Queens Park Rangers are getting worse.
The speakers work. They actually work.
For years we’ve sat there, staring up at that bloody thing, encrusted with bird-shit and under-investment, and got only crackly static back. Paul Morrissey has stood out there time after time, gamely talking to Wayne Fereday, Terry Mancini, Gerry Francis, Tony Currie, asking them what it means to be handed a Forever R's tie and blazer badge set from the club shop. And what does it mean? None of us will ever know. Because all the speaker does is hiss at us. If the place burned down, the first we’d know of it is our feet getting warm. Podcast after podcast, meeting after meeting, Lee Hoos patiently explains that they carve out as much money as they can to do capital investment works, and they move around the ground block by block, and maybe one day we’ll get a speaker that works, so we can hear what’s got Jude the Cat feeling quite so funky. Every week we come back, and all we get is hiss. God can only please one person per day, today is not your day, tomorrow doesn’t look good either. I only found out we used to play goal music (back when we actually scored goals) when the Coventry fans took the piss out of us for it. And you know what, the fucking thing works after all.
We know this now because at full time last night Queens Park Rangers were so worried that the two dozen people who’d actually stayed all the way through to the end might say something that would upset the poor little rich bastards who’d just made us sit through another 90+ minutes of their lamentable, incompetent, phoned-in slop, they picked the loudest, screechiest, most intrusive bit of modern racket they could find, cranked it up to 11, and blasted us with it to drown out the reaction. All of a sudden, no problem with the speakers at all, clear as a bell, fucking ships turning round in the North Atlantic. Literally couldn’t hear ourselves think, which is just as well for Jamal Lowe who journeyed round the Loft End making ‘calm down’ gestures at people and shaking his head, because now the music’s off I’m very clear what I think about that among other things.
Ok, let me just get right through it.
As I’ve said a couple of times, if you cannot beat this Cardiff City team, this Huddersfield Town team, this Fleetwood Town team, at this point in time, then you’re not going to be beating anybody without significant changes in personnel, performance, tactics and attitude. Certainly not Sunderland, who last lost away from home way back in October when we were winning at Loftus Road for the final time, possibly ever — nine unbeaten on the road, and about to break into the top six in the division on their first return to the Championship after three years downstairs. Moany Towbray brought a bright, young, creative, attacking team to Loftus Road, furnished by a clever and purposeful recruitment operation that’s brought together an exciting group of promising prospects from Premier League academies, Europe and Latin America. QPR brought a big bucket of shit and a whisk.
For Rangers, just keep adding one to everything bad. Now one win in 17, one win in 11 under Neil Critchley, no wins in ten, no wins in eight home games, thirteen scoreless games in 32 played in the league, a fourth 3-0 defeat in 12 games (three of those at home)…
If you’re one of those glass half full/straw clutcher types who like to tell me I’m exaggerating, things aren’t that bad, LFW trades in hyperbole, we should have got a point from Millwall at the weekend and so on then, I guess, you did at least have the first 20 or so minutes to cling to. Chris Martin got a first start in attack, and was targeted with a long ball good and early — he nodded it down, Rangers won a generous free kick from stand-in referee Peter Bankes, and wasted that. Perhaps Bankes felt sorry for us, another couple of free kicks followed, both hung up to the back post for visiting goalkeeper Anthony Patterson to come out and catch — one of those he needed two attempts to grab, oooooooooh. Ilias Chair broke free from midfield for the first time on 14 minutes, and played an early pass to a striker while in a shooting position for the first time this season — Martin, the recipient, was standing offside, and flagged accordingly, so I doubt Illy will be doing that again any time soon. Once he’d trundled back onside, some six, seven minutes later, he touched one off for the recalled Tim Iroegbunam to hit a shot a yard or so wide of the goal.
If you’re one of those people with two eyes in your head, then you could see this was a castle built on sand. Not much of a castle either, one with a sofa in the bathroom — left-footed defensive midfielder Sam Field bizarrely utilised wide right in a 4-4-2 formation. Neil Critchley so keen to get back to the basic set up that rescued his poor start to life at Blackpool that he’s now trying nonsense like this — perhaps Les forgot to put the ‘preferred formations’ algorithm into the big manager machine?
The dinner bell rang on 21 minutes and the carve up began in earnest. One short goal kick to the right from Patterson, one long ball down the line from Luke O’Nien, and that was all it took. Jimmy Dunne, caught hopelessly under the ball, was roasted so comprehensively by Joe Gelhardt I thought we’d need a priest to scatter him around a garden of remembrance. The Leeds loanee, somehow, contrived to blast into the side netting from six yards out when clean through on goal — an absolute sitter, and it wouldn’t be the last.
In their next attack Sunderland won a corner off Rob Dickie and then stationed all their most threatening players in the air 40 yards out from goal ready for a late charge into the box. Well, QPR can’t defend routine corners, so something creative like this was always going to fry their tiny minds, absolute chaos ensued and Rangers were lucky to escape with a goal kick. No matter, all of three minutes later Sunderland were passing the ball around the edge of the QPR penalty area without opposition, and O’Nien tried his luck from 20 yards drawing a routine save from Seny Dieng.
If you felt like a goal was coming, you were right.
It’s time to play count the mistakes again, come on down. Thirty two minutes played, a throw in to Sunderland on the Stan Bowles side of the ground, midway inside the QPR half. The two Sunderland players nearest to the taker are unmarked, because Rangers’ two central midfielders — Tim Iroegbunam and Andre Dozzell — are scratching their pubics thinking about something else, and Ilias Chair is only walking back down the line to get involved rather than running. After a quick one-two, Iroegbunam and Paal are then both drawn back into the taker Patrick Roberts, who’s consequently able to pop the ball in behind them to an unmarked player who’s moved into their vacated space. Roberts then moves beyond the QPR players, unchecked, because of course, to receive the ball back. At no stage yet has a tackle been made, or even attempted, and Iroegbunam’s effort at doing so on Roberts is so utterly pathetic and limp that I’m not going to count that as one either. Don’t get fucking hurt will you darling, whatever you do. Ba’s intelligent flick around the corner now has Gelhardt and Roberts beyond the final QPR defender, and into the area for a clear sight of Dieng’s goal. There have been five visiting players involved to this point, not one of them has been marked or tackled at any stage. Roberts took the responsibility on himself, aimed for the bottom corner, and Dieng saved well to his left. What did you do during the war daddy? From the corner, Daniel Ballard neither blocked nor marked, a free header straight at Dieng, which the keeper spilled amateurishly — maybe a bit more concentration and practice and a little bit less time acting the clown flashing your Rolex and diamond necklace around Sumosan of a Saturday evening eh mate? — and O’Nien tapped into the empty net from no range at all. And so began the now weekly mass appeal of the QPR defence to the linesman for a flag to rescue them from their own ineptitude. It was, to be fair, unlike at Huddersfield and against Millwall, at least a marginal decision this time.
Whatever fragile belief and confidence there had been about Rangers in the first 20 minutes now completely disintegrated on the pitch and in the stand. The team died on the vine in front of our eyes. It was a painful spectacle. Rob Dickie, like a dog on fireworks night, lost one challenge that was 70/30 in his favour, and then found himself backed up to his own byline by a series of ill-advised and poorly-executed passes in a dangerous part of the pitch — he, quite literally, gave up, and just punted the ball out for a throw in ten yards away.
Bankes added two minutes to the half, played most of that, and then awarded QPR a free kick on half way. The only person, the only person, in the entire team, who realised this was essentially a free hit, and a chance to put a ball into the opposition penalty area loaded with players, with no risk of a counter the other way because the time was up, was Jimmy Dunne. Everybody else was already mentally heading to the dressing room, and some of them physically. Ilias Chair took it. Ilias Chair took it, a free kick from the halfway line, on the stroke of half time. It barely reached. Maybe I should get me a gun and rob the Foodway.
It's Middlesbrough away on Saturday and in what I am sure is entirely unrelated news, Ethan Laird failed to reappear for the second half. Colour me shocked. He now presumably joins Chris Willock, Leon Balogun, Tyler Roberts, Jake Clarke-Salter and work of fiction Taylor Richards on the absentee list for that one. Personally I’d make them travel and watch. Still, I bet the proprietor of Reign in Mayfair is glad to hear all his best customers will be staying in town Saturday night.
He was replaced by Osman Kakay who went down the line on the hour, crossed a decent ball, and Chris Martin stuck it wide. A round of applause. That’s all we want.
Having not forced a save from Patterson all night, Rangers had a golden chance to do so much more than that as the game entered its final third. Chair stood a cross up to the back post, Alese naively jumped with his hands in the air and ended up fisting the ball away — an obvious handball, a clear penalty, referee Bankes pointed straight to the spot. Ilias Chair, whose last penalty was at this end of the ground against Sunderland in last year’s League Cup heartbreak and is due to re-enter the earth’s atmosphere sometime around 2045, stood with the ball on the spot and allowed himself to be eye-balled and talked to by Patterson for the entirety of O’Nien’s treatment for a non-existent injury in the six-yard box. Walk away, do something else, think about something else, change the taker, don’t stand there for that long and let him do that to you. Do you? Is it just me? The camera behind the goal shows Chair then give the bottom left hand corner a less than furtive glance, and Patterson had set off that way so early and dived so far that he actually ended up going most of the way past the ball and saving the bloody thing with his legs. Ye Gods.
A little word on O’Nien at this point if I may. His antics were an obvious attempt to delay the taking of the penalty, and they worked. The referee was weak, allowed himself to be conned, looked stupid, and damaged his authority in the game — you tell him to get up, you tell him to move five yards to the side, or you book him, you do not allow the physio to come and treat something you all know is fictitious in the six-yard box before a penalty. It wasn’t the first time he outright cheated on the night either, and it’s a particularly unbecoming part of the game for an intelligent young lad who spends all his spare time recording long winded podcasts about mentorship and attitude and behaviour — he’s basically Ben Pearson, with a radio show, and sparklier eyes. But… He was brilliantly effective in this game. Moved into the centre of midfield he covered every blade, tackled every player, got forward and posed a goal threat, scored an actual goal, kicked people, broke the play up, passed the ball… He can play full back or wing back either side, he can play central midfield, he’s played as one of three centre backs sometimes this season, he writes the theme tune, he sings the theme tune, he absolutely dominated the whole middle of the park all night. You hate him, because he behaved like a little twat on occasions, but you’d love him in our team, and you could have had him at any point between 2013 and 2018, for a couple of lousy bob, when he was playing for Watford (12 miles away), Wycombe (30 miles away, strong relationship, frequent loan deals, Gareth Ainsworth) and Wealdstone (fucking Wealdstone) (nine miles). Instead he goes to the other end of the country, for £150k, and we sit here watching Andre Dozzell, who cost nigh on ten times that. For shame.
That really was that now. The crowd did their best to raise and rally the troops, singing on regardless in support of the boys — they don’t listen to us at dinner either — but there was nothing left out there. Dead team. If I didn’t know better I might suggest that some of the tackles in the last quarter hour rather hinted that quite a few of them also fancied a night out in Mayfair on Saturday rather than a gob bumming up at the Riverside. Rangers would end with six yellow cards, and the ones handed out to Paal and Dozzell in particular were three inches thick. An awful lot of big, meaty tackles going in from players who've been scared to so much as pull somebody's shirt for weeks.
One tackle on sub Sinclair Armstrong on the edge of the box that was lost and sent the ball squirting the other way on 76 minutes was, somehow, enough to split the entire home team right down the middle. Sunderland’s own newbie from the bench, Amad Diallo, journeyed off through the wide open acreage and eventually a cross was cut back for unmarked Geldhardt to hit the bar when he should have scored. Stefan Johansen, on for the hapless Dozzell after he’d given the ball away one too many times and the crowd had started to turn, tried to interrupt the next counter attack by making an attempt on Dennis Cirkin’s life. When that failed Jack Clarke was able to wander into the penalty area, Rob Dickie’s efforts to tackle him were feeble, and he calmly slid the ball into the far bottom corner for two nil and game. Soon Armstrong was losing the ball in a tight spot, two passes later (this is all it ever takes) and Diallo was through on goal, and Dieng came out to save at his feet one v one. No matter, another gilt-edged chance is only ever just around the corner with this lot, and when one long punt by Dieng was headed back from whence it came by Baath that was enough for Diallo, Clarke, Dan Neil, Pierre Ekwah and half the fucking cast of Auf Wiedersehen, Pet to be given the freedom of Shepherd’s Bush at the other end to craft a second goal for Clarke that, frankly, would have shamed a training game. Clarke, of course, one start and six sub appearances in a hopeless loan spell here three seasons back. One cannot wait to see what we do with Jordan Hugill and Conor Washington up at Rotherham in a couple of weeks’ time. Into the tub, with the four slice.
Three nil then. Richly deserved by both sides. Sunderland as a team, and individuals, absolutely everything our side, and players, are not.
If you sat through it all, if you stayed to the death, then you more than most deserved to have a bit of a say at the end. And you didn’t even get that, because the fucking speakers work after all.
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QPR: Dieng 5; Laird 2 (Kakay 45, 5), Dickie 2, Dunne 3, Paal 4; Field 4, Dozzell 3 (Johansen 81, -), Iroegbunam 2 (Armstrong 76, 4), Chair 4; Martin 5, Lowe 4
Subs not used: Archer, Dixon-Bonner, Gubbins, Adomah
Bookings: Field 63 (foul), Lowe 71 (delaying the restart/time wasting at 1-0 down), Dozzell 72 (prat), Johansen 82 (attempted murder), Paal 90 (assault), Dunne 90+1 (argument)
Sunderland: Patterson 7; Hume 6, Ballard 7, Batth 7, Alese 6 (Cirkin 81, -); Roberts 8, O’Nien 8, Pritchard 7 (Neil 69, 7), Ba 7 (Diallo 63, 7); Gelhardt 5 (Ekwah 81, -), Clarke 8
Subs not used: Bass, Bennette, Lihadji,
Goals: O’Nien 34 (unassisted), Clarke 82 (assisted Cirkin), 90+2 (assisted Neil)
Bookings: Clarke 69 (foul), Pritchard 90+1 (argument)
QPR Star Man — N/A
Referee — Peter Bankes (Merseyside) 6 Gave us a penalty, which was nice of him. Allowed much of the game to be refereed by Luke O’Nien, less so.
Attendance — 14,471 (2,800 Sunderland approx.) The beatings will continue until morale improves.
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