happen. In fact we’ve been so abysmally awful in the majority of our 28 matches here I would have said before this season started that I’d be more likely to wind up in the Wembley baths with the FA Cup in one hand, a winning lottery ticket in the other and Miss Brook scrubbing my back than seeing Rangers pinch a scrappy 2-1 win on this ground.
We tried to win here for the first time back in 1934 in the FA Cup Third Round. Forest beat us 4-0 and to be honest things haven’t got a lot better since. Last season we lost 5-0 here (it could easily have been ten) and in between there have been three other 4-0 defeats, a 5-2 and several other comfortable defeats besides. Draws here are celebrated like victories and I can only really recall one of those stalemates, in August 1990, where a bad mistake by David Bardsley let Forest in for an injury time equaliser that ever looked like they might be wins.
Top of the league and unbeaten in 16, Rangers will probably have to wait some time for a better chance of breaking this ridiculous hoodoo than this Saturday when they face a Forest team that has stagnated somewhat since their excellent 2009/10 campaign ended in play off heartbreak at the hands of Blackpool. If we do it, I’m going down to the bookies first thing on Monday morning to put a wadge of cash on us for promotion. I’ll really start to believe it’s possible if we win this game and here’s why.
Previously the only other ground that we’ve played regularly on and never won was Blundell Park Grimsby. That’s understandable – with fish docks to the left and the north sea to the right it’s a pretty inhospitable place and QPR teams have always turned up there looking a bit cold, a bit miserable, and a bit like a group of people that is looking forward to getting back on the bus and going home.
That record of some 16 failed attempts came to an end in 2003, at about this time of the year. It was cold, and the wind was blowing, and lots of the QPR players wore gloves so the scene seemed to be set for our annual Cleethorpes defeat. Rangers held out at 0-0 until the final two minutes of the game when Paul Furlong raced through on goal only to be brutally rugby tackled to the ground inside the penalty area by Tony Crane. A more blatant penalty you could never wish to see but referee Anthony Kaye, a well known tosser at the time, turned the appeal down and it seemed we’d have to settle for a point.
Not so. In stoppage time, from a suspiciously offside position, Kevin Gallen smacked the ball against the base of the post and it rebounded out perfectly to one of the worst players in recent QPR history Eric Sabin who tapped into the empty net from no more than a yard out to send the travelling faithful into hysterics. Record duly broken, Rangers went on to clinch promotion by those two extra points that Sabin gained that day.
Moments like that define seasons, and when they go for you it’s impossible not to feel it’s got to be your year. If QPR can shrug off the thick end of 80 years of disaster in this part of the world on Saturday then it may just be our season again.
Recent History: LoftforWords is known for the odd terrible prediction or three, and so it’s no real surprise to see our pre-season tips for the top two, Middlesbrough and Nottingham Forest, residing in nineteenth and eleventh respectively. Boro are struggling because they foolishly went shopping in the SPL, which is a bit like buying your meat from Aldi. The reason for Forest’s slow start to the season is a little bit more of a mystery to me.
Last season manager Billy Davies said they weren’t ready to win promotion to the Premiership, and seemed to console himself with that after they been knocked out of the play offs at the semi final stage by Ian Holloway’s free scoring Blackpool side. Davies infamously lead the Premiership’s worst ever side when his Derby team managed just one win in the entire campaign after winning promotion one year into a three year plan so it’s easy to see why he may have been reluctant to take Forest there in his first full season in charge.
They are currently only one point away from the play off places so this season has been far from a disaster and could yet turn out to be a great success – nothing is decided in November. But after failing to add to his side at all during the last two transfer windows Davies has cut a frustrated figure this season, continuing to make barbed comments towards his employers and their ‘transfer acquisition panel’ which he seems to believe is obstructing his work.
The panel, which includes former Luton boss David Pleat, has been used by Forest to avoid a repeat of the financial meltdown the club suffered when David Platt was in charge. The former England midfielder was touted as a bright young manager having played and coached at the highest level in this country and Italy but his policy of bringing in Italian players such as Salvatore Matrecano, Gianluca Petrachi and Moreno Mannini for big transfer fees and healthy wages backfired when the players failed to produce on the pitch and almost bankrupted the club in the process.
The rot that set in under Platt was one that Forest have only recently recovered from, despite him leaving the club way back in 2001, and the panel’s job seems to me to be to prevent one man doing such financial damage to the club through bad judgement and/or incompetence again. When it’s put like that it starts to sound like a reasonable idea. However, as we have seen at QPR, most managers don’t want people above them dictating, or having much of a say at all in, transfer policy. David Platt had only ever managed Sampdoria, very briefly, before he got the Forest job and was inexperienced. Billy Davies has proven himself at Preston and Derby to be a very capable manager in this league, probably one of the best around, and as we have discovered with Neil Warnock when you get hold of an experienced manager it’s often best to just leave them to get on with it.
Like QPR and Leeds it took Forest three years to finally climb out of League One, and even then it needed a dramatic run of six wins and a draw from their last seven games to claim one of the automatic promotion places. Colin Calderwood was the manager then, but he left his post at Christmas the following year when his side was unable to continue that form into the Championship and looked highly likely to be relegated again. Davies kept them up, and then rebuilt the team with the likes of Lee Camp, Dexter Blackstock, David McGoldrick, Dele Adebola, Paul McKenna, Radoslaw Majewski and Chris Gunter all brought in.
Forest became a formidable side last season – unbeaten in their last 20 league games at home, and only conceding two goals on their own patch in the second half of the season. QPR were ripped apart 5-0 during that run. In the play offs they came up against Blackpool, the last team to beat them at the City Ground, and Ian Holloway’s tactics of going all out attack whether at home or away proved to be Forest’s undoing as they crashed 6-4 on aggregate.
Davies almost seemed glad of that reprieve when he spoke to the press afterwards, and the feeling from him seemed to be that Forest would be a stronger outfit this season after another summer of fine tuning in the transfer market. But it is now 16 months since Forest actually made a permanent signing, and only Chelsea full back Ryan Bertrand has been added on loan this season. James Perch (Newcastle) has been the only departure from the first team so I theory they should have been able to just pick up where they left off last season and, indeed, they are unbeaten at home in seven matches this season and currently just a point outside the play offs.
But in a wide open division Forest should be title challengers and there seems to be a stagnation occurring here that is clearly irking Davies’ – his comments increasingly sound like a man who is daring his board to sack him. Earlier this season he said: “You can see clearly there is a lot of work to be done in the team and there is a lot of quality we need to add. I keep saying to be a success in the Championship to improve each season - particularly when you finish in third in the table - you have to improve the quality and quantity. Unless you can do that you will get what you deserve."
Manager: A strange character. Undoubtedly a good manager, but a difficult man to deal with.
As a player he started at Rangers but played the majority of his football at Dunfermline and Motherwell and it was at Fir Park where he started his managerial career in 1998. He had the Mothers on the verge of European football at one stage during his three years in charge but was sacked after a poor start to the 2001/02 season and subsequently turned up at Preston as assistant to former Scotland manager Craig Brown.
Preston have enjoyed decent success with Scottish managers, most notably David Moyes, in the past but Brown never really found his feet at Deepdale and t needed Davies to take over for the club to reignite its play off charges which had become a feature of the Moyes era. They lost in the Cardiff final against West Ham in 2005 and then a year later found themselves knocked out in the semi finals by Leeds despite drawing at Elland Road in the first leg. Leeds felt Preston, and Davies in particular, had celebrated avoiding defeat in the first game rather too enthusiastically and used it as motivation for the second leg – just one of a number of incidents where Davies has stirred up bad feeling during his career.
I always had the feeling at the time, proven by their performances since his departure, that Davies had Preston punching above their weight. Derby on the other hand was a bigger, more ambitious club geared up for the Premiership so it was no surprise when Davies decamped there in the summer of 2006 – a year after he had first been linked with the post. Derby had endured a couple of up and down years – reaching the play offs one year under George Burley, and then only narrowly avoiding relegation 12 months later under Phil Brown. Davies set in motion a three year plan, but was so effective he achieved promotion in one.
Derby were never ready for the top flight but Davies’ summer transfer spending, which included players like Rob Earnshaw, Kenny Miller and Claude Davies who never have really cut it in the top flight, only made their plight worse. He could be seen as a victim of his own success, sacked and replaced by Paul Jewell a third of the way through the season, but in many ways he seemed keen to engineer his departure from the club, perhaps knowing they’d never stay in the league. He used the post match interviews after their 1-0 win against West Brom in the play off final to criticise the board for not sorting out a deal to bring David Kelly in as his assistant, and then criticised them again for lack of investment once the Premiership campaign got underway.
His time at Nottingham Forest has followed a similar pattern. Just as he did at Derby he inherited a bleak situation, quickly turned it round and achieved success earlier than anticipated. Perhaps fearing a repeat of the Pride Park experience he spent most of last season saying his team wasn’t ready for promotion but having failed to make a single signing in the last two transfer windows he has now turned his attention back on his own board again – frequently criticising the way Forest buy players and the lack of recent investment in the team. Is he angling for the sack again? With Davies, you never can tell.
Three to watch: Billy Davies may not appreciate the interference in his transfer activities, but he directly profited from similar unwanted intrusions at QPR when he picked up Lee Camp and Dexter Blackstock very cheaply last summer.
Camp is a former England Under 21 goalkeeper, who is currently awaiting clearance to restart his international career with Northern Ireland. He became a favourite with QPR fans during two loan spells – one in 2004 when he played the final 12 games of the season and excelled as Rangers were promoted, and another in 2007 where he again arrived towards the end of the season and played 11 times as John Gregory’s side pulled off an unlikely survival bid in the Championship. QPR then scrabbled together what little money they had and bought Camp permanently from Derby, their manager at the time was Billy Davies and he couldn’t guarantee Camp first team football.
As a permanent Ranger Camp was voted by supporters as runner up to Martin Rowlands in the 2007/08 season but during that time QPR were taken over by the current board and Flavio Briatore, for whatever reason and there have been a few outlandish ones batted around, took a dislike to Camp. At the end of the season QPR signed Radek Cerny from Tottenham and although Iain Dowie had intended to start the season with Camp as his first choice he was quickly overruled by Briatore who told him that he had to pick Cerny instead. This situation grew so ridiculous that even when, in January 2009, Cerny pulled his hamstring prior to an away game at Blackpool the Czech was forced to travel with the team and train with them at Oldham the day before the game to see if he could make it through with somebody else taking his goalkicks – such was Briatore’s desire to see Camp kept out of the team.
A subsequent poor display by Camp at Nottingham Forest, where he had been on loan, and reaction to the home fans angered some in the away end that day and soured what had otherwise been a very good relationship between supporters and goalkeeper. The short sightedness and stupidness of ostracising one of the country’s brightest young goalkeepers in favour of an ageing Czech was shown up last season when Camp was named in the Championship team of the year while Cerny’s form deteriorated so badly that QPR were forced to bring in Wolves’ fourth choice Carl Ikeme to play instead.
The story is similar with Blackstock. A £500,000 signing from Southampton by Gary Waddock in 2006 Blackstock proved to be a decent goal scoring forward for QPR during his time at Loftus Road. In his first season, which started with Waddock but ended with Gregory, he scored 14 goals including five in the final seven games as Rangers successfully battled to stay in the league. “Imagine how good he’ll be when we get a good team around him,” said Gregory at the end of the season. But there in lies the problem with Blackstock – whoever he has had around him, however good the team is that he has played in, he has never managed to break through that 15 goal barrier for a season which really is the difference between a prolific forward and just another Championship striker.
Last season Forest finished third in the league and scored for fun in home matches. Blackstock still only managed to get to 14 goals for the season. He was on the verge of signing a new contract at QPR before Briatore personally removed the offer and to be honest I wasn’t overly sad to see him go to Forest – on the understanding that we would replace him with better. Of course we did no such thing as it turned out – relying on no hopers like Sam Di Carmine to lead the line instead.
In both the case of both Camp and Blackstock it’s only now with Neil Warnock in charge and being allowed to get on with it away from the grubby hand of Flavio Briatore that we have adequately replaced the pair of them and if Forest were to sell either of them, they’d go for a lot more than the peanuts we offloaded them for after making their respective positions untenable.
It would be remiss of me not to include Lewis McGugan as player to watch number three – seeing as he’s currently running his own goal of the season competition. McGugan, a product of Forest’s youth set up with more than 100 appearances for the club to his name, has a very creditable goal scoring record of 26 from midfield to his name. He has eight already this season including recent blockbusters against Ipswich and Watford. QPR will do well not to concede free kicks around the area with McGugan in this kind of goal scoring form because he can hit them from anywhere – Ipswich only set up a two man wall to defend against his 35 yarder at the City Ground believing he was too far out to really trouble their goalkeeper.
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Recent Meetings: Mick Harford was in charge of the shambolic mess at QPR when we last visited the City Ground at the end of January. He’d drafted in Nigel Quashie and Matt Hill to try and add some bite to his ailing side but in form Forest absolutely annihilated QPR on the night – scoring five and missing chances to make it twice as bad. It was 3-0 by half time with Robert Earnshaw curling in a free kick and then seizing on hard work in midfield by Anderson after a rotten mistake by Quashie to make it two within two minutes. Dexter Blackstock converted a penalty ten minutes later as the QPR defence melted away under pressure. Cohen added a fourth straight after half time that Ikeme should have saved and Perch finished off a farcical goal mouth scramble ten minutes from time. A dire night to be a QPR fan.
Nottm Forest: Camp 7, Gunter 7, Morgan 7 (Chambers 72, -), Wilson 7, Cohen 8, Perch 8, McKenna 8, Majewski 9, Anderson 8 (Tyson 69, 7),Blackstock 7 (Adebola 80, -), Earnshaw 8
Subs Not Used: Smith, McGugan, McGoldrick, Moussi
Booked: McKenna (foul)
Goals: Earnshaw 18 (free kick), 21 (assisted Anderson), Blackstock 32 (penalty), Cohen 49 (assisted Perch), Perch 78 (assisted Earnshaw)
QPR: Ikeme 2, Connolly 2, Gorkss 2, Stewart 2 (Ramage 46, 2), Hill 3, Buzsaky 2, Leigertwood 2, Quashie 2, Faurlin 4 (Ephraim 46, 4), Buzsaky 2,Taarabt 3, Simpson 3 (Vine 69, 3)
Subs Not Used: Cerny, Hall, Cook, German
Booked: Buzsaky (foul), Taarabt (kicking ball away), Quashie (off the ball incident)
Both sides made sluggish starts to last season and shared a point apiece from a dull 1-1 draw at Loftus Road in August although in truth Forest were unfortunate not to have won. Mikele Leigertwood curled a trademark long range shot past Lee Camp to give QPR the lead before half time but Rangers were terrible in the second half, conceding a soft equaliser to David McGoldrick and going close to losing the game on several occasions.
QPR: Cerny 7, Ramage 6, Hall 5 (Gorkss 46, 6), Stewart 6, Borrowdale 6,Routledge 7, Leigertwood 7, Faurlin 7, Pellicori 5 (Vine 61, 5), Helguson 5,Taarabt 6 (Buzsaky 66, 6)
Subs Not Used: Heaton, Mahon, Agyemang, Connolly
Goals: Leigertwood 25 (assisted Routledge)
Nottm Forest: Camp 7, Gunter 6, Morgan 6, Lynch 6 (McCleary 46, 6), Cohen 7, Chambers 6, Majewski 8, McKenna 7, Garner 6, Adebola 7 (Blackstock 71, 7),McGoldrick 7 (Tyson 75, 6)
Subs Not Used: Smith, Anderson, Earnshaw, Davies
Goals: McGoldrick 57 (assisted Adebola)
Head to head >>> Forest wins 25 >>> Draws 17 >>> QPR wins 14
Past Results:
2009/10 Forest 5 QPR 0
2009/10 QPR 1 Forest 1 (Leigertwood)
2008/09 Forest 2 QPR 2 (Alberti 2)
2008/09 QPR 2 Forest 1 (Balanta, Buzsaky)
2004/05 QPR 2 Forest 1 (Bircham, Curtis OG)
2004/05 QPR 0 Forest 3 (FA Cup)
2004/05 Forest 2 QPR 1 (Santos)
2000/01 Forest 1 QPR 1 (Wardley)
2000/01 QPR 1 Forest 0 (Crouch)
1999/00 Forest 1 QPR 1 (Ready)
1999/00 QPR 1 Forest 1 (Kiwomya)
1997/98 QPR 0 Forest 1
1997/98 Forest 4 QPR 0
1995/96 Forest 3 QPR 0
1995/96 QPR 1 Forest 1 (Sinclair)
1994/95 QPR 1 Forest 1 (Barker)
1994/95 Forest 3 QPR 2 (Allen, Ferdinand)
1992/93 QPR 4 Forest 3 (Ferdinand 3, Wilson)
1992/93 Forest 1 QPR 0
1991/92 Forest 1 QPR 1 (Sinton)
1991/92 QPR 0 Forest
Played for both clubs – Gary Bannister
QPR 1984-88 >>> Forest 1992-93
Born in Warrington in 1960 Bannister was one of the most consistent goal scorers of the 1980s, especially at Loftus Road. A product of the Coventry youth system, Bannister broke his way into the first team to make his debut in May 1978. To gain some first-team experience he was sent on loan to American side Detroit Express impressing with a goal every other game in a three month spell. Once back at City he found it difficult to break into the team and decided to drop a division, joining Sheffield Wednesday for £100,000. At Wednesday, Bannister started to show his predatory instincts and was top scorer for the club in each of his three seasons at Hillsborough, and helped the Owl’s gain promotion to the First Division. However Gary never got to play for Wednesday in the top flight as he was snapped up that summer by QPR who bought him to fill the void left by Clive Allen.
He made an immediate impact on the R’s faithful by scoring on his debut against West Brom and went on to have steady first campaign in the hoops, with most of his strikes coming at Loftus Road. But when Jim Smith took over the R’s in 1985 things really took off for Bannister and he flourished on Rangers plastic pitch and formed a formidable partnership with John Byrne. Their goals led R’s to Wembley, in their first League Cup Final since 1967, beating Liverpool in the semis on route. Sadly the final was a day Rangers would rather forget, as Oxford running away with it 3-0.
Bannister’s finest hour however came on Easter Monday 1986 when Rangers entertained local rivals Chelsea, who were within a shout of the title at the time. Many expected them to rollover Rangers but on a day that’s gone down in R’s folk law, QPR hit Chelsea with six without reply – Bannister getting three of them.
He stayed at the Loft for another season until the arrival of Trevor Francis and Marc Falco saw him pushed out the picture and he moved back to first club Coventry. Spells at West Brom and Oxford followed before he joined Nottingham Forest in time for the inaugural season of the Premier League. But despite scoring against Rangers, the season at the City Ground was a disappointing one as Forest were relegated. He moved to Hong Kong side HK Rangers and played for Stoke and Darlington before retiring in 1996. Now owns a holiday apartment business in Cornwall. Famed for having one leg shorter than the other.
Links >>> Forest 5 QPR 0 Match Report >>> QPR 1 Forest 1 Match Report >>> Connections and Memories
Team News: QPR have several problems in defence ahead of this game. Bradley Orr is serving the second game of his three match ban while Matt Connolly also picked up a suspension for his sending off at Portsmouth on Tuesday night. With Fitz Hall injured, Peter Ramage out for the season and Mikele Leigertwood away on international duty it leaves the R’s thin on the ground in defence and may mean that Clint Hill has to pressed into service at centre half, with Gary Borrowdale making a rare appearance at left back. Elsewhere Gavin Mahon and Lee Cook are the other injured absentees, Heidar Helguson is doubtful.
Forest are without Kelvin Wilson who continues to be troubled by a back problem but could welcome back midfielder Paul McKenna. The former Preston man missed training earlier in the week because of a family issue and was only on the bench against Coventry on Tuesday but is available to start in this game.
Elsewhere: The two televised games this weekend are on Friday night and Saturday tea-time. The first features two of the strugglers in the Championship Preston, who you may have expected to have a tough season after their summer transfer activity, and Hull, who were never going to be much of a threat following their relegation from the Premiership but should be doing better than they are. On Saturday it’s Reading and Norwich, two of the play off hopefuls. Cardiff will be confident of picking up all three points at Scunthorpe who have a dreadful home record this season, Swansea in third have to wait until Sunday to play Middlesbrough by which time they could have slipped to fourth if in form Derby win at Leicester. Just two points separate Portsmouth in fourteenth from Coventry in sixth.
Referee: Andy D’Urso is in charge of Rangers for the first time this season on Saturday as the unbeaten R’s head to Nottingham. D’Urso was dropped from the Premiership list in 2005 for failing to send off Blackburn’s Barry Ferguson after showing him two yellow cards but has continued to referee regularly in the Football League, with occasional returns to the top flight as cover. He is a veteran of some 18 QPR matches which has made for a bumber referee round up this week – click here for more information.
Forest: Not only have QPR not won on this ground in 28 attempts, but Forest are now unbeaten here in 27 league matches although Blackpool did win 4-3 on this ground in the play offs last season. Blackpool are in fact the last team to win a league game here, 1-0 back in September 2009. A betting man might favour a draw here because while remaining unbeaten at home Forest are only eleventh, and that’s largely because they’ve already drawn eight games this season – only Burnley can match that record. Forest’s form has been very up and down of late – they have won three, lost two and drawn one of their last six matches. Forest have scored in each of their last nine games, but are currently averaging a goal a game against as well.
QPR: QPR and Manchester United are the only sides who remain unbeaten in the entire Football League, but Rangers have played four games more than United. That run has been propped up by a good number of draws recently – six of Rangers’ last eight games have finished in draws whittling down a lead at the top of the table from six points to two. Rangers have become adept at scoring late goals on the road this season – they have scored four injury time goals at Derby, Palace and Portsmouth to win four points. There have been an astonishing 12 penalties in QPR’s 16 matches so far this season – Rangers have scored all eight of theirs, Burnley and Portsmouth scored at the other end although Liam Lawrence was controversially given a second chance to take his on Tuesday after initially seeing his shot saved by Paddy Kenny.
Prediction: I’ve been saying for a few weeks now that I think the unbeaten run will come to an end here. Forest are a good team, much lower down the league than they should be and possibly effected by the uncertain position of the manager who seems to be trying to talk himself out of a job. Dexter Blackstock and Lee Camp will be keen to impress and QPR are dreadfully short of numbers in defence, while Forest are reporting a clean bill of health. That said, the lack of a win here will serve as motivation to QPR who have looked a better side since Tommy Smith was introduced to the starting line up and looking at the results of both teams so far the draw is the obvious score to go for. So I will.
1-1 draw, 6/1 with William Hill