As the situation moves beyond critical for QPR at the bottom of the table Nick Gordon Brown casts an eye over the permutations for LoftforWords.
We can still do it, Harry keeps telling us. Everyone thinks he’s mad, he adds, but he remains convinced. He’s not the only one. On Sky’s Monday Night Football, despite having just torn half the QPR team apart for the catalogue of errors that led to his beloved United’s decisive second goal last Saturday, Mr Neville himself said he too still felt Rangers could still do it – whilst adding the caveat that said thought was disappearing further and further back into his “thick skull” (his words, not mine).
Neville gave presenter Ed Chamberlin - who now has down to a tee the role of eager student to Gary’s trendy young professor – two reasons. One – the manager. Two – the run in.
We then saw a nice red and blue graphic showing said run-in, with Gaz helpfully pointing out to the nation what Rangers fans have known for months, namely that we have a run of eight games through March and April all bar one of which could, under any normal circumstances, be described as winnable. “What about the last three games then,” we all chorused at the screen. “They’ll take care of themselves,” said the Neviller, implication being that had we somehow cobbled together a string of wins, momentum and increased self-belief would enable us to scrap whatever additional points we needed from Arsenal, Newcastle and Liverpool to edge over the line.
This got me thinking...when Harry said only the other day that he thought another 20 points would see us right, he clearly saw these eight games as being the ones where most of that haul could be accrued. And I started to wonder – has this been his thinking all along? After all, we all know there are some managers who split the season into chunks and have points targets for each one. Iain Dowie springs to mind – though it’s odds on he felt he was more or less on target when Flavio Briatore binned him for his team’s failure to shoot at Swansea’s stand-in ‘keeper.
Four points from 13 games was what he inherited. He didn’t talk about it quite as much as he did when he arrived at White Hart Lane (“we only had two points from eight games when I got here y’know” – yes Harry we do think we’d heard mention of that) but there was much talk of miracles and of “my toughest challenge”. I became convinced Harry must have split the remaining 25 fixtures into Dowie-esque bite-sized chunks, with approximate points targets for each – so I decided, albeit retrospectively, to do the same, to put myself in Harry’s loafers for a day...
New manager bounce
With his reputation as a master motivator, ‘Arry must have expected this. My guess is the team met his expectations with battling (if in the latter case unconvincing) points at Sunderland and Wigan, but I’m sure he would have hoped for two wins from the Fulham and Villa home games. The somewhat limp draw against the Villains would have put us two points behind schedule, but securing the elusive win against Fulham, and the manner of it, would have given him hope for the next phase of games.
Christmas rush
Three games in eight days, not easy for any team. The way he set us up for the trip to St. James’s Park suggests Harry was gambling on a point. With the Toon then struggling themselves, many Rs felt this was unduly negative but when the mission failed, Redknapp had Bosingwa-gate to deflect attention. However, worse was to come – I reckon he’d have been targeting a haul of four points from the quick fire home games against WBA and Liverpool. As we all know, none were gathered – so these three games saw us drop a further five points behind target (seven in total), with all the confidence gained from the Fulham victory surely drained away - albeit with the transfer window round the corner.
Nightmare January – not!
The New Year run of fixtures was the last thing we needed in our perilous position, but this is when Harry Redknapp won huge respect from Rs fans as he dug deep into his reserves of experience to conjure up an unlikely set of results. Given their home record, surely a point at West Ham was the realistic target. This was duly attained – but three points at Stamford Bridge was the most welcome of unlikely bonuses. I really think the most our leader would have hoped for from home games against Spurs and City was scrapping a point from one of them...so the fact that we got two, added to the Chelsea three, meant four points were clawed back – leaving us three behind target.
Futile February
Alas the wheels came back off this month. Much as the outcome of the United match was wholly predictable, surely a win against Norwich was seen as a must, and a point at a Swansea with other things on their minds would also have been hoped for. So another three points dropped, six behind target in all.
Beware the ides of March
All of which brings us to the here and now. My amateur sleuthing has us six points behind where Harry hoped we’d be...namely 23 points and with a better goal difference. This would have seen us neck and neck with three other teams, with a further four (everyone up to Newcastle in thirteenth) not completely out of sight over the horizon.
However, despite the setbacks, Harry has now had a chance to factor in other team’s results. Their pivotal win at Loftus Road came in the middle of a great run for our next opponents, Southampton – and despite their bizarre decision to change manager in the midst of this run, their impressive performances have continued. It has not been enough, however, to put them out of sight and the 4-2 reverse at Newcastle on Sunday gives hope that their early season defensive frailties have yet to be fully erased. Likewise did any of us think Villa would be this bad for this long? And hands up who thought Wigan would have started to improve and put daylight between them and the trap door before now. Reading had a great run but still failed to pull away from the relegation scrap, whilst Sunderland and West Ham are looking nervously over their shoulders, both showing signs of the form that suggests an unwanted plummet into the bottom three isn’t out of the question.
Armed with this additional info, Harry has calculated that 37 points will probably be enough. He said this after the Swansea defeat, so assuming he expected nothing from United, he was targeting 20 points from the remaining 11 games that now confront us. So where does he see these coming from?
Five wins and five draws would garner those 20 points, but surely even the wildest hooped optimist doesn’t expect a team that has lost 17 of its previous 27 games to lose just one of the next 11? More probable is that the unconvincing straw Harry is clutching at sees us win six and draw two – which even allows us the, ahem, ‘luxury’ of three defeats.
So where is he looking for the six wins? Presumably Wigan, Villa and Reading are musts because of their ‘six pointer’ nature. Arguably the Saints fixture also falls into this bracket, but I think Redknapp would settle for a hard-earned point from an improved performance in this one. An out of form Sunderland and a Stoke team that doesn’t travel well are undoubtedly home games we must win if the escape is to come off. That would leave one more win and one more draw to be concocted from the games with Fulham, Everton and Liverpool away, and Arsenal and Newcastle at home.
Looked at like that, it doesn’t look so crazy after all – a raft of games against other poor teams, inconsistent teams, distracted teams, under-performing teams. We’ve played the top four home and away already – hell, we even snatched six points off ‘em.
However, to take us back to where we started, and to paraphrase Gary Neville – there are two reasons why I think we will fall short and why I fear we won’t even go down fighting, but rather with a whimper and an embarrassing points tally.
Team spirit
Fragile at best in any team that has endured a season such as ours, I just don’t see it at all in this squad. Every time you see a spark of it, that spark seems to be snuffed out in the next match. Talent-wise, this squad has proved to be way short of the sum of its collective parts...and it falls even shorter if you try to make up for that with work ethic. It’s been said time and again on LFW and elsewhere that we have an unedifying mix of triers with limited ability and talented players with questionable attitude. On this score, only the rudderless Villa look as weak.
Lack of a settled team / formation
More by luck than judgment - injury and suspension denying him the chance to feature his planned forward pairing of Cisse and Zamora - Mark Hughes fell upon a 4-2-3-1 formation that managed to scrap its way to last season’s life-saving five home wins through a mixture of bus parking and counter-attacking goals. Crucially, we also kept a consistent back four – even with an error-prone player like Anton Ferdinand in it, there is no substitute for a settled defence.
By contrast, Harry Redknapp currently shows no signs of knowing either his preferred starting 11 or his preferred formation. Team selections in recent weeks have frankly appeared scattergun at best. Cesar, Samba and Hill look like guaranteed picks. Beyond that Townsend seems to be making one of the wide berths his own with SWP finally ousted as a result and Taarabt looks a certain starter, but whether that is as a ‘false nine’, playing off the striker, wide in a three or wide in a four is uncertain.
We have four full backs in Bosingwa, Traore, Onouha and Fabio seemingly being rotated in two slots with Ben Haim and Suk Young waiting in the wings too. Midfield-wise, one week we start with Mackie’s legendary industry, the next with Granero’s supposed artistry (currently missing in action). Start Derry and we lack pace, start Diakite or Mbia and we lack sanity. Start Jenas and we lack...well quite a lot actually. Start Park and, on the evidence so far, we add little bar squeals from his fan club temporarily housed at Loftus Road. Start Hoilet and...Well we don’t start Hoilet, do we?
Ahead of this plethora of misfiring midfielders we find Harry’s biggest gamble of all. With Cisse and Campbell farmed out, we’re reliant for goals on a one-legged old warhorse, an oh so sensitive F1 car of a player new to the league, and a man sent back from a Championship basement club for not being good enough.
Even in the highly unlikely event that Zamora and Remy can both stay fit together for any length of time, which Redknapp’s recent pronouncements suggest he may be banking on, this causes a whole load of new problems. For the first time in over a year, we’d be playing 4-4-2 again...and we’re back to trying to square the circle from our imbalanced midfield pack. Of course Remy, Taarabt and Townsend playing in a three behind Zamora (with Hoilet and Mackie as back up) actually looks pretty tasty. Keep a settled seven behind them and...No, no – STOP IT!
Pictures – Action Images