QPR followed up their supposedly season-saving comeback at West Brom with another abject showing and heavy home defeat against Coventry on Saturday afternoon.
On Easter Monday at West Bromwich Albion, a surprise comeback from 2-0 down just as it looked as though Rangers were about to run their poor supporters through another awayday mangle. Chris Martin’s first goal in six, Lyndon Dykes’ first in 18, a more aggressive and purposeful press, some legs in midfield, some shots on the goal — a significant improvement on much of what had gone before.
The result was raucously celebrated, in the stand and on the pitch, and heralded as some sort of turning point for the team. A platform for this beleaguered group to take some confidence and belief from something positive it had achieved; a reward for the manager for a switch in shape, system and, possibly more importantly still, style; a sea change for the whole club with a team selected without loan players in it for the first time since August. Gareth Ainsworth made a big, exaggerated deal of running onto the field, jumping around, pointing at the players and asking the fans to thank them for their efforts. The ‘we go again’ merchants among the squad back on the Gram for the first time in weeks.
You are, however, going overboard about what was essentially Finland’s warmest day. It was just one point. You might easily have mistaken it for some sort of cup semi-final triumph, given the reaction, but it was just a draw, against a team that played very poorly, and should have been a win but for some very presentable misses in the last ten minutes. QPR had spent nearly an hour in the bottom three during proceedings, and finished it only two points above the dreaded dotted line. Now two wins from 26 games, it was at absolute most a starting point. Unbeaten in one, what the R’s did next would separate league games against Southampton next season with ones against Shrewsbury. Go on then, if you've turned the corner, prove it. A little less natting, a little more doing.
What they did next was exactly what I expected them to do. It’s exactly what they’ve done for 14 months now. It’s exactly what they did when you thought wins against Preston or Watford this season, Blackpool, Luton and Derby last, heralded a change in fortunes, form, mindset and direction of travel. Exactly what they did with previous draws against Sheff Utd and Swansea. They got up on stage, walked up to the microphone, cleared their throats, and did a burp you could hear from the International Space Station. They did this because this is what they do, what they always do, and who they are as people and football players. At the moment a "freak set of results” would be QPR not blowing chunks two games in a row, and that was never likely to be the case here.
Coventry City won the game with embarrassing ease. It was a sixth defeat in seven games for Rangers at Loftus Road, a ground where they’ve now won one of 13 games, losing ten. It was a fourth 3-0 defeat for the home team in W12 this season, and a fifth occasion they’ve conceded three goals here. Their 67 goals conceded is the worst record in the Championship, and it’s Burnley away to come next Saturday. Far from continuing the myriad improvements from an apparently herculean triumph at The Hawthorns, a game in which calamities in the R’s defence still resulted in two goals conceded and several other near misses besides, they simply regressed back to the ugly mean we’ve seen for the last six months.
Tactically, this was in fact a re-run of the team’s other Easter fixture against Preston North End here, a game which finished two for nil declared to the visitors. Once again, a two-man central midfield in Hoops asked to go up against a physically stronger, far more talented, vastly more intelligent, and embarrassingly more effective midfield three on the other side — Ben Whiteman’s role as the outstanding player on the pitch will today be played by Gustavo Hamer. Not exactly a case for Hetty Wainthropp investigates this one is it? Fuck me. Last week one of the two was Stefan Johansen, turning in a performance you could present in evidence to the council for a blue badge so he can park closer to the doors at the big Tesco, and here it was Andre Dozzell, who was so completely and utterly anonymous that our photographer Ian Randall managing to capture this image of him doing any single fucking thing at all makes him a hot favourite for this year’s World Sports Photography Awards.
Overrun and overawed, QPR conceded after ten minutes. This, in itself, represented progress. Having conceded after one minute at Blackpool, two against Birmingham, six at Wigan and nine at West Brom, Gareth Ainsworth’s side had at least now made it to double figures. At that rate of progress they’ll keep a clean sheet again 46 games from now — Mansfield Town away, perhaps.
There was, however, nothing progressive about the manner of the goal. It came from a QPR throw in, in safe neutral territory a dozen yards the wrong side of the halfway line over on the South Africa Road side of the ground. Most teams would consider this odd, but QPR very sportingly return the ball to the opposition within two touches of every single throw in they ever have, in every game, anywhere on the pitch, at any stage of the match, and so it is always a possibility that one day one of them might do something with that. This time even two touches was ambitious — Jimmy Dunne cut the middle man out and simply heaved the ball down the line onto the head of Jake Bidwell who didn’t have a QPR player near him. His header back into midfield dropped invitingly between three: Kenneth Paal, Sam Field and Ilias Chair. There are no Coventry players in the picture at this point. QPR are about to turn this into a goal conceded. The three of them move for the same ball at the same time, all stop, and eventually Paal smacks it into Field’s shins and falls over. Now immediately three v three the other way all there was left for the visitors to do was have Hamer slip in the perfect ball for Viktor Gyokeres and he made it one nil with the utmost calm and composure. QPR’s big plan for dealing with the division’s second top scorer seemed to be allowing him to bend an arced run into the yawning chasm between centre back and full back on either side and let him have a free run at us whenever he felt like, presumably in the hope he’d eventually get bored of it and leave us alone.
West Brom now long since forgotten, what followed was really quite abject and embarrassing. A huge overload in numbers on 19 minutes could, perhaps should, have delivered a goal for Bidwell on his return to the Bush, but his unmarked back post volley went wide of the top corner. On 24, Gyokeres’ latest unchecked run through the valley of rank defensive incompetence put him in a very similar position to the one he’d scored from earlier, this time a desperate block kept the Hoops in the game and the deflection out to Bidwell once more was cleared away by weight of numbers.
Jimmy Dunne, and in particular Rob Dickie, seemed to be labouring under the misapprehension that Andy Sinton was playing for QPR on Saturday afternoon. Time after time after time after time one or the other of them drew back a boot, put laces through the ball, and planted it firmly into the seats under the camera gantry in the Ellerslie Road Stand. Anybody who sits in blocks T and V this season and dares to nurse a hot drink during the "action” is a far braver man than I. Andy Sinton would, to be fair, be a whole lot more mobile and useful to this team than Albert Adomah plodding around out there.
There were two moments of note for Gareth Ainsworth’s team before half time. Michael Salisbury - too incompetent to be trusted with a game in the precious "best league in the world” after torching last week’s Spurs v Brighton game even with the use of a video replay to help but apparently perfectly adequate for this game so crucial to both team’s chances - spent the final quarter hour of the first half fussing about and awarding QPR a collection of questionable 50/50 decisions which brought increasing ire from a packed away end and eventually a yellow card for Kyle McFadzean for refusing to leave the field for treatment when asked. Ilias Chair whipped one free kick over the bar from 25 yards, and drew a reasonably comfortable save from visiting keeper Ben Wilson up in the top corner with another from marginally closer in.
One more Rob Dickie boot into the side stand and that was the first stanza over with. Never mind a half time pint, I could have done with some half time smack.
As adverts for the Championship go, the first quarter hour of the second half will require a long time in the edit.
One minute in, Albert’s had a fall bless him. Maybe we should get him one of those panic buttons to wear on a string round his neck. Five minutes in, Callum Doyle booked for kicking the ball away — the visitors still behaving as if this game would require some dark arts and shithousing to grind out, though this delusion wouldn’t last much longer. Eight minutes in, a QPR corner, headed away by the first man (because of-fucking-course), and now off that one simple clearance an enormous counter attack where everybody that’s ever played for Coventry since the war was trundling through on goal unchecked with only Leon Balogun between them and Seny Dieng. Balogun committed a deliberate foul to end the move, and took a yellow card. It’s the first sensible thing anybody in our colours has done for half a year. Soon Salisbury was waving play on through a very obvious shirt pull on a Cov player allowing Ilias Chair to break, and then when he gave the ball away he once more completely ignored a blatant hand ball by the away side allowing them to break back themselves and win a free kick. A shambolic passage of football refereed by a wind up monkey banging a pair of plastic cymbals together.
I think my favourite bit was when QPR’s "high press” actually managed to pin and corner someone deep in their own territory by the corner flag. Let me tell you, it’s a dumb animal gets caught in that trap. The home crowd started to ironically cheer as Cov’s escape attempts got more frantic and apparently doomed to failure. Three passes later and Hamer, who spun one of those round the corner and then peeled away to join the attack himself, was having a shot at the other end blocked. Laughable if we weren’t so painfully invested in the outcome.
Rangers did, in their defence, go very close to an equaliser. Paal’s deep free kick to the back post was headed down by a combination of Dunne and Dykes. The ball bounced its way all the way back through the crowd and sat up perfectly for Sam Field to stride onto on the edge of the box. He caught the volley well, taking care to keep head and knee over the ball so as not to sky the thing, and it was well beaten back by Wilson who was on his way to a league-leading nineteenth clean sheet of the season. This fine meal represents the last of the petty cash. QPR would finish scoreless at home for the ninth time this season, the third game in succession, are now without a goal at the Loft End in seven games and have only scored four times at that end of the ground all campaign — two of them penalties.
Coventry went close to a second on 62 minutes when Dieng went for a walkabout for himself and Hamer’s attempted lob into the empty net missed by a distance; on 64 when industrious Matty Godden dragged a shot across the face of goal; on 65 when Hamer’s shot was deflected wide; on 67 when a three Cov players left all alone and unmarked ion the six yard box were belatedly flagged offside as the ball hit the net (did feel like the sort of goal we would concede to be honest with you); on 73 when Wilson shrugged off a warning about his constant and wholly unnecessary time wasting to kick off a set move down the middle of the park which carved QPR apart with staggering ease and Gyokeres cut the ball back looking for a team mate when he really should have been more selfish and taken the shot on.
Let’s do some of this week’s numbers now shall we? Jimmy Dunne, 33 passes attempted, 49% of them given away; Albert Adomah, 17 passes attempted, 53% of those off target; Leon Balogun, 22 passes attempted, 48% of them given away; Andre Dozzell (who you can at least usually rely on to not give the ball away) tried 35 passes on Saturday and found Coventry players with just shy of 40% of those; Stefan Johansen spent ten minutes on the field, tried four passes, and gave away two of them. If you add together the amount of times Chris Martin (20) and Lyndon Dykes (37) touched the ball, you get to the amount of influence Gyokeres (56) had on proceedings. Hamer had the ball 20 occasions more than Field or Dozzell. Two shots on target again, Coventry had five which is more than QPR have had in any of their last 20 games - 1, 2, 2, 2, 4, 4, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 3, 4, 2, 2, 3, 1, 2, 2. Clown car.
Ainsworth belatedly responded with a succession of straight swaps from the bench: Ethan Laird for Dunne, Chris Willock for Buster Merryfield, Old Man Johansen for Andre the Friendly Ghost; mystery man Taylor Richards for Ilias Chair (not popular with the natives that one, but Chair had been pony); and Jamal Lowe for Chris Martin. Tyler Roberts, back on the team sheet for the first time since January, came out at half time in full kit and did the sort of extensive warm up that usually means you’re coming on at half time, then disappeared entirely and wasn’t seen at all as his team "chased” the game in the second half. Honestly, if he got injured in the half time warm up, I am going to choose violence. The three v two in midfield remained. Mark Robins took one look at Laird’s pace over Dunne’s and immediately subbed Bidwell for Wilson-Ebrand. Laird, at one point, tried to rev the crowd up. If I speak, I am in trouble. Nothing changed whatsoever.
Actually, that’s not true. Coventry realised their clock running was a metaphorical waste of time as well as a literal one. There were more goals, and a comfortable win, here for the taking. The ones they scored to confirm that would shame the defence of a Highland League team.
Chris Willock’s "impact” from the bench consisted of him disappearing all the way up his own arsehole and attempting to escape from there by passing the ball straight to Luke McNally, which was jolly nice of him. Without a second thought — Coventry are one of those well-drilled sort of sides where the manager plans and coaches for things like this, bastards — McNally sent a glorious crossfield pass 60 yards down the pitch and off went fucking Gyokeres into that chasm down the left channel again. So flush with options once he arrived in the penalty box the visitors actually nearly made a complete mess of the chance — Gyokeres, Walker and Hamer should all really have scored before Hamer finally did stab home off Dieng’s desperate dive. Luckily for Mark Robins’ men you get all the time and chances you need with this defence — fully 15 seconds after McNally's pass, four shots, two blocks and a save later, and still City had more attackers in the QPR box than Rangers did defenders. The token efforts at tracking back were despicable. In amongst it all, a season ending hamstring injury for Leon Balogun off a nonsense lunge — tea at the training ground again this week mate? What a signing that's been.
You take a second shit of the day, it's never a good one. Taylor Richards decided now was the time for circus tricks. Into the Coventry half he trundled, stepping over the ball left and right. Idiot. Sheaf watched him come, watched his feet, wondered what on God’s green earth he thought he was doing, took the ball from him calmly, and played a far more effective straight, accurate pass back the other way into the space behind him. Hamer: space, channel, cross. Gyokeres: space, channel, goal. A full 17% of the Swede’s goals this season have come against QPR, I’m surprised he hasn’t wanked himself to death at the thought of playing against this defence.
In a rare player interview after a defeat, Chris Martin, among other observations about it being a quiet side compared to ones he’s played in before, said: "We need to have honest conversations with each other and with ourselves. How dedicated are we off the pitch?” Hmmmm.
Four games left. Four games too many. Four games too many for the league table, where Rangers are now separated from the drop zone by a single point with 12 still to play for. And four games too many for the poor sods who spend their time paying to watch this incompetent slop. Absolutely fucking abysmal.
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QPR: Dieng 4; Dunne 3 (Laird 73, 4), Dickie 3, Balogun 3, Paal 3; Adomah 3 (Willock 72, 3), Dozzell 2 (Johansen 82, -), Field 5, Chair 4 (Richards 65, 4); Martin 3 (Lowe 72, 3), Dykes 4
Subs not used: Roberts, Archer
Yellow Cards: Balogun 54 (foul)
Coventry: Wilson 7; McNally 7, McFadzean 7, Doyle 6; Norton-Cuffy 6 (Dabo 76, 6), Hamer 8, Sheaf 7, Eccles 7 (Maguire 90, -), Bidwell 6 (Wilson-Esbrand 77, 7); Gyokeres 8, Godden 6 (Walker 77, 6)
Subs not used: Panzo, Howley, Tyler
Goals: Gyokeres 10 (assisted Hamer), 88 assisted Hamer), Hamer 86 (unassisted)
Yellow Cards: McFadzean 34 (dissent/refusing to leave field), Eccles 45+3 (foul), Doyle 52 (kicking ball away)
QPR Star Man — David Pizanti
Referee — Michael Salisbury (Lancashire) 5 I think it’s a mistake, and disrespectful, to punish Premier League referees for their failures in that league by parachuting them into ours, especially into games with a lot riding on them. He was much as he was when he refereed at this level — too involved, fussing about, losing control of the game. Nothing major wrong, but some pretty obvious mistakes, poor game management and general arseholery throughout. Stoppage time for both halves plucked from thin air and bearing no relation to what had happened over the 45.
Attendance 16,713 (3,100 Cov approx.) Madheads.
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Pictures — Ian Randall Photography
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