QPR turned a reasonable recovery from recent poor form into a demoralising disaster for their promotion push at home to Cardiff City on Saturday — 1-0 up and comfortable to 2-1 down and bereft in the blink of an eye.
I shan’t take my coat off I’m not stopping.
Improved, more attack minded, and winning... for the first hour or so on Saturday it looked like Queens Park Rangers might be mustering some sort of halfway decent response to their recent loss of form and dip in performance level. Then, for reasons that many of us will speculate on but nobody will know for sure other than the players on the field, they dropped off the side of a cliff — a long, dramatic and traumatic fall interrupted and brought to an end only by the final whistle. If you wanted a microcosm for a season that promised so much for so long and looked so certain to end in a significant promotion push, and now increasingly feels like it’s going to end with us not even making the play-offs, then this was surely it.
After a painfully laboured and tired display in an important clash with a fellow promotion chaser at Blackburn last week, changes were inevitably made to the team. To watch QPR at Ewood Park you’d think the whole aim of the game was to complete as many sideways passes as you can as close to your own goal as possible without conceding, and in an effort to get the team slightly further up the pitch than the end of the goalkeeper’s shadow an actual striker was picked up front from the off here in the form of Andre Gray Offside. Stefan Johansen wasn’t in the matchday squad, nor Lyndon Dykes whose "knock” has kept him out for four matches, George Thomas who must wonder what he's got to do, and Charlie Austin who’s coming to the side of a milk carton near you soon. No manager, anywhere, bar Marcelo Bielsa, is ever going to give too much away regarding injuries and team selection in the pre-match press conference, but keeping the cards quite so close to the chest at a time when form is tanking leaves a few of these things open to rumour, conspiracy and inuendo, and there’s plenty of that flying around the place at the moment, particularly regarding Austin’s unexplained vanishing. Seny Dieng, we do now know, is out for a month, with David Marshall the only fit senior goalkeeper at the club, and Football Manager regen Murphy Mahoney on the bench.
Initially, same shit different day. I’ve always been impressed with young Welsh international Rubin Colwill when I’ve watched Cardiff, but never quite realised he’s as big as the Jolly Green Giant. This enormous man child took time out from flogging sweetcorn to power through a busted defence after seven minutes and lay our old chum My Chemical Hugill into the right channel from where he forced a really quite impressive save from Marshall. Mercifully, Wor Jordan thereafter reverted to type, leaning back on a series of presentable chances and spraying shots all over the W12 postcode. Couldn’t fault his application and work rate mind, as ever was.
When QPR did cough into life as the time ticked into double figures, a header behind led to their first corner of the day which was taken by Yoann Barbet. Nothing came of it, because Yoann Barbet took it. While I’d say it’s pretty certain that I’m not going to be able to make it through this report without a full-scale Kermodian rant on the issue, I feel it’s worthy of a small note at this early point, because it can never be said too much or too often, it will bear repeating throughout and I make no apologies for doing so — THIS IS A SERIOUSLY FUCKING STUPID IDEA.
Slowly though, progress. Long, patient build up - perhaps a little forced and laboured at time but at least taking place in the right half of the field - ended with a classic Lee Wallace overlap and low cross which Gray would probably have scored but for a last-gasp interception in the six yard box. Chair’s inswinging cross from the left was then flicked goalwards by Gray and saved smartly in the bottom corner by Alex Smithies — both goalkeepers playing against former employers on their birthdays here by some weird quirk of time and space. From the rebound Chris Willock gathered, delivered a dangerous ball, Smithies claimed to nullify the danger. By the twentieth minute the visitors were really rather penned in, unable to escape their trenches after a QPR corner, and that prolonged press ended with Chair shooting over. Already it felt like City’s best hope, and the biggest threat to QPR, would be set pieces and set pieces alone — the ball boys sensed this too and staged a raid on the Cardiff laundry, pinching all of Will Vaulks’ long throw towels and dispatching them into the crowd where they were tossed back and forth to much mirth. Cheeky boys. More things like this please.
The teams exchanged misplaced passes and hopeless shots — Barbet deflected over from one of the few set pieces he didn’t take (because, as said, it’s a really stupid idea that he does) and Hugill gave the full lean-back Peter Kay treatment to another presentable opportunity around the half hour as Rangers’ back three (grumpy with each other all afternoon) got themselves in a terrible tangled mess. The deadlock was then broken when Moses Odubajo produced a moment of genuine quality from a wide area (we should have it framed) that forced an error from the Cardiff defence and presented Andre Gray with a free shot from 12 yards which he dispatched emphatically.
So far, so acceptable. Confidence returning, quickly Chair got Wallace in on an overlap and Smithies had to improvise a save to prevent an immediate second. Rob Dickie charging forwards with the ball like it’s August 2021 again, Willock with a sight of the goal, shot deflects wide for a corner wasted by Barbet — still a really silly idea.
Now then. What a lovely position to be in. Leading at half time, at home, to a bottom-half team with nothing to play for. Attacking the Loft End, without them being able to sit deep and try and piss the clock away as has happened here so frequently since we got good again. Everything we wanted right? Just pick them off. Oduabjo looked good in a strong start to the half — Gray, into the area, and cleared behind. Barbet still on the corners so that was cleared (…) and Chair got the rebound all wrong. Gray later would have had a tap in off Chair’s cross but for Smithies’ desperate intervention, and when Willock produced the ball of the game on a counter attack from a Cardiff corner it took the visiting team out of the match en masse and left Gray one on one with the goalkeeper and all the time and space he needed to do whatever he wanted — what he wanted, on this occasion, was to spaff a ridiculous, rushed, first-time effort off towards fucking Neasden. Wanted — one brain, reward offered.
The recovery felt fragile at 1-0. Marshall had already dropped one cross under little pressure and been awarded a terribly generous free kick by referee Michael Salisbury, Hugill had broken through again as Rangers lost possession with men the wrong side of the ball but only succeeded in giving the upper tier behind the goal another peppering. The Gray miss from the Willock pass felt like it was going to be important. More late heartbreak from films you may remember such as Nottingham Forest at home felt possible. But, at this point, honestly, the worst case scenario felt like a 1-1 draw. Cardiff were the ones chopping and changing — no Will Vaulks towels means no point in Will Vaulks, so off he went.
Quite what happened next I’m at a loss to explain, and I feel ok with that because judging by Warbs’ red face, cracked voice and visible, palpable anger in the post-match interviews he didn’t very much care for it or understand it either. QPR started - with half an hour still to go, and just a single goal lead — pisballing about. Pass, pass, pass, centre passes to wing, wing passes to centre, centre holds it, holds it, holds it. There are 40-year-old virgins filming YouTube conspiracy videos in their mum’s basement with more ambition than QPR showed in this game from 60 minutes on. They just sort of moved the ball around in their own half, going nowhere and thrilled to death about it, as if they thought they might just be able to play out the time like that. Other goals are available lads. Jeff Hendrick, who gets an automatic start in the team it seems, was doing that thing we saw last week where balls fed into his feet were immediately passed straight back into the defence, without any consideration given to perhaps even turning the head to look and see if there might be an alternate, FORWARD, option. Perhaps he, himself, might like to cross the halfway line occasionally? This is the sort of stuff we take the piss out of teams like Swansea for — yaaaay, you’ve completed 50 consecutive passes, good for you. Where have you gone? Where has it got you? Where are you on the field? What have you achieved other than running time off the clock and boring everybody titless? Nowhere. Nowhere. Nowhere. Nothing. In excess of 70% possession, and a home defeat. Warburton described it as "testimonial football” and he wasn’t wrong. It was weird, frankly.
Weird, and fairly swiftly punished. QPR could make a reasonable case that Rob Dickie was pulled over by sub Isaac Davies on his way through for a scrambled equaliser, and that Jimmy Dunne had been fouled long before Dickie lunged in desperately on the edge of his own area for a free kick that was awarded and dispatched classily into the top corner by the impressive Colwill. But we had Michael Salisbury refereeing us at Barnsley just last month, we know exactly how he goes about his business, we know he’ll often be in a poor position to judge what’s happened and therefore have to guess, and that within those guesses he’ll mix periods of extreme leniency with others of rank pedantry. When you talk about inconsistency in decision making between Championship officials, here’s one who, Trevor Kettle-style, can contradict himself in the same game, sometimes in the same minute or two. What is a foul on 65 minutes, may no longer be a foul on 66 minutes, and vice versa. Having benefitted from one extremely kind call over the Marshall drop, QPR were now on the wrong end of not having a much more obvious free kick given in their favour.
But that’s this referee, you can’t trust him, you have to take matters into your own hands. QPR should have been going for a second goal not fucking about cheering the passes in their own half. Rob Dickie needs to be bigger, stronger, more commanding in the first instance — Cardiff are a big, physical, uncompromising team, mix it with them or go and sit at the side because you’re no good to us. I felt he tried to take a bit of an easy ‘out’ — go down and rely on the referee to give you a free kick rather than defending the situation. Usually you do get that free kick, but yesterday he didn’t, and in all fairness I’m not sure that wasn’t the right call from the referee. It typified the sort of sloppy shortcuts we tried to take all through this second half. And, of course, Marshall has to save the shot — his attempt to do so, resulting in the ball looping up and down just far enough over the line to trigger the technology, was shambolic and he’s now cost us two games in a week. None of that — none of it — is Michael Salisbury’s fault.
Nor is it Michael Salisbury’s fault that Cardiff get one dangerous set piece on the edge of the box all afternoon long and calmly and skilfully stick the thing straight into the top corner, while at the other end QPR had all manner of opportunities from dead ball situations and more often than not left it to their fucking centre back to take. Now, to quote Malcolm Tucker, I just wanted to say to you by the way of introductory remarks that I'm extremely miffed about yesterday’s events and in my quest to try to make you understand the level of my unhappiness, I'm likely to use an awful lot of - what we would call - violent sexual imagery. It would be a really fucking stupid idea for Yoann Barbet to take the set pieces even if he was good at them, because as we saw when he scored at Bristol City, and hit the bar against Huddersfield, his late run and flashing header at the near post is really quite an effective weapon at our attacking corners — which, by and large, and certainly compared to the days St Joseph insisted on taking all of them, are pretty decent these days. But it is especially stupid when he’s this bad at them. I was reminded of the Tweet from earlier this season that if Barbet were to eventually score one of these free kicks, and as far as I can tell one dog-having-a-day moment at Bolton from his Brentford days is the sum total of his CV in this area, it’ll take the roof off Loftus Road, mainly be due to all the previous damage his free kicks have done to that roof. QPR, shell-shocked, bereft, with nothing to add from a bench devoid of attacking options and pace, posed absolutely zero threat and showed no hint of re-establishing themselves in the game until the very last seconds of four added minutes at the end of the game when a free kick not that dissimilar to Colwill’s was awarded right of centre on the edge of the Cardiff box and Barbet dispatched it calmly straight into the back of the stand behind the goal.
Look, I love Barbet. I think he’s been a terrific signing. His durability, minutes, consistency, performance levels, speak for themselves. I think he deserves, and should be given, a new contract for next season and beyond, and it’ll require some serious scouting to find a specialist left-footed centre back of his ilk to replace him, or some major surgery on the back-three set up we now prefer, if he leaves. But he’s not the set piece taker, and any future contract should have that in there specifically as a clause. Of course if LFW stays true to form, what now happens is he bangs in a 25 yard winner at Luton next week, and naturally nobody will be more delighted than me if that happens — I’ll be tumbling down the concrete steps with the best of them. But, on this evidence, it’s not very fucking likely is it?
Nor, it now feels, is QPR making the play-offs. After more than a year of consistent, promotion-winning form and results straddling two seasons, the team now feels like it has hit a wall — physically, and mentally. I thought it was really noticeable in this game how often the players were falling out with each other, and how many of them were involved in that. I think the signing of Hendrick, and the seeming insistence that he has to play, has given us a problem, not necessarily because he plays poorly himself, but because he doesn’t particularly fit in this system, he’s often trying to do the same job Field and/or Johansen is there to do, and he’s way, way, waaaaaaaaay too far back down the field reducing our attacking numbers and isolating the forwards further. That’s without getting into what sort of message it sends when a Premier League loan name you’ve heard of walks straight into the team and stays there, while other, younger players we own and are supposed to be developing struggle for minutes, or sometimes even a place on the bench, and in the case of Luke Amos and George Thomas after they have actually contributed some of the rare positive moments the team has produced recently. We’ve tried, partly through the manager’s preference and mainly financial necessity, to squeeze through the season with a small squad, reliant in key areas on older players like Albert Adomah and Lee Wallace doing big minutes, and that feels like a factor now too. Never the quickest team, we look really tired and slow relative to a lot of the sides we’re playing at the moment. Form, fitness and confidence has drained out of too many players - often players who were key to the earlier highs - at the same time for us to maintain levels.
Look, I always feel the need to flag this disclaimer. I don’t know what I’m talking about. Never coached, never managed, never taken a training session. I don’t know these players, I don’t see them train, I don’t know who’s fit and who isn’t, who’s carrying an injury and playing on the needle perhaps, who’s got shit going on at home, what the sports science people are saying, what the opposition scouts are feeding back. Nothing. I’m an idiot, frequently drunk, going to QPR games, and writing about what I see. That’s what I saw yesterday, and a few of my ideas for why it’s happened. You may have your own theories. None of us know for certain. It seems, judging by his rage afterwards, that Warbs doesn’t either — and I thought it interesting that it was this result, performance and second half that broke that particular camel back and brought him out of his usual calm, methodical, stock-phrase approach to post match. He took responsibility at Blackburn, but there was none of that this week — he clearly didn’t feel the players had done as they’d been asked, and he was pissed off about that.
What is certain though is QPR have now pissed away games against Barnsley, Hull and Cardiff on days when all our rivals were playing each other and dropping points. As a result, we’re still fifth, despite now one win in seven league games, but the gap and the games in hand have gone. If that position, and that play-off push, is to be maintained from here, it’s going to require several positive results from horrible looking away games at Luton, Forest, Huddersfield, Preston and Sheff Utd. Five of the next seven, six of the next nine, are away. One of the homes is Fulham. Having turned down the ‘easy way’ so dispiritingly emphatically, QPR must now do it the hard way. If they’re to do it at all, that is.
Links >>> Ratings and Reports >>> Message Board Match Thread
QPR: Marshall 4; Oduabjo 6, Dickie 4, Dunne 5, Barbet 4, Wallace 5 (Adomah 81, -); Field 6 (Dozzell 84, -), Hendrick 5, Chair 5; Willock 6 (Amos 81, -), Gray 5
Subs not used: Kakay, Ball, McCallum, Mahoney
Goals: Gray 38 (unassisted)
Bookings: Dickie 73 (foul)
Cardiff: Smithies 6; Drameh 6, Ng 6, Flint 7, McGuinness 7, Doughty 6 (Bagan 57, 7); Vaulks 6 (Davies 56, 7), Wintle 7, Ralls 6; Colwill 8, Hugill 5 (Ikpeazu 82, -)
Subs not used: Phillips, Pack, King, Davies
Goals: Davies 70 (assisted Bagan), Colwill 74 (free kick won Davies)
QPR Star Man — Moses Odubajo 6 Maybe the best of a very, very mediocre bunch? At least drove forward with a bit of pace and purpose. Nice cross for the goal. Or Field? Fair enough if you don’t agree, I’m not sure I truly believe it myself to be honest with you.
Referee — Michael Salisbury (Lancashire) 5 I’ll just repeat what I said about him at Barnsley in February: positions himself poorly requiring him to guess at a lot of decisions, and within those guesses he mixes moments of extreme leniency with others of incredible pickiness. Unfortunately for Rob Dickie, Jimmy Dunne and QPR one his periods of ‘nothing’s a foul everything’s play on’ produced two Cardiff goals that on another day, hell even at another point in this same game, would have both been free kicks the other way.
Attendance 16,170 (1,444 Cardiff) Another shame of it is to play like that, lose like that, in front of a decent sized crowd, with the lower School End now open at QPR fans as well. I can rarely recall Loftus Road quieter than it was in the final ten minutes here. Air and hope completely drained out of the place.
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