Harry Redknapp’s QPR side turned in their worst performance of the season so far in a 2-1 defeat at lowly Doncaster Rovers on Saturday.
The mystery of 2013/14 Queens Park Rangers team deepens still further.
Is this a wonderfully talented side that is simply finding the Championship too easy, and being caught out every once and a while when the comfort of winning in second and third gear each week manifests itself in complacency?
You could easily make a case for this. Rangers have really only played well — and even then it was certainly nothing exceptional — against Middlesbrough and Derby at home this season and yet had amassed 35 points from 16 games prior to Saturday to set a league leading pace. They’d lost only once, despite some insipid displays, and Championship opponents have queued up to hail the R’s as the best team in the league and a shoo in for promotion. When you look at the money spent and the players acquired you can see why they’d think this — Charlie Austin, Matt Phillips, Junior Hoilett, Niko Kranjcar, Joey Barton, Benoit Assou-Ekotto, Richard Dunne and so on is not a Championship line up. In fact, it looks a better team on paper than the one Rangers had in the top flight last season.
Does the team simple get too big for its boots every now and again? Twice in an away game at struggling Millwall they went in front while playing well, only to quickly revert to messing around trying to keep possession in their own half - winding up opponents and taking silly risks rather than pushing on for a bigger win - and ended up with a draw.
Or is this team actually not that good at all? Has it simply been able to climb into the Championship’s promotion race by virtue of a fixture list that pitched it against the division’s ten worst teams in its first dozen matches, and a series of games — particularly at home — where opponents seem to have written the match off as an inevitable defeat before it’s even kicked off and done little more than make a half-arsed attempt to grind out a 0-0 draw?
As we enter December, we should be clearer about what exactly we’re watching here, but Saturday’s lame performance and pathetic defeat at relegation-haunted, injury-ravaged Doncaster Rovers has provided more questions than answers.
It could easily be said that Rangers were arrogant about their task at the Keepmoat Stadium. Fourth bottom Rovers, jaded after a long midweek trip to Charlton where morale will have been sapped by a 2-0 defeat in a rearranged game that they had originally led 3-1 when it was abandoned due to waterlogging, have worked their way through a first choice back four and are now busy injuring their loaned replacements, including Rangers’ own Yun-Suk Young. Four defeats and a draw from the previous six didn’t look a threatening record, and four clubs have already been to this corner of South Yorkshire and won games this season.
And so QPR plodded around a bit and waited for the inevitable victory. Joey Barton won the ball in his own half and set up a counter attack that Jermaine Jenas could have finished off with a goal had he been braver under challenge in the Doncaster penalty box eight minutes in — don’t want to muddy those shorts too early though. Richard Dunne headed a corner over and Joey Barton saw a shot blocked after a prolonged period of possession ended with Assou-Ekotto working the ball to him on the edge of the box. Matt Phillips cut inside and out and then dragged the ball hopelessly wide of the target from 20 yards out. Kranjcar shot wide with a late challenge from Khumalo a mitigating factor.
But this was no onslaught by any means. These meagre attempts on goal — none of which troubled Rovers’ Chelsea loanee Ross Turnbull between the sticks — were the sum total of half an hour of work. QPR were like a metronome on a low setting, and about as interesting to watch. I’ve seen orthodontic surgery carried out at a greater pace, and I’ve enjoyed trips to the dentist a lot more than this match. The match report notes, scribbled on the back of a betting slip for want of something better to do with my time during a turgid encounter, read "possibly the worst ten minutes of football I’ve ever seen in my life” at one point and "a lovely sunset” at another. The spectacular sky deserved a greater spectacle beneath it, but a half-empty, soulless, out of town stadium on a retail park, devoid of character and totally silent for the majority of the game, was a perfect setting for this absolute dirge.
When anybody did inject a bit of urgency, speed and pace into the game the shock of it was like having a bucket of iced water tipped over your head. Mark Duffy looked most likely for the home team, spinning cumbersome Richard Dunne a merry dance and then shooting at Green after a quarter of an hour. Ten minutes later QPR actually got Matt Phillips moving with some purpose for the first, and possibly only, time on the day but when he cut the ball back to Niko Kranjcar the Croat fired very high and very wide — one of several shots of his that went that way on a day he looked like he’d rather be anywhere else. Later Duffy had a shot blocked after prolonged Doncaster pressure, but by and large this was dreadful stuff. Utterly, utterly boring and a totally miserable experience for anybody unfortunate enough to have paid to get in.
And if that was down to QPR’s arrogant assumption that they could simply piss around at half pace for an afternoon and get a result anyway — and in their defence, home matches with Birmingham, Ipswich, Barnsley and Charlton will only have strengthened that belief — then the Charlie Austin goal just before half time will have hindered more than helped. An immaculate touch from Kranjcar wide left enabled him to move infield and feed Jenas and although he was tackled on the edge of the area the ball fell to Austin whose low shot somehow squirmed beneath Turnbull, rolled over the goal line and stopped before it hit the net. The reaction of the QPR players said everything about the quality of the goal, and possibly how simple they expected their afternoon to be. The standard of the opening strike, and the celebrations that followed, had a pre-season friendly feel about them.
Straight after half time Kranjcar dribbled a shot at Turnbull and then Phillips drew a routine catch from him with a deflected shot. So perhaps QPR weren’t complacent, or over-confident, or cocky, or anything else - perhaps they’re just not as good as everybody seems to think, and as they look on paper - because what followed was 42 minutes of football where Doncaster, with their meagre resources and stretched squad of players, were by far and away the better team.
A corner two minutes after the break, and the subsequent cross back into the area, were both headed away powerfully by Dunne but Rangers couldn’t clear their lines fully and when Richie Wellens pinged a fine ball out to Theo Robinson wide on the right he stood Assou-Ekotto up and then bent the ball around him, through a crowded penalty box and into the far corner of the net from the corner of the area.
If it was simply over-confidence then, as happened at Millwall, Rangers would have stepped up and retaken the lead. But the lack of tempo in the Londoners’ game was palpable and absolutely slayed them here. Passes were laboured, delivered far too late, after too many touches, and too much dwelling on the ball. A blind man in a medically induced coma could have telegraphed the R’s intentions. Wellens chopped into Barton and, after prolonged treatment himself and a typical exchange of words with the QPR man, was yellow carded but the incident seemed to stoke the home fires rather than stir Rangers up at all.
Harry Redknapp sent on Andy Johnson for the wholly ineffective Gary O’Neil, and he almost caught Turnbull napping straight away by snuffing out a chance at the near post from a low corner. Later he was just out of reach of a fine cross from Danny Simpson but any improvements effected by Johnson’s introduction were superficial. QPR were carrying too many passengers — Kranjcar and Jenas totally anonymous and Phillips ineffective wide right — for Johnson’s hard running and high work rate to make much discernible difference. When Kranjcar again lazily thrashed a loose ball out of the ground after Johnson had worked hard to win a corner, Redknapp hooked the apparently totally disinterested Croatian and sent on Junior Hoilett. That sparked a flurry of half chances — Hoilett and Clint Hill both failed to keep volleyed efforts from loose corners down sufficiently to trouble Turnbull — but again the change was to little avail.
Doncaster grew in belief that there was more than a point here for them. A counter attack with Robinson at its heart drew a yellow card from Dunne for a shirt pull in back play and then the Irish centre half had to flick a header behind as Rovers players queued up to convert the cross. Federicho ‘Smokey’ Macheda shot into the side netting with a now silent away following fearing that one of Rangers’ worst loanees in recent memory might come back to haunt them, and Khumalo came up for a corner but headed over.
When the R’s conceded another corner with a minute of normal time to play the script seemed written and sure enough Paul Quinn, probably the home team’s worst player on the day, rose highest to head home Duffy’s flighted delivery.
Four minutes of stoppage time brought a stupid booking for Jenas, and Robert Green kicking the ball straight out of play, to the audible frustration of the few QPR fans who had remained in their seats for the duration — many did not, and nobody could blame them for that.
A festering turd of a football game, from which QPR got exactly what they deserved.
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Doncaster: Turnbull 5; Quinn 5, Khumalo 6, McCullogh 6, Stevens 6; Coppinger 6, Furman 6, Wellens 7, Duffy 7; Robinson 6, Macheda 7
Subs not used: Paynter, Cotterill, Maxted, Wakefield, Woods, De Val, Paterson
Goals: Robinson 48 (unassisted), Quinn 89 (assisted Duffy)
Bookings: Wellens 51 (foul) Turnbull 90 + 4 (time wasting)
QPR: Green 6; Simpson 6, Dunne 6, Hill 6, Assou-Ekotto 5; Barton 6, O’Neil 5 (Johnson 63, 6); Phillips 5, Jenas 4, Kranjcar 4 (Hoilett 77, 6); Austin 6
Subs not used: Traore, Carroll, Onyewu, Henry, Murphy
Goals: Austin 43
Bookings: Dunne 81 (foul), Jenas 90 + 3 (foul)
QPR Star Man — N/A
Referee — Oliver Langford (West Midlands) 7 Not much to referee, with QPR not really in the mood to be competitive, but allowed a poor game to flow as best he could. Should have got to drips with Turnbull’s time wasting a lot sooner — a card in the fourth minute of injury time isn’t much of a deterrent really — but as QPR did nothing when the ball was in play it’s difficult to get too upset about that.
Attendance 8,854 (1,500 QPR approx) A great following from London in number if not volume, although given how dull the match was and how poor Rangers were that’s perhaps understanding. It didn’t stop some QPR fans starting on others though, even blaming their lack of vocal support for the dirge on the pitch in some cases, which was a bit of a shame.
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Pictures — Action Images