Ebere Eze predictably scored the winner, and was the outstanding player on the pitch, as Crystal Palace squeaked through a League Cup third round tie at Loftus Road on Tuesday night which had some QPR fans asking whether we could have done a bit more.
In this age of hyper analytics in sport, football’s ongoing tendency to defy logic and rely instead on moments and vibes are a key part of its enduring appeal. Those moments and vibes, in Queens Park Rangers' corner of West London, used to flow largely to, through and from Ebere Eze.
Eze spent his teens at the mercy of the kind of bloke who gets an initialled tracksuit printed up for himself to coach Gainsborough Trinity’s U11s, and loudly explains to vague acquaintances within earshot at the local Spoons the Spurs Arsenal game was all about "transitions”. The sort of dinosaur that would stamp on the last living specimen of the world’s most beautiful butterfly should it not want to spend pre-season running up and down the biggest hill in the town, or be judged slightly deficient in the air when defending set pieces.
Given a chance at Loftus Road, Ebs repaid the faith by Eyeball Pauling pure joy directly into the locals’ retinas. The people’s republic of Shepherd’s Bush had been so bereft and miserable since Adel Taarabt left town natives had taken to persuading themselves Conor Washington was only some decent service away from being a Championship striker. Forget excitement, forget euphoria, forget feeling very much at all, those still bothering with Loftus Road once a fortnight needed something, anything, to cling onto by way of hope. Now here was a magical boy teaching them about love and rainbow flicks.
You’d trudge through the teeming rain to watch QPR play some idiot scum like Stoke. They’d go two nil down immediately because of course. Then Ebere would shift from third into fifth and, before you knew it, Rangers were 4-2 up and you were nursing a hard-on the size of the Chrysler Building. The alarm would go off on New Year’s Day, the cruellest of all the cruel fixtures, and you’d roll your heavy head around the bed for 45 minutes weighing whether you could really be arsed with this or not. It was Eze who got you there that day, and your reward was a 6-1 win against Cardiff – Nahki Wells got a hat trick and wasn’t man of the match. You’d overcome plague, pestilence, fire and the replacement coach service of open access rail operators to get your arse to Hull only to see Jarrod Bowen lob your 5ft 6in goalkeeper after ten minutes. Ebs would think that didn’t seem right or fair, and take a Once Upon A Time In Hollywood flamethrower to the situation – goals Manning (assisted Eze), Eze (assisted Eze), Eze (assisted Eze). Massive Leeds, when they weren’t busy twirling their scarves around and singing about a trophy they didn’t win, insisted Kalvin Phillips was the best player in the Championship and a future England captain. Eze, the canary down that particular coal mine, made him look a chump every time he went near him – tricking, jigging and sliding around the leaden-footed oaf like Darcey Bussell paired with Eamonn Holmes on Strictly Come Dancing.
It was glorious, pre-pandemic, time to be alive, and the narrative around his first competitive return to Loftus Road seemed pretty set in stone.
Crystal Palace, who used to be fun, are all Premier League and professional these days. They’ve taken our magician and made him a machine. The raw materials were there, and now he has… thighs. It was always a metaphorical sexual experience watching Ebs glide around the gaff, now it’s a genuine porno like what you used to find in the woods. I spent the whole first half closing LiveJasmin windows. He was always, inevitably, going to score. Sure enough, just after the hour, QPR debutant Harrison Ashby (on a booking so without the lifeline of a tactical foul) got drawn into that temptation we’ve seen so many players succumb to before, allowing Ebs to showcase the trademark plant, pivot and acceleration away into space. Your flesh mother used to bring me pudding. The shot he struck at the end of it was terrible, and going well wide, but it hit Steve Cook, took Joe Walsh out of the picture, and won the game for the Eagles 2-1. Sometimes it is written.
That was, by every conceivable metric, fair enough.
Palace had more of the ball, more of the shots, more of the shots on target, more touches in the opposition box. They were, are, a much better team than QPR. Steve Cook had to make a big recovery challenge after three minutes. Nketiah accelerated onto a ball QPR had long given up as a throw in and put a square ball on a plate for Eze who sportingly lifted it over the bar with the time still in single figures. Joe Walsh made a good, brave save on Nketiah five before half time, though should never have been required to do so as the former Arsenal striker was obviously offside and with (thankfully, mercifully) no VAR at proper football grounds like this the linesman gained no benefit or advantage at all by letting the thing play through to the striker planting one straight in our goalkeeper’s chops. Second half sub Ismaila Sarr drew a decent save from Walsh, who’s done his cause no harm at all in the three League Cup games. Rangers looked gassed just hanging onto the Eagles tail feathers, and that was with the visitors clunking somewhere between second and third gear for much of the evening.
Given the team the visitors had put out, I’m not really sure what anybody expected.
Palace, who’ve never won a major trophy, have hitherto been one of those cunty midtable Premier League teams whose annual quest to secure another year’s television money and fuck off to Mykonos as soon as possible apparently precludes any attempt at actually, you know, winning a trophy, playing in Europe, achieving something, lessen their players explode into a thousand pieces at the prospect of having to play three games in a week. The Eagles’ League Cup record of late is almost a mirror image of our own shambles – R3, R3, R2, R2, R2, R4, R4, R3, R4, R3, R2, R2.
Appointing an Austrian/German manager isn’t often a precursor to that improving – they usually like to come over here and immediately tell us how ridiculous we are maintaining two cup competitions – but Oliver Glasner went big with his selection for a 4-0 win against Norwich in the last round and here selected something that would, let’s be honest, potentially get into the top 20 Palace starting 11s of all time. Not really cricket that is it, Oliver? Play the game mate. Another chastening night in store reflecting on how a club we used to consider pre-season friendly fodder has accelerated past us to quite this extent. Palace, like Bournemouth and Brentford, doing it with a lot of the same stadium problems we defeatistly use to explain away all our failures and incompetence.
It's the physicality and the speed. I said this after the pre-season friendly with Spurs, but just the sheer size of the Premier League player now, and their effortless acceleration across the ground. Not conventionally fast, but monstrous strides that eat up the distance and swallow opponents whole. Paul Smyth looks quick against Championship players but here (as v Spurs) I’d have backed Dean Henderson to beat him across 30 yards. Marc Guehi at the back - in a dinner suit, that won’t require laundering. What a footballer. Jefferson Lerma stomping around midfield - keep it backwards and sideways and nobody gets hurt. Jean-Phillipe Mateta knows exactly what he’s doing in that child-size top, but I’ve seen that guy on the television and never realised he was built like that. It was like one of the Jurassic Park animatronics had escaped. Shoot her. Shoooooooot her. Thankfully all he did was whine and moan but credit Steve Cook, and makeshift centre back Sam Field, for sticking to that task as gamely as they did. Drederick Tatum v Homer Simpson. Stop letting him hit you Homey, he’s not gonna get tired.
QPR, on the other hand, made changes. Lots of changes: Joe Walsh, we expected in goal; Harrison Ashby debuted at right back; Sam Field had to play in defence with Jimmy Dunne rested to the bench; Elijah Dixon-Bonner and Jonathan Varane replaced Saturday’s midfield starters; Koki Saito and Paul Smyth both started having been benched at the weekend; Zan Celar replaced Michy Frey.
Some of those players did their chances no harm at all: Saito was good; Varane was impressive except for his weird aversion to turning around and playing forwards when he picked the ball up in 20 yards of space. Some were a little bit rocks and diamonds: for every good thing the purposeful and keen Ashby did there was a brain fart, culminating in his part in the winning goal. And others I shall not expect to see again any time soon: Dixon-Bonner, so confident and purposeful at the end of last season, here looking like a little academy boy lost in a man’s world and withdrawn at half time after a stiff bollocking for the opening goal. A shame, because his decay rather hamstrung Kenneth Paal’s instructed effort to invert into midfield when in possession which he did rather well – bar one free kick at the start of the second half when he was entirely on the wrong frequency.
This has polarised the post match reaction in a way I can’t quite recall seeing from one set of people who went to the same game.
It has antagonised a demographic of the QPR support which I, and I suspect both regular readers, sit squarely in the centre of. A demographic who grew up on Terry Venables taking Second Division Rangers to a Wembley replay against Spurs. Who remember Jim Smith punting out Brian Clough’s Nottingham Forest, Chelsea at Stamford Bridge with a goal from the halfway line, and the storied 1980s Liverpool at Anfield, on their way to the sadly postponed 1986 final. Who reminisce about Don Howe’s replay-heavy FA Cup run in 1991, and Kenny Sansom striking through the rain against his old Arsenal employers. Clive Wilson, last minute, Loft End, Millwall out, and QPR are going to the quarter final of the FA Cup. We remember how that felt, how much it elevated the status of our club, how it bred confidence and momentum in the squad, and we crave it again. We’ll forgive Neil Warnock ditching out of both deliberately in 2010/11 because we only lost six league games and won the title. We understand when we’re battling against relegation why extra cup games are unwelcome. But we’ve been in the Championship for ten years now. Ten away trips to Preston. And we’re desperate. We’re haunted by ghosts of our past and we use that to beat up this generation of players, managers and supporters.
This is a thirsty support base. If you’re getting grumpy about Eze’s welcome back, the club presenting him a shirt before the game, well, I’m sorry, but he gave the home and awayers something to live for while he was here. A cup run would do the same, but QPR just don’t seem interested. The first goal typified a first half in which the team selection bled into an insipid, standoffish, cowed, weak, meek performance. A free kick conceded, everybody turns their back and switches off, Eze rolls a quick one down the side of us, Nketiah sprints onto it and finishes low beneath Walsh. One nil. You’re playing a good team, fine, we get it, but fuck me at least pay attention lads eh?
Lazy, slapdash, careless, carefree. QPR in cups. Don’t worry about it. Doesn’t matter. Millwall’s the real quiz on Saturday, as we attempt to finish 11th rather than 13th. Let’s save for Saturday night Steve McClaren and Mark Warburton making big changes for cup games and then subsequently losing the following league games to mighty Swansea and Blackburn anyway.
When Varane finally did step on and crack into a challenge the crowd celebrated it like a goal. It’s a cup tie this, lads. Under the lights, Loftus Road, London opposition, big crowd. You can kick them if you like. I don’t want to get all Neil Harris and what is Wawll and isn’t Wawll about this but do feel free to give it some fucking right hand if you’d like. I’m dressed as a fireman here.
As ever Steve Cook epitomised what I wanted from my players in these environments, and his pregnant, checked pauses said much more than the words in his erudite post-match analysis. Listen to what he’s not saying, and how he’s not saying it.
Fundamentally, I’d have gone all in on this game, and if that meant a scratchy team and a defeat at the weekend in a league where everybody beats everybody anyway and we’ve got 30+ games and eight months to go then so be it. I’m in a minority. The sport, as a whole, now disagrees with me. "We need to give these players minutes”. Give them minutes on Saturday then, I’ve been to a thousand of those games and there’s a thousand more to come. Other, more intelligent, more pragmatic, more reasonable, less emotional, less drunk people have pointed out the ridiculousness of this point of view. I am now an old man who shouts at clouds. It breaks my heart.
Marti Cifuentes, who would no doubt have loved a Premier League scalp on his CV as he attempts to fast track his career, is already missing his best centre back and his immediate back up through injury. His best attacking player is yet to feature this season. He has two strikers, one of whom is struggling badly – though if we continue to play towards Zan Celar, a penalty spot striker awaiting cutbacks, as we play towards Michy Frey, a tear in the fabric of reality, that’s not going to improve against a silly old goat like Kyle McFadzean never mind a Rolls Royce like Guehi. He’s got a 34-year-old central midfielder who’s a walking red card. He’s got a whole heap of analytics-driven summer signings that he didn’t necessarily want or choose who he has been charged with integrating, getting up to speed and adapting to English football. What team, exactly, did you/we/I want him to pick? What did you/we/I expect him to pick? What could he have picked?
I’d counter if this was a league game would that have been the team? You counter back with what difference would it have made anyway? Against that Palace line up? What team is there within this QPR squad that can hold a candle to that? Well, as it turned out, when QPR did step forward, get a bit braver, put a few challenges in (and start introducing people who should have started from the bench) it turned out it was all there for them. Palace are yet to win in the league, having been gifted Brentford, West Ham and Leicester in their first four league games. A lot of their players are leggy after a long summer. It's not the 1978 Dutch World Cup finalists this, you know.
Saito, lively all night, worked the frustratingly languid Madsen into space in the move of the match on 50 minutes. The Dane’s beautifully stood up cross looked a goal for all money when Smyth met it in the air at the back post but Henderson flew across and produced an outstanding save. Dembele, on for his Palace trial and with two QPR goals from his corners already this season, hung the resulting set piece up and, after Henderson flapped, Madsen and Cook were both first to loose balls allowing Field to spin brilliantly on his first touch and belt the second into the far top corner. A goal of superb execution, Loftus Road alive and bouncing at last. God forbid a cup tie break out and tire the poor loves, but here it was in all its raw glory.
Sub Alfie Lloyd was sniffing an equaliser to Eze’s goal off another corner, QPR then criminally played the next short and lost the chance and momentum to much moaning and groaning. Two perfect crosses from either side of the pitch followed soon after, Celar’s glancing header when we needed a Devon White special put the tin hat on his frustrating night. Varane tried his luck with a bicycle kick - come on mate, we've all had a drink.
There was, therefore, plenty of material and evidence here to suit every narrative. If you wanted to come here and nuzzle into the sweaty gooch of Ebere Eze, then he was head and shoulders the best player on the pitch. If you think that pre-match video and all the fawning was a bit tin pot, then Andy Sinton came on before the match and presented him with a signed shirt. If you think the cups are a waste of time and a drain on limited resources (three of our best, Akos Buszaky, Jamie Mackie and Ale Faurlin all suffered career altering injuries in cup ties with QPR) then that Palace starting 11 spoke to the futility of it all. If you’d rather us go strong here, sack off Millwall instead, enthuse this long-suffering crowd and bring in a bit of money, excitement and attention with a cup run, then the way the game developed in the second half when better players were introduced from the bench and we did get on the front foot a bit more spoke to you.
The result in the top left corner of the screen dictates the narrative, reaction, and vibe. In five minutes of stoppage time, a classic QPR move where Richard Pacquette retreats from an offside position, drawing tired centre backs with him, allowing Paul Furlong to break through unchallenged and onside, was played out with Alfie Lloyd in the lead role. He did everything – everything – right. His final finish was powerful of strike and pure of heart. It fizzed an inch wide of the far corner. A stairs goal. We were already on the stairs. Perhaps it’s written here, now, for him like it was on Saturday when a reasonably dreadful performance and deserved defeat at Sheff Wed was saved by a generational fluke from the same player. On Sunday we euphorically trumpeted our team’s never-say-die attitude, here we lambast them for limp-wristed cup surrenders.
Score, take it to penalties, win, imagine what this match report, what that message board looks like this morning. From exactly the same game, and same team selections, with one shot not deflecting quite as much and another bending just a tiny bit more. Cifuentes genius. Lloyd a new Sinclair (Trevor, not Sinclair). Local man loses pants, life. Beaver rescue falls short.
It’s a sport of moments and vibes. QPR needed one hideous deflection to fall slightly more kindly, and/or a shot to go a foot or so inside the post. Either transforms everything, with the same team selections, with the same game, with the same stats.
That’s football guys. That’s all it is.
Links >>> Ratings and Reports >>> Message Board Match Thread
QPR: Walsh 6; Ashby 5 (Lloyd 68, 6), Cook 7, Field 7, Paal 6; Varane 6, Dixon-Bonner 4 (Dembele 46, 5); Saito 6 (Santos 68, 6), Madsen 5 (Dunne 81, -), Smyth 6 (Andersen 81, -); Celar 5
Subs not used: Frey, Bennie, Morgan, Nardi
Goals: Field 53 (unassisted)
Yellow Cards: Varane 27 (foul), Ashby 58 (foul), Smyth 75 (foul), Field 90+5 (foul)
Palace; Henderson 6; Richards 6, Guehi 7, Lacroix 6; Mitchell 6, Kamada 5 (Schlupp 90+3, -), Lerma 7, Munoz 6; Eze 8, Nketiah 7 (Sarr 65, 6); Mateta 5 (Hughes 74, 7)
Subs not used; Clyne, Agbinone, Turner, Umeh, Ward, Wharton
Goals: Nketiah 16 (assisted Eze), Eze 64 (assisted Kamada)
Yellow Cards: Kamada 29 (foul),Nketiah 55 (foul), Henderson 90+1 (time wasting)
QPR Star Man – Sam Field 7 I thought for those two centre backs to cope against that Palace front three as well as they did was a formidable achievement. Field crowned that not only by scoring a brilliantly taken goal, but also by not being a centre back.
Referee – Sunny Singh Gill (London) 6 Anybody who remembers his dad terrorising the reserve fixtures up at Northwood in the late 90s and early 00s will make Marge Simpson grumbly noises about a guy being elevated from National League to Premier League within three seasons with all the accompanying "look, it’s an Asian fella refereeing in the top flight” PR guff. I gather he didn’t do well in his top flight debut with Palace against Luton last year. Here there were some obvious nonsenses – Varane’s booking, a QPR corner given after Lloyd had punched the ball out - but I thought he was alright.
Attendance 13,945 (2,800 Palace approx.) So, is there a WhatsApp group that lot use to coordinate outfits?
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