QPR, as perhaps only QPR could, took their relegation haunted team of two wins from 28 games to champions elect Burnley on Saturday, and inflicted their first home defeat in a year and first loss anywhere in the league for 22 matches.
Burnley’s first corner of 11 on the day is sent high and handsome to the back post where Ian Maatsen is waiting unmarked. He’d scored for the Clarets against Queens Park Rangers at Loftus Road and thought he’d done so again here as a crisp, well executed volley flies past Seny Dieng in the visitors’ goal. Rob Dickie, going through a personal annus horribilis, launches himself into the air and meets the ball with a diving header, diverting it away from danger just as it passes underneath the crossbar.
The home team like that. They like that a lot. They go to that side again moments later and, amidst some confusion about whether Josh Brownhill should be tracked by Ilias Chair or A N Other, the midfielder whips a ball back from the byline unchallenged for Ashley Barnes to bang a couple of feet wide with Dieng, again, merely a spectator. Cue much pointing and flapping about.
How about the opposite flank? Time to take that club out of the bag for a practice swing. Anass Zaroury versus Aaron Drewe. Nobody ever said life was going to be fair. The Moroccan strips the youngster for pace and stands a cross up to the back post where Manuel Benson has ghosted in unnoticed to head over Dieng and back into play off the underside of the bar. Barnes, from a foot and a half away, turns the rebound towards goal and Dieng somehow readjusts to save instinctively. Benson, same spot, this time with his feet, has a second go, and there’s Dickie again, improvising the best goalline clearance you’ve seen for at least 90 seconds.
We have been playing for nine minutes, in which I have aged 30 years. It’s going to be a long old day.
It was, of course, always going to be like this. We are the 511 QPR fans left standing three games from the end of a season that has gone all the way from engine trouble, through the crash onto the mountainside, past the weeks of miserable purgatory and now reached the bit where you have to start eating each other. Rumour and counter rumour fuelled by Gareth Ainsworth’s maverick selection for the midweek draw with Norwich swallowing up one beleaguered member of this sorry excuse for a team after another. Today, again, he’d rather Drewe face Zaroury than his expensive Manchester United loanee Ethan Laird. Chris Willock, in theory this team’s star boy, will remain an unused substitute and while some QPR fans sing his name as he warms up this enrages two gents behind us who tell him, and those singing his name, they should "fuck off”. Everybody has a pet hate in this team now. Goofy’s my favourite.
It is duty and habit that has brought us 250 miles to the other end of the country and Turf Moor today, rather than any faith or love. You have more chance of beating Susie Dent at Scrabble than QPR do of beating Burnley at football. Our numbers we know all about — two wins in 28 games, 14 points from the last 81 available, the league’s second worst attack and second worst defence, top of the table in October to seemingly inevitable relegation in April. Their numbers every bit as stark — cantering straight back to the Premier League as champions with only two defeats all season, no losses in 22 games of which 16 have been won, unbeaten at home with 15 wins and six draws, the league’s best attack and best defence. They bought their tickets, they knew what they were getting into, I say let 'em crash.
Zaroury’s cross right through the six-yard box and out the other side on 19 minutes sparks a crisis of confidence in Drewe, who is now berating himself out loud. Help and reassurance is in short supply. It’s a tough watch. Poor boy. Barnes heads over at the back post after going toe to toe with Rob Dickie and winning. Gudmundsson’s snatched shot wide is the first hint at desperation in the ranks of the home team who need a win here to confirm their inevitable league title. Soon he’s shooting wide from a quick corner routine QPR aren’t alive to. Benson cuts into the area and curls wide of the top corner. Make it stop. Dickie’s third brave headed clearance of a goalbound shot of the day comes four minutes before half time — the league have taken pity, we’re being allowed to play with a second goalkeeper.
At one stage Albert Adomah sits down to try and kill a bit of time and Lyndon Dykes, walking backwards and not noticing, tramples his team mate underfoot. They both collapse in a heap. Burnley play on around them. Jesus Christ. This has the potential to get very embarrassing indeed. Like watching your dad get beaten up by the RE teacher. Those numbers are starting to stack up all over again: Burnley will finish the day with 81% of the ball and 21 shots on the goal; they will attempt 663 passes on the day and complete 592 of those (89%) while QPR will try just 153 and complete only 83 (54%) which is well under one successful pass to a team mate a minute. Tim Iroegbunam plays in the centre of midfield in a Championship football game for 67 minutes touching the ball only seven times — he attempts one pass all afternoon, and gives the ball away with it. Rangers are effectively standing there, deep tight and narrow, with a flat back eight, two goalkeepers, ceding possession and space everywhere except the final ten feet in front of their own goal, wasting every little bit of time referee Dean Whitestone will stand them, hoping for the best and waiting for Burnley to punch themselves out. Homer, it’s Drederick Tatum, he’s not going to get tired.
And yet… And yet.
Football is 11 against another 11 played on a square patch of grass — in theory anybody can beat anybody else on any given day. It’s one of the sport’s main appeals and beauties. And we’re playing in the Championship division of it. We’re not trying to compete in Serie A circa 1994 here: Ruud Gullit is not strutting about back there, it’s Taylor Harwood-Bellis; Attilio Lombardo is not coming for your lunch money it’s Josh Brownhill; that’s Ashley Barnes up front lads, he’s nearly as fat as some of you are, it’s not Giuseppe Signori rampaging about. There will be no James Richardson, no pink pages, no pastry, no elaborate ice cream. We not talk about Cech, we talk about Wes. It’s the Championship, and yeh Burnley are a very good team in the Championship, and we’re barely a team at all, but… still.
Vincent Kompany is one of the greatest defenders to have ever played on these shores, his managerial career is already off to a flying start, a promotion and title at Burnley is as inevitable as the job offers that will follow, the style of football he employs and promotes is as impressive as the results it is achieving and the way he has spun Burnley around from Sean Dyche-ball to this in such a short period of time is worthy of all the televised fellating that’s currently coming his way from such footballing luminaries as Don Goodman. "Oh, Vincent, to think you graced this division with your presence even for a season makes my heartbeat so loud I’m surprised it doesn’t wake you up. When the five o’clock dinner bell rings I will be home like the winged Gossamer of love in your arms, your loving admirer, Andy Hinchliffe (don’t mention the nose).” He’s also, though, and let’s be really frank here, a geezer with a massive head. That head is enormous. Perfection does not exist, in life, and certainly in football. It is 0-0 at half time.
The tone for the second half is set before the second half begins. QPR are late out. One wonders whether there’s been a Great Escape-style debate about a tunnelling expedition of some sort. Gareth Ainsworth comes out last of all, dressed like a walking midlife crisis, and crawls across the pitch to the dugouts at a pace that could kindly be described as glacial. Dobbo is the thinker in this relationship, and it might be time for Dobbo to point out you can’t run the clock in a football game until the clock has actually been started in the first place. You have to let them kick off first Gaz.
It says in the notes here "a good spell of possession”. I don’t believe it. Looking at the stats a thick 85% of the passes QPR completed all afternoon must have been in this bit here. During the war, Buster Merryfield might have done better with a back post header. Lyndon Dykes is going through it for the cause, roughing people up. Bring it. Harwood-Bellis once taunted Scunthorpe United’s Kevin Van Veen over the respective size of their pay packets while playing an LDV Vans game for Man City’s puppy farm at Glanford Park so he deserves somebody to put the rounds of the kitchen through him and I’m pleased it’s us, and Lyndon in particular, to be the ones to do it. Queen’s birthday honours. Eat that and tell me you’re still hungry, horrible twat. We’ll take that with us at least.
Actually, we’ll be taking more than that Jim. Ethan Laird is now on, and he’s taking this throw in see, and here it comes towards where we’re sitting, and Burnley are fannying about a bit but that probably won’t matter, except this time it will, and now Sam Field is here — just like an angel, his skin makes me cry - and the ball is sitting up for him just so, and he knows what to do with that because, well, a grown up has entered the chat. Knee over the ball, like a professional footballer might, he wraps the outside of his left boot around it and sends a shot arcing off on a trajectory directly in line with my head. On this occasion, my head is behind the top corner of the net at the cricket club end of this ground. And that’s where the ball ends up. Floating like a feather, in a beautiful world. Into the top corner. Of the net. In this game. In open play. It’s a goal. A real live goal. So fucking special.
In the away end society dissolves entirely. Field, an island of integrity and professionalism in a sea of the opposite, doesn’t know where to go, because he never scores, and was certainly not expected to do so in this game. He just sort of runs around in excited loops, with his tongue out, looking for new friends, like that time a dog got into your school. Loud? That’s our secret word for the day.
Well, now, this is quite a thing. I was only here out of morbid curiosity, and now I’m invested. Ainsworth gets all boisterous and sends on Sinclair Armstrong to chase oh so many channel balls beyond defenders who are increasingly bemused by this most unlikely of ambushes. Harwood-Bellis interrupts one such charge with a foul and is booked, and then moments later Armstrong sets off through one-on-one with Muric for a goal that would bring about the collapse of civilisation as we know it if it’s scored but actually ends with him miscontrolling the ball multiple times and then orphaning the children of Jordan Beyer for which he is yellow carded.
You do just start to wonder don’t you? As Jay Rodriguez, on from the bench, one of all the Burnley substitutes who would be the best player in our team, heads one towards the far bottom corner and Seny Dieng has three nervous grabs at it by the post and, this time, unlike all those other times, actually keeps the fucking thing out… When Rob Dickie makes, effectively, three of the best goalline clearances you’ve ever seen in your life, having played like a complete tart for the last six months… As one QPR player after another collapses to the ground with spurious complaints like so many Ben Pearson’s have done to us in the past… Whether it might just be your day. Excuse me while I interrupt myself, they’ve scored. Benson cuts in from the right and seeks out the far corner with his left. It’s a goal Burnley have scored before, which makes it annoying. There’s also still a quarter of an hour left, which means it’s the starter for a main course of thick disappointment still to come. But, still, this was better than any of us could have expected. We played a hand.
There is, indeed, a winner to come. It’s not the winner in the script, but the clues were there. Armstrong runs a channel, which you expect, and then calms and composes himself to find the right pass, which you do not — Ilias Chair receives and draws a good save from Muric. Chris Martin, who’s been brought on for Dykes really just to waste time, not only keeps a ball in at the corner but also elaborately back flicks it into the path of Chair (come on Chris, we’ve all had a drink) for him to dribble into the heart of the red zone and test Muric again. For all the numbers and statistics and possession and percentages and time wasting and shit housing, QPR will register five shots on target which is more than they’ve managed in any of the last 23 games dating back to their last away win at Preston in December. We’ve mentioned four of them here, and there is one more to come. There is one more to come. Is that the faint strain of Celine Dion blowing in on the spring breeze?
Chris Martin actually spends much of the build up to the corner what won it explaining to Sinclair Armstrong where he might like to stand, because that’s a thing you have to do with Sinclair Armstrong. As he turns back to face the play, the corner has already been taken. Lowe, so close I could reach out and touch him, has gone short to Paal, and received the ball back. Burnley are asleep, and Lowe is now drifting into the area waiting for his trigger point. It comes in the six-yard box, where the short corner has pulled enough defenders away to create a numerical advantage in QPR’s favour. Lowe gets the whip just right, Martin arches his back like early years Diana and cries "yah”. The ball flicks off his pate and nestles into the far corner of the net with a beautiful, sexual, majestry. Martin has scored, QPR have won, of that there can now be no doubt, add on all the time you like. And in the away end, the dogs and cats are indeed living together once more.
In 2013, QPR won one of their first 20 league games in that Premier League season. They were effectively relegated right out of the gate, and we hated them for it. Faced with a £65 ticket in the away end for a midweek gob bumming at Chelsea two nights after New Year’s Eve, nobody went. And they won. They won with a goal right at the end of the game, from an unlikely hero, who on that occasion didn’t even want to score the fucking thing, and refused to celebrate it. Had the police allowed it, we’d still be there now, singing the name of Rafa Benitez. Sometimes it is written, sometimes it is your day, and QPR do coupon busting nonsense like this like few others. This is the most QPR thing QPR have done since then. Arguably one of the most QPR things of all.
From the depths of despondency that only hopelessness can bring, to a shot of everything you’ve ever wanted before in your life. The "influencers” like to call these things "limbs”, or "scenes”, but they don’t know, because they don’t go. They’ve never been part of that moment, they just film it from afar and judge it out of ten. Mark Goldbridge is a thing in this country. Those of us actually there amongst it will stay, forever this way, on the off chance something like this happens. It’s been a long time between drinks, but it’s a hell of a drink when it finally hits once more, warming the throat as you emerge onto the street of bemused locals, blinking disbelievingly into the realisation that we've actually just done that. "You’re still shit” shouts Johnny Fucking Notherner. Well, yes, friend, that’s what makes this so unbelievably funny. Like Eyeball Paul, mainlining joy, straight into the retina.
Imagine no possession, it’s easy if you try.
Links >>> Ratings and Reports >>> Ratings and Reports
Burnley: Muric 6; Roberts 6, Harwood-Bellis 5, Beyer 5, Maatsen 6 (Obafemi 76, 5); Brownhill 6, Cullen 7; Benson 7, Gudmundsson 6 (Twine 57, 6), Zaroury 7; Barnes 5 (Rodriguez 57, 5)
Subs not used: Taylor, Clark, Peacock-Farrell, da Silva
Goals: Benson 76 (assisted Roberts)
Bookings: Harwood Bellis 63 (foul), Twine 90+2 (foul)
QPR: Dieng 6; Drewe 5 (Laird 45, 6), Dickie 8, Dunne 7, Paal 6; Adomah 5 (Armstrong 59, 7), Iroegbunam 5 (Amos 68, 6), Field 7, Chair 6; Lowe 6, Dykes 7 (Martin 85, -)
Subs not used: Willock, Archer, Richards
Goals (actual goals): Field 58 (unassisted), Martin 87 (assisted Lowe)
Bookings: Armstrong 80 (Brick killed a guy), Laird 89 (time wasting)
QPR Star Man — Rob Dickie 8 Surprise goalkeepers, each more surprising than the last.
Referee — Dean Whitestone (Northants) 6 Added eight minutes, when QPR’s antics probably warranted double. This meant we made our train with about 45 seconds to spare. You’ll do for me son, see you Monday.
Attendance — 20,027 (511 weirdoes) Forever this way.
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Pictures — Ian Randall Photography
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