QPR kick started their 2023/24 season with a memorable 4-2 victory at home to Stoke City, and the desperation for a repeat in the wind and rain at Loftus Road tomorrow is palpable with the R’s bottom of the league and only one win in 15 games.
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Queens Park Rangers’ most recent three-season stint in the Premier League was, by and large, a torturous testicle-ache.
Lots and lots of £250 Saturdays to stand in the corner at Old Trafford and watch your team get smashed about for the benefit of 70,000 American tourists while a pack of lobotomised gibbons in steward jackets set about ejecting 75% of the away following.
Two of the moments of genuine euphoric excellence, however, did come in matches against Stoke City – not necessarily the first place you’d go looking for bright spots among the gloom.
The first was really at the peak of the Neil Warnock era. When QPR faced right into the teeth of prime Tony Pulis Premier League Potters at the Britannia Stadium in November 2011, bullied the bastards right back, and won 3-2 thanks in large part to a brilliant double from Heidar Helguson, it felt like a moment. Helguson’s first, a beautifully arced header right in front of the away end, was a superb goal, and he did it all that day playing on through a fractured eye-socket. That’s the sort of centre forward a club like ours needs.
At that stage Rangers had won four Premier League games, three of them away, including a 1-0 at Goodison Park and memorable home victory against Chelsea. They were eighth in the top flight. Afterwards things quickly slid away into a relegation battle and sacking of a revered manager.
The team survived, under Warnock’s replacement Mark Hughes, thanks to a remarkable run of wins at Loftus Road through the spring in which Liverpool, Spurs and Arsenal were all beaten in Shepherd’s Bush. That was ridiculous for all sorts of reasons, but not least because it had been preceded by an eight-match winless streak in which QPR lost to all their main relegation rivals – Wolves, Fulham, Bolton and Blackburn. It was also interspersed with seven consecutive away defeats.
The whole thing culminated in the final home game when, with Man City away to come and Bolton leading their game, a win was vital but the game was drifting away to a nil nil draw. Djibril Cisse, himself in a perverse sequence of form where he either scored or got sent off every time he played, banged in a winner from an Anton Ferdinand flick with the last kick of the game. Loftus Road erupted. John Motson just stood there shouting "CISSE”. And Rangers survived. Though there was, naturally, a twist or two to come on the final day.
Stoke, at that stage, were an established Premier League club, feared on their own ground. They’d played UEFA Cup football in that season after an FA Cup final the year before. Three consecutive finishes of ninth awaited them still.
The two clubs meet again tomorrow at Loftus Road after suffering almost identical declines, for identical reasons.
QPR, as we know, have now been in the Championship for ten years, and the highest they’ve ever managed to finish in that time is ninth. They have ended up in the bottom half of the table in six of the nine attempts so far, and are currently dead last and looking extremely likely to be relegated. Stoke are presently 13th, which doesn’t sound like much but if they hold onto it will be their highest finish since returning to this league seven seasons ago. Over the intervening six years they have finished 16th, 15th, 14th, 14th, 16th, 17th.
Both clubs love a change of manager. Mark Warburton successfully completed three seasons at Loftus Road, including finishes of ninth and 11th which is as good as Rangers have done in ten years. But the other seven seasons have been overseen by eight different bosses (Chris Ramsey, Jimmy Floyd-Hasselbaink, Ian Holloway, Steve McClaren, Mick Beale, Neil Critchley, Gareth Ainsworth and Marti Cifuentes). Narcis Pelach is Stoke’s sixth manager in the six and a bit seasons outside the top flight. Gary Rowett, Nathan Jones, Michael O’Neill, Alex Neil and Steven Schumacher have all had a swing before him.
Both clubs have unbelievably wealthy owners. The Coates family are worth somewhere in the region of £7.3bn per the last Sunday Times Rich List. Ruben Gnanalingam, who has inherited the family Westports business from his late father, is down at £1.26bn according to Forbes. Both have shown themselves keen to spend as much of that money on their team as they possibly can within the restrictions of FFP. Stoke, infamously, clear £10m in "sponsorship and commercial” in their annual accounts, almost entirely from the Coates’ Bet365 business, just to try and increase their spending headroom. QPR have, at least in part, worked themselves into their latest tight spot by spending more than they should in 2021 and 2022 chasing a Premier League pipe dream.
Both clubs would be completely unsustainable overnight without their owner writing a monthly cheque. There is no word or whisper of protest against either because fans fear what would happen if they upped and walked away. At QPR in particular there’s a feeling of ‘better the devil you know’ exacerbated by lamentable previous regimes, and heightened by the club’s possession of two very valuable bits of West London real estate. Neither, however, have matched their benevolence with shrewd decision making.
Had QPR won at Stoke last February, Steven Schumacher - himself already the second Stoke manager of 2023/24 - would have been fired. The Potters won a dreadful match, in which QPR were shockingly bad, 1-0. That was enough to not only keep him but then give him the entire summer as well. Well, we were going to sack you, but as Wouter Burger has scored from a corner here’s another six months and ten signings. The decision to then ditch Schumacher after all, five games into this season, was the third time in a row Stoke have given a manager a summer budget and transfer window, and then sacked him soon after it closed leaving a new guy with somebody else’s players, and all the money spent. This is a particularly stupid football club.
This rapid hire and fire of managers hasn’t moved the needle on the league table, for either, even to the tune of a few positions. If you keep firing managers and your results don’t improve, the manager isn’t your problem. These clubs have gone through 15 between them in a collective 16-year period and their final league placings for all of that are 16th, 15th, 14th, 14th, 16th, 17th for Stoke and 12th, 18th, 16th, 19th, 13th, 9th, 11th, 20th and 18th for QPR. They’re now 13th and 24th. That is a remarkably consistent level of shiteness for two clubs who have made 143 permanent signings in that time (59 Stoke, 84 QPR). Between them, in 16 seasons of Championship football, they’ve made the top ten once, and that only to ninth.
Both ownership groups seem desperate to right the previous wrongs, bring success to their clubs and make their supporters happy. But that desperation leads them to make perplexing decisions. Both have been highly susceptible to mediocre football people with mesmerising chat. Both have entertained overspending, appointments of inexperienced and underperforming people, and business practices they would never possibly allow in their day-to-day work. Would Peter and Denise Coates allow Bet365 to operate at 200% wages to turnover? Would Ruben Gnanalingam appoint a 26-year-old chief exec to the port of Malaysia who’d never run so much as a fucking marina before in his life?
So, we come to the latest meeting of these two fallen foes. In the red corner, a club once again onto its second manager of the season before the clocks go back, with a team being put together by sporting director Jon Walters whose sole qualification for the job seems to be he knows where the ground is. In the blue corner, a club that also feels like it’s getting an itchy trigger finger for a manager unable to get a tune out of an injury ravaged side put together by a combined CEO and director of football who’d never been a CEO or director of football anywhere before.
The desperation and need, on this occasion, is certainly greater for QPR. Bottom of the table, five points adrift, on a club record winless run at home. They kick started a similarly ailing campaign last year with a dramatic and memorable 4-2 victory in this fixture and will hope and pray for similar tomorrow.
The trajectory over the last decade is matched almost step for step, the state they’re both in is plain on the field of play, and the reasons for it are almost identical.
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Team News: QPR’s decision this week to publish a full rundown on the status of our injured players represents a climbdown and reversal of a secret squirrel communications strategy under CEO/DOF Christian Nourry which was flawed, naïve and disrespectful to the club’s fans from the start. Whether he’s held his hands up to being wrong, or the owners have got hold of him and told him to reverse the rapid disintegration of relations and communication with the supporters, we’ll probably never know. Either way, it’s a welcome, albeit small, development. The news within it, however, was mostly bad – including the official confirmation that our head of performance continues to draw a salary from the club while working remotely from another country. Literally phoning it in.
Joe Walsh, Morgan Fox, Liam Morrison, Harrison Ashby and, most crucially, the club’s only left back Kenneth Paal have all been passed fit for this weekend’s game. However, that key four of Jake-Clarke-Salter, Jack Colback, Ilias Chair and Michy Frey right down the spine of the team are still missing. Clarke-Salter, who is unbeaten in nine appearances since the opening day, will not return until mid-December. Jack Colback, without whom QPR have won only one of the last 21 games, might return at Watford next week but misses these key matches with Stoke and Cardiff. Chair will be back in the first half of December along with Frey. Karamoko Dembele isn’t expected back until February at the earliest.
In addition to injuries, there may be suspension problems looming. The amnesty for five yellow cards isn’t until after round 19 (Norwich H) and Jonathan Varane, who’s already missed three games suspended this season, is only one yellow away. Steve Cook, Sam Field and Jake Clarke-Salter are all on three.
There might be some better news for QPR in the Stoke team news. Enda Stevens had an absolute shocker in this fixture last year and ended up getting himself sent off. He missed the recent draw with Millwall but is back for this one. Lyndon Gooch (stop it) may play for Pelach for the first time this week but Bosun Lawal, who arrived with a stress fracture when he signed from Celtic in the summer and is yet to debut, and persistent scourge of QPR Sam Gallagher won’t be back much this side of Christmas.
Elsewhere: Not sure about the merits of sending Watford all the way down to Plymouth on a Friday night at the best of times, but when it’s international week and their call ups will only have been reporting back on the Thursday that seems particularly needless.
But then needless is the theme of the deal we have with our Sky Overlords this season, with the ridiculous notion that we need three Championship matches, and three from the divisions below, all televised at the same 12.30 time on Saturday persisting into the winter. Tomorrow’s collection includes Bristol City 0-0 Burnley, Coventry apparently on the cusp of really swapping Mark Robins for Frank Lampard ahead of a homer with Sheffield Red Stripe, and Sheff Wed at home to Cardiff.
Six games in the traditional slot along with our own, arguably led by the meeting of play-off hopefuls West Brom and Norwich at The Hawthorns. Leaders Sunderland face a tough trip to in form Millwall, surprise strugglers Luton and Hull meet at Kenilworth Road, free scoring Boro go to free falling Oxford, Blackburn v Portsmouth and Preston Knob End v Derby very much feel like things happening for want of something better to do with the time.
Red Bull Leeds away at Swanselona rounds the weekend out on Sunday. Full midweek round of fixtures Tuesday/Wednesday. The fun never stops.
Referee: I’ll give it to you straight, like a pear cider that’s made from 100% pear… It’s Gavin Ward. Details.
QPR: With the longest current winless run in the top four divisions, we’re at that stage again where we’re just adding one to all the terrible numbers with each passing game. It’s now 12 without a win for QPR (11 in the league) and one win from 15 Championship games. This is the third time since Boxing Day 2022 that QPR have gone at least 12 games without a win – the previous three occasions were spread over 20 years between 2002 and 2022. At home it’s eight without a win in the league, and ten overall, to begin a season for the first time in the club’s history. Of course last year the R’s started with seven without a win at Loftus Road, eight in all comps, and then broke that sequence with a 4-2 victory against Stoke. Four points is their lowest ever tally at this stage at home. QPR have won eight of their last 51 games at Loftus Road, 13 of their last 58 to the start of the 22/23 season, and 15 out of 66 going back to January 2022. Only QPR and Morecambe remain in the EFL without a home league win. No team in the division has conceded more than Rangers’ 15 at home. Only one team has conceded the first goal more often than we have.
The problem is pretty obviously scoring goals. Marti Cifuentes’ side haven’t scored more than one goal in a game in 12 attempts. They’ve failed to score at all in five of those. They’ve only scored more than one goal in a game twice all season – both in August at Sheff Utd and Luton. They haven’t scored more than two in a game since the home win against Leeds in April. They haven’t scored at all in their last four away games. The last time they’d done four away games without scoring was 14 years ago, in February 2010. They have the worst shot conversion rate in division – 6.45%. Only Michael Frey (three) and Nicolas Madsen (two) have scored more than one goal. Only Swansea (11) have scored fewer goals than QPR, although they’re somehow eleventh. QPR have spent just 5.2% of their Championship matches leading this season, 9% fewer than any other side (Plymouth second-fewest with 14.3%).
Right back Jimmy Dunne has more touches in the opposition penalty area this season than any other QPR player. Against Leeds Rangers didn’t have a shot on target, and had only seven touches in the opposition box.
Stoke: Six consecutive seasons in the bottom half of the Championship doesn’t immediately look like changing any time soon for Stoke, currently up in the dizzying heights of thirteenth after yet another managerial change. They’d won two and lost three in the league when Steven Schumacher was binned and have since won three, drawn four and lost three under new man Narcis Pelach. Stoke have an xG against of 24.98 – only Plymouth & Watford have higher in division. That said, the Potters have lost just one of their last eight Championship matches (W3 D4), having lost five of their previous six games before this run.
They won 2-0 at Blackburn in their last away trip but their form outside of Stoke has been pretty ropey this season with only one other win, away at Plymouth, and five without success before that victory at Ewood Park. They’re 2-1-4 on the road and have only scored three goals in those seven matches which is the league’s worst away attack bar Plymouth. Tom Cannon is the top scorer here with six, though four of those came in a quarter of an hour in a 6-1 home romp v Portsmouth. More goals in 15 minutes there than any QPR player has scored in the league all season. No player has more Championship assists this season than Stoke’s Bae Jun-Ho (5), with three of those assists coming from corners (gulp).
Both last season’s meetings went the way of the home teams. Stoke have only won one of their last seven meetings to Loftus Road and two of the last ten. Last season was the second time in five meetings they’ve been beaten 4-2 on this ground, and in both games they initially led. Three of the last six games between the two in W12 have finished 0-0. QPR have won two of the last six meetings between the sides overall but in the other four ties they failed to score, including February’s 1-0 loss in Staffordshire which was the last time they met.
Prediction: In our Prediction League for 2024/25 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.
Nico’s Prediction: "Well, that was quite the couple of weeks, in which we both learned, and revisited, various interesting home truths about our youthful, no coaching badges, "sports minded CEO/DOF”. After that voyage of discovery, and him then seemingly bottling it in relation to his Imperial Business School-inspired comms strategy as regards player injuries, let’s see if we also continue to play his favoured "some form of 4-3-3, possession-based, mid-block/high press football” or whether Marti is able to attempt to pick a team to do a job without his "game model” interference and/or that of his former League 1 (which is where we are heading) "head of methodology”. Sadly, injuries, lack of talent and appalling squad recruitment over the summer suggest that our abject goalscoring and home form will continue against a mediocre Stoke side.”
Weston’s Call "After a pleasant two weeks with no QPR loss it is back to it with Stoke. Often an international break breeds confidence; plenty of training, players back from injuries, but having watched two fairly abject performances after the previous breaks I don’t have much hope. I fail to see where the goals are coming from and sadly expect our pain to continue with a narrow loss.”
Nico’s Prediction: QPR 0-2 Stoke. No scorer.
WestonSuperR’s Prediction: QPR 0-1 Stoke. No scorer.
LFW’s Prediction: QPR 0-2 Stoke. No scorer.
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