A Sam Field double banished memories of a frightful first half, and continued QPR’s steady recovery run of wins and clean sheets, with a 2-0 home win against Oxford on Wednesday.
"Jordan Cousins potentially the best pound-for-pound signing in the Championship this summer.” "Steven Caulker such a failsafe option even QPR couldn’t mess this one up.” Jordon Mutch/Conor Washington/Matt Ingram… "exactly the sort of signings QPR should be making”.
When you’re turning this level of copy out, frequently for three game weeks, across nine months of the year, every year, for 20 years, there are going to be some humdingers amongst the hot takes. Still, LFW rating you highly as a new signing is less a kiss of death more a deep, lasting, meaningful snog. With a heavy smoker. With a cold sore. And a strep throat. And a cloak. And a scythe.
When we’re right, though, we don’t half nail it. A selection of lines from yesterday’s match preview, which I’m copying and pasting here because I know nobody reads the midweek match preview so I can afford a bit of recycling, and to delay the inevitable task of talking about the first half of last night’s match which was the worst thing I’ve seen up to, and possibly including, my dad’s funeral.
"QPR have two wins in three games, two defeats in nine, unbeaten in four. They have kept five clean sheets in eight games, as many as their previous 32 in all comps, and haven’t conceded at all in three matches. This despite them having less of the ball. In each of the last three games (wins to nil against Cardiff and Norwich, and what surely should have been the same against Watford) they’ve had 32%, 37% and 37% of the possession respectively. For a nil nil at high flying Burnley they had barely a quarter of the ball.”
"There was an almost hubristic arrogance to how QPR approached the start of this season. Like we’d arrived. We have, more recently, gone back to a style which probably wouldn’t be the manager’s first choice… but it suits the players we have here now. We’re pressing higher, we’re crowding the strip down the middle of the pitch almost with a three, three, three set up, and we’re letting opponents have the wings. Lo, Jimmy Dunne and Steve Cook, as they did last year, are coming into their own as the team’s key men. Kieran Morgan, brought in as a development squad player, is now a key member of the first team because he provides legs and energy in midfield. This time last year Elijah Dixon-Bonner performed a similar role, one of Cifuentes' first decisions as manager. You've got to run in this league. Having fairly basic youth team players who will makes a substantial difference over more senior, talented players who won't.
"The issue tonight… is what happens when you’re playing an opponent against whom you’re expected to not only win, but also dominate against?”
Well, what happens is you end up sitting through one of the lowest quality first halves of football played on this ground in years. And, my God, do we have a large sample size for that.
QPR gave Oxford the ball, so they could press them high, win the ball back with opponents committed and take advantage of the space and all that jazz. Oxford, very sportingly, gave it straight back. So QPR gave Oxford the ball again, to have another go with it, so they could press them high, win the ball back with opponents committed and take advantage of the space and all that jazz. And Oxford, nice boys that they clearly are (Morty Goodrham, absolutely adorable, ah geez), once again, gave it straight back.
Oxford set up in an unusually defensive shape and system for them, presumably thinking QPR would try and impose themselves on the game as the home team and they’d be able to counter. Rangers wanted to play as they have been playing recently, without the ball and high on the press. The result was that clip of the rugby union game where the two teams just drop kick the ball back and forth down the field at each other for an interminable length of time. A glitch in the sporting matrix. The only reason it doesn’t happen is the players usually don’t want it to happen, but it’s a perfectly legitimate way of playing the sport within the confines of the laws of the game. The only thing the match officials can do is blow for half time as soon as feasibly possible, and Championship newbie Adam Herczeg went on 45.01 – for which we all thank him dearly.
Paul Smyth at least had the beating of Greg Leigh for most of the night, and got round his man for an early cross. Cameron Brannagan’s speculator took a deflection on its way to being held soundly by Paul Nardi. Steve Cook headed wide when Smyth’s long throw broke his way. Rayan Kolli, playing through illness after his two goal weekend salvo, spun in the corner of the penalty area and got a half decent shot away which Cumming needed two attempts to save. That was it, really. One attempted pass down the line struck a team mate in the back of the head and flew into touch.
QPR’s first set piece was absolutely hilarious. Wide on the left corner of the penalty box, a very handsome crossing opportunity, three players passed the ball between them to work it precisely back to the position it had started in with Nicolas Madsen. Now under pressure, the Dane kicked the ball higher than a football has ever been kicked before. When it dropped, some three or four minutes later, Rangers conceded a free kick of their own. Is the set piece coach in Dubai as well? He’d have probably seen it from there.
It felt like Oxford didn’t really realise the opportunity that was being presented to them. Two draws and six defeats from their eight aways coming into this game and if they can’t beat QPR playing like this then it’s difficult to imagine where that first maximum will come. Well, Cardiff. It’ll come at Cardiff. But, you take the point. The kindest thing to say was they lacked confidence.
I’m trying not to hammer Harrison Ashby too much, because he’s young, because he’s struggling, because we are giving up the wings, because we leave our full backs exposed, because he’s playing on the wrong side, because we switched him from side-to-side several times in this game. But, at times, it felt like he was playing for them. Statistically, one in three of his passes last night went to an Oxford player. At one point in the first half he gave the ball away to Matt Phillips twice in the same move he was also beaten for pace in, hauled the winger down, and got away without a free kick more as a sympathy vote from the officials. Luckily Phillips was very much in ‘one of his moods’ and spent the evening taking each opportunity we’d given him in turn and kicking it into the stand.
Dreadful. Okay, we get it. Let’s park that there and start again.
That both a line in the match report, and the half time team talk. Forget it, don’t dwell. Life and football don’t often do second chances, but you’ve got one here with the score at nil nil, just go out and do what you wish you had done in the first half.
Second half QPR moved through the gears. Now, by that I mean they went from first to something approaching third. The engine wasn’t exactly purring. But it was a lot better, and it was enough. Smyth was giving his full back a good going over and won an early free kick from which Varane shot over at the edge of the area.
I was going to deduct marks from the Northern Ireland winger for what happened next because, look, if Steve Cook runs 100 yards to provide the overlapping full back run down towards the Q Block you give him the fucking ball. Whether you expect him to do anything with it is irrelevant. The fact not one single defender has bought it as a potential option for us, I care not. You give him the ball. Just to see what happens. We’re not going up. We’re never going up. We’re stuck here forever. Let’s have fun.
Redemption, though, was immediate. A sequence of three appallingly bad crosses into the box, each cross worse than the one before, was broken by a great delivery from Smyth, a terrific bit of body positioning and aerial win by young Kolli, and a header down into the path of Sam Field who, in composing himself and getting his head over the ball, provided the first bit of calm, thoughtful, effective quality in the whole game. It was enough to go one nil up. Kolli now with two goals and three assists in seven first team appearances – the sort of numbers some of our other recent strikers took dozens of games to post.
It's a frequent LFW refrain that Sam Field, for his ability and physicality, has to score more goals for us. A point semi-echoed by Marti Cifuentes in post match who pointed out how often Field gets in good positions in the box for second balls when playing as the second ‘eight’ midfielder. He’s now actually the top scorer at Loftus Road in 2024, albeit only with seven, and the pattern to the scoring is becoming somewhat spooky. When he gets one, he gets two. When they come, they come at night. And mostly at the Loft End. Mostly.
Sure enough, when Smyth decided to give Leigh a break down the right and QPR went to see what the returning Peter Kioso was up to on the other side of the pitch they found a seam richer than the Accidental Partridge account discovered when they stumbled on Nick London’s QPR commentaries.
I get he’s coming back from a month-long absence, and playing against the excellent Koki Saito is difficult, but ye Gods. Caught out badly pisballing around in possession by the Japanese winger, the ball was quickly fed into a busted backline, well left by sub Alfie Lloyd and finished expertly again by Field. Caught again soon after, Kioso fell on the ball and was penalised for handball. He spent the rest of the game mostly booting the ball out to prevent further damaged was hooked for his own safety amidst some sort of existential crisis. More opposition full backs like this please. But, again, let’s focus on the positive work of Saito, and the cool finish of Field from exactly the position in the penalty box you’d want him. One late looping header away from the most unlikely of perfect hat tricks.
Madsen, who’d been particularly insipid in the first half, showed more willing in the second. At the moment he’s that cruel combination of not very good and/or not very lucky. One charge into the penalty area brought a decent shout for a spot kick that was somehow given as an Oxford free kick without a yellow card simulation. It was potentially a lot of things – penalty, corner, play-on, offside, dive and a yellow card – it certainly wasn’t an Oxford free kick and no caution. Later, as part of his new found hustle, he chucked himself into a wild challenge which resulted in bad injuries to both players and nine minutes of stoppage time at the end of the game. Felt a bit sorry for him – starts doing what we ask of him and breaks his leg. Barrel of tits: thumb.
There were occasional late scares. Steve Cook produced a monstrous clearing header under heavy opposition fire right in the centre of the goal where you’d really want Paul Nardi to be coming and claiming the ball, then moments later swooped in with a crunching challenge after Liam Morrison, tiring, had allowed a ball to run under his foot into the penalty area. Two big captain’s rescue recoveries for younger members of his team. Great knock.
Nardi was a good deal better under a subsequent dangerous cross – perhaps Cook had words – which looked like it, too, had resulted in a bad injury to a key player but turns out he was just being all French about it. In truth Oxford were never coming back into this and the only shame was Saito’s long quest for a deserved goal once again drew a blank as a beautiful curling shot missed the top corner by an inch. That’s going to go down well when he does eventually bag.
Which brings us to whether that first half matters or not?
In the overall grand scheme of things of course it does. Firstly, because we have to aspire to so much more than that as a club and a team otherwise what’s the point? Secondly, because you won’t beat anybody else in the Championship playing that way. Oxford - unfortunately because I like some of their players and manager a good deal more than a lot of the bums at the bottom of this division - ascend the mantle of worst team we’ve played and, per our season preview, it feels like if you finish below them you’re going down. They’ll beat us at theirs though, because of course.
Only three of Cifuentes’ now 14 wins as QPR boss have come with more than 50% of the ball – Stoke (ten men), Rotherham (relegated), Birmingham (relegated). We’ve got to be far better, far more comfortable, far more effective when we have the ball ourselves. Pressing and picking off opposition mistakes is one part of an overall plan, it’s not an overall plan by itself because eventually you fight Drederick Tatum and, Homey, he’s not gonna get tired.
Right now, though… No. No, it doesn’t.
It’s a three-game week, in the busiest part of the year, with multiple injuries to key players down the spine of the team. Oxford were rested after not playing at the weekend. QPR’s uptick is very much welcome, and to see clean sheets stacking up like this after none from the first 14 games is encouraging, but ours is a fragile recovery. Paul Nardi saves, Watford free kicks off crossbars, Norwich disallowed goals. We thought we’d turned a corner this time last year as well, with three wins, three draws and four clean sheets from seven games after a similar dire start. Another 1-0 looked to be in the offing at Sheff Wed, but we missed a chance to go 2-0 up, made the wrong substitutions, conceded twice in injury time, and collapsed into another run of eight without victory.
Marti Cifuentes is right in everything he said about this game, before and after. A different kind of challenge, with expectations on us to dominate, which we’ve struggled badly with this season against the likes of Plymouth, Hull and Portsmouth who’ve all taken points from Loftus Road. We’ve now beaten Cardiff and Oxford to nil in a fortnight. Was it pretty? Absolutely not. But, as the Spanish man say, a few weeks ago we’d have died for a win like this, so let’s not sweat the aesthetics too much at this stage. Never mind the quality, feel the width.
I could have saved myself 2,751 words and simply said…
Needed to beat Oxford.
Did.
Links >>> Ratings and Reports >>> Message Board Match Thread
QPR: Nardi 6; Dunne 6, Cook 7, Morrison 6 (Chair 84, -), Ashby 4; Varane 6 (Morgan 76, 6), Field 7; Smyth 7 (Fox 76, 5), Madsen 5 (Andersen 67, 6), Saito 7; Kolli 6 (Lloyd 66, 5)
Subs not used: Santos, Dixon-Bonner, Bennie, Walsh
Goals: Field 53 (assisted Kolli), 68 (assisted Saito)
Yellow Cards: Fox 90+1 (foul), Lloyd 90+3 (kicking ball away)
Oxford: Cumming 5; Kioso 3 (Dale 88, -), Moore 5, Brown 5, Leigh 3; Brannagan 6; Phillips 4 (Rodrigues 58, 6), Goodrham 6, El Mizouni 5 (McEachran 70, 5), Placheta 4 (Edwards 58, 5); Harris 5 (Scarlett 70, 5)
Subs not used; Ingram, Thorniley, Vaulks, Avest
Yellow Cards: Brannagan 13 (foul), Moore 27 (foul)
QPR Star Man – Sam Field 7 Only scores in twos apparently. Level head, calming presence, match winning influence on a night that could have got out of hand after the poor first half.
Referee - Adam Herczeg (Durham) 6 Well there’s a thread on our message board about how terrible he was, detailing failures like QPR’s second half handball penalty appeal (never a penalty for me), the booking of Alfie Lloyd for kicking the ball away (don’t kick the ball away then) when Oxford didn’t get one for the same thing (they were losing 2-0, they want to waste their own time you lettum carry on), why there was nine minutes added to the end (significant injury stoppages with Madsen and Nardi). As you can probably tell, I thought he was fine. I came out thinking probably a seven. Bit perplexed why the Madsen incident in the penalty box was given as an Oxford free kick but I liked that he penalised for handball when Kioso fell on the ball trying to buy a free kick, and adding not a single second to the end of the first half was an act of pure mercy. Pretty fine by me.
Attendance 14,440 (1,800 Oxford approx.) Nine minutes of added time. NINE Jeremy, that’s insane. And, so, the crowd descends immediately into a pit of misery, in what was obviously at that point a comfortable home win. My God, have we been through it. Hello Dragons, I’m here today to ask for £20,000 for a 10% stake in my on-demand, 24-hour therapy business. *Evan Davis voiceover*. "Peter Jones is first to probe the plans, which will see the first five branches all opened within 300 feet of each other in the same West London post code…”
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