QPR v Wigan is a relatively recent addition to the footballing annals, and rarely has there been a meeting as crucial as the one this weekend between the two.
Wigan 2 QPR 0, Saturday August 27, 2011, Premiership
Tony Fernandes’ takeover of QPR had been ratified in the days leading up to the August Bank Holiday fixture at Wigan and Joey Barton was perched high in the main stand after completing his move to Loftus Road from Newcastle the day before. The QPR starting 11 wasn’t even as strong as the one they’d won the Championship with the season before with Bruno Perone given a full league debut at centre back and the lumbering Patrick Agyemang selected in attack. Agyemang missed the chance of the match, firing horribly wide after Adel Taarabt had struck the post from distance, and Perone thumped the cross bar with a header in the second half. But Rangers were poor overall and Wigan deserved the win they achieved, albeit through two deflected goals from striker Franco Di Santo who has only scored twice more in 15 appearances since that day.
Wigan: Al Habsi 8, Boyce 6, Caldwell 6, Lopez 6, Figueroa 6, Diame 8, Watson 7, Moses 7 (McArthur 69, 6), Rodallega 8, Gomez 7 (Stam 85, -), Di Santo 6 (Sammon 69, 6)
Subs Not Used: Kirkland, McCarthy, Thomas, Jones
Booked: Lopez (foul), Caldwell (foul)
Goals: Di Santo 41 (unassisted), 66 (unassisted)
QPR: Kenny 7, Gabbidon 7, Hall 5 (Harriman 61, 7), Perone 6, Connolly 6, Faurlin 6, Derry 6, Taarabt 7, Buzsaky 6 (Bothroyd 72, 7), Smith 6 (Andrade 80, -), Agyemang 4
Subs Not Used: Murphy, Helguson, Ephraim, Hewitt
2011/12 Wigan 2 QPR 0
2004/05 Wigan 0 QPR 0
2004/05 QPR 1 Wigan 0 (Furlong)
2002/03 QPR 0 Wigan 1
2002/03 Wigan 1 QPR 1 (Thomson)
2001/02 QPR 1 Wigan 1 (Gallen)
2001/02 Wigan 1 QPR 2 (Thomson, Brennan og)
QPR 1 Wigan 0, Saturday November 13, 2004, Championship
Wigan and Rangers had met a handful of times in the seasons leading up to this as the R’s chased the Latics up the Football League ladder. This was their first ever meeting in the second tier of the English game and came as Paul Jewell’s Wigan side was pressing for its first ever promotion into the top flight, and just a few months after Ian Holloway’s QPR had finished second in the Second Division to move back up a division of their own.
That promotion hadn’t kept Ian Holloway safe from the vultures that circle around Loftus Road all too often. As we’ll discuss in more detail in the Player Connections section shortly the introduction of Gianni Paladini to the board shortly before the club won promotion led to stories that Argentinean coach Ramon Diaz was set to take over from Holloway when the R’s made a slow start to life in the Championship.
Luckily for Olly, and for Rangers, a crucial home game against fellow newly promoted side Plymouth was won in September and the R’s caught fire thereafter. That Plymouth win was the first of seven on the spin that lifted Rangers to fourth in the table and eventually developed into a run of nine wins and a draw from 15 matches played. The run came to an end in spectacular fashion with a 6-1 defeat at Leeds but the week before QPR had been on top of the world after a famous win at Loftus Road against the big spending, high flying, free scoring Latics.
Jewell had paired Jason Roberts and Nathan Ellington together in attack that season and the partnership proved to be prolific – but a combination of awful finishing and fine goalkeeper from Chris Day kept them scoreless on this occasion until the dying embers of the game. Wigan’s profligacy set up a grandstand finish when former Everton winger Kevin McLeod crossed on the run from the left flank for veteran frontman Paul Furlong to superbly guide the winning goal into the far corner of the net with his head.
Wigan did go onto win promotion while QPR’s challenge fell away, but on that occasion it was the R’s well on top.
QPR: C Day, M Bignot, D Shittu, G Santos, M Rose, G Ainsworth (K McLeod, 64), M Bean, K Gallen, L Cook (G Padula, 76), J Cureton, P Furlong
Subs not used: F Simek, S Branco, A Gnohere
Goals: Furlong 89 (assisted McLeod)
Wigan: J Filan, D Wright, M Jackson, I Breckin, L Baines (S McMillan, 46), N Eaden, A Mahon, J Bullard, D Graham (G Teale, 76), N Ellington (M Flynn, 87), J Roberts
Subs Not Used: G Whalley, G Walsh
Some players just seem to fit well at certain clubs. Ask a Wigan fan about Gino Padula and, if they remember him at all, they probably won’t have many complimentary things to say about his brief time with their club - just another player who didn’t quite cut the mustard as they climbed through the divisions to the Premiership. Ask a QPR fan on the other hand and you’ll probably hear nothing but good things – a likeable and enthusiastic footballer who enjoyed some of the best form of his career at a time when QPR turned round years of decline and restored a feel good factor to the club.
Padula initially came through the youth set up at River Plate before playing for Huracán in his native Argentina. He came to Europe first with Xerez in Spain, from whom QPR have just picked up Bruno Perone, and then for the first time in England with Ian Holloway at Bristol Rovers. But it was at Walsall where he really caught the eye, a star performer in their 1999/00 First Division campaign that ended in narrow relegation when Gary Megson was appointed late on by their main rivals for the final spot West Brom and led a remarkable recovery. The first sight of Padula for QPR fans came in a 3-2 win for the R’s at the Bescott Stadium with Chris Kiwomya and Stewart Wardley among the goals. Despite the defeat Padula was a clear man of the match in the home ranks with a classy display on the left side of their defence. Incidentally, do Walsall still run out of the tunnel to Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now by Starsailor? I do hope so.
Padula’s form attracted Wigan and although he didn’t settle, play regularly or impress there he formed part of QPR’s summer intake for the 2002/03 season when Ian Holloway moved for the player for a second time in his career. Holloway also brought in Marc Bircham, Paul Furlong and Tommy Williams that summer – the latter having ripped the R’s apart the previous season in a 4-1 defeat at his former club Peterborough. A big money move to Birmingham hadn’t worked out so he found himself on loan at Loftus Road, we assumed, to play at left wing where he’d been so effective for the Posh. Padula, we thought, would play behind him at left back.
Not so. Williams was used as the first choice left back by Holloway with Padula, apart from a bizarre early defeat at Barnsley where Williams played left back and Padula left wing, not selected at all. Form soon tailed off that season – the Vauxhall Motors defeat is the one everybody remembers but there was a 4-0 home defeat to Cardiff in there, a 3-0 at Notts County and a 0-0 at Luton when the home side played the majority of the game with ten men and almost half of it with nine. Eventually, probably through plague and pestilence, Padula was given a second chance in hi favoured position in a home game with Barnsley.
What happened next was remarkable. Padula was superb, clearly unburdened by the confidence draining results of the previous weeks that he hadn’t been involved with and keen to stake his claim for a regular place. The long suffering QPR fans loved his style, effort and ability and chanted his name from the word go. A new star was born, and Padula would go onto be a well liked regular of the side for the next two and a half years as Rangers first lost in the play off final against Cardiff and then won promotion to the Championship automatically a year later. Padula seemed to enjoy it all as much, if not more, than the died in the wool QPR fans like Gallen and Bircham he played alongside.
What happened next was a shame. With the club promoted but now in the hands of Gianni Paladini after a messy boardroom coup Ian Holloway, despite everything he’d done over the previous three years, came under pressure after a poor start to life at the higher level. Paladini and fellow director Antonio Caliendo lined up another Argentinean, Ramon Diaz, as a potential replacement for Holloway, bringing him to London and taking him to QPR games. Holloway’s loyal squad of players subsequently upped their respective games and won seven Championship games on the spin to move up to fourth in the league making Holloway unsackable and leaving Diaz to contribute to Oxford United’s fall out of the Football League.
It has since transpired that during this courting of Diaz there was a dinner in Fulham where Paladini, Caliendo, Diaz and others discussed the transitional period and how they would cope with the inevitable hostility from players and fans that would result from removing Holloway. They targeted Padula as a potential Spanish speaking go-between for the squad and the new manager and subsequently offered him a generous extension to his existing contract that expired at the end of the season.
Come May, with Holloway still in position, the club then told a somewhat surprised Padula he would not be retained at the end of his deal at which point he produced the extended contract given to him earlier in the campaign. Paladini came up with a tall tale about the offer being merely a guideline of what a contract extension might look like offered to the player so he could proceed with a mortgage application. An employment tribunal didn’t believe him (no surprise there) and Padula was awarded somewhere in the region of £180,000 compensation which Paladini said he would pay himself, and then took out of club funds.
I’ve often thought that Holloway probably got wind of what was going on with Padula and that was why he released him. For me he was easily good enough for the Championship and only suffered because Holloway’s maddening desire to include Matthew Rose in every single match saw the far inferior former Arsenal man selected at left back on the strength of one decent game against West Ham at Loftus Road where he scored the winner.
Padula went on to play for Nottingham Forest, where his first team chances were limited, Montpellier and in the MLS with Columbus where he won the MLS Cup and an audience with the president as a result.
Others >>> Fitz Hall, Wigan 2006-2008, QPR 2008-present >>> >>> Ben Watson, QPR (loan) 2009, Wigan 2009–present >>> Scott Sinclair, QPR (loan) 2007, Wigan (loan) 2009-2010 >>> Jason Jarrett, Wigan 2002-2005, QPR (loan) 2007-2008 >>> Matt Jackson, QPR (loan) 1996, Wigan 2001-2007
Tweet @loftforwords
Pictures – Action Images