QPR get a chance to right the wrongs of October at Peterborough United on Saturday, as the R’s go back to London Road to face the Championship basement-boys in the FA Cup.

Peterborough (5-5-17 LWLLDL 22nd) v QPR (15-6-7 WDWWDW 4th)

Zenith Data Systems Challenge Trophy >>> Saturday February 5, 2022 >>> Kick Off 15.00 >>> Weather — Windy >>> London Road, Peterborough

I guess if I was running a 24-hour football news network that never shows any actual football, I’d probably hype up the transfer window a bit as well. Likewise, if I was trying to build a Twitter following as some sort of all-knowing man-on-the-inside of elite European football by rushing up to deals everybody knew about anyway and shouting “HERE WE GO” just before the scarf holding pictures appear on the official website. Still, the idea that all transfers are great things - regardless of who they are, how much they cost or how they go on to perform — and all inaction is terrible, sticks in the craw for the supporter of a club that gorged on that excess under successive managers and chairman and nearly destroyed itself in doing so. To see Bournemouth’s panicky trolley dash described as a “good window” directly alongside stories of Derby’s crash and burn, without any presenter, pundit or journalist ever conflating the two, is Nadine Dorries levels of 'thick as a Boxing Day shit'.

For “good window” see also “busy window”, and if you’re busy in January you’ve got problems. Firstly, because if you’re buying players in the middle of the season, they’re either not going to be as good as the players you’d ideally like to be buying, or they’re going to cost you more than they should. Often, it’s both. Other than the odd contract situation you might take advantage of (Charlie Austin to Southampton, Bright Osayi-Samuel to Turkey), why would a club offload a player halfway through the season unless they had no use for him (not as good as their other players) or the money on offer is way above what they think he’s actually valued at? ‘Well, we’ve got this 24-year-old goalkeeper under contract who’s kept a dozen clean sheets in the first half of the season and might get our Player of the Year award, but hey Sunderland offered £200k for him so we let him go because we were bored and had big bar bill from the Christmas party’ — said no chairman ever.

Secondly, because if you need players halfway through a season, clearly whatever your plan for that season was hasn’t worked as you thought it might. QPR’s January 2021 was transformative, the arrival of Charlie Austin, Sam Field, Jordy De Wijs and Stefan Johansen not only revitalised that season but also set the platform for the huge promotion push we’ve since embarked on this. But it needed to be. QPR had won four of their first 23 games (none of them comfortably), and looked a very decent outside bet for relegation as they descended through the winter and into Christmas without a win in ten matches. Sliding doors and all that, but I wonder whether an angry away end for the abject performance and draw at Wycombe, followed by a restless W12 as Swansea calmly took us to pieces the week after, might have brought about a managerial change. Warbs told us in interview last summer he wouldn’t have been surprised himself. Keeping faith with a good, principled manager for a long period of time has stood us in good stead, but perhaps he was saved a year ago only by the lack of fans at games. The team needed emergency surgery, and got it.

Look at the teams in the Championship doing big business this time around and they, too, are acting because they have to: five in and five out at Birmingham, who have dropped to seventeenth on a run of one win in ten; four in and five out at Cardiff, who had sunk to twentieth with three wins in 20 games; seven in and five out at Stoke, who’ve taken an early season play-off push and turned it into midtable nothingness through two wins in ten matches; West Brom, one win in eight, automatic promotion hopes in tatters, spent £8m on the manager’s favourite player Daryl Dike, replaced him with the anti-Ismael striker Andy Carroll when Dike then got injured, then fired the manager anyway. None of these teams are doing this because it’s going well.

And then there was Bournemouth. Seven players in, almost all of them on deadline day, with only Fleetwood’s excellent 19-year-old centre back prospect James Hill and Peterborough’s Siriki Dembele anything like approaching a long-term prospect. A hefty loan fee and wage committed to Liverpool’s Nathaniel Phillips, to borrow him for a bit. Todd Cantwell added to a midfield that already includes Philip Billing, Jefferson Lerma (£25m), Ben Pearson, Ryan Christie (signed in the summer), Emiliano Marcondes (signed in the summer), Lewis Cook, Robbie Brady (signed in the autumn) and others. Kieffer Moore for £4m, which in his case works out at about £7k per positive Covid test, in a team which plays with a lone central striker and already has the division’s third top scorer. The next time you're at the checkout and you hear the beep, think of the fun you could be having on Supermarket Sweep. If it works for them, and they go up, who cares? It’s reminiscent of Harry Redknapp’s insane grab of Mobido Maiga, Will Keane, Ravel Morrison, Kevin Doyle and Yossi Benayoun because Charlie Austin had hurt his shoulder a bit — we did go up though. Their squad, like ours back in 2014, should have been well good enough for that anyway. I don’t know, I think maybe if I was a chairman, and a manager who’d just gone four wins in 12 with the squad Scott Parker has came to me and said “I want Freddie Woodman on loan from Newcastle”, when Mark Travers has been the best keeper in the Championship so far this season, I think I’d be inclined to tell him where to stick that.

Do you know who did have a good January? QPR. Unbeaten through the first month of the year for the first time since 1997, they beat West Brom at home to move above them in the promotion race and plunge a rival into deeper crisis, stuck another couple of away wins on the board at Birmingham and Coventry to bump right up to the total of 9/10 road wins that usually guarantees a play-off spot, progressed in the FA Cup, and gave Reading the gob bumming they’ve so sorely deserved for many years. Now fourth, two points off second when the top two had previously looked separated and gone, and a nice six-point gap down to seventh. That’s what a good January looks like, winning actual football matches, and remember the club came into the month sweating on Covid absentees and AFCON call ups — if anything, we’ve actually kicked up another gear in the month lots of us were most worried about.

As far as transfer business is concerned, David Marshall has already been a worthwhile acquisition even if he doesn’t play another minute. A significant upgrade on Jordan Archer, he has three clean sheets in four games. Concerns about Seny Dieng’s absence blown out of the water and replaced with a debate about who should actually start when he’s back. For me, by the way, it’s still Seny, as both a very good goalkeeper, with better distribution, and the one you’re looking to develop to sell. Dion Sanderson was the best player both times we played Birmingham this season, and his arrival means that next time Jimmy Dunne sits down and signals for treatment we’ll perhaps not shit a brick quite of the same magnitude we did at Coventry. Honestly, they thought the Germans were back. Jeff Hendrick covers a multitude of midfield roles, including backing up the Illy and Willy combination we’re so reliant on.

Many others were linked, getting people jolly excited across the social media vacuum. Josh Maja, and several others, went from players fans had never even given a passing thought to for months to the difference between us staying down or going up, sometimes in the space of about ten minutes, and often on the back of “my mate says” posts from the same people who told you over and over again that Nahki would stay, and Bright would sign a new contract. Jamie Paterson would have been nice, a player I like a lot, the sort of ‘statistical porn’ this new and intelligent Rangers set up go for, genuinely excellent cover for that supporting role behind the striker, but Swansea wanted a fee Rangers refused to stretch to and surely our club and recruitment team have done enough in recent times to trust their judgement on that? A 30-year-old, with no sell-on value, out of contract soon, commanding a transfer fee - that's usually a pass for us, as it was with Nahki Wells, and as it always should be.

Our next set of accounts are due shortly and while they will include the Ebere Eze sale, they also cover a year in which we received no ticket and matchday revenue at all. When it seems you’ve got to release Jordy De Wijs just to afford the Sanderson loan — although perhaps Warbs’ patience just finally snapped with the Dutchman’s chronic unavailability — that doesn’t suggest there’s a lot of wiggle and headroom available to you in the budget (£11m at our last pre-pandemic, pre-summer outlay count). To those demanding ambition, gambling, showing faith in the manager, because we’re undoubtedly in a better position to get promoted than we have been for years past or possibly to come, that was done in the summer. No outgoings in either window, all four loans from last season secured, Jimmy Dunne, Andres Gray and Dozzell, Sam McCallum… that was the gamble. That was the boat going out. That was the show of faith in the manager. My suspicion is even £750k for Jamie Paterson is too much for us right now, and while that doesn’t matter if he wins you promotion, if he doesn’t you’re then stuck in the dire ‘cleaning house’ situation we’ve been in for the last seven years, with transfer embargos, EFL business plans, points deductions and all the rest of it. Reading, Derby, Birmingham, Sheff Wed, Bristol City… all thought they’d have a gamble too. Or, maybe we just thought he wasn’t worth it, and, again, have they not done enough to trust their judgement now?

Do I think our strikers are good enough to get us there? Probably not. Do I remember the impact Wayne Routledge, in particular, made last time we won this league, added to an already formidable team in January? Of course. But when people are directly messaging Amit Bhatia online to coat him off about the cost of his wedding, I think we’ve taken leave of our senses a little bit. We talk about sustainability, doing it properly, reducing the wage bill, getting our house in order, and it’s all right, but it’s from a high of disgusting excess. QPR still loses £1.6m a month at the last count, and the owners are picking that tab up. Even if they were tempted to go all in again, on Paterson, or somebody better, there are literally rules of the league that forbid you losing too much money per season. Derby ignored those, their fans revelled in the cheating, and they charge around the gaff now shouting “fuck the EFL”, but you can’t be holding “fuck the EFL” marches when you stuck it all on black and it came up 32Red. That’s on you. And I’m pleased QPR seem to be staying away from that table these days.

Of course, if Willock gets injured, two of the strikers are absent, two of the centre backs, the ageing wing backs finally creak and crack, then we’ll lament all summer about the chance we had, and wouldn’t it just have been nice to add one or two more in January. I look forward to my Twitter mentions in such a scenario. I don’t disagree with you, I’m simply pointing out the mathematics of it. We’re also not that short of options. Not Bournemouth levels of depth, but then I suspect when Scott Parker describes his squad as “a bit thin”, Warburton, Tony Mowbray and others want to go down to the South Coast and show him exactly what he can do with that fucking tie clip. A cup tie tomorrow brings about the usual debate about who you rest and who you pick, though we do this every time and Warbs Warburton rarely makes wholesale changes. Whether a hectic month ahead, which gets an extra midweek date added just before Cardiff at home if we win tomorrow, will change his mind on that I’m not sure, but he tends to subscribe more to the idea that winning cup ties breeds confidence, mood, support and gravitas rather than being some horrible burden — another thing to his credit. You would think Lee Wallace will sit out, maybe Albert Adomah too, hopefully Chris Willock, ahead of a huge game in W12 on Wednesday night against Middlesbrough. Dion Sanderson I’m looking forward to seeing, George Thomas has suddenly sparked into a bit of life, Sam McCallum is back training, Moses Odubajo is fit again, Ilias Chair is back from an AFCON which for him was basically a very handy mid-winter break, Sinclair Armstrong made the bench against Rotherham, Jeff Hendrick is not cup tied.

It's a small, tight squad. It’s built on the smallest budget of any of the teams up there. It may yet not be deep enough, strong enough, good enough. But right now far from being bare bones and desperate for signings. We’ve had a strong month, we’re in good form and now have a clutch of players all coming back to us.

Tell me again who had a good and bad January?

Links >>> Bristol/Birmimgham - Awaydays >>> Deadline day blues — Podcast >>> The View from the Pu — January >>> Webb in charge — Referee >>> You’re not famous any more — History >>> Posh Official Website >>> Peterborough Telegraph — Local Press >>> London Road — Forum >>> Football Ground Guide

Below the fold

Team News: As above really. Andre Gray and Seny Dieng remain on international duty, Sam McCallum is back training as is Ilias Chair. Jeff Hendrick is not cup tied and stands by for a debut, Dion Sanderson came off the bench last week and you’d think might start here. Injuries, mercifully, are few and far between, and this team selection will be more about who Warbs wants to rest ahead of a hectic month that starts with a big game against Boro than anything else. Once again, 4,000 QPR fans will travel in a season of away support like none I can ever remember.

While Siriki Dembele was allowed to become Bournemouth’s 347th signing of deadline day, late offers from League One promotion chasers Sunderland and Oxford were rebuffed for Sammie Szmodics and Mark Beevers. Director of football Barry Fry taking the unusual step of not only revealing details of the bids, but also that both players wanted to go, before hastily adding they’ll “give their all” for the rest of the season. Captain Oli Norburn retains the armband, and returns from a thigh injury, despite trying to force his own move away last week. Beevers and Ronnie Edwards return after missing last week’s limp surrender to Sheff Utd, but Harrison Burrows (dry rot) and Jack Taylor (rising damp) are both out and West Brom’s Callum Morton played for Fleetwood while on loan there pre-Christmas so is cup tied. Darren Ferguson has been talking up the impact a cup run could have on the flagging mood around London Road, with a win here and big draw in what would be a first fifth round appearance for 36 years on his mind. Peterborough have a Fuchs, a Benda and Beevers in their squad for tomorrow, and with this we wish Nick London and Andy Sinton all the best.

Elsewhere: Championship takes a merciful break from our lives this week, before volleying eight games in four weeks straight back down your gob through the rest of the month. That means it’s FA Cup fourth round weekend and another chance for the television companies to shove faux romanticism and cliché’s about magic down our necks - Dan Walker dragging 100-year-old women out of the crowd at St Albans, Mark Clemmit rummaging through the cupboards in the student flat of some spotty oik that combined a lucky third round winner with his media studies degree - before then showing us whoever Manchester United Reserves are playing anyway. Their game with Middlesbrough is the “big match” for your Friday - about as romantic and magical as a bottleg PornHub feed of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Bone.

To be totally fair, I’m not sure I’d have wanted to pick the television games from an uninspiring draw in which Reading’s third round conquerors Kidderminster, of Conference North, at home to Premier League West Ham Reserves gets the top three spots on the billing. Saturday lunchtime for that, along with Plymouth’s trip to Chelsea Reserves.

There’s a few ties that would have been far better the other way around: League Two Hartlepool are away to Crippled Alice Reserves rather than at home — the Premier League side paying for the coach travel of the visitors, #nicetouch klaxon; Championship leaders Tarquin and Rupert are away to Man City Reserves; a very decent Coventry City side sold out their allocation in 25 minutes for a trip to Southampton Reserves; and Boreham Wood, one of two remaining non-league sides, have a chance to increase the full blown panic going on down at Bournemouth.

Spartak Hounslow will probably be the best team Everton Reserves have played all season, though their initial request for 6,000 tickets has proven a moment of hubris too far even for a team managed by Thomas Frank. Cambridge v Luton guarantees a lower league hovel in round five, and Spurs Reserves v Brighton Reserves is the Saturday evening game. Liverpool Reserves v Cardiff is a Sunday breakfast fixture, which seems needlessly cunty towards those hoping to travel to the game from South Wales. It’s followed by Nottingham Florist at home to Leicester Reserves where another home win could see the servers at The Athletic melt into the earth’s core.

There’s some right tat about elsewhere - Sporting Huddersfield v Barnsley, Stoke v Wigan (Christ), Wolves Reserves v Norwich Reserves — but I doubt even the few who are going to those games are really that enthused by them. Back in the league, it's all eyes on Swanselona v Blackburn on Saturday night.

Referee: QPR’s 1-0 home win against Blackburn prior to Christmas was their first in eight attempts with referee David Webb. Details.

Form

Peterborough: It’s been a desperate season for Peterborough, who have won only six of their 29 games played so far and currently sit third bottom of the Championship. One of those victories did of course come against QPR here in the league in October, a six point week following a midweek success at Hull, though the scorer of the injury time winner, Siriki Dembele, has since, like everybody else, signed for Bournemouth. Their home form has actually been passable — the 2-1 third round win against League Two Bristol Rovers that brought them here meant they’d lost just three of 12 home games, the defeats coming against Fulham, West Brom and Bristol City and two of those with injury time goals. Cardiff, Bournemouth, Barnsley and Huddersfield have all dropped points here in the league while Derby, QPR, Birmingham and Millwall have all lost. However, since the cup progress, Coventry have won 4-1 and Sheff Utd 2-0 without really breaking a sweat which would suggest that Dembele’s departure has rather taken the wind out of the sails here. They come into this on a run of two wins in 14 games, one of those against Bristol Rovers, and they’ve lost nine of those including three of the last four. They have conceded 55 times in 27 Championship games this year, easily the worst record in the league and an average above two a game. They have conceded 23 times in their last ten league games, including four against Coventry and Blackburn, and three to Blackpool and West Brom. Only Barnsley have scored fewer than their 23 goals in the league, and the now-departed Dembele was joint top scorer with five. QPR have five separate players level or above their remaining top scorer Jonson Clarke Harris’ current total of five. Only Bristol City, with seven, have conceded more injury time goals than Peterborough’s six. They were punted out of this year’s League Cup 4-0 on this ground in August by League One Plymouth. Despite being a League One side, and therefore starting in round one, Posh have made it at least as far as the third round of this competition in six of the last eight seasons. They haven’t been past round four since 1985/86 when they beat Bishop’s Stortford, Bath City, Leeds and Carlisle before succumbing to Brighton 1-0 after a replay. Their best ever performance was a quarter final in 1964/65.

QPR: QPR have only lost seven matches out of 33 in all competitions all season, but one of those was at Peterborough in the league despite their lowly league position. Since that last minute defeat in October Rangers have lost two of 16 and come into this rematch unbeaten in seven with five wins. Their 4-0 win against Reading last weekend was their biggest margin of victory this season, and the most goals they’ve scored in a single game. It broke a run of 19 matches without scoring more than two goals in a game, 13 of which they scored one goal or fewer. Lyndon Dykes’ brace were his first goal in eight league outings, though he did head home an equaliser in extra time against Rotherham in the third round of this competition to bring about this tie. He is now clear as the club’s top scorer this season with nine in league and cup. Rangers’ trip to the fifth round of this competition in 2018/19 under Steve McClaren was the furthest they’d gone since Trevor Sinclair’s bicycle kick in 1997. The 2-1 round three home victory against Leeds that helped take them there was their first FA Cup win without the aid of a replay since that memorable day 23 years prior. In Mark Warburton’s first season they defeated Swansea 5-1 in the third round only to rest players, including striker Nahki Wells, for a meek fourth round surrender at home to Sheff Wed. Last season they lost 2-0 at home to Fulham after extra time, with replays cancelled and the 90 minutes finishing 0-0. They haven’t won away in the fourth round since a 2-0 success at Oxford in 1973, though there have only been seven away ties in this round since then with five of them drawn and all the replays won at home. In the League Cup this year QPR knocked out Orient and Everton on penalties either side of a 2-0 home win against Oxford before being conned out of a first quarter final appearance since the 1980s in a controversial home loss to Sunderland. Cup progress against Rotherham came in the club’s fourth penalty shoot out of the season, as many as they’d been involved in the previous 20 years (Bristol City H, League Cup, August 2019; Swindon H, League Cup, August 2016; Vauxhall Motors, FA Cup, November 2002; Bristol City H, FL Trophy, October 2002). In all, 14 different players have scored in the shoots outs this season, but Rangers have missed two of the last three penalties they’ve been awarded in open play — Lyndon Dykes v Norwich in April, and Charlie Austin v Stoke in December, though Charlie did then redeem himself by converting one at Bristol City. David Marshall is the first QPR goalkeeper to keep a clean sheet in three of his first four appearances for the club since Paddy Kenny in 2010. QPR’s unbeaten January is their first since 1997.

Prediction: It was George Bush who said: “There's an old saying in Tennessee–I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee–that says, 'Fool me once, shame on...shame on you. Fool me–you can't get fooled again.'"

Peterborough 0-2 QPR. Scorer - Charlie Austin.

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WigRanger added 23:39 - Feb 4 Great write up as usual Clive ....COYRS 👊👊
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TacticalR added 14:26 - Feb 5 Thanks for your preview. It's funny the way that people see things upside down, and end up prone to these January binges. As Bournemouth are now in their second season in the Championship it looks like a panic is setting in about not getting back to the Premiership. On a side note, wasn't the reason that Warburton fell out with Benham that Warburton didn't want to do much January business? '4,000 QPR fans will travel in a season of away support like none I can ever remember.' I think this is due to a combination of factors: 1) we are as likely to get points away as at home 2) we're good to watch. Peterborough don't sound like the same team we played earlier in the season...let's see how we do this time around.

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double_m added 15:32 - Feb 5 Some absolute corkers in there. Glorious reading! "and gave Reading the gob bumming they’ve so sorely deserved for many years." How long I've waited for a line like this.
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