Instagram statements and peace talks with supporters won't dig QPR out of the ever-deepening hole they find themselves in ahead of the Easter double header - it's time for the players to take responsibility on the pitch as the R's host Preston.
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The incident with Leon Balogun in front of the away end at Wigan Athletic last week has been coming.
It’s been coming because if you win two of 24 matches sooner or later the people are going to get quite cross about that.
Personally, I’m surprised the crowd has stuck with this group of players as long as they have. To post the biggest home attendance of the season at home to Watford when you haven’t won for 13 games is completely counter intuitive, and while it’s the Balogun row and the booing of Ethan Laird that has drawn the headlines and press conference questions this week the 730-odd (very odd) who travelled to Wigan last Saturday were steadfastly with the team throughout, singing away behind the goal for much of the 90 minutes trying to rouse the players, despite being served up another festering turd of a performance on the pitch. You can’t lose game after game, perform as we are performing, and expect that level of backing to hold — eventually somebody is going to get the hump with you. Return train tickets to Wigan were retailing at around £100 last weekend, by the way.
There’s going to be ever-more comparisons to the 2000/01 relegation season as we continue our descent — a season in which we lost eight at home (already nine this) and 20 in total (19 currently with seven games to play) — but one for now is the crowd had turned on those players and managers months and months earlier than this. At Barnsley, in September, just a second defeat of the season at that point, there was an incident at the tunnel at half time with QPR fans trying to get at the players who’d gone 3-0 down in the first half. At Luton in the cup in January, and a 5-0 defeat at Preston in February, club legend Gerry Francis got it square in the teeth from the travelling fans. I’ve heard a lot of "you’ve got to stick with the players, they need your support more than ever” over the last few weeks — from former QPR players, this week from our ex-manager Ian Holloway, from posters on our message board, and last week in the away end where there were some QPR fans turning on those who were venting their spleen at full time and telling them not to bother coming any more. I get that we’re not going to boo this lot into a performance, and that a packed and vibrant Loftus Road could be crucial to our chances tomorrow, but frankly any insinuation this team hasn’t been backed steadfastly by those still going to the games, or they’re somehow part of the problem or dragging the players down by getting a trifle peeved by a 6-1 defeat to Blackpool, is insulting to those of us still traipsing across this broken country’s extortionate transport system every week. I think these players can count themselves quite fortunate to have got to April without any real, significant, abuse from at least a portion of the crowd, and as I’ve said in match reports even after debacles at Rotherham and Blackpool there are still people willing to clap them off at the end of beg for shirts.
It's also been coming because Balogun is part of a summer intake who are perceived to be a huge part of the problem.
Bar Tim Iroegbunam, their performance levels and attendance records since Mick Beale left have cratered compared to what they were producing when he was here. One of the enormous frustrations among the die-hard supporters is these players are capable of so much better, because we’ve seen it through September and October. If you’re Zesh Rehman, you’re Zesh Rehman — people shouting at you to be a better footballer are howling at the moon. But when we’ve seen Ethan Laird at Watford, Kenneth Paal at Millwall, Leon Balogun at Sheff Utd, Tyler Roberts at Bristol City, and then you see what they’ve produced recently, people are going to be angry about that because it looks very much like you’re not trying as hard as you were, not as bothered about what you’re doing as you were.
It's been coming because the club and the players are asking you to believe in what is really quite a sizeable coincidence of all of the players signed in the summer by/for Mick Beale all getting injured at once as soon as he left.
Now, as I said last week, this team has been losing consistently for more than a year now — 32 of the last 60 games with just 15 wins — under four different managers, so the idea this was all started by Beale walking out doesn’t hold water. It’s also suffered enormously with injuries in that time — the five goalkeepers, Chris Willock’s hamstring — and Beale pointed out in the summer that one of the big things that would have to improve this season was the availability of players in a small squad. So, again, the idea that a massive injury list started and was caused by Beale leaving is also false. Nevertheless, Balogun, Laird, Clarke-Salter, Paal, Roberts and Richards all disappearing, all at once, after everything Beale said about his background with them in the summer, after he’s left the club, isn’t passing the smell test for many supporters.
Let’s for a moment take these players at face value. They have been injured, their absences are genuine, it’s nothing to do with Beale leaving, they’re all absolutely desperate to play, it is an enormous coincidence, and they’re as frustrated as everybody else. If that is true, the club need to take some big lessons about communication away from this season because the strategy they have employed has essentially made pariahs of their own players — players who we now need to be fit, motivated and in form to get us out of the shit. Frequently, and Balogun is a case in point, these players have initially gone out with non-descript muscle injuries such as a "calf strain” — which is what both Balogun and Jake Clarke-Salter were reported as to start with — only to then disappear for weeks and in Balogun’s case five months. There are seldom any updates on their conditions — Balogun "seeing a specialist” in January/February time the only occasion I can really remember being mentioned at all, and I have to monitor and analyse this shit for a living. Can you remember hearing anything about what’s wrong with Clarke-Salter or when we might see him again? Can you actually tell me any of the reasons Taylor Richards has started one game this season, other than a bereavement two thirds of the way through it? This is driving the conspiracy theories that, actually, there’s relatively fuck all wrong with these players, and if the team was still in play-off contention, or in the midst of a long FA Cup run (haha) they’d be available to play.
More recently, Gareth Ainsworth has made a big deal out of not wanting to reveal team news for fear of tipping the opposition off but it's not like we’re hiding any particularly big hitters away is it? It’s not 1994, it’s not Les Ferdinand surprisingly making the team at Newcastle, prompting a run on the away end bookie who offered 7s for first goal when he didn’t have him on the coupon. The big GOTCHA of bringing all those players back at once last week really seemed to catch Wigan by surprise didn’t it? They looked absolutely stunned. Took them all of five minutes to score, when Birmingham and Blackpool had managed it in a few seconds. Pur-lease. The trade off between this almost non-existent element of surprise, and the ill-feeling towards their own players the lack of information has driven among the supporters, culminating in the incident at full time last week, is simply not worth it. Next season the club should treat its customers like grownups and update us fully and regularly on who’s unavailable and why, as they used to do with Prav’s column in the programme, otherwise it looks like there’s something to hide.
Of course, it may simply be that there is and that’s why they’ve taken this approach. The catalogue of injuries that have derailed this season and last does not reflect well on the medical and sport science side of the club. Beale was very frosty on that topic, the number and nature of the absences, while he was here and admitted to openly ignoring what they said to him about several players’ status for the Middlesbrough home game. The ‘seeing a specialist’ line from the winter was actually Balogun taking himself away from the QPR medical department for a second opinion with a doctor in Germany because of the lack of progress. It’s going to be a huge problem for this club if we’re consistently missing as many players from a small, low quality squad as we have been for the last 14 months. With the caveat that there’s got to be something wrong with you if you sign for QPR, and we have used injury proneness as a way to try and get value in the market, when the inquest into QPR’s 2022/23 begins this treatment and management of injuries and recoveries has got to be very high on the agenda.
On another communications issue, this has been coming because of the way the club and Mick Beale spoke and behaved last summer.
Now, either QPR hired a manager and let him bring in loads of his own players who he’d worked with before, or QPR hired a manager and let him say that he was bringing in loads of his own players who he’d worked with before. Neither is good. As I say all the time, what manager wants manager gets does not work at QPR because the managers change so frequently, so letting Mick Beale go out and tell all these stories about reading bed time stories to Kenneth Paal and Jake Clarke-Salter, publicly tapping up Millwall’s Danny McNamara, boasting about all the agents he was talking to and all the players who wanted to come, was alarming. It was Redknapp-lite. After Beale left the club belatedly wheeled the head of recruitment Andy Belk out to say that actually they’d been watching Paal, Clarke-Salter and all the rest of them for ages, and Les Ferdinand said the same in his interview with LFW in February, but it’s too late. You’ve tied yourself in communication knots and fuelled the perception that a group of players came to play for a manager and then downed tools when he left, basically running completely contrary to the director of football system and everything Les said he was coming here to prevent happening again.
But it’s also been coming because nobody at QPR seems to really be grasping how much trouble they’re in, or taking responsibility for it. Least of all the players.
Everybody you talk to is parroting lines like "we need to get to the summer” and "we just need this season to be over”. Gareth was doing this last week, talking about what he’ll be doing once we’re safe, once we’ve got the points we need, planning for next season. I saw former Q editor Ted Kessler on Twitter last week saying, essentially, these players are in shock — they came to push for the play-offs with Mick Beale, and they’ve ended up playing Ainsworth football at the bottom of the table, they’re not prepared for it mentally. On the pitch they do just look absolutely stupefied, conceding goals almost immediately from the kick off of games to horrendous errors, frequently just wellying the ball into the stand and then staring at each other dumbfounded. There's nobody taking responsibility. Nobody really calling anybody out for some of the dire individual mistakes we’ve been making. Who’s giving Adomah a gobfull for that woeful attempted tackle in the lead up to the Birmingham goal? Instead, they choose, repeatedly, to blame the referee. Jimmy Dunne, chasing the match official around after Fleetwood Town’s winner in the FA Cup, when it’s his lousy defending against a League One striker that’s cost us. Abysmal defensive goals, with rank goalkeeping errors, at Huddersfield and at home to Sunderland, followed by a prolonged haranguing of the linesman and chasing the referee down the pitch when both goals were absolutely fine and onside, the officials did their jobs correctly, and QPR did not. Even last week’s penalty at Wigan, the most obvious penalty you’ll ever see in your life, was preceded and proceeded by Balogun following Gavin Ward about as if it was anything at all to do with him. It’s you, Leon, it’s your fault, wear it.
Balogun, like Taylor Richards before him in similar circumstances at Rotherham, just cannot believe or understand why we fans might be angry at him. Richards even apparently said to the fans having a go at him at Rotherham, a game where at one point he stopped to do his shoelaces as his man ran at him leaving Aaron Drewe two v one, "are you shouting that at ME?” Incredulous that we might dare to not think very much of his efforts this season. Balogun, whatever he’s said since and however he dresses it up, lost his head for a moment at the end of the Wigan game because people were having a go at him and he’s affronted by that because he hasn’t played for five months and therefore none of this is his fault, ignoring that it’s precisely that absence that has wound people up and we’ve lost the game because of his ludicrous tackle for the penalty. Again, instead of accepting responsibility there’s the now weekly iPhone notes statement for the Gram, and a meeting with supporters at the training ground. The correct and only response is to wear the mistake, take the abuse from the supporters who’ve been traipsing around the country for the last five months, shut the fuck up, and go out on Friday against Preston with a really solid, commanding, leadership performance, clean sheet and result. That’s the response — take responsibility, make it right. Not fucking Instagram statements, mealy-mouthed excuses about "I know it looked bad but…” and peace talks with supporters.
Success has many fathers, and failure is an orphan. There are dozens of reasons, mistakes and people who have got us into this position this season. We’ll no doubt spend the post mortem in May talking about things like Warburton’s departure, releasing Yoann Barbet, hiring Beale, Les Ferdinand, Lee Hoos, the owners, the head of recruitment and his team, the signing and loans, everything around Neil Critchley, the injuries and the sport science, the decision to pivot entirely with Gareth Ainsworth and whether that was just the lazy nostalgia play we all feared... Incidentally, I’m yet to hear any one of these people — any of our three managers, the director of football, the CEO, the owners — admit they have got things wrong this season and apologise for it. Just an ever-lengthening list of mitigations and excuses around injuries, Beale getting an offer he couldn’t refuse, EPPP, FFP, and so on. But it is the players who cross the white line each week and I think a lot of them are hiding behind these things, heading out for their big Saturday nights out on the town after yet another home loss while all the blame goes towards those above them. You have to add up Jamal Lowe’s touches of the ball over his last three appearances (nine last week, 18 v Birmingham, 21 v Blackpool = 48) to get to the number of times Seny Dieng touched the ball just last week alone (45). That’s not somebody who’s putting it all in, and that’s nobody’s fault but his - he’s only been here since January and has no excuse. Actually having somebody turn around to them after a defeat at the bottom of the table team and call one of them a wanker, rather than Les or Lee or Mick or anybody else, seemed to come as a complete, stunning surprise to them.
You’re not staying up with excuses. Somebody on that pitch tomorrow is going to have to take a grip of this situation and get back to nearer the levels they were playing at in the autumn. Can you be more involved? Can you tackle that bit harder? Can you make sure that pass is finding a team mate? Can you mark a bit tighter? Can you win the first contact? Can you pick up that second ball? Is this injury really enough to force you off, or can you play through this one? Can you really, honestly, hand on heart, look in the mirror and say this is your best, this is everything you’ve got? Can you give us ten more minutes, ten more passes, ten more percent?
We need responsibility, we need a response, and we need a result.
Links >>> Blackstock’s crucial winner — History >>> PNE buoyed by Pool win — Interview >>> Eltringham in charge — Referee >>> Preston Official Website >>> Lancashire Telegraph — Local Press >>> From The Finney — Blog >>> Deepdale Digest — Blog >>> PNE Online — Forum
Team News: Tyler Roberts (remember him?) is reportedly back from Leeds and in "light training” ahead of potentially gracing us with his presence before the end of the season. When that might be, how much longer it might take, what part of the body he’s injured, what even the injury is, we’re still not allowed to know — he hasn’t been seen since January 28. Jake Clarke-Salter, last seen on February 4, is also apparently in "light training”, although, again, what the injury is, how serious, when he might be back… not allowed to know. Ethan Laird was booed from the field at Wigan after his latest sit down and signal to the bench routine, but apparently this week’s mortal wound was a cramp brought on by 80 minutes of solid toil after his recent absence so he should be available for this week. If you’d like to guess what minute he sits down in this week, the message board is running a sweepstake. Chris Willock, Leon Balogun and Kenneth Paal all came back from the start against the Latics, and Ilias Chair was on by half time, so one would hope/expect we’ll see all four of them from the get go. Taylor Richards remains a figment of your imagination.
Preston’s recent uptick in form comes despite injury problems win their attack. Emil Riis hasn’t played since January 2 and won’t return this season. Ched Evans is now also out for the duration with surgery planned on his neck/spine because of what the club are describing as a "serious medical condition” caused by "repeated high force contact” that leaves him facing "potentially life-changing consequences". A statement said: "More common in American football and rugby players, the condition requires surgery to address his current symptoms and to prevent any further damage from occurring in the future." Goodness. Good job Everton loanee Tom Cannon has four goals in seven games. Bambo Diaby is back after a one match ban.
Elsewhere: Ei-i-ei-i-ei-i-oh, up the Football League we go. The belated enforcement of Reading’s ridiculously skimpy six-point deduction for repeated and prolonged breach of the league’s FFP rules, and now failure to comply with the business plan set out when they were docked points last season after which they rushed straight out and bought a part-used Andy Carroll which rather brought into question exactly how seriously they’d taken their final warning, has lifted QPR up a place and put the Royal two places and one point above the drop zone. They begin trying to claw those points back tomorrow at home to Birmingham. Chasing them, and us, after a surprise home win against Middlesbrough last week, is Neil Warnock’s Huddersfield. How apt it would be if its Warnock, ten years later, completing the cycle of destruction under the Tune Group ownership by relegating us to League One. Watch out for the final day fixtures — Huddersfield v Reading is the last game.
Sandwiched in between those two sides after last week’s dramatic 99th-minute defeat in the Welsh derby are Cardiff, who’ve gone from never having a double done over them by Swanselona in the history of the club to suffering it twice in successive seasons. They’re facing former boss Mick McCarthy in a relegation cruncher at Blackpool tomorrow. Wigan, meanwhile, have a tough trip to Sheffield Red Stripe while Rotherham host West Brom.
With six points now between us and Hull, and some doubt as to whether we’ll ever win again, it’s now almost certainly three from these seven who will drop: Wigan 34 (-25); Blackpool 35 (-20); Huddersfield 39 (-19); Cardiff 39 (-14); Reading 40 (-18); Rotherham 41 (-10); QPR 42 (-22).
Three TV games tomorrow for your Good Friday, with the division’s two games of the day bookending the schedule. Miwlwawwll and Lutown, currently fourth and fifth in the division giving every police intelligence officer this side of the equator sleepless nights ahead of a potential two-legged play-off semi-final, kick things off in every sense of the term at The Den at lunchtime. Champions Burnley and third placed Boro go off at 20.00 — that loss in West Yorkshire last week not only bad news for QPR, but also for Michael Carrick’s men who are back to six points behind Sheff Utd and just for the first time looking like they might run out of games to overhaul them. Sunderland v Hull is on at 17.30, presumably just to be there to film it if Luke O’Nien does anything else nutty this weekend.
Blackburn occupy the final play-off spot with 61 points, and with games running out and a four point gap down to seventh you’d think Borussia Norwich could really do with winning at Ewood Park on Friday to put a bit of power behind that particular battle. Coventry, for whom Mark Robins has again worked wonders this season, takes his eighth-placed side to Swanselona waiting for a slip up from either. More damning revelation for another of the chasing pack, West Brom, who desperately need promotion this season to stave off financial meltdown — their latest accounts show a £2m loan being charged at 79% interest per year. They’re at Rotherham.
Stoke are doing that thing they do where they finish the season really well giving hope that it’ll all be different next year before winding the tape back to the start again and pressing play. Bristol City are their cannon fodder this weekend.
Referee: Geoff Eltringham is one of the highest rated officials on LFW, but QPR’s record with him is pretty dire — 2-3-9 from 14 appointments, most recently a 1-1 draw at Huddersfield. Details.
QPR: Must we? Rangers have now lost eight of their last nine. Sixty goals conceded is the worst defensive record in the league bar Blackpool with 61. Only Wigan, -25, have a worse goal difference than our -22. Rangers have now conceded 18 goals from set pieces alone in 22/23, the joint worst total in the division with Swansea. The R’s are winless in nine games away from home, losing seven. The surprise 1-0 win at home to Watford halted a run of no wins from 13 games, and none from nine at home (one shy of the club record), but following it up with another three losses means the R’s have now won just twice in 24 games — more than half a season of Championship action. One of those two victories was at Preston in December, and if they succeed in winning here it will only be a second double of the year to go with the Watford games with only Bristol City still to come to register another. That run began with a 2-0 loss at Birmingham in October, when QPR were top of the Championship having won eight and drawn one of the previous 11 games. Rangers have scored one goal or fewer in each of their last 12 games, have only scored two goals in a match twice in those 24 fixtures, and haven’t scored three since beating Cardiff on October 19, 25 games ago. Having kept a first clean sheet in 13 games against the Hornets, just the eighth shut out all season, the following three results made it one clean sheet in 16 and the R’s have conceded 22 goals in nine outings.
Preston: Plenty of déjà vu around the visitors with this fixture. When we travelled to Deepdale in December, we faced a North End side in decent form and on the back of an impressive win in a local derby — then it was five wins from seven and a 4-1 success at Blackburn. Of course QPR surprisingly won that game, and set off a run of two league wins in ten and five home games without a win. The recovery from that began a month or so back, and sees North End arrive at Loftus Road with four wins from seven, one defeat in nine, and a big 3-1 home win against bitter rivals Blackpool last weekend. Away from home they’ve won three and lost only two of their last seven road trips — the defeats coming at red hot Burnley and Middlesbrough. Everton loanee Tom Cannon has four goals in seven games, and he’s going to need to keep that up with top scorer Ched Evans (nine) and second top Emil Riis (five) now out for the season. Goals have been a problem all year for PNE, who started the campaign with six 0-0 draws in their first eight games and have been involved in nine scoreless draws including another recent run of three in four games. Their 37 goals scored is the division’s lowest total north of the bottom four, at least six fewer than any other team in the top half, and less than half what table topping Burnley (74) have managed. Liam Delap is this week's striker without a goal in 14 appearances. Even QPR (38) have scored more than Preston. As we remember back this week to Dexter Blackstock’s rocket winner in a crucial April victory against Preston in the 2007/08 successful fight against relegation worth having a look at how similar the numbers were back then…
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. Our joint predictions of 0-0 on Tuesday lasted 30 seconds, so for what it’s worth here’s what last year’s champion Cheesy and I think this week …
"We have all seen Preston close out games with their tactics so no early defensive errors please. If they score first it’s going to be a long day — (not as long as it takes Holloway to answer a question mind). I spent an evening going through the remaining fixtures the other night. I really think this is going to go down to the last day. Last week did not surprise me. Chair and Willock will have had more time to get back to some sort of fitness so an improvement is surely on its way. Having said that, still can't see us winning.”
Cheesy’s Prediction: QPR 1-1 Preston. Scorer — Ilias Chair
LFW’s Prediction: QPR 0-2 Preston. No scorer.
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