For the second time in a week QPR held one of the division's early pace setters to a 0-0 draw, but it's wins Rangers need and having played another half an hour of football against ten men without scoring this was a missed opportunity.
When we sit down and write the retrospective on whatever version of Queens Park Rangers’ ongoing shuttle disaster 2024/25 turns out to be, I think that Portsmouth home game is going to figure quite prominently in the final report.
You can talk about analytics-driven signings from European backwaters needing to settle in, you can talk about the unfortunate timing of multiple injuries to key players, you can talk about miraculous goalkeeping performances from the visiting custodians of Plymouth and Hull. We have, repeatedly. But you go 1-0 up at home, against what looks increasingly like the divisional whipping boy, lose 2-1 with two of the most defensively shambolic goals we’ve seen in these parts since Zesh Rehman and Karl Ready were taken up into woods late at night, and you’re in trouble.
Those far off summer dreams of steady, considered, consolidated progress into the dizzying heights of… fourteenth in the Championship, start to fade. The nights draw in, the results stack up, the rest of the division moves off into the distance, and soon it’s just you – and Portsmouth, of course – fiddling about with the unlubed dildo of consequence once more.
We’ve been here before, dozens of times, and so we know the drill. First order of business – stem the bleeding. You cannot be conceding goals of the quality and quantity QPR did in that game.
Admittedly those goals, and that defeat, were almost entirely the product of Morgan Fox starting his day with a bottle of wine for breakfast and a ‘mental acca’ in which Portsmouth featured three times, but still… QPR got 14 league and cup games into this season without a clean sheet, winning only one in the process. This with a pretty good goalkeeper as well. That shit cannot sustain. And it hasn’t.
It hasn’t been particularly pretty. It wouldn’t win any prizes for aesthetics. Steve Cook’s headed the football so much this week I’m surprised the bed wetter’s switchboard hasn’t intervened and asked for him to be stood down while we ask how he is. How is he in himself? But Rangers have stopped conceding goals. Coventry’s defensively shambolic opener after four minutes is now - including stoppage time – a good three games ago. QPR are 270+ minutes without conceding. Sunderland were the only team in the league to have scored in every game prior to this round, and they didn’t score here. Important.
To some extent that was more by luck than judgement. In a frantic, frenetic start to a game between two teams refreshingly trying to play each other on the front foot and high press, Sunderland could easily have scored twice in the first 20 minutes. Purposeful, penetrative, forward passes through the middle of the pitch are allowed, as it turns out. Wilson Isidor (is a window, I don’t care) turned onto Hume’s final pass with intent, and whipped a shot past Nardi and his post when he should have scored. Later, with QPR again infuriatingly willing to give up the entire edge of their own box from every corner they face, Sunderland worked a training ground move into that vacuum and the excellent Dan Neil hit the post with the keeper beaten. We cannot keep setting up like this from corners. We will concede again and again. And again and again and again. It’s insanity. You can see it before the ball is delivered.
This was always going to be a tough assignment. With 28 points, this is Sunderland’s best start to a season since 1894-95, and a win here would have been the first time since then they’ve started with ten wins from the first 13 games. The Mackems had won more away games (Cardiff, Portsmouth, Hull, Luton) and scored more away goals (11) than anybody else in the division. By contrast only QPR and Pompey are yet to win a home game in the Championship. It took QPR nine home matches through to the start of December to get a victory at Loftus Road in 23/24, and before kick off here they were already eight deep into this campaign without one (six of those league games). Rangers have won a pathetic eight of their last 49 games at Loftus Road, 13 of their last 56 to the start of the 22/23 season, and 15 out of 64 going back to January 2022. More of a chocolate factory than a fortress. Everybody loves coming here for the day.
Layer onto that an ever-lengthening injury list while we still pretend our Dubai-based "head of performance” works for us. Jake Clarke-Salter, contract in the bank after a career high 29 starts last season, is back to playing one game in five. Sam Field filled in here and did well – arguably his two best performances of the season have come at left centre half. Harrison Ashby was again asked to do a job at left back in Kenneth Paal’s absence and lasted 40 minutes before collapsing himself. He was then replaced by Hevertton Santos, signed as a right back but so poor in that position the manager would only use him as a winger, now taking a swing on the other side because we don’t have a reserve left back. Recruitment 1:1.
The general consensus in the Crown & Sceptre at team news time was shall we just stay here? QPR are unbeaten in eight games this season with Clarke-Salter at centre back, but he was missing again. Our only left back is injured. Our most senior central midfielder is pressed into service as an auxiliary centre back. Kieran Morgan got a first senior start of his career, aged 18. Nicolas Madsen’s input to this point makes Andre Dozzell look like Terry Hurlock, but he was back in from the beginning too. That Karamoko Dembele injury apparently so minor they still expected him to play at Burnley last Saturday lunchtime, now reportedly so severe you’ll be lucky to see him this side of Christmas. "Competitive advantage”.
And, yet, it kind of worked. Stabilise the patient. Three in midfield. Three in midfield, however ropey, however rudimentary, is better than two. It’s maths, this. We’re always better with three in there, and Cifuentes’ has always preferred a 4-3-3 formation.
Lo, Madsen looked more involved, effective and composed. Not any good, let’s not get carried away, but fine. And previously he’s been the farthest thing from fine. Morgan looks like one of those boys who goes missing on a family holiday to Greece – Kieran, sweetheart, we just want to know you’re safe – but he gets on the ball and he plays forwards. One charge back into his own half and big win halted a dangerous Sunderland counter attack in the first half. Jonathan Varane was charging about all over the place, affecting the game without killing anybody – 11 ball recoveries in this game, that bloke who used to paddle about in the river behind the old Shrewsbury Town ground would have been proud of a total like that. It was certainly Varane’s best effort to date. The press was high, and effective. The powderpuff midfield was standing up to the league leaders. QPR were in the game, playing well.
What it needed, obviously, was a goal. It should have really had one after two minutes when Chair’s cross from left found Smyth on his heels. It might have had one after six minutes when Smyth put a similarly good early ball in behind the defence from the opposite side with no takers. And it absolutely had to have one when the move of the first half worked Smyth into space and his low near post cross was spaffed wide by Celar at the near post. Steve Cook’s firm header from a corner flew straight at goalkeeper Simon Moore when half a yard derivation would have been a thick opening goal. This would become a theme.
I was starting to think even Fritzl would struggle to find use for this Celar, and then suddenly events transpired in his favour. First, Jobe Bellingham tried to snap his leg, and that seemed to wind him up a bit. Usual thing, player chasing a runaway touch of his own, high and over the ball, into the shins. Initially I thought the referee had been sold a red card by the sadly hysterical player reaction we have to go through every time anybody puts a tackle in these days – Ilias Chair filling the Lewis Travis hands-on-head West End musical role in this instance - but it was a bad challenge, Bellingham knew it, Sunderland barely complained, and actually he spent time making sure Celar was okay before going off. I’ve got a lot of time for this lot, however much angelic shithouse Luke O’Nien tries to turn me against them.
Now, here you go, fill your boots. Half an hour, at home, against ten men. Pile on.
Initially, QPR did exactly that. Celar was now chesting balls off and running channels like a proper centre forward – maybe somebody should give him a slap before we come out next time. Madsen part of a high win and ball into Celar, who opened his body, went looking for the far corner, bent the ball, beat the goalkeeper, and missed. Missed by inches. Barely inches. There must be a hole in the side of that fucking net. I thought it was in all the way. In from the moment it left his foot. I was already on my way down the steps. But, wide.
Only just back in my seat in time to see Ilias Chair stand a ball up to the back stick for Jimmy Dunne to pile onto over the top of a stranded, stationary defender and…. head straight at the goalkeeper. Head straight at the goalkeeper. Anywhere else. Anywhere else. I’m sorry for repeating myself here but if you can imagine me ripping the seat in front of mine out of the concrete moorings it’s held in that South Africa Road Stand since the 1970s and using it to beat somebody to a bloody pulp that’s where I was at this point. Just score. Score a goal. Win a game. We’ll have a nice time. We’ll enjoy it.
Things, sadly, rather petered out from there on in. Sunderland tucked in deep, tight and narrow in good shape, and even excellent referee Ben Toner’s early carding of their obvious time wasting didn’t flex them too greatly.
In this circumstance you need pace, so you can commit men who would otherwise be part of that solid shape behind the ball. Once Paul Smyth went off, QPR died a death. They didn’t have anybody capable of beating a man. I know why they’re starting Smyth - because he can defend (stem the bleeding, stabilise the patient), and Dembele, Saito, Kolli and others have left the full backs badly exposed when picked in that position - but Smyth’s impact when used as a sub in these scenarios is considerable. Without him, QPR were slow, narrow and predictable. Ilias Chair dribbling infield, and infield again, exacerbated the problem. You need pace and width against ten men. QPR went slow and narrow. Stripping the full back and standing crosses up for Dunne to attack at the back post was a trick Chair worked once, well, and never again. The goal threat dried up entirely. If you include extensive periods of stoppage time, we’ve now basically played two hours of football here this year against ten men (Plymouth and Sunderland) without scoring once. And it wasn’t hard to see why here. We’re easy to play against. We’re easy to defend against.
Having done three single subs, Marti Cifuentes wasn’t able to add anything further from his bench. I’m not saying there was anything brilliant left among the subs, but one of the key advantages we should have had against ten men was legs and energy in the final few minutes. Instead, we looked every bit as knackered as them. Sunderland stood in resolute shape, and didn’t face a serious shot on target in the final 15 minutes of the game. QPR rainbowed around, sideways and sideways, a safe distance from goal, launching a series of increasingly ridiculous 25 yarders over the bar. I’m not saying Alfie Lloyd or Rayan Kolli come on and score the winner here, but watching them swap Koki Saito and Ilias Chair from right to left and back again, while Morgan gassed, and Celar died on his arse, it was difficult not to think they’d mismanaged the bench/subs - perhaps forgetting Ashby had gone off injured first half.
In awarding a free kick on halfway in the final minute of stoppage time, the referee presented QPR with a chance to plant a dead ball into a packed penalty box. Everybody up there. Everybody. Draws no good. Play to win. Rangers tried to take it quickly, and fucked it up. The referee, generously, let them have it again. Lucky. Okay, compose yourselves. Panicked, they played it short a second time, and had what I think was a shot from 55 yards out. A shot. From 55 yards out. I’m trying to be kind here, genuinely. But fuck me dead. These people.
It was, like last week’s 0-0 at Burnley, a positive result. A result we perhaps didn’t expect, and a step in the right direction. But if you can’t win at home, and you can’t score goals, you’re only going one place, and that place is Northampton Town.
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QPR: Nardi 6; Dunne 6, Cook 6, Field 6, Ashby 5 (Santos 44, 5); Varane 7, Morgan 6, Madsen 6 (Andersen 81, -); Smyth 6 (Saito 68, 6), Celar 5, Chair 5
Subs not used: Aoraha, Dixon-Bonner, Bennie, Kollie, Lloyd, Shepperd
Yellow Cards: Celar 78 (foul)
Sunderland Moore 7; Hume 6, Mepham 7, O’Nien 7, Cirkin 6; Neil 7, Browne 6; Roberts 6, Bellingham 4, Mundle 5 (Connolly 64, 5); Isidor 5 (Hjelde 92, -)
Red Cards: Bellingham 56 (serious foul play)
Yellow Cards: Moore 70 (time wasting), Roberts 90+6 (foul)
QPR Star Man – Jonathan Varane 7 Varane’s best game for the club, arguably Madsen’s best game for the club, and Morgan very accomplished before tiring late on. Almost like three in midfield, rather than two, and the 4-3-3 system this manager has built his career on to this point, suits us a lot better.
Referee – Ben Toner (Lancashire) 8 I thought he was really good. Obviously as the beneficiary of a straight red card I would say that, and at the time from my seat in F Block I thought this was a referee who isn’t a regular at this level being swayed by the now sadly typical histrionics of players pretending everything is a war crime. But it was a red card. Bellingham knew it straight away, apologised to Celar, and took his medicine. The referee got the big decision right. He got almost all of the little decisions right as well. Love a yellow card for time wasting when it’s still early enough in the game to affect the behaviour. A fine display, deserves more games at Championship level on this evidence.
Attendance – 17,422 And still they come. I think.
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