Liverpool inflicted a miserable end to a dreadful year on a hapless QPR side at Loftus Road on Sunday, scoring three without reply and spurning the chance to bag at least the same again.
On Sunday Loftus Road echoed to the unmistakeable cracking sound of camels’ backs laden with straw. Some could stand it no longer at half time while others didn’t even last that long. People threw what they could lay their hands on – programmes, tickets, a replica shirt in one case – and booed. There was a feeling of helplessness among the long suffering massed ranks of the home support.
QPR could be forgiven for conceding two goals to the mercurial Luis Suarez who was in perpetual motion and simply far too good for anything Rangers had to offer - the only surprise in the end was that the Uruguayan didn’t score more as his performance warranted a four or five goal haul - but a lot of what took place under the leaden West London skies on Sunday afternoon was not forgivable at all.
Suarez, and the similarly excellent Steven Gerrard, you expect to be difficult opponents, but QPR even struggled to cope with the more meagre talents of Jordan Henderson – previously considered one of the division’s most expensive flops but made to look like the answer to all England’s midfield worries here after being afforded the freedom of W12 to do as he pleased. And while you don’t mind – relatively speaking – if Suarez makes an absolute fool out of an honest old pro like Clint Hill and scores a fine goal, when he’s allowed to stand completely unattended in the centre of the penalty box waiting for a corner to be taken with almost the entire Loft End on its feet pointing at him and screaming at the defenders to do something about it that’s simply not good enough.
I coped with all that reasonably well actually: I got to half time; I watched the three Liverpool goals; I sat and said nothing as Liverpool supporters – some brazenly dressed in their replica shirts – celebrated in the home stands with tickets purchased from the club’s “official ticket partners” Viagogo; I even resisted the urge to tear my seat out of its moorings and hurl it towards the playing surface when a rare chance to put a ball into a crowded penalty box from a corner in the second half was spurned in favour of a chipped delivery out to Shaun Wright-Phillips who then allowed it to run under his foot and set Liverpool away on another counter attack.
I’ve watched this all season in mostly decent humour and always gone back for more. I said nothing to anybody when the club awarded me the Supporter of the Year trophy, took the positive PR that came with giving that to a third generation QPR fanatic with a surname hundreds of people in the support base know because of my late father, but then didn’t actually get round to presenting me with the award itself. I even offered to just go down to the ground one afternoon and pick it up, no need for a presentation or anything, just so I could have something to place next to the same award that my dad won in 1998, nine months before his death. But, again, they hadn’t quite got round to purchasing some £30 trophy from Shepherds Bush Market yet so I decided to leave it.
I also said nothing when I spent several days earlier this season putting together an application for a job at the club for which I was well qualified and ticked every box on the job advert. An application which didn’t even warrant an interview, or even a “thanks but no thanks” reply until I chased it up after seeing via Twitter that they were already onto a second round of meeting with other candidates.
‘Self important, self indulgent prick’ you may think, and you’re probably right, but those two incidents are just a couple of a thousand microcosms of what QPR is at the moment: it’s a club that talks a good game, and cannot deliver; it’s a club that currently has a fundamental lack of footballing knowledge in the boardroom, resulting in a massively flawed squad building and managerial recruitment strategy; it’s a club with a total lack understanding of its own support base, what it means to be a QPR fan, what’s important to those who go to Loftus Road every week and what isn’t.
And I’m saying all this now because Esteban Granero put the last piece of straw on my back yesterday afternoon when he strode onto the field as a second half substitute, marched immediately to a previously awarded free kick on the edge of the area, made Adel Taarabt – who has already done more for QPR than Granero is likely to in his lifetime – step aside and then duffed a pathetic scuffed shot well wide of the post. Later, when another free kick was awarded in the same place, Granero showed no interest, Taarabt walked away and so we had another farcical situation where Stephane Mbia – God love him but he can’t shoot – took a direct free kick while Ryan Nelsen stood in the penalty area screaming at his team mates that the situation was tailor made for Taarabt and they were behaving like little children.
It was at that moment, when Granero mooched away from his failed shot, that I stopped standing up and yelling and to a large degree stopped caring. QPR is not any kind of football club at the moment. It’s sort of a mixture between a cash cow for Mark Hughes and his friends, Kia Joorabchian and his overpaid, underworked, over rated clients, and an advertising vehicle for faraway airlines and businesses. A club that cannot even find 18,000 people to come and watch it without resorting to marquee Korean signings and the subsequent tourist trade (Ji Sung Park currently leads the online vote for Player of the Month by the way despite him only playing for 45 minutes v Aston Villa on December 1) and Liverpool supporters in the home end.
QPR is not actually a likeable club any more. Even if it had a team that won every now and again it’s a club whose positive points can be counted on the fingers of one hand. It’s a club that after everything that has happened this season so far thinks season ticket holders should pay £25 (plus £3.50 booking fee) this Saturday to watch an FA Cup game with West Brom. I found myself hoping Liverpool scored more in this game, partly because Suarez was so wonderful I wanted to see him go home with the matchball, but mainly because QPR deserved a good hiding. They deserved everything they got here and more, both for the way they played on the day and the manner in which they’re approaching their work on and off the field in general. They were an embarrassment to the good, loyal people who keep turning up and wanting the best for their team only to be repeatedly treated poorly. This was a shambles, a nadir of a dreadful season so far, and for a great many QPR fans who’ve been going to Loftus Road for decades it was too much to bear.
You’ll forgive me I hope, on New Year’s Eve, if I rattle through the facts of the matter quite quickly from here. Harry Redknapp – who surely would never have taken the job on had he been aware of just what a rotten state the club is in – was able to return Nelsen to the defence alongside Hill after a bout of flu. Nedum Onuoha also returned at right back after injury and was one of the few to emerge with any credit from the match for at least keeping a grip on former R’s trainee Raheem Sterling. Julio Cesar was recalled in goal suggesting that, for all Redknapp’s public support of Robert Green and lambasting of Chris Foy over the controversial second West Brom goal on Boxing Day, he too thought it was a dreadful piece of goalkeeping. Armand Traore was, ostensibly, the left back. In midfield Rangers tried to counter the threat of Sterling and Gerrard with a pairing of Stephane Mbia and Samba Diakite, but both were miles off the pace and totally overrun with Diakite in particular unable to produce a single piece of positive play to affect the match. Jamie Mackie started on one wing, Adel Taarabt played off Djibril Cisse in attack, and after several weeks of improvement Shaun Wright-Phillips’ form took a cliff tumble from the left flank. He, like Diakite, couldn’t stand up for falling down.
Mbia may have been slightly more use had he not spent the entire match diving pathetically to the floor and feigning injury under minimal, or sometimes non-existent, contact. This began as early as the second minute and when referee Anthony Taylor rightly ignored his pleas for a free kick Suarez tested Cesar with the first shot and the Brazilian keeper was lucky that Joe Allen – recalled to the Liverpool midfield – scuffed the rebound wide after the ball was spilled out to him.
At the School End Jamie Mackie almost latched onto a through ball from Taarabt but was offside in any case. That was about the only piece of possession QPR had in the first ten minutes and rarely has a goal felt as inevitable as Suarez’s ninth minute opener, cooly finished after tricking Clint Hill with speed and skill on the edge of the box. Five minutes later it was two, Suarez again revelling in the wide open spaces of the QPR penalty area and finishing well from an acute angle after his initial cross had bounced back to him off a defender. It was like shelling peas.
Mbia had play stopped for treatment on a mythical facial injury after another shameful piece of play acting in the nineteenth minute, but did win a free kick on the edge of the area a moment later which Taarabt drilled into the wall. Taylor turned down half-hearted appeals for a handball penalty.
At the midway point of the half Glen Johnson – an obvious threat as anybody who watched Liverpool’s recent win at West Ham could have identified – accelerated into an acre of space down the right and whipped in a dangerous low cross that Ryan Nelsen turned over his own bar from close range. Rangers left Steven Gerrard unmarked from the resulting corner and Cesar needed to make a smart, if slightly nervous and unorthodox, save to deny him.
Three minutes later, with lessons not learnt, Rangers allowed a two on one situation to develop from a short corner and then left centre back Daniel Agger unmarked in the centre of the goal and he notched the third goal with a firm downward header that Cesar may have done better with. Two minutes after that, with lessons not learnt, Rangers allowed a two on one situation to develop from a short corner and then left central midfielder Jordan Henderson unmarked in the centre of the goal but he shot wide. Five minutes after that, more space for Suarez in a wide area, a further penalty box farce after he cut the ball back, and Nelsen had to clear Gerrard’s shot off the line. Gerrard then shot over after Taylor allowed Enrique to play on after what appeared to be a deliberate hand ball.
Two weak long range shots – one at the keeper, one wide – from Adel Taarabt were all Rangers had to show for their first half “efforts” and rarely has a QPR team deserved to be booed at half time quite as much as this one. Outclassed is acceptable, but this was so much worse than that.
Harry Redknapp knew it as well. He took off Djibril Cisse at half time and threw on Shaun Derry, an old hand to sit in front of the back four and try and stop the tide of possession Liverpool had enjoyed in the gap between the midfield and back four. The tide was stemmed, but this was more down to Liverpool putting the cue on the rack. If I was a Scouser I’d actually be quite annoyed at this second half performance, because this could and should have been pretty much any score they liked. Credit to Cesar for a fabulous save four minutes into the half as Suarez wriggled free again but a better team would have run the sword a little bit deeper given the same situation – Liverpool, easy to forget, were tenth at the start of play.
I actually saw more in the second half to upset me than the first in many ways. The Granero free kick primarily, but also after 50 minutes a set piece worked short by Taarabt and Traore after a foul by Joe Allen for which he really should have been booked which resulted in a cross into a penalty area populated by Jamie Mackie and six Liverpool players. One v six for an attacking free kick when QPR were, presumably, meant to be chasing the game.
Normal service was quickly restored as Samba Diakite – heavy legged, off the pace, patently low on confidence – sloppily lost possession in his own half and Suarez crossed for Gerrard who came steaming in but was an inch too short to power home a close range fourth. A corner was awarded for that, and with lessons not learnt Rangers left Jordan Henderson unmarked in the middle of the goal and he met the ball at the near post with a shot that flew over the bar. Mindblowing. Basic stuff this.
Mbia was then yellow carded for diving, and much like the Liverpool goals there was a masochistic part of me that enjoyed seeing it. Taylor rightly pointed out that it was the third or fourth occasion he’d fallen to the ground theatrically and the yellow was richly deserved.
Jamie Mackie’s positive run into the area set Traore up for a shot that he dragged across the face of the goal, and then Taarabt hit a low shot at Pepe Reina to hint at a revival but then there was the Wright-Phillips miscontrol on the edge of the area from a Rangers corner quickly followed by Granero’s free kick after he’d replaced the hapless Diakite and many took that as their excuse to head home, with half an hour still left to play.
Granero further endeared himself to the home fans by interrupting a rare Rangers attack to kick the ball out of play because Jose Enrique had sort of pulled up with a bit of cramp. Words fail me on that one I’m afraid but, credit where it’s due, a Shaun Derry interception midway through the second period did spark a neat five pass move through to the area and Mbia curled a shot a yard or so wide. That was better.
Wright-Phillips was booed as he left the field to be replaced by Fabio, and Anthony Taylor was cheered for finally producing a yellow card for Lucas Leiva after two quick fire fouls on Taarabt moments after he’d generously let Allen off again for kicking the ball away down the field a long time after the whistle had blown. The Leiva free kick only created another opportunity for an argument over the taker though and although Mbia had earlier tested Reina with a shot the Spanish keeper needed two attempts to hold, he was way off target with the set piece and I took that as my cue to leave with five minutes left on the watch.
I’ll pre-empt some criticism now if I may. LoftforWords is a site that gives supporters a chance to air their views. I write most of the stuff, and while I try and do so as neutrally as possible I am, at the end of the day, a dyed in the wool Queens Park Rangers supporter. I go over the top when QPR win, I get all melodramatic when QPR lose, but all I ever do is say it as honestly as I can from what I’ve seen having been to the match and spoken to other supporters and set it in the context of however many other thousands of games I’ve seen since I started coming to Loftus Road as a small lad. I’m not for one moment going to say that these are the worst QPR players I’ve ever seen because they’re obviously not – although pound for pound they probably are given their wage packets – or that this was the worst performance I’ve ever seen, or even the worst performance this season.
Yes, I could be more positive about the situation – eight points behind, 56 points left to play for, nine wins needed, it’s still doable however unlikely that may seem. Yes, I said Rangers would be relegated last season, and they weren’t. Yes, I probably am a little bit bitter about how I’ve been treated on a couple of occasions by the club this season – although judging by the recent Tweet from club sponsor Apex Car Rental to Tony Fernandes I’m not alone in that.
But, I’m afraid, that’s how I see it tonight, the final night of 2012 which has been the worst year of my QPR supporting life. Whatever lies in store in 2013 it begins with a trip to Chelsea on Wednesday, followed by a home match with West Brom on Saturday for which I’ve paid just shy of £90 to attend. This game, wherever you feel it lies on the all time list of disasters, felt like a big moment for many supporters and it needs to be exactly that for the club as well. QPR needs to remember who it is, what it is, and start working towards becoming that again. It needs to be a club that people like me are you are proud to support. At the moment it’s not even a club I like very much.
They’ll win at Chelsea now of course. Happy New Year.
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QPR: Cesar 4, Onuoha 6, Nelsen 5, Hill 3, Traore 3, Wright-Phillips 2 (Da Silva 80, -), Diakite 2 (Granero 63, 3), Mbia 3, Mackie 4, Taarabt 4, Cisse 2 (Derry 46, 6)
Subs not used: Green, Ferdinand, Faurlin, Hoilett
Bookings: Mbia 56 (diving), Da Silva 90 (foul)
Liverpool: Reina 6, Johnson 7, Agger 7, Skrtl 7, Enrique 6 (Suso 71, 6), Allen 7 (Carragher 87, -), Henderson 8 (Lucas 64, 6), Gerrard 8, Downing 7, Sterling 6, Suarez 9
Subs not used: Gulacsi, Coates, Shelvey, Assaidi
Goals: Suarez 10 (assisted Henderson), 16 (assisted Downing), Agger 28 (assisted Gerrard)
Bookings: Leiva 82 (foul)
QPR Star Man – Nedum Onuoha 6 Very tempted to just put this down as not applicable but I felt Onuoha deserved credit. He’s had a tough time in his personal life, and has been very poor for QPR since arriving, but selected out of position at right back again here he had a job to do on Sterling and did it reasonably well. He can at least look himself in the mirror knowing he did what he was asked to do.
Referee – Anthony Taylor (Manchester) 7 Very little to referee in such an uncompetitive game. I thought he called the Mbia simulation card exactly right and should have produced a card sooner, but was rather generous with Joe Allen all afternoon and might have given a foul on Adel Taarabt in the area more consideration than he did – would have been a soft one though.
Attendance 18,303 (3,200 Liverpool approx) Now we’ve all had to sit in a home end before as an away fan – behind enemy lines and all that – so I don’t begrudge Liverpool fans who couldn’t get tickets in the away end doing that, but there is an etiquette to observe in such situations. Wearing colours, for a start, is a no-no and you certainly shouldn’t be openly celebrating the goals as they go in. That there were Liverpool fans doing this presumably thanks to Viagogo – a ticketing agency promoted by the club selling match tickets above face value – sticks in the craw somewhat. That there were some doing it in the Lower Loft, where several QPR fans who’d had a season ticket there for many years were forced to move in the summer and have found it difficult to purchase tickets there ever since because of the draconian ‘family stand’ rules the club have imposed, is simply not good enough and needs looking at.
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