QPR, one point outside the relegation zone with two wins from 28 games, surely need a win from their last three matches to survive, and if they get that tomorrow at Burnley I’ll give you the money myself.
Lancashire and District Senior League >>> Saturday April 22, 2023 >>> Kick Off 15.00 >>> Weather — Rain in the morning clearing up later >>> Turf Moor, Burnley, Lancashire
Crikey almighty.
There can rarely have been a bigger mismatch form wise between two teams in the same division than this one.
In the red corner, Burnley. The only team in the EFL, the only team in any of the major European leagues, not to have lost a league game this year. They have lost two matches all season, and none in their last 22 Championship games. Their last loss came on November 5 at Sheffield United, prior even to the first meeting between these sides at Loftus Road which Vincent Kompany’s team declared at 3-0. Since that game at Bramall Lane the Clarets have taken 54 of the 66 points available to them. They can seal the league title with another win tomorrow at Turf Moor, a ground they haven’t lost on since May 22, 24 games ago. They have won 15 and drawn six here in the league this season, conceding just 13 times. They have scored 45 goals at home, which is four more than QPR have scored at all. Three wins from their final four games will carry them beyond 100 points for the season.
In the blue corner, a footballing beer shit. Queens Park Rangers have won one game in 2023, and just two of their last 28 fixtures. Over the same period Burnley have taken 54 points, QPR have added just 12. They have gone from a position of leading the league table, ahead of even Vincent Kompany’s all conquering side, at the end of October to one of now seemingly certain relegation. Ten of their last 13 games have ended in defeat, and only one in a victory. They head to Lancashire without a win in ten away games, a run that includes defeat in a different corner of this county to might Fleetwood Town in January.
Even in the lamentable modern age of boxing where a big Instagram following can get some roided up nobody in the ring with an actual fighter for the right price, this doesn’t feel like a bout that would/should be allowed to safely take place. You are going in against the Marine Raider Regiment branch of the Corps’ Special Operations Command with one bloke from accounts holding up a pocket calculator with 800813S written on it and giggling. Guys, it’s been a pleasure to serve with you, we’ve had some laughs along the way, but this is surely some sort of bloodbath in waiting.
QPR are preparing for the task by, as is often the case, having some form of a meltdown.
The idea a team goes from the top of the league getting relegated from it because they lost confidence, because they got a few injuries, because they’re "fragile”, because they bought into what the manager said at the start of the season and then got All Sad when he left them, or whatever fucking PR-driven, mealy-mouthed horseshit and outright lies we’re being expected to swallow this week, was never going to hold through two wins in 28 games. You lose five or six games if you lose confidence. You win one of ten, one of 12 maybe. You crash through seven or eight league places, maybe a dozen. You don’t go from top to bottom and two wins in 28. This has literally only ever happened once before, and even Millwall won four of their last 30.
It has been clear, to anybody that has watched QPR even casually, there is something profoundly wrong with this group. It has been losing consistently now, 34 of its last 65 games, for a year and a half under four managers. They’ve tried to keep a lid on this, they’ve tried to straight bat questions about it, they’ve tried to keep it all in-house, they’ve tried to ride it out until the end of the season and sort it out in the summer. They’ve rocked backwards and forwards repeating "just need to get to the summer, just need to get this season over with”, because no team, no team, can possibly lose every single game it plays, and even if this one were to do that the bottom three are so dreadful and adrift it won’t matter anyway. Well, it turns out you can, and they’re not. And as that realisation has started to set in, so the truth has started to seep out.
Chris Martin’s post-match barb after the Coventry game about a lack of dedication off the pitch was the first of what will hopefully become a steady stream of home truths - because if it’s one thing this support base deserves when this is all over its some of the truth, rather than the nonsense we’ve been fed so far in the name of trying to keep whatever sort of show this is on the road. Unfortunately in these febrile times, and with the club still persisting with the now utterly failed strategy of telling us as little as possible about who’s going to not be playing this week and why, the worst kind of Twitter accounts will simply fill that vacuum with all manner of tall tales, lots of them made up just for the online clout, and we’ll be back to the start again not knowing what is true and false about the team we support. QPR’s corner of the internet is absolutely alive with rumour and counter rumour. Perhaps we won’t truly know what went down here until somebody pops up on Under The Cosh years from now and comes clean.
Gareth Ainsworth’s decision to pick the youth team right back against Onel Hernandez on Wednesday night, and send expensive Man Utd loanee Ethan Laird home for the night, is a pretty clear indication all is not as fine with these players as they would have us believe. Chris Willock, whose input into this team’s performances relative to his natural ability has been fucking disgusting for months and largely excused by supporters because of his hamstring injuries, was left as an unused sub in a game Rangers really needed to win while the last dregs of football were painfully wrung out of the ghost of Albert Adomah in his position. Club captain Stefan Johansen, whose lucrative three-year deal reward for a good loan spell two years ago is now a horrible millstone around our neck, another entirely absent with "a knock”. Rob Dickie is playing like such a complete tart Ainsworth would rather go with Jake Clarke-Salter after five days of full training in two months and see how long he can last.
What you are seeing here has been inevitable since Ainsworth walked in the door. These players hated, and wouldn’t play for, Neil Critchley once he’d come out publicly and questioned their mentality. Ainsworth is the opposite, regularly going out to bat and protecting them, even when it makes him look fairly ridiculous. He was defending Ethan Laird vociferously against fans who’ve long since had enough of his antics as recently as Wigan away. For that support he wants buy-in and backing from them. You go with him, or you don’t go at all. He’d rather have an inferior player with the right attitude than a superior one without it, this is how he builds his teams and cultures, and so Ethan Laird goes home even with second choice right back Osman Kakay injured and we go with Aaron Drewe, first against Hernandez, and next against Anass Zaroury. Gulp. Pray for Aaron.
What you’re certainly not seeing here, and what nobody at the club can continue to claim after that team selection, is a team that simply lost confidence. There are underlying issues, maybe several of them, maybe dozens of them, with this playing group, set up and club, that Ainsworth has been asked to inherit and do something with. Wednesday was both unequivocal confirmation of that, and his latest attempt to combat it. Interesting the changes led to some improvements, and a point, though given Norwich’s complete lack of interest in proceedings I won’t be writing many History columns about that one in the years to come.
And so, with what’s left of the team, we go to the runaway champions on a day when, just like our last visit in 2016, they can seal the title with a win. Lions versus Christians, but the lions have got machine guns, and the Christians are fast asleep. One can only hope Burnley’s two recent draws is either them taking their eye off the ball a bit, or deliberately dragging this out so they can win it at Blackburn next week instead. Either that, or we get the most ‘typical QPR’ moment since Shaun Wright-Phillips’ late winner at Stamford Bridge in January 2013. There’s been absolutely nothing to suggest this group have that within them, but then there wasn’t then either.
08.33 train. Three to go.
Links >>> Dream season - Interview >>> Vine from the halfway line — History >>> Whitestone in charge — Referee >>> Burnley Official Website >>> No Nay Never — Podcast >>> Lancashire Telegraph — Local Press >>> Up The Clarets — Message Board
Team News: Other than it’ll probably be the most interesting bit of the afternoon, who honestly fucking knows anymore?
Southampton loanee Nathan Tella is one shy of 20 goals for the season but missed the midweek draw at Rotherham with a muscle injury sustained at Reading. Burnley are hoping to have him back in time for Blackburn next week. January arrival Hjalmar Ekdal hasn’t been part of the defence since Good Friday and may also now miss the remaining games of the season.
Elsewhere: Paul Ince Is A Wanker getting out of your life is always going to cheer anybody up, so no real surprise that Reading have responded to his departure with draws from tough home games against Burnley and Luton. With Wigan at home still to come and Huddersfield away on the last day one would think the very least QPR require at this point is them to lose away to play-off chasing Coventry tomorrow.
Wigan are seven points adrift so really only three wins will do for them now, starting at home to Millwall. Blackpool, six points away from safety, likewise ahead of a trip to Birmingham. Huddersfield are level on 44 points with QPR with a superior goal difference, but don’t have another date on the Fifteenth Annual Neil Warnock Farewell Tour until next Sunday at fellow strugglers Cardiff because their game this weekend has been postponed because of Sheffield Red Stripe’s FA Cup commitments. This will leave the Terriers with a game in hand all the way through to the first Thursday in May when those two meet at Bramall Lane. Cardiff, after a midweek win at Watford, can move all but safe with another at home to Stoke this weekend. Full credit to Rotherham, a fine effort this season, recovered well form Paul Warne’s departure, added shrewdly in January, one more win to make doubly sure for them, starting at Bristol City.
With Burnley and Sheff Utd obviously the top two, and Lutown and Middlesbrough confirmed in the play-offs prior to their meeting on Monday night, the debate at the top of the league is now all about the final play-off places. Blackburn are in possession of one, but have only won one of their last seven games, ahead of Saturday night’s big derby game with one of the chasers in touch Preston North End. Millwall’s form is also cratering, but they remain in the six for now courtesy of falterings all over the place from Watford (away to Hull), Norwich (at home to Swanselona) and Sunderland who face West Brom on Sunday — the Baggies suddenly right back in there after a couple of wins on the spin.
There’s a midweek game every night next week. Lutown Boro is the Monday night football, the big Burnley Blackburn derby is Tuesday, Sheff Utd play West Brom 24 hours later, QPR eyes on Rotherham and Cardiff’s replay on Thursday and Blackpool Millwall is on Friday.
Referee: Bricktop says third round stoppage. Details.
Burnley: So, yeh, let’s just get right through this. Burnley have won 26, drawn 14, and lost only two of their 42 league games. At home they have won 15, drawn six, and lost none. They have scored 80 goals, just shy of two a game, and conceded 32 which is the league’s meanest defence. At home they have scored 45 goals in 21 games, and conceded only 13. They haven’t conceded a goal at all at Turf Moor in the last five matches here. They have at least faltered to the tune of two draws from the two games leading into this one, at lowly Reading and Rotherham, so perhaps they’re deliberately delaying the title clinch to Blackburn during the week. They have 92 points with four games left. Nathan Tella is top scorer here with 19 in league and cup.
QPR: And this. Rangers have lost ten of their last 13 games, and seven of ten since Gareth Ainsworth took over. They have won none of the last seven taking just two points. It’s now just two wins from 28 matches, 21 defeats from 43 played, 34 defeats in the last 65 games under four managers and just 15 wins in that time. The 68 goals conceded is the league’s second worst record, and only Wigan have scored fewer than our 41 goals. At Loftus Road, where QPR have only scored four times at the Loft End all season (two penalties), records are starting to tumble. The Coventry defeat was the fifth time Rangers have conceded three goals in a game in W12 this campaign, and the fourth time they’ve lost 3-0. It was the eleventh home defeat of the season, equalling the club record set by Steve McClaren’s team. The current total of 22 points would be our lowest ever second tier haul at home. Away from home the surprise comeback 2-2 at West Brom was the first point won on our travels after four straight defeats. Rangers haven’t won an away game since Preston In December, 11 matches ago. QPR are yet to receive a red card this season, one of only eight teams in the Football League.
Prediction: We’re once again indebted to The Art of Football for agreeing to sponsor our Prediction League and provide prizes. You can get involved by lodging your prediction here or sample the merch from our sponsor’s QPR collection here. It’s taken him a while, but our reigning champion Cheesy has finally flipped …
"It’s worrying me that Huddersfield and Reading could play out a draw to send us down on the last day and keep themselves safe. It seems like the players woke up a bit on Wednesday night. It’s going to take a lot more to get a result at Burnley even though they are not looking as good as they were a few weeks ago. This sort of game is when Rangers surprise us the most and I've been negative all season so, fuck it, I'm going for a win.”
Cheesy’s Prediction: Burnley 1-3 QPR. Scorer — Ilias Chair
LFW’s Prediction: Burnley 4-0 QPR. No scorer.
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