| Watford 1 v 1 Coventry City EFL Championship Saturday, 14th September 2024 Kick-off 15:00 |  |
BUNDLE – Report Sunday, 15th Sep 2024 22:22 by Clive Whittingham For the second year running at Hillsborough a largely forgettable and brutally low-quality game between Sheff Wed and QPR suddenly sprung to life in injury time – Rangers, and Alfie Lloyd, the ones to come out smiling on this occasion. What you were going to be reading here, circa about 16.49 yesterday afternoon, was a dozen paragraphs or so on Saturday Kitchen. Not the classic ‘relatives fear he’s using Air Crash Investigation to describe QPR games again’ LFW drop intro. A full-on match report. Factually, as Alfie Lloyd says, we were going to do it. Florid descriptions of Rick Stein sweeping through France, bitching about people coming to his restaurant and saying the food is too salty, bursting with excitement as he potters through one market after another pointing and shouting “look at that fish”. Wistful daydreams of how much better life might be if everybody just approached it with the attitude of The Hairy Bikers. Analysis on whether Nigella’s recipes are really all that good, as she leathers seven shades of shit out of a packet of minced beef, sticks some cheese on top of it, whacks it under the grill for ten minutes and calls it her “meatzza”. No, I’m not exaggerating thank you. And, naturally, a healthy dose of graphic imagery as she voices the thing over from her “pleasure palace” while wafting a chunky courgette about the gaff in such a way that nobody notices or cares what she’s cooking anyway. “I give it a hard shake so it knows I mean business, until I hear that muffled squelch out of the mould.” ARE WE GOING TO FUCK OR WHAT? I was going to flag some of the Tweets from the Waitrose classes of middle England, who rejoice in giving food hell to any female guest who looks a bit too foreign, or any male celebrity who’s a bit too snazzily dressed, and like to talk about “muck” and “baby vomit” whenever anybody dares come on and do a curry. We were going to talk about how Andy swore blind through Saturday’s first half that LFW official counsel (not a salaried position) Harriet has (f)actually been on Saturday Kitchen. And how she can’t possibly have been on bloody Saturday Kitchen, Andy, because Saturday Kitchen isn’t a show with an audience. To be on Saturday Kitchen you’ve got to be a chef, or Stanley Tucci, or somebody with a book out. Yes, I know Harriet’s got a book out, but not a book like that, a book like Graham Norton’s wiffling on about his favourite chat show guests. They don’t just let LFW staffers wander in off the street and sit there quaffing rose with Helen McGinn of a Saturday morning, this is a serious public service broadcast. You’re obviously thinking of that one with James Martin, or that abomination Lovejoy reduced himself to after they decided it was a bit smutty pulling girls in football shirts out of lockers and shouting “SHE’S GOT THE LOT” at them and so neutered Soccer AM with Jimmy Bullard and that geezer with the big konk. I was so sure on this point we decided to ring Harriet, during the first half. I had to go home, to get a book, to prove it. Don’t worry about it, let’s get on with the quiz. Turns out she was on. And her sister too. “Oh, has Best Bites been on again?” Fuck my life. This is how it was going to be. Reams and reams of it. I can do this all day long. Because when you’re in week three of God knows what with the manflu from hell, and you’ve dragged your heavy head back up to Sheffield again, and you’ve stood there behind that goal watching two of this division’s supposed dark horses, with two of its more progressive managers, spend 90 minutes repeatedly kicking the ball a) to the opposition and b) into touch, what do you want me to do? It was turgid. You want me to sit here and list the minute-by-minute regardless? Well, okay then, let’s do that for a bit. Danny Rohl’s Sheff Wed like a high press and big impact on turnovers and transition. Marti Cifuentes’ QPR like possession and build up from the back. It’s shaken out two nil in favour of the former approach from the games played between them so far, and the first half offered little hope of Rangers reducing that deficit: Ugbo inches away from a first minute cross through the box; Nardi with an excellent save from Polish winger Kobacki as the time ticked into double figures; Windass with a shot high over the bar on the half hour after bringing Johnson’s back post cross under his spell in the penalty box. QPR, sloppy and slapdash. Sam Field’s latest loose touch in midfield precipitated a foul, first half yellow, and inevitable Cifuentes substitution at half time with Paul Smyth on from the bench. Field was poorly, to be fair to him. Jimmy Dunne was back in at centre half - Jake Clarke-Salter’s calf problem unhelpfully resurfacing approximately five minutes after director of performance Ben Williams left for the Brooklyn Nets (something publicised in the US but still not on our side, and he remains listed on the official website) - but he was back out on the right side after 24 minutes, receiving a horrible ball he could have no hope of doing anything with and picking up a yellow card of his own. In form Frey, charging about to no effect, glanced one header at home keeper Beadle before half time. The preference for a mixture of Lucas Andersen and Nicolas Madsen at ‘ten’ reduced Dembele to a peripheral figure out wide – his lone first half impact a trick which drew an obvious foul in first half injury time which referee Oliver Langford played advantage through leaving QPR with no free kick, no advantage, and no yellow carded opponent. Do you want more of this, or shall we talk about Marcus Wareing’s smallholding? Rangers were somewhat better after half time. Paul Smyth shot over from the edge of the area. Andersen broke clear into the Wednesday half on a counterattack with numbers in QPR’s favour but wrong options were chosen and Frey ended up heading off target. Saito swiftly replaced Andersen, curled one wide of Beadle’s left post ten from time, and then one wide on the other side as the stoppage time board was being prepared. The main positives from this performance, however, tell their own story. Paul Nardi continues to impress. There was another terrific save 20 minutes from time from an admittedly offside Liam Palmer to go with his first half sweeps and stops. Hevertton Santos was trusted to start a league game at right back for the first time, with Dunne covering the Clarke-Salter and Morrison absences, and performed pretty well – as he had done against Luton in the cup. Sheff Wed targeted Santos several times and he stood up – lovely covering challenge on 88 to preserve what we thought at that point was a nil nil draw. Kenneth Paal continues to recover nicely from a tough pre-season and start to the campaign – his back post intervention on Bannan’s cross straight after half time was goal/game saving. Jimmy Dunne’s switch to the middle went pretty seamlessly, and he’s a good outside bet for player of the year at this early stage. Steve Cook gave the ball away one in every four times he had it, but defended stoutly whenever it was returned his way. Jack Colback, bar one moment in the first half when he was too busy bitching and moaning at Michy Frey for a poor pass to notice he still had the ball and/or a chance to tackle the opponent about to take it from him, had his best game of the season, and a huge recovery tackle on 52 minutes was every bit as vital as Paal’s intervention moments before. If these are the players you’re talking about as your stand outs, then you haven’t had much of the ball/game. Fine, though. Not going to play well every week, particularly at this stage of the season with the profile of signing we’ve made. Get out of here with a nil nil nobody will ever remember and let LFW do 2,000 words on whether 65 acres of Sussex can really be termed a “smallholding” at all. Then, because of course, QPR’s hitherto reasonably sound and stable defence got a bit loosey and goosey in five minutes of stoppage time. Having, once a-bloody-gain, not even got to 1.1 in the manual for playing Sheffield Wednesday and allowed Barry Bannon to stand in ten yards of clear space and be the best player on the pitch all afternoon, they might have possibly started to think they’d got away with it. And then the 34-year-old crowned a man of the match display by wrapping his foot round a bouncing bomb on the edge of the box and looping it into the top corner out of the reach of the helpless, and previously pretty faultless, Nardi. Well, doesn’t that just put the tin hat on it? You think I’m going to write about that? You think I’m going to go to Sheffield, feeling like shit, stand and look at the worst football match ever played, lose in the last minute to Barry bastard Bannan a-bloody-gain, spend two hours watching a waitress get six out of eight orders wrong in Mamas and Leonies, travel all the way back home, then get up on Sunday and write about that? You’re wrong. I’m not. For many/some/okay maybe me, even the idea of staying there while that goblin parades around in front of the away end cupping his ears at us was too much to stomach. Consecutive trips to Hillsborough, consecutive weekends spent dropping 200 sheets on silently watching three sides of the ground dissolve into the ecstasy of a last-minute winning goal. Not for me, Clive. If you were one of the leavers, you missed something extraordinary. You missed, first of all, Max Lowe nip in front of our waitress with his entry for the 2024 International Year of the Wally Brain. He decided to foul Paul Smyth, despite time being up, despite him heading away from goal, and despite it only being Paul Smyth. What are you doing, you absolute whopper? Let the baby have his bottle. How to turn neutral possession heading back towards the halfway line into a chance to put a ball back into your own penalty area. Put a ball back into your own penalty area… and win a corner, as it turned out. Here we go then. Script written. Seconds out. Time up. Now or never. Do or die. Stop waving it around and start fucking. Kenneth Paal. Left footed delivery. Nardi joining the entire population of Shepherd’s Bush in the Wednesday penalty box. One headed clearance and it’s all over. One goal and the narrative shifts entirely.
It was Jimmy Dunne, initially, unsurprisingly, who wanted it most, who had that desire, who wanted that headline. I love him more than more each week. Beadle was nowhere near his glancing header. Mere weeks on from his near post goal at Bramall Lane, here he was again twisting the knife in the Steel City. A goal all ends up. Di’Shon Bernard, on from the bench, had other ideas - heaving himself full length across the line to deflect the ball out from underneath the crossbar with his shoulder. Hands to head in gold, a cheer out of tension from those in blue and white; a last gasp escape, a cruel missed opportunity. And then screams. Screams and pandemonium. Screams and pandemonium and farce. A panicked clearance of the loose ball from the goalline smacks Steve Cook plum in the chops. Ihiekwe and Palmer desperately converge to stop him volleying home, and so he volleys them instead. Both of them. It’s an old fashioned goalmouth scramble. By gar it’s been a while.
Referee Oliver Langford has, like the rest of us, had to sit through this dirge for 90 minutes and he too was now in the mood for some fun. We’re playing on. As Jimmy Dunne falls on the ball. The Sheff Wed goalkeeper has no real need at all to get involved at this point, and if he just stood where he was might end up calmly catching what eventually happened next, but we’re not in need territory now, and nobody’s calmly doing anything. We’re in the world of want, and Beadle wants to get involved. Soon he’s rolling round on the ground with Dunne: keeper making amorous advances with a shirt lift; Dunne rejecting them with a face splat into the turf. Referee Langford watched on. There’s a 24 in there, Michael Smith, it says here. And Paul Nardi of course, jumping around the immediate periphery. Tickle him, tickle him. Don’t throw the hat, cos it’s a radio as well. Farce. Farce and chaos. Farce and chaos and comedy. Chaos, comedy, and Saito. The Japanese love this sort of thing. Have you seen their television shows? Attach a couple of electrodes to Bannan’s nipples and this would be primetime. Does Saito handle it? One angle he say yay, one angle he say nay. My angle say, who bloody cares? Meanwhile, Steve Cook is busy pouring a nice warm glass of shut-the hell up for Liam Palmer. Sir, Mike Scioscia may not live through the night. And referee Langford watched on.
One year on from a last second goal into that Kop End net which felt like watching your dad get beaten up by another dad on the school playground, now it was QPR stealing the lunch money. And the guy who ultimately did that stealing is just out of school himself. Alfie Lloyd, breathless with childish excitement, come on, ahhh, gaffer was like, do what you can do, show us what you can do, and was like, cool with that, and when the ball was scrambling was like maybe, maybe can get something, and then it just come to him so he quickly poked it. No way, he’s scored. The celebrations were crazy. And there is, indeed no better feeling Alfie, for you or for us. VAR would have spent ten minutes on this, and disallowed it three or four times over. Which is why we’re better off without VAR, and why the Championship is now a vastly superior experience for both the fans in the ground and the ones watching at home on TV than the robotic, mechanical, predictable, tedious Premier League. I would say that, wouldn’t I? Because QPR have come out on the right side of this one. Sheff Wed’s LFW equivalent is into six pages of crying foul. There was plenty of foul to cry. Both regular readers will back me up, I’d be saying the same if we’d conceded this goal. You’re better off with a thousand Keith Strouds ballsing a thousand things up a thousand times, than you are one cunt with a laptop spending five minutes examining stop-motion animation footage so he can turn around and tell Alfie Lloyd “ahhhh, actually, it’s not a goal after all, and let me explain to you why… 1/36”. That shit is everyday life. That’s Monday-Friday stuff. That’s the stuff draining life and spirit from you and I. We come here on Saturday to escape those things, those jobsworths, that existence. We come here to feel alive. We come here for moments like this. Watch that Alfie Lloyd interview. You want to be the one to tell him his signature was slightly outside the box on the form? You want to tell him his call is important to you? You want to tell him it’s not a goal? You want anybody to tell him it’s not a goal? You’re a monster. A Tom Hitchcock moment, or the start of something bigger for a young player Marti Cifuentes seems to have a lot of time for? Why do we only start attacking with this purpose when we’re behind? You’re not listening. These are questions for another time, another day, another moment. We’re being romantic about baseball right now. And how can you not be romantic about baseball? When I studied journalism at the University of Sheffield my wonderful, grizzled, Sheff Wed-supporting tutor liked to dine out on the story of a midweek game at Bradford City’s Valley Parade which finished 4-3 having been 1-0 after 75 minutes. That was always going to result in some rather odd ‘on the whistle’ match reports in the following morning’s first edition of a thing in this country we used to have called newspapers because, behind the curtain, where the sausage is made, you file(d) the bottom half of your 500 words at half time, another couple of pars on 75 minutes, and then top it off with the angle/intro at full time. Consequently, The Independent ran 450 words of colour on the night skyline of post-Thatcher-era Bradford, street lights twinkling over the side stand of a ground laced with tragedy, old mills sitting distant, vacant and dark, topped with 50 words in which six goals were scored and the Bantams registered a win those present would tell their grandchildren about. Back then you’d write letters, and letters they wrote. Who is this idiot…? And who is this idiot, so riled by the ear cupping of the game’s best player/man with a wispy ballbag for a head, that he couldn’t stand to be there a moment longer and stormed off resolving to write 2,000 words of ego-dribbled drivel about Saturday Kitchen instead of staying to experience this? Unbeaten since the opening day, five points from losing positions on the road after none in the whole of last season, this QPR team and manager is worth keeping faith with. If you/we/I didn’t know that before, we certainly do now. Links >>> Ratings and Reports >>> Message Board Match Thread Sheff Wed: Beadle 5; Famewo 5 (Bernard 73, 6), Ihiekwe 6, Palmer 6; Valery 5 (Valentin 74, 5), Bannan 8, Charles 6, Johnson 6 (Lowe 89, -); Kobacki 6 (Musaba 64, 5), Ugbo 5 (Smith 74, 5), Windass 6 Subs not used: Gassama, Charles, Ingelsson, Paterson Goals: Bannan 90+3 (unassisted) Yellow Cards: QPR: Nardi 7; Santos 6, Cook 6, Dunne 6, Paal 6; Field 5 (Smyth 46, 5), Colback 6; Dembele 5 (Lloyd 90+1, -), Andersen 4 (Saito 72, 6), Madsen 5 (Varane 84, -), Frey 5 (Celar 72, 5) Subs not used: Ashby, Dixon-Bonner. Morgan, Walsh Goals: Lloyd 90+5 (unassisted) Yellow Cards: Field 22 (foul), Dunne 25 (foul), Dembele 70 (foul) QPR Star Man – Paul Nardi 7 I actually came away thinking it was either Santos or Colback for this, but the only one who really played up to their true level throughout for Rangers was the goalkeeper, who’s making a big difference to this team already. Referee – Oliver Langford (West Mids) 6 After a few pernickety performances with us, back to a very much more hands off approach and that obviously benefitted QPR with the equaliser which I think with most Championship officials, and certainly the evil VAR, would have been disallowed at least a couple of times over - certainly there's a foul by Steve Cook in there at least. I would say this today, but football is genuinely better when the referee leaves it alone and there’s no better example of that than Lloyd’s equaliser. Could it have been disallowed? Sure. Do you think it should have been? Into the sea with you. Attendance 23,283 (1,303 QPR) If you enjoy LoftforWords, please consider supporting the site through a subscription to our Patreon or tip us via our PayPal account loftforwords@yahoo.co.uk. The Twitter @loftforwords Pictures - Reuters Connect Please report offensive, libellous or inappropriate posts by using the links provided.
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