Injury hit, toothless, second from bottom Queens Park Rangers face the Championship’s big surprise success story on Saturday, as league leading Sunderland come to town to start a tough three-game week for the R’s.
Sky’s Super Saturday Brunch Spectacular >>> Saturday November 2, 2024 >>> Kick Off 15.00 (!!) >>> Weather – Grey but mercifully dry >>> Loftus Road, London, W12
It is a mental agony so pure I can still reach out and touch it. I’d just turned ten, now I’m coming to terms with being 40, and if I close my eyes I’m still there. The dark night, the smoke in the air, the stopped clock. Huddled up under my grandad’s coat at the back of the Q Block. Him with his snuff. Me praying. A child, praying. I’ll be good, just give me this.
Queens Park Rangers are at home to Aston Villa. Big story. Big day. Big hitters. Ron Atkinson, despite a second placed finish in 1993, and a League Cup win in 1994, is in trouble as we head towards 1995. Paul McGrath is here, but a little worse for wear, and gifts Rangers an opening goal. Dwight Yorke partners Dean Saunders in attack. Andy Townsend is a Chelsea wanker. And so QPR cling to that goal.
Supporting QPR to this point had been an absolute breeze: the country’s outstanding young centre forward Les Ferdinand; a procession of exciting Sinton/Sinclair/Impey wingers to supply him; Ray Wilkins enjoying an Indian summer so warm and productive they were talking about calling him back up for England as his 40th birthday loomed; attacking full backs Bardsley and Wilson way ahead of their time and surely worth a small fortune in the modern game.
Fucking abysmal goalkeeper, because of course, but you turn up, dad sinks six pints in The Goldhawk, grandad tells Margaret the Landlady they should wed so he could show her how to run the place properly, we stand at the back of the Q Block, we beat Coventry City 5-1, Bobby Gould gets the sack, we go home. Well, we don’t go home, we go back to The Goldhawk, and come up with a convoluted story for why mum has been sitting in the car outside Richmond station watching people in QPR shirts go past for an hour and a half and we’re only just turning up now. "Life’s a serious business with Helen”.
Many nuclear bombs were about to go off and lay waste to that youthful idyll but, for now, the first hints it may not always be like this were coming on the pitch. QPR were not winning. For the first time since I’d stumbled past the family television one fateful New Year’s Day, clocked the score at Old Trafford and asked "isn’t that dad’s team?”, Rangers were losing. Losing consistently.
Losing 4-3 to Man City in the League Cup despite scoring from the kick off after eight seconds, then scoring off the kick off again when Man City equalised first time around. Nicky Summerbee with a spectacular winner ("met it wellllllll, oh he did more than meet it well, he did more than meet it well he’s found the roof of the net”) after 80 minutes of my dad shouting "not as good as your fucking old man” at him. Losing at home to Man City in the league the week before, Wimbledon the week before that. Losing 3-2 at Nottingham Forest despite Ferdinand’s brilliance, despite Bradley Allen getting "an important goal for your manager”, because we had Tony Roberts in goal and the league were still resisting our lobbying for use of a ball with a bell in it. Losing at home to Ipswich bloody Town. My God. In those days that was quite a thing. We made Boncho Genchev look good. Draws. Draws with Leicester and Coventry and Everton. And a shambolic 4-2 loss at Norwich. Fourteen games and three months deep into the season and QPR had beaten Sheff Wed, and Carlisle United.
Celine Dion whispered "serious" through the pool hall jukebox at the back of the pub, and the grownups huddled round those little gold tables you used to get and muttered hushed tones about Gerry, and Rodney, and that wanker Thompson. Two games in three Halloween days, Villa and Liverpool in town, Les injured. Don't think I can't feel that there's something wrong, you've been the sweetest part of my life for so long.
It was a young Danny Dichio who crept in behind McGrath for the first senior goal in a career which, at that point, felt like more of a distraction from his deejaying. That was after half an hour. The clock stopped there, as the night closed in, and Villa laid siege. How they didn’t score was more down to pure, dumb luck. Sometimes it’s just your day. You only get to find that out afterwards though. There are no spoilers. There is no reassurance. Only purgatory. Only suffering. You will stand there, and watch. The sponge is dry. You will watch what you have done. I usually do tick followed tock followed tick followed tock at this point. But there was no tick, and there was no tock. It was 75 minutes. It was 75 minutes forever. Part of me still thinks it’s 75 minutes now. Steve Yates marking Dwight Yorke. This cannot possibly be fair. And it certainly can’t stay 1-0. "They can’t hear you, you know,” grandad Tom reminded me. Life lessons. Just please, let it end.
And when I close my eyes for long enough, eventually Gary Penrice comes bounding out of the darkness.
A missed interception by Trevor Sinclair when he could have thrown his headband on it. A final cross into the box which surely spells doom. A scramble about. Steve Hodge is dead. Get up Steve. Nothing. A panic. And a boot through a ball by David Bardsley. From nothing and nowhere, it’s everything to everyman. Mark Bosnich, off his chops probably, has strayed far from home. Villa are ten to the good in a full court press. The goalkeeper is playing five positions at the back by himself. And he’s missed it. He’s gone all that way and he's missed it. Fat mess. Missed it completely.
"Chip it over his head Penrice… YES.”
Now there’s a ball, and a goal, and the only person in the picture is a little fat guy with a moustache Television X would have asked him to remove for fear of making the plot too farfetched. The more discerning weirdo likes a bit of story to it. A whole half of a football field, and those are the only three things in it. "Penrice is through…” That Irish guy who used to do the club coms is crying at this point. Off Penrice waddles. At the speed of the District Line. First touch of a planet. And all around him that Loft End curve is begging. Begging. Pleading.
Some ten, maybe 15 minutes later, Penrice has caught up with the ball.
"Penrice is Stuart’s man” my dad used to say of his best mate’s long held belief Penrice was always the best partner we had for Les. And Stuart’s now falling down the steps. With everybody else. Because Penrice has scored. Penrice has scored, into the empty net. Penrice has scored, with the last kick. Penrice has scored, and there’s no time to restart, and QPR have won. And the relief is so palpable here we are 30 years later. And in my young mind’s eye I see that Ford Sierra driving down the Uxbridge Road, blue and white scarf hanging from a blue and white drunk out of the passenger side window, driver honking both of his horns, both bidding "you Brummie cunts” farewell. All the grownups, all so happy. Dad, happy.
Not 48 hours later QPR have won again, against Liverpool. With Les. Because of Les. Live on Sky. "That’s what David Bardsley is all about”. "He's looked a threat from the first minute. Liverpool have played the offside trap once too often… it’s very close, in fact I think he might even be offside Ian, but this time Liverpool don't get the decision, and Les makes them pay for it.” "Look at Gerry Francis, that’s what it means to him.” Two days later Gerry was gone.
You should follow @onthisdayQPR. Jan Stejskal lives there.
⚽️ | #onthisday in 1994 @DannyDichio scored his first professional goal while Gary Penrice also struck in a 2-0 win over Aston Villa at Loftus Road. #qpr | #avfc pic.twitter.com/cHOeyoW0rM— On This Day - #QPR (@onthisdayqpr) October 29, 2024
⚽️ | #onthisday in 1994 Gerry Francis signed off in his final home game as QPR manager with a 2-1 win over Liverpool at Loftus Road. Goals from Trevor Sinclair and Les Ferdinand. #qpr | #lfc pic.twitter.com/Czso1AtgP1— On This Day - #QPR (@onthisdayqpr) October 31, 2024
We do all this together tonight, of course, because it’s 30 years this week that Gary Penrice set off after that first touch and a ten-year-old cried with happiness for the first time despite the growing realisation he'd been named Clive.
We come together in this manner because these previews don’t write themselves. And because it’s not only a three-game week, but a three game week from Futurama’s Planet of Amazonia – you, Kif, as the most attractive male, shall play first Sunderland, then Middlesbrough, then Leeds.
However, we also do it like this because every other angle I could pick for this tonight is a negative one. QPR’s results and form, the growing injury list, the ever more clandestine communications strategy and its ever increasingly damaging results, the two goalkeepers on the bench, The Rayan Kolli Mysteries, the fact we’re all passengers on a bus now being driven by a 27-year-old who’s never driven a bus before… Maybe we’ll do that for Tuesday’s preview. Or Saturday’s preview. I’m on the train to Leeds on Thursday night. We’ll be spending a lot of time together this week, you and I.
For now, we settle for sweet, warming, nourishing nostalgia. We rejoice in the comfort it brings. Have I told you how good Rick Stein’s Secret France is?
We also, however, cling desperately to the flotsam of hope it may offer a team with no home wins, no strikers and no goals, as it goes in against Gab Sutton’s five star, all conquering army of table toppers.
There have been seasons, many seasons, where QPR start badly and fade away from there. That 1990s team did collapse into relegation soon after. Four seasons further still it was relegated to the Second Division with one away win and a balance sheet that looked like Liz Truss’ Amex account. Mark Hughes got QPR relegated from the Premier League having started the season without a win in 16 games. Having brought it back (spending £100m in the process), Harry Redknapp then relegated it again with two wins from the first 12 and no away wins until February. It does, sometimes, start shit, stay shit, and end shit.
Some of our very best modern day QPR memories, though, are when you stare into the abyss so long, Gary Penrice stares back at you. And it’s often at this time of year the tache appears.
This week in 1989 produced one of the all timers. Kenny Dalglish’s hated Liverpool, sweeping all before them, with John Barnes in world beating form, arriving at relegation-haunted Rangers for an absolute shoo-in.
Trevor Francis’ player-manager reign had gone badly awry after the Martin Allen controversy. No wins in seven. Nigel Spackman gobbing off. Half the squad hated the manager, who was still their best player, and had been in hospital most of the previous fortnight having emergency surgery to try and get him back on the pitch. It was a club in turmoil, a squad at war, a manager about to collect his P45, and it had no chance. No chance. Even allowing for the sort of Bruce Grobbelaar goalkeeping that had flying squad paying him breakfast door knocks in later years, and an early double from homesick Scot Paul Wright. Barnes’ first equaliser from the penalty spot was surely a harbinger of what was to come.
Until Andy Sinton, left Whelen behind, and drew Hysen across, so that Falco could shoot…. BRILLIANTLY.
From a foregone conclusion and a "why on earth are we bothering”, to an ‘I was there’ moment. Trevor Francis’ wife Helen slipping the tongue all the way in and then some at the front of the director’s box, bedecked in a coat that had laid waste to most of the Scandinavian mink population. "And that says it all… A result here that will reverberate around the First Division corridors tonight, second from bottom Queens Park Rangers three, second from top Liverpool two.”
It is that time of year for this club. Loftus Road crackling on dark Saturday nights.
Sunderland themselves victim of a Don Howe and Bobby Gould double act in 1990, Rangers previously no wins in ten in a run that at one point included eight consecutive defeats.
Simon Barker, have a shot… WHAT A GOAL. The victory is here. The home victory is here. It’s Queens Park Rangers three, Everton one. This week in 1991, when Gerry Francis had started his reign with no wins in eight, two wins from 14, and no home wins at all.
Gerry’s second spell didn’t start well either. Taking over a financially destitute, second tier, Rangers from the cataclysmic mismanagement of Stewart Houston and then Ray Harford, Rangers lost at home to Grimsby and Birmingham and away to Huddersfield, West Brom and Swindon in swift succession. Five straight defeats, some real humdingers amongst them, how’s that for new manager bounce? Now with two wins from 19 games, screwed, and with two thirds of the squad out injured, this week in 1998 began with Francis (allegedly, no lawyer letters please) ordering the sprinklers be left on overnight to try and waterlog a homer with Barnsley off until later in the season. It went ahead, on a bog. Francis’ plan B, a young Richard Langley, scored on home debut in a 2-1 win. Bolton were beaten 2-0 on the Saturday. Crewe 2-0 the week after. Bradford, Port Vale, Norwich were all knocked over in short order. From the absolute depths to six wins in ten games.
In this town your luck can change just like that.
Ian Holloway twice looked certain for the sack. Seven defeats in ten, a 4-1 at Peterborough, a 4-0 at destitute Swansea in the FA Cup. He recovered first with the signing of Kevin Gallen, and a 4-0 win at home to Swindon, third week of November 2001. In 2002 the depths were plumbed still further, the FA Cup exit to Vauxhall Motors part of a winless run of 12. The rot stopped with the signing of Lee Cook, and a draw at home to Brentford. Holloway and his team were promoted 18 months later, at the end of an unbeaten home season, and a run of 11 defeats in 74 games.
When Gianni Paladini got his suffocating tentacles all over that wonderful flower we’d grown together, Holloway was dismissed. Gary Waddock started the 2006/07 season with a woefully underequipped squad burnished with such luminaries as Adam Czerkas, Armel Tchakounte, and Monday Oliseh. The team won three of its 15 games. And then, from nowhere, new manager John Gregory won three times in a week. Which week? This week, in November 2006. It started with a 4-2 win at home to Crystal Palace which featured Lee Cook performing a live autopsy on Danny Butterfield.
Samuel Di Carmine, a dog having a day, driving through the snow. This week in 2008. Knocking over league-leading and eventually promoted Birmingham City for a ten-man QPR team under caretaker management and with one win from seven matches. In a blizzard, the pitch decreasingly playable, vision being measured in yards, a Brum side with Kevin Phillips up front plundered a late equaliser only to be flagged offside. If that linesman could see that, from there, in those conditions, he should be on telescope duties in the Persian Gulf. Sometimes it’s just your night.
Ian Holloway, second time around, on a run of seven games without a win and under mounting pressure and criticism, randomly knocked over Wolves and Sheff Utd in a week. This the financially doped Wolves that had Ruben Neves and Diogo Joto ponsing about in the Championship; this the Sheff Utd of Chris Wilder first time around with his double promotion and underlapping centre backs. QPR beat them with goals from Conor Washington, Matt Smith and Idrissa Sylla inside four days. Which four days? These four days, in 2017.
Am I saying QPR are randomly going to start winning this week, with a growing injury list, and fixtures like this? No. I don’t really believe it myself. But history has taught us that if it is to turn out okay this season, as we all hope, you have to get moving at some point. You have to beat somebody eventually. And that often happens when you least expect it. Right at the point you’ve given up hope of it ever happening.
Sometimes you beat somebody by accident. Because it’s QPR. And because it’s time.
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Team News: While we cling to the hope that salvation may lie in senior squad members returning from injury, Marti Cifuentes is losing players faster than he’s gaining them. The injuries to Morgan Fox and Karamoko Dembele we were told were so touch-and-go they were expected to play at Burnley last Saturday right up until the morning of the game, are now apparently so serious neither can play this weekend either and Dembele is the latest first teamer to be sidelined for an indeterminate number of weeks with a knee injury. Of the previous victims, Jack Colback seems some way off a return so misses out on the chance to make amends for his personal brain explosion in this fixture against his former club last season, but Liam Morrison is back in training having not featured since August. Kenneth Paal and Michy Frey both remain out it seems. Rayan Kolli’s been a good boy though, back in first team training, so he might get the treat of a bench spot, pending how many goalkeepers we want on there this week.
While QPR face another fixture with Zan Celar as their only recognised senior forward, Sunderland arrive in London trying to pick one from an assortment of four. Eliezer Mayenda started the season up front and scored two in six before being sidelined. He’s back now, but his replacement Wilson Isidor (no, it’s a window) now has four in six himself. Chuck in Aaron Connolly and Nazariy Rusyn and it’s clear they’re just showing off. Goalkeeper Anthony Patterson had six clean sheets in 11 before his injury, but second choice Simon Moore kept Oxford at bay last week and will likely play again. Dan Ballard, who scored in this fixture last season, is unlikely to make it back in time to take his place in the defence.
Elsewhere: Three game week. What joy. Followed by another fortnight off for that crucial third international break in three months.
The whole thing lurches back into life tonight with surprise strugglers Luton at home to West Brom who are Carlos Corberaning it right up.
Stoke v Derby is, for some reason, the main lunchtime game tomorrow. Our Sky Overlords have also moved Oxford v Swanselona and Blackburn v Sheffield Red Stripe into that kick off slot, just because they can rather than because they want to televise it or expect anybody to watch.
There are then six games as well as our own left alone at 15.00, with a theme being teams at the wrong end of the table facing tough away games. You wouldn’t fancy Wazza to get much of a reception, or many points, as he takes his Plymouth team to Elland Road – Plymouth haven’t won away this season, only won away twice last term, and haven’t won outside of Home Park since April 5 at relegated Rotherham. Hull at home to Pompey also looks a bit of a banker, as does Middlesbrough at home to Coventry although Boro are wildly inconsistent this year and are one of those teams (waves) that Mark Robins seems to have a weird tactical hex over.
Playing for want of something better to do with their time are Cardiff at home to Norwich and Sheff Wed at home to Watford.
Scott Parker’s attempt to convince the good people of Burnley that a 0-0 at Millwall is always a great result is the televised Sunday game. Meanwhile, in the everlasting game of what is proper Wawll and isn’t Wawll at all, a tribunal hearing has come back in the negative for plans to have a flashing floodlight show added to the pre-game festivities daghn at The Den.
🤬 NOT THE MILLWALL WE KNOW!
As part of the new deal for floodlights @MillwallFC are going to have bloody LIGHT SHOWS as part of pre-match build up.
Part of the deal with new light company, to have THREE per season.
First one planned for LEEDS at home.
Utter garbage!— Millwall Supporters’ Club (@TheMillwallFans) October 30, 2024
Referee: Occasional Championship official Ben Toner gets a second career date with QPR this Saturday. By far the best story with this guy is the PGMOL quietly removed him from a Blackpool fixture at the height of the Oyston protests because of his name. Details.
QPR: Rangers have stemmed the bleeding of four straight defeats with a pair of draws at home to Coventry and away at Burnley. The clean sheet at Turf Moor was the R’s first in 14 attempts across league and cup this season. However, they have won only one of their first 12 league games and are now winless in eight in the Championship – equalling their longest previous sequence of games without a win under Marti Cifuentes which took place between December 13 and January 14 last season and included a cup loss to Premier League Bournemouth. It is, sadly, the fourth time in two-and-a-bit seasons that QPR have had a winless run of at least eight games.
The home record is particularly troubling – only QPR and Pompey are yet to win a home game in the Championship. It took QPR nine home matches through to the start of December to get a victory at Loftus Road in 23/24, and they’re already eight deep into this campaign without one (six of those league games). QPR have won eight of their last 49 games at Loftus Road, 13 of their last 56 to the start of the 22/23 season, and 15 out of 64 going back to January 2022. That’s not going to change any time soon unless the team can find some goals – they had just two shots at Burnley last week, with neither on target. QPR have only scored 11 goals altogether, only Swansea have fewer with eight. The R’s have only scored more than one goal in a game twice, at Luton and Sheff Utd in August, and have since fired blanks in three of eight league games. With Michy Frey absent, QPR will likely field a side tomorrow that can’t match his four goals so far cumulatively. Nicholas Madsen is the only other player we have who’s scored more than once. The focus is increasingly on the failings of summer import Zan Celar, who touched the ball 14 times in 79 minutes up front against Coventry, and 11 in 61 minutes at Burnley last week without registering a shot on target in either game.
Jake Clarke-Salter’s impressive role in a first clean sheet of the season at the 14th attempt last weekend should perhaps not come as a surprise. Despite Rangers’ struggles so far they’re unbeaten in eight with JCS in the team. The last time they lost a game he played was the opening day against West Brom and that’s the only one of 11 games he’s been on the losing side for going back into last season.
#QPR failed to win a league game in both September and October in a single calendar year for only the second time (also 2012 in the Premier League).
Bring on November...— Jack Supple (@JTSupple) October 31, 2024
So QPR are now joint 2nd-lowest in big chances in the @SkyBetChamp
Joint with… Burnley #QPR @FotMob pic.twitter.com/iN2CJjTKLg— QPR Analytics (@AnalyticsQpr) October 29, 2024
Sunderland: When these sides met at The Stadium of Light in March they fought out a turgid nil nil draw that seemed to do little for either cause. Sunderland had lost six in a row going into the game and finished the campaign with two wins from the final 15 games – a run that included ten defeats including the final three matches, which they lost to Millwall, Watford and Sheff Wed without scoring a goal. The Black Cats failed to score in five of their final six matches, and only managed one in the remaining fixture at West Brom (albeit one of the games they did win). When a 120-day search for a new manager landed on Regis Le Bris, relegated from Ligue 1 with Leyton Orient’s more garlicky cousin Lorient in his previous gig, the knives were well and truly out for controversial sporting director Kristjaan Speakman.
It has been quite the turnaround. With 28 points it’s the best start to a season since 1894-95, and a win tomorrow will be the first time since then they’ve started with ten wins from the first 13 games. The Mackems arrive at Loftus Road five points clear at the top of the table having won the last three on the spin at Hull (1-0), Luton (2-1) and at home to Oxford (2-0). They’ve lost only twice in the league, away at Plymouth (3-2) and Watford (2-1) and are unbeaten in five coming into this fixture. Nobody has scored more than their 23 goals (Wilson Isidor and Romaine Mundle top score with four) and only four teams have conceded fewer than their nine. They’re the only side to have scored in every game so far. Their four wins away from home (Cardiff, Portsmouth, Hull, Luton) is the division’s highest total so far, nobody has more points than them on the road, and their 11 goals scored away is the division’s joint best record along with West Brom. Le Bris’ side have only drawn once – the lowest total in the league along with Watford.
As said, QPR have won 15 of their last 64 home games over the last three years. There have been 29 home defeats in that time and Sunderland are one of five sides to account for more than one of those having won 3-1 here last season, and 3-0 the prior campaign in what proved to be Neil Critchley’s final game. West Brom, Blackburn, Coventry and Cardiff are the other four who’ve all also won here twice in that time. QPR had won three out of four meetings between the sides here before that, a sequence that included a first career goal for Ebere Eze, but prior to that hadn’t won a home game against the Mackems in five attempts going back to 1990. Rangers haven’t beaten Sunderland in five attempts home or away.
Prediction: There’s still time to enter our Prediction League for 2024/25, where we’ll once again be handing out prizes for being top at Christmas and overall winner from The Art of Football - sample the merch from our sponsor’s newly extended QPR collection here. For the first time last year we had joint winners so this season you’ll be hearing from one or both WestonsuperR and SimplyNico in the match previews, and the former is already top of the league again this time around.
Nico’s Prediction: "After the 0-0 battering at the hands of Burnley last time out, we have runaway leaders Sunderland with their "Come in Peace” Forum member advising how great it is to be a Sunderland fan at the moment (fair enough after Adam Johnson and double relegation). HQ has been a happy hunting ground in recent times for the Black Cats, and even with the recent pair of draws, given the injury list we have, I do not see anything which would result in a change to that.”
Weston’s Call "One win all season and now facing a team five points clear at the top of table, Lloyd or Celar leading the line with one goal between them, Chair and others badly out of form. Surely an away banker? My natural pessimism would normally kick in and predict a comfortable loss but have a weird feeling we will get something on Saturday, not much but something.”
Nico’s Prediction: QPR 0-3 Sunderland. No scorer.
WestonSuperR’s Prediction: QPR 1-1 Sunderland. Scorer – Ilias Chair
LFW’s Prediction: QPR 1-0 Sunderland. Scorer – I don’t know, some cunt.
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