QPR continued their recent unbeaten run, despite another poor performance, away at Bristol City on Saturday, thanks to an extraordinary goal from Paul Smyth.
Queens Park Rangers, as they did this time last year, continue to steadily recover their position in the Championship from the handicap of a terrible start.
The similarities, in results at least, are actually quite spooky.
Under Gareth Ainsworth in 2023 the team won just two of its first 17 games, none of them at home, to post 10 points from a possible 51. It won none of its first eight games at Loftus Road in league and cup, a club record to begin with. All hope seemed lost, because how do you recover from a start like that? Certainly not playing like Rangers were at the time.
The feeling was this season could/would be different, not least because the team wouldn’t be burdened by the considerable millstone of only winning two of its first 17 games. Yet, off they went again into a death spiral from which there was apparently no escape. One win in 16 games this time, though a few more draws to make it a chunky 11 points from 48 this time (they really spoil us). No wins in any of the first nine games at Loftus Road in league and cup, another club record.
A year ago the catalyst for change was very obvious. The club fired Gareth Ainsworth as manager and appointed Marti Cifuentes. He did away with all the tactics and methods that had gone before, added some players who’d been outcast or ignored under the previous regime back into the team, started playing a style more suited to the players and club, and began to turn things around. Rangers put together three quickfire wins against Stoke, Hull and Preston with three draws besides – a quick shot in the arm of 12 points to punch some life back into the campaign. This year, exactly the same time of this year, it’s three quick wins and three draws again. Cardiff, Norwich and Oxford have been beaten, Stoke, Watford and now Bristol City have been held to draws. The Loftus Road monkey has been slain.
Yet, when it comes to the performances and style, almost the total opposite has happened. Twelve months ago it was all about cleansing ourselves of Ainsworth’s notorious ‘possession can do one’ Wycombe 2.0 approach and getting us playing some football the supporters found more palatable and the likes of Ilias Chair and Chris Willock could thrive in. This year they’ve improved their results by doing the reverse. Cifuentes’ team no longer wants to be open and expansive, it no longer even seems to want the ball – 30% possession this time to go with 37% in the recent Norwich and oxford wins, 32% in the draw at Watford and 25% at Burnley. You’d be forgiven for thinking Ainsworth has been re-appointed. In fact, this version of QPR seems to be locked in some bizarre sporting experiment to judge exactly how poorly it’s possible to play football and still get results from it.
Wednesday night’s much needed 2-0 at home to Oxford grew out of a laughably bad first half which both teams spent mostly giving the ball away to each other. A modicum of improvement after half time enough to see Rangers home against such dire opposition. You won’t beat (m)any teams at this level playing like that, we cautioned, but for now we needed a win and got one by fair method or foul so nobody was in too much of a mood to sweat the aesthetics. Three game week, multiple injuries, poor league position, low confidence… We get it. Just, don’t be in too much of a rush to try that again, though.
QPR, hadn’t listened. QPR seemed to think the whole thing was an absolute riot. QPR were in the mood to try exactly that again, at Bristol City on Saturday.
Jimmy Dunne was caught napping twice in the first three minutes, first by a long throw, then by ball in behind he thought was going out for a goal kick only for an opponent to appear and win a free kick. That was cleared, and cleared again, before Mehmeti struck a first time shot back through the crowd and off the base of the post. The next serious threat came down that side as well, though this time Dunne had surely been fouled up on the halfway line – blatantly shoved into touch by Mehmeti. Referee Lewis Smith, implausibly, awarded the free kick the opposite way and with QPR largely set up for their own set piece City were able to act quickly and break for half a handball appeal in the area.
A back post cross put Paul Smyth in all kinds of bother in his own box and the ball sat, momentarily, plum in the middle of the goal, six yards out, untouched, until Liam Morrison swept in with a clearing boot. Vyner crossed right through the goalmouth, removing Paul Nardi and his defence from play, but nobody applied a touched and the overworked Dunne headed wide of his own far stick.
Soon Nardi was being chased down to his own corner flag by Nahki Wells and although the goalkeeper’s check and turn back inside to fool the striker was delightful, the shanked clearance straight to an opponent while he was stranded miles from home was less so. Ohlalala, c'était une catastrophe! Oui, Paul, tres catastrophe in fact. You best get running mate.
Rangers escaped from that, from Hirakawa’s burst down the middle of the field and foul on the edge of the box, from Dunne’s foul and yellow card for a pull back on Mehmeti after Jonathan Varane had played the ball back past him and inadvertently put an opponent through, and from the craziest of goalmouth scrambles in injury time in which Nardi and Sam Field combined on the line to just about deny Wells that goal he so loves against hist former club.
Other than this deepest and lowest of deep low blocks, and a sort of rhythmically chaotic way of defending by steadily throwing one Nardi, Dunne, Cook, Morrison or Varane in front of the ball after another, Queens Park Rangers contributed nothing to this game. Nothing. Young Rayan Kolli starting alone up front against a physically imposing opposition pair of Dickie and Mcnally was always going to be a difficult task, and his inability to win much in the air or hold the ball up at all could have been predicted, but Rangers didn’t even cross the halfway line. It was quite embarrassing at times really. Koki Saito, executing a simple run-around overlap down the left side, passed the ball straight into touch. From a QPR throw in Ashby lobbed the ball to Field, who swung a wild leg at it and volleyed it aggressively back into touch ten feet away for a City throw.
Some of the passing statistics for this game would be hilarious if they weren’t so terrible, and we weren’t so emotionally invested. Harrison Ashby 57% completion, Varane 66%, Field 62%, Smyth 30%, Andersen 53%, Saito 44% - players, essentially, giving the ball to the opposition every other time they have it, or worse. Only one Bristol City player completed at less than 75%, for comparison.
If you’d hoped for any change, in any aspect of the game at all, after half time you were to be left disappointed. Morrison was required to rescue a terrible Varane back header. Cook got a block in on Hirikawa at the end of a prolonged ice hockey powerplay move round the Rangers’ box. Harrison Ashby decided to get all clever with a chest back to Paul Nardi only for Wells to dive in between the two of them with a header that flashed an inch wide of the post.
Some great work by Saito did finally get Rangers far enough up the field to win a corner, but Lucas Andersen has regressed from dreamboat Danish ten to Dunstable’s third best Iggy Pop tribute act in record time and could barely lift the delivery above chest height of the defender at the near post. Ageing like a fine banana.
Cue another City break downfield, a desperate Sam Field swipe on the edge of the box, and another City free kick for which Liam Manning was no longer in pissing about mood. Scott Twine was summoned as designated kicker and, after some needless toying around with the positioning of ball and opponents in the wall, neither of which referee Smith should have tolerated, he lifted a typically glorious kick over all else involved and into the net for one nil with his first touch of the game.
That had been well coming, and could easily have been extended upon when Nardi saved soon after from Mehmeti, and Rangers survived a big handball appeal against Field in the box.
Perhaps the hosts had become complacent. You could hardly blame them, this was ridiculously one sided. Or maybe frustrated at their inability to put away such an obviously inferior opponent. Either way, from one of ten corners, just after the hour they were caught overcommitted. Pring stepped too far forward to try and win a second ball, meaning the entire Robins outfit was now stranded a very Hull City-like 90 yards up the field. Varane intercepted and played the ball forward well for Paul Smyth to chase into the space. Now this needn’t have been a problem. It was set to be only the second time QPR had even crossed the halfway line, and scarcely represented a goalscoring chance given the distance left to cover and the final ball form of the man with possession. And yet, through boredom perhaps, through panic of making sure whatever the first thing it was he had to do was done well, entering stage left as the camera looked and right in our field of vision from the away end, was, for some reason, home goalkeeper Max O’Leary. No right or need to be there, no rhyme or reason, only bad could come of it, a disaster waiting to happen, absolutely hilarious. Cruel? Maybe. But sometimes the only way to make yourself feel good is by making somebody else feel bad, and I’m tired of making other people feel good. Smyth beat him for pace, nudged the ball into space and then, in a moment of hitherto unseen composure, launched a brilliant 50-yard crossfield bouncing bomb straight into the net with beautiful precision to delight the travelling faithful behind that goal. Stendhal Syndrome – struck dumb by incredible beauty after staring so long at such mediocrity. QPR, somehow, back level. Smyth should have been wearing a mask.
City seemed, understandably, crestfallen by this turn of events. Their threat rather ebbed away - punched out. The question then became whether Cifuentes’ rope-a-dope strategy could secure an unlikely knockout in the eleventh. Alfie Lloyd running through one-on-one with Rob Dickie but somehow turning around and inadvertently playing Bristol City through on goal at the other end didn’t immediately suggest so, but soon the energetic young sub was marauding into the area for a shot deflected fractionally wide with O’Leary’s nerves shot to shitrags, and a late speculator from Steve Cook of all people had the keeper scrambling the opposite way to make an improvised save. Every bit as impressive – Cook’s recovery run to the other end of the pitch and no-nonsense clearance as O’Leary then attempted to expose him with a long clearance back over his head.
Rangers, implausibly, could have won the thing. Though a point was probably robbery enough.
Links >>> Ratings and Reports >>> Message Board Match Thread
Bristol City: O’Leary 4; Vyner 6, Dickie 7, McNally 7, Pring 5; Bird 6, Knight 7; Hirakawa 6 (Twine 59, 7), Earthy 6 (Bell 77, 6), Mehmeti 6; Wells 5 (Mayulu 77, 6)
Subs not used: Atkinson, Bajic, Cornick. McRorie, McGuane, Roberts
Goals: Twine 60 (unassisted)
Yellow Cards: Knight 26 (foul)
QPR: Nardi 7; Dunne 6, Cook 7, Morrison 7, Ashby 4 (Paal 80, -); Varane 6, Field 6; Saito 6 (Chair 74, 6), Andersen 4 (Madsen 74, 5), Smyth 7 (Bennie 88, -); Kolli 4 (Lloyd 46, 5)
Subs not used: Fox, Frey, Morgan, Walsh
Goals: Smyth 65 (assisted Varane)
Yellow Cards: Dunne 45+2 (foul), Field 58 (foul)
QPR Star Man – Liam Morrison 7 Effectively calm and necessarily composed under constant, heavy fire. He is now unbeaten in eight starts for the club.
Referee – Lewis Smith (Wigan) 6 Few bizarre calls, but when you set up to chase the opposition around out of possession for two hours you’re not going to get many decisions you like out of the referee.
Attendance 20,935 (1,868 QPR)
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