The final part of our end of season assessment of the QPR squad looks at the team’s attack, which was in much better shape at the end of the campaign than it was at the beginning.
Stats Key:
Key Facts – goals, assists, Man of the Match and appearance data
Fan Rating – average rating over the course of the season from interactive match ratings
LFW Rating – average mark from the match reports
Rating breakdown – marks out of ten from the LFW match reports over the course of the season, a dash signals player on the field for less than ten minutes
Discipline – number of cards and reasons for them
It’s been a season of incredible extremes for Adel Taarabt. This time last year he seemed all set for big spending Paris SG, and was consequently allowed to miss almost all of QPR’s pre-season while locked in that will-he-won’t-he struggle. When it fell through Taarabt returned to QPR with his tail between his legs, which by that stage were rubbing together at the top. Taarabt has never had a regular run of games in the top division in any country which made it something of a personal tragedy that when he finally did get one at the start of this season he was too fat, and the team around him too poor, for him to make any impact whatsoever. He briefly threatened a return to form in the home game against Newcastle where he linked up superbly with Shaun Wright-Phillips in a dynamic attacking display but the new players that initially threatened to bring the best out in him, soon started to make him a scapegoat for their own failings culminating in Joey Barton’s scandalous comments in interview about the Moroccan and Taarabt’s inglorious removal at half time at White Hart Lane during a dressing room tear up following the worst first half of his QPR career.
I don’t believe Neil Warnock covered himself in glory during all of this. It almost seemed as though Warnock had decided long ago to indulge Taarabt in the Championship and then dump him following promotion, perhaps believing he didn’t have quite what it takes at the very top level. But Mark Hughes very quickly recognised that Taarabt remains a key game winner for QPR as we’ll discuss in a moment. Potential move to Paris SG or not, why was Taarabt allowed to bunk off almost the entire summer? Why was he allowed to get so out of shape? Why was Joey Barton allowed to say whatever he liked about him with no comeback? Why was Taarabt made a scapegoat during collective team disasters at Fulham and Tottenham? Why indulge him so completely in the Championship just to disregard him in the top flight? None of it really made any sense to me. Nor did the decision to keep him out of the team altogether through November and December when it was clearly struggling without him.
When Hughes took over and Taarabt was back into some sort of game shape we were treated to a couple of revelations. Firstly, Taarabt will quite happily play on the wing and do his defensive duties as well as the attacking ones. Warnock had built a Championship team around him, with Derry and Faurlin sitting deeper to do his running for him and clean up some of the messes he made, which was never going to be able to continue after promotion but Hughes quickly found a way to accommodate him and Taarabt’s attitude since the change in manager has been first class. Secondly, QPR are still heavily reliant on him.
Although Hughes later went away from his time honoured 4-4-2 system, he is a ‘straight lines’ manager who believes in rigid team shape and discipline – Taarabt is the only player we have who can provide a creative spark within that from deeper lying positions within that and, despite not being an obvious Mark Hughes-type player, the manager recognised that immediately. The Moroccan’s season came full circle with a goal and fine performance against Tottenham at home, and another Goal of the Season contender against Arsenal - two goals that won four points.
Once again his failings, or perhaps the failings of the management, mean he’s probably going to stay at Loftus Road this summer rather than move on. His contract is up next summer and I’d be making an extension to that a priority because he showed in the run in he is still one of our best players even against quality opposition and I believe the next 12 months will see something of a coming of age at the highest level for the Moroccan. Exciting, but worrying given the contract situation.
Stats:
Key Facts – 25 starts, three sub appearances, two goals, four assists, six Man of the Match awards
Fan Rating – 6.91 (highest of regular starters)
LFW Rating – 6.39
Rating breakdown – 6 6 4 7 8 6 7 4 5 7 4 6 7 7 7 7 8 6 7 7 6 6 9 6 6 6 7 7
Discipline – Four yellows (kicking ball away, over celebrating, foul, kicking ball away), and one red (two yellows)
Good players don’t become bad players overnight, and DJ Campbell is more than likely the same decent player we signed last summer assuming he can overcome the series of niggling hamstring injuries that have decimated his first year at QPR. The issue here may be that the club has moved on while he’s been on the massage table.
I’ve always quite liked DJ Campbell and thought of him as a good fit for our club, not only because he’s a QPR fan and played in our youth set up once upon a time but also his style of play and character. He was the only quality signing we made last summer, coming to us in the face of competition from established top flight sides like Sunderland after a 13 goal season with Blackpool in the Premiership the season before. That total in a relegated team was impressive, although Ian Holloway’s policy of all out attack meant chances were plentiful and Campbell also missed more than he should.
At Rangers he started well with a decent finish in the 3-0 win at Wolves but on the eve of what was set to be his next start against Blackburn at home he pulled up injured in training and by the time he was fit for league action again Mark Hughes had replaced Neil Warnock as manager. That may not have been such a bad thing for the player because in Warnock’s last match in charge at MK Dons, against League One opponents, Campbell spurned a chance to really stake a claim for a place with an insipid display. Hughes’ new broom brought a second second chance in the home match with Wigan but, again, injury struck halfway through and he never appeared again. In the meantime Rangers signed Bobby Zamora, Djibril Cisse and now potentially Andy Johnson as well.
Still a man with a part to play, but somebody desperately in need of a prolonged period of fitness and action in and around the first team. Potentially one that could be moved on this summer, which I think would be a shame.
Stats:
Key Facts – Three starts, nine substitute appearances, one goal at Wolves, no assists, no Man of te Match awards.
Fan Rating – 5.23
LFW Rating – 5.55
Rating breakdown – 5 – 7 6 6 6 6 5 – 4 5 -
Discipline – No cards.
Now, I’ve never liked Jay Bothroyd. For a striker with the physical build he has I’ve found his aversion to actually getting into the penalty box and his propensity to limp out of crucial games with the most meagre injury complaint unfathomable. He lacks goal scoring instincts, he lacks brains, he lacks bravery, and he has an amazingly high opinion of himself despite all these things. Despite all that, and a dreadfully mediocre goal scoring record, he’s never been short of a club.
After falling out with legendary Arsenal coach and former QPR manager Don Howe and leaving Highbury for Coventry City he managed 17 goals in 83 appearances. There followed spells with Perugia (five goals, 29 appearances), Blackburn (one goal, 11 appearances), Charlton (five goals, 25 appearances), Wolves (13 goals, 60 appearances) and Stoke (no goals, four appearances) – 41 goals in nine years. He was best known for turning round and belting Norwich’s Mattias Jonsson while wasting time in the corner, and bizarrely getting a single England cap when he scored 15 times in the first half of last season for Cardiff City.
Strangely though, despite a lot of these traits once again shining through in QPR colours, I found myself spending most of the first half of the season defending Bothroyd, both on this website and on the terraces. As I wrote in the midfield section with Shaun Wright-Phillips, QPR fans seem to enjoy nothing better than persecuting one or two of their own players and Bothroyd certainly copped more than his fair share of abuse this season. I think the worst example was the gentleman in front of me at Arsenal on New Year’s Eve who launched into a tirade against him during the pre-match handshakes – presumably upset by the way he’d come out of the tunnel.
That said, Bothroyd is enormously frustrating. When he’s in the mood the potential is clearly there, and against Man City at home he scored one fabulous header, had another deflected in by Heidar Helguson and saw a third rebound off the post. But he’s not brave enough, not hard working enough, and seems to be obsessed with drifting miles away from areas he can be effective into strange, deep lying wide midfield roles where he can’t. He needs somebody to tell him to remain within the width of the penalty box, and man up to a bit of physical contact. Or he needs selling, and I’m not really fussed which one it is at the moment.
Stats:
Key Facts – 14 starts, ten sub appearances, two goals, one assist, one Man of the Match award.
Fan Rating – 5.42
LFW Rating – 6.10
Rating breakdown – 6 8 4 7 7 6 7 4 8 8 6 6 6 – 6 5 6 6 – 5 5 – 6
Discipline – Three yellows (foul, foul, kicking ball away)
The excellent Open All R’s Podcast finished the season with an epic hour-long episode which included an interview with Jamie Mackie in the wake of his extraordinary goal at Manchester City. By the end of the chat, and I’m sure the boys won’t mind me saying this, those in the studio were positively swooning. I know the feeling, this boy stirs strange emotions within me.
Mackie is daft as a brush. A week prior to his flying header at Eastlands he’d been running headlong into Stoke’s Robert Huth over and over and over again expecting a different result. He never got it, Huth was one of the few Premiership defenders who actually coped with him last season, but it didn’t stop him trying. Nothing will ever stop Jamie Mackie trying. When we were 3-0 down and playing dreadfully at Blackburn he leapt from the bench to score twice and almost rescue a point. Previously at Tottenham, 2-0 down at half time and getting battered, he came on and changed the shape of the game in our favour. Against Liverpool at home he’d gone on at 1-0 down promising to score the winner (not the equaliser) and did indeed manage that despite us going 2-0 down soon after his introduction, despite there being only a minute left and despite the rest of his team looking happy to settle for a hard won point by that stage. Regardless of circumstance, Jamie Mackie is what Jamie Mackie is.
But allegations that Mackie is simply a kick and rush footballer, limited in ability and making a living solely because of the over importance placed on effort and commitment over actual skill and ability in this country, is not only unfair but also inaccurate. When he first arrived from Plymouth Argyle two years ago he was incredibly raw, and it was often difficult to distinguish between him passing the ball and attempting to control it. He has clearly worked hard on all aspects of his game, most notably his ball control, and he has improved beyond all recognition into a quality Premiership player that we are lucky to have and will be seeing some serious interest in if he continues in the current vein. He’s destroyed some experienced top level full backs this season – most notably Jose Enrique and Benoit Assou Ekotto. His style of play and attitude drives the performances of the rest of the team and the tempo of the game.
He’s superb, absolutely bloody superb, and is my Player of the Year.
Stats:
Key Facts – 27 starts, seven sub appearances, seven goals, three assists, two Man of the Match awards.
Fan Rating – 5.99
LFW Rating – 6.22
Rating breakdown – 7 6 – 7 7 7 7 7 6 6 6 7 5 5 4 5 6 6 6 5 8 6 - - 7 6 8 7 7 6 7 4 5 7
Discipline – Two yellows (dissent, ungentlemanly conduct)
Apart from Clint Hill, few players at QPR this season proved how foolish it was for Neil Warnock to move away from the successful Championship team so quickly more than Heidar Helguson. In Warnock’s defence, I couldn’t see how the Icelandic international could play any kind of serious role before the campaign began either given that prior to joining us in 2009 he’d been playing reserve team football for almost three years solid at Fulham and Bolton. But Helguson was almost as crucial to the way we played in the division below as Adel Taarabt, exhibiting a hold up and lay game that was second to none and hinting at a Paul Furlong style Indian summer at Loftus Road. Nevertheless Warnock preferred Jay Bothroyd, DJ Campell and others to him from the start of the season and it was only in October when Blackburn came calling, and Campbell picked up a training ground injury the day before the game, that Helguson had his chance from the start and he opened the scoring that day.
By the end of the season the press were raving about target men in the two other promoted teams: Danny Graham at Swansea and particularly Grant Holt at Norwich. But once in the QPR team Helguson scored more freely and played a good deal better than both Graham and Holt until, tragically, his campaign was ended in January by injury. In fact he scored more prolifically than anybody else in the division for a while, bagging nine goals in 15 appearances. In that three month period he became the first name on the QPR team sheet, scoring crucial points-winning goals against Chelsea, Blackburn, West Brom and Wigan. The problem soon became overuse – he’s always needed to be wrapped in cotton wool to some extent and used sparingly but Rangers just couldn’t be without him and it turned out to be short term gain for long term pain.
Without wishing to write him off prematurely for a second time, it will be interesting to see how much of a role he has in Mark Hughes’ QPR team. Bobby Zamora, most certainly a Hughes man, has arrived and plays the Helguson hold up role reasonably well. I suspect one or two Championship clubs may have a sniff around our Icelandic talisman but if not, he’ll be superb back up to have for Zamora this season.
Stats:
Key Facts – 14 starts, five sub appearances, nine goals, three assists, three Man of the Match awards.
Fan Rating – 6.84
LFW Rating – 6.79
Rating breakdown – 5 7 7 8 7 9 9 6 8 6 7 6 6 6 6 6 7 7 6
Discipline – Two yellows (foul, foul)
When Adel Taarabt was ripping the Championship apart last season, scoring 19 goals and assisting 23 others on his way to being named the division’s outstanding player, people still complained about his attitude, work rate and occasional strops. My reaction to that was to embrace the failings, because they were the reason he was at QPR in the first place and why nobody showed serious interest in him in the transfer market. In Djibril Cisse we have happened upon another player of far superior quality to anything we’ve seen at Loftus Road for a generation – a 41 times French international, aged 30, bought for a lousy £4m from Lazio in January. One of the reasons we’ve been able to do this is because he’s mad. Cisse is temperamental, prone to moments of madness, and unpredictable which are attributes big, established clubs don’t like but things that little old Queens Park Rangers should embrace because there is no way on earth a player this good should be playing for us.
Cisse has, so far, built a formidable record of a goal or a red card in every appearance. He scored his first on debut at Aston Villa, receiving a loose ball in the penalty box and dispatching it emphatically into the bottom corner in the blink of an eye. The feeling I had that night, and in every game he’s played in since, is one I haven’t felt since Les Ferdinand played in Hoops; if Cisse is on the pitch then it doesn’t matter how badly he is playing, how poorly the team is playing, or how brilliant the opposition is, we have a chance. At Man City on the final day Rangers waited 50 minutes to even get out of their own half but the first time they did Cisse smashed an equaliser past the excellent Joe Hart. After the goal at Villa I looked along the line at the rest of the LFW Travelling Crew and the look on the faces of Andy, Tom, Colin and Neil matched my own – we all knew we had a special player on our hands.
The game after Villa, against Wolves at home, Cisse was flying for the first half an hour and Rangers led through Bobby Zamora. The Frenchman then reacted badly to a poor challenge on him by Roger Johnson and was sent off, costing us a victory against a relegation rival. Internationals and other club’s cup commitments strung his three game ban out over a month and although he then scored another beautifully taken, crucial goal during the comeback against Liverpool he was subsequently sent off again for a mindless tackle against Sunderland. This stupidity seemed to trigger feelings of guilt within him though and he spoke regularly about staying with QPR regardless of what division they were in to repay the faith of the fans and the club. Thankfully, due in no small part to his last minute winner against Stoke, he’ll be a Premiership QPR player next season. He’s performed brilliantly enough to keep QPR up, but behaved stupidly enough to ward off interest from other clubs which is an ideal combination for us, and very similar to Taarabt a year ago.
Personally he’s the player that’s giving me optimism for next season, the one who excites me the most. A full season of Djibril Cisse could be snatched from us by one injury but assuming he does play, I think he’s going to be an absolute revelation in 2012/13 and I can’t wait to see him get started.
Stats:
Key Facts – Seven starts, one sub appearance, six goals, no assists, one Man of the Match award. 17 starts for Lazio, seven sub appearances, two goals.
Fan Rating – 6.21
LFW Rating – 6.25
Rating breakdown – 7 6 7 7 5 4 7 7
Discipline – Three yellows for Lazio, two reds for QPR (violent conduct, serious foul play)
I find Bobby Zamora a difficult player to like. He just always gives off the impression of somebody who’s not going to put himself out unless there’s something in it for him – when the going gets tough, Bobby preserves his fitness for another day. It’s harsh to pick out any individual from the shambolic 6-1 defeat at Chelsea but I thought the way he allowed the home team to hold possession at the base of their midfield completely unchecked set the tone for the whole disaster. Had Zamora engaged with John Obi Mikel our midfield could have sat deep and our shape could have been maintained, instead he stood the other side of the Nigerian and did nothing about his prolonged periods of possession which in turn dragged midfielders further up the field which then left space in behind them where the likes of Juan Mata had a field day.
When the going is good he’s an excellent Premiership centre forward, and it was no surprise to see him turn in his best display for the club against Arsenal because he has always enjoyed playing against their powder-puff centre backs for Fulham and he therefore knew there was something there for him. What it would be nice to see is him putting in the hard yards when perhaps things aren’t going his or QPR’s way – I’m not talking about a Jamie Mackie level of work rate here, but something more than standing still, scratching his pubics looking like a man who regrets his transfer might be nice. Hopefully next season we’ll have more to bring on from the bench – Helguson, Andy Johnson and others – when Zamora is in disinterested mode and therefore we can just enjoy the good times with him rather than worrying about the bad ones.
Stats:
Key Facts – 14 starts, two goals, no assists, one Man of the Match award. 25 starts for Fulham, four sub appearances, seven goals.
Fan Rating – 6.39
LFW Rating – 6.14
Rating breakdown – 7 6 6 7 7 7 5 8 6 6 8 2 5 6
Discipline – Four yellows for Fulham, two bookings for QPR (unsporting conduct, foul)
Others >>> The rest of the strikers on our books this season is a real collection of the bad, sad and desperate. Amazing to think that Patrick Agyemang started twice for us back in August, playing abysmally at Everton and Wigan before thankfully being rejected from the 25 man squad. He ended the season on loan at Stevenage and was bloody awful for them as well. Now mercifully released.
Angelo Balanta, as usual, spent time on loan at MK Dons and it’s something of a surprise to see him extend his deal in W12 this summer considering his five goals in 24 appearances didn’t exactly rip up any trees. Troy Hewitt was ineffective on loan in League Two at Dagenham and Redbridge and is likely to move on. Rowan Vine was crap on loan for Exeter, crap on loan at Gillingham, and in between failed to earn a deal at Southend because he was too fat. Another one we’re glad to see the back of this summer, likewise Rob Hulse who surprisingly appeared for two games in January but has never looked happy at QPR and will make a Championship side a reasonable signing this summer. Bruno Andrade was Man of the Match against Rochdale in the cup but looks unlikely to make the grade at the highest level.
Which leaves my final rant of the season for the Marlboro man himself Federico Macheda. The young Italian was Neil Warnock’s final signing as manager (on loan in January) and is right up there with Leon Clarke as his worst. A player of minimal ability living off one goal against Aston Villa and the fact that he somehow tricked Man Utd into signing him once. Incapable of playing for more than an hour without blowing out of his arse thanks to his love of cigarettes, unwilling to put in even a modicum of hard work, lacking bravery, lacking ability, lacking everything you need to be a professional footballer. Useless, arrogant waste of space.
Tweet @loftforwords
Pictures – Action Images