QPR’s work in progress heads to Sheff Utd on Saturday, a game perhaps the whole division would have relished having a swing at a few weeks ago but now a daunting prospect after a rush of transfer activity in the Steel City.
Sky’s Super Saturday Brunch Spectacular >>> Saturday August 17, 2024 >>> Kick Off 15.00 >>> Weather – Sunny and Breezy >>> Bramall Lane, Sheffield
The problem with LFW – well, one of the problems – is it’s turned my hobby into my job.
The start of a new season, which used to bring me such joy and excitement, now builds into something approaching existential dread as the prospect looms of a 40,000 word season preview nobody reads. Four goal home defeats to Blackburn you never want to think about again as long as you live instead have to be dissected the following day. Wins by a similar scoreline against Leeds which should be marked by putting all the pounds in all the jars at Browns until the wee small hours are instead spent crawling out of bed to crop and edit 120 photographs.
This is never more true than when QPR are making signings – something which they do a lot.
The point at which a signing is made is one of tremendous opportunity, because it’s an entirely clean slate. They haven’t cried off games with spurious injuries yet, they haven’t ruined your entire weekend with a last minute own goal at Blackpool, they haven’t gone on the Chelsea podcast, they haven’t disrupted the dressing room, you haven’t heard any pub chat about what an absolute 64 carat bellend they are around the place. What they’ve done at previous clubs doesn’t have to matter, because Jake Clark-Salter and Jimmy Dunne arrived here with middling reviews from their loan spells, Lucas Andersen had just been injured and relegated in that order, while Taylor Richards had been signed by Man City and Brighton. Sometimes the unheralded – Clint Hill, Shaun Derry – far outstrip the surefire things, like Steven Caulker. Who would have tipped Jamie Mackie for cult hero status when he first arrived here for a few hundred grand from a relegated Plymouth team?
With every new arrival it’s impossible to supress that childish, Christmas Eve glee at what this could become. I dare say we even thought Daniel Toszer might be Ale Faurlin reincarnated at one point. Jordan Cousins was "pound for piund the best signing in the Championship this summer”. I’ve lost count of the amount of times somebody’s neat finish in an early pre-season game reminded somebody a bit of Clive Allen, and the "remember what Les was like when he first started” gets an outing on our message board almost as much as the suggestion you could increase Loftus Road’s capacity by digging the thing down into the ground (and the water table).
The point the signing is made is the point of maximum excitement, and when you look at somebody like Karamoko Dembele how can you not get excited? Little. Tricky. Quick. Unorthodox. Unexpected. He’s a bit of us. And he played for Blackpool last season, where QPR have an astonishingly high success rate for a club which tends to shit the bed with four of every five purchases. Trevor Sinclair, Bright Osayi-Samuel, Kaspars Gorkss, Clarke Carlisle – no tat from the seaside for us. Wouldn’t it be nice to stop writing "the team has lacked pace since Osayi-Samuel left” and for it to be another Bloomfield Road alum who solved the problem? He looks like my kind of player. I want to go to the football and be excited, and he looks somebody who can do that for me. Cannot wait to see him.
And, yet, like I say, the problem with LFW is…
After such ‘bold takes’ as "Caulker is such a fail-safe signing even QPR can’t mess this up” I do feel duty bound to cover my arse a bit and say a few things about our recruitment so far this summer which may trouble us down the track.
The first is a pretty obvious physicality issue.
As pointed out by Andrew Scherer in his analytics piece covering last season, there was clearly a very obvious pragmatic pivot by Cifuentes, when the team was conceding from set plays for fun, towards a taller, more physically aggressive side. We subsequently went from the worst team in the division for both attacking and defensive set pieces to the best over the remaining games. Now, a Cruyffian disciple like Marti Cifuentes wouldn’t ideally have Jimmy Dunne at right back so the keeper can knock long balls out to that side, nor a midfield made up of Sam Field, Isaac Hayden and Jack Colback, and we spent the summer wondering whether they’d just decided this was the Championship and they had to be pragmatic, or whether it would be back to idealism with a full pre-season and transfer window. Overall, the recruits – Hevertton Santos the Championship right back? – suggest very much the latter. Koki Saito and Dembele could realistically pull off that trick where they get into the cinema on one ticket standing on each others’ shoulders under a long coat. How that plays out on the field remains to be seen, but West Brom scored from three crosses last week and Harry Souttar looms large (very large) at Sheff Utd corners tomorrow.
The second is a Championship experience problem.
Now, much of the time I think it’s overblown just what a deeply sophisticated and difficult league this is to play in. People furrow their brows and shift their worry beads awkwardly as they stress the intricate complexities of a division which those Stoke and Millwall teams comfortably managed to stay in. It’s frequently painted as one of the most challenging, exciting, competitive leagues in Europe and, well, I say again, just look at some of the teams that stayed up last year and how they did it. The idea Johnny Foreigner could never possibly cope with it is dispelled immediately just by looking down the top goalscorer lists from the last few seasons. Nevertheless, I’ll concede it is a challenging league logistically. A 46 game season crammed in with two cup competitions presents a physical challenge. QPR, for the second year running, have a week where they play Hull and Plymouth away within four days. The R’s have struggled, for years now, with game three in a three game week, particularly when that game is not at Loftus Road – the so-called "away fatigued” games. Last season we won only two out of 11 when it’s game three in a three-game week, and it’s three out of 17 and five out of 27 if you take it back further through the reigns of Ainsworth, Critchley, Beale and Warburton.
Dembele will be used to this level of action having played at Blackpool, where they come into the FA Cup at the first round and have the EFL Trophy farce thrown in there, but it’s a simple fact that Celar, Varane, Saito, Nardi, Morrison, Bennie, Santos… this profile of signing is not used to this. This stat is skewed somewhat by Begovic playing 45 games last year - and a bit rich of me to bring up given I coated him off throughout, wasn’t that keen on Chris Willock either and most of the players who make up these numbers are crap and we’re well shot of (Dozzell) - but this summer QPR have lost 156 starts and 98 sub appearances from last year’s team for a total of 15,421 minutes. They’ve so far replaced them with eight players whose career Championship experience amounts collectively to zero minutes.
As Ryan Manning showed, nothing makes you a brilliant player for QPR like not playing for QPR. The more you sit out, the more you become the answer. Lo it came to pass that we spent much of Tuesday night’s train journey back from Cambridge talking about Isaac Hayden who, at 29 and an extortionate Newcastle wage, generally isn’t the sort of player QPR should be signing, but nevertheless did make a big difference to us in both football and voice through our pragmatic third third of last season. It’s notable Sheff Wed, who have been a mirror image of us over the last 15 months, have combined their trendy acquisitions of wingers who scored 14 times in the Polish second division last year with… Nathaniel Chalobah. Oxford, who spent the summer loading up on podcaster favourites like Louie Sibley, Jack Currie and Peter Kioso, also found room and wage for Will Vaulks and Matt Phillips. Do I like those signings? No. Would I want them here? No – well, Vaulks maybe. But I think it speaks to a balance so far lacking in QPR’s summer recruitment which has been exclusively European and analytics led.
Here's all the mitigation.
Saito and Dembele may be 5ft 6ins apiece but one of them plays Ilias Chair’s position, over whose booster seat they can fight for on the coach up to Sheffield, and the other is replacing Chris Willock, who’s never headed a football in his life and would probably find a way to snap his hamstring if he ever attempted it.
By prioritising Gareth’s culture guardians last summer we are layering these players onto an existing base that is both physical and extremely well versed in the whys and wherefores of the Championship – Dunne, Cook, Clarke-Salter, Field, Colback and Chair is very good spine around which to hang trinkets. This is not Paladini adding Monday Oliseh, Adam Czerkas, Armel Tchakounte and others onto a team that was essentially Lee Cook and Dexter Blackstock versus the world.
There’s still window left in which we may well add a Hayden type, particularly as the Premier League clubs get close to the deadline and naming their 25-man squads and start loaning people out.
And we’re not the only club in this situation. In a league dominated by parachute payments – as we may get a chastening reminder of tomorrow – clubs in our boat are increasingly making use of the changed foreign imports regulations to shop in exactly the sort of places we’ve been buying from this window. Belgium, Switzerland, Japan, Scandi, second divisions in Spain and France… nearly 40% of the Championship’s input so far this summer has come from abroad, and from less fashionable leagues at that. Look at Swansea’s incomings so far…
Ins >>> Goncalo Franco, 23, CM, Moreirense, £2m >>> Ji-sung Eom, 22, LW, Gwangju FC, £1m >>> Zan Viptonik, 22, CF, Bordeaux, Free >>> Lawrence Vigouroux, 30, GK, Burnley, Undisclosed
Blackburn have just sold Sammie Szmodics and replaced him with strikers in their late 20s from the Jupiler League and J-League. Analytics rules in the second tier now, and this is where the OnlyBallers subscribers find value.
I think you can probably tell I’d quite like a Hayden type (Hayden’s available) between now and the end of the month. We’ve looked, in both games so far, still like that team that’s been through a horrible couple of years, very fragile, and easily knocked off balance with slight setbacks. Josh Maja’s equaliser against the run of play, and Cambridge pulling one back, needn’t have provoked the meltdowns we produced in both cases. Sam Field taking short cuts on Tuesday night, looking for cheap free kicks from a referee who’d made a real point of not giving those things, was fairly indicative for me.
Overall, I’m very happy with what we’ve done recruitment wise so far. I’m terrifically excited about the two newcomers this week in particular, and it would be nice to go to Loftus Road and just enjoy the football again – Saito and Dembele have the potential to really provide that, teaming up with Chair and/or Andersen behind a striker. I’ve spent the last decade on LFW saying these are the sort of signings we should be making, and the sort of recruitment operation we should be running, not buying players because Gary Penrice knows the agent, or Mark Warburton worked with his dad in Watford’s academy. We were getting left behind by other clubs our size who were doing this a lot smarter than we were.
It will take time though. No surprise to hear Cifuentes saying that about both Saito and Dembele this week, and not just because all managers say the same thing because they know a few defeats in a row cost them their job.
If you’re one of these who’s "seen enough” of Zan Celar after one start and a few friendlies then you’ve come to the wrong show I’m afraid.
Links >>> Blades’ big start – Oppo profile >>> Warnock’s statement of intent – History >>> Backhouse in charge – Referee >>> Saito and Dembele arrive – Signing >>> Sheffield United official website >>> Bramall Lane ground guide >>> Sheff Utd Way – Contributor’s YouTube Channel and Pod >>> The Shoreham View — YouTube channel >>> S2 4SU — Message Board >>> Sheffield Star — Local Press
Team News: QPR continue to miss star man Ilias Chair, who hasn’t featured since the initial pre-season games out in Spain. The problem has now been disclosed as a bone bruise in his lower back and Marti Cifuentes told West London Sport he expects to be able to put a firm date on his return after some test results come back today. There has been some speculation Chair’s sudden unavailability after four years of virtual ever present attendance (43 starts last season, 40 the year before, 41, 45) hint at a departure before the transfer deadline, but Cifuentes has made him vice captain and says "He is a very important player for us and we want him to stay. He knows that and I’m sure that he will stay here.”
QPR await international clearance for Japanese left sider Koki Saito, so we’re presumably picking from Rayan Kolli or Alfie Lloyd out there again in Chair’s absence. Karamoko Dembele has more chance of starting wide right, though Paul Smyth did score at Cambridge so maybe he could be an option to switch sides. Michy Frey did his chances of a start no harm with a goal at Cambridge, his second for the club and first since February. Jack Colback and Steve Cook sat out the cup tie but will almost certainly return here. Still no sign of Reggie Cannon amidst ongoing legal wranglings about his move from Boavista.
Sheff Utd got Palace winger Jesuran Rak-Sakyi’s loan deal over the line in time for the midday deadline, so he can play tomorrow. QPR had been really keen on him but (rightly) baulked at a £1m loan fee that has apparently now ballooned out to £2m rising to £4m (just to borrow him) amid interest from Leeds. As Burnley pocket £40m (with £10m add ons) for a 19-year-old they signed for £3m a year ago it’s another indication of exactly what QPR, their manager and their recruitment team are up against in this league now. Worth bearing in mind if it does all go to shit tomorrow afternoon.
Sheff Utd had a real clear out this summer with 15 players out including some big fees received for Cameron Archer (£15m), William Osula (£10m) and Jayden Bogle (£5m) and a number of stalwarts of this team for the last few years all departing (Oli Norwood, Chris Basham, John Egan, League One Wes). That looked to have left them well short going into the new campaign but their transfer activity has stepped up significantly in recent days. Callum O’Hare has been re-teamed with his Coventry partner in crime Gustavo Hamer behind striker Kieffer Moore. Half the division wanted Harrison Burrows from Peterborough down the left, and our former loanee Sam McCallum has also signed on that side. Plymouth keeper Michael Cooper is something of a steal at £2m while in the loan market giant Leicester defender Harry Souttar will be a permanent pest at set pieces and he’s been joined by Chelsea’s Alfie Gilchrist (one of the dozen nicked out of QPR’s academy by Premier League puppy farms) and Palace’s Jesuran Rak-Sakyi.
Elsewhere: If you thought our cup draw at home to Luton, four days before we play Luton in the league, was uninspiring, then check out Coventry’s start to the season. Having won 1-0 at Bristol City in the cup during the week they go back to Ashton Gate in the league next Saturday. Their reward for that cup win is a home game with Oxford, who they also play tonight in the Championship.
Sky’s massacre of this year’s fixture list sees another three matches moved to 12.30 tomorrow to compete against each other on the same broadcaster. Obviously Leeds are among those, heading to West Brom. The Baggies are apparently on the verge of adding Tom Cannon to an already good looking side, while our pre-season tip of Leeds for the title is so far having exactly the effect we intended with a full ‘won’t somebody please think of the children’ flap in progress at Elland Road. Fortunate to escape from an opening day home game with newly promoted Pompey with a 3-3 having gone behind deep into stoppage time, they’ve now lost Georgiono Rutter to Brighton (£40m release clause on a player you spent £35m on, shrewd stuff guys) and there’s talk that an even more favourable contract clause may yet see Mateo Joseph picked off before the deadline. Cue many emergency podcasts and, if you needed to squirt beer out of your nose in uproarious laughter, the supporters trust has waded in all earnestly like.
We’ve been in ongoing discussions with the club about Georgie’s situation. pic.twitter.com/BHHYfcjADW— LUFC Trust (@lufctrust) August 15, 2024
"Georgie”.
Fuck me to death.
Portsmouth get to follow that creditable point up with a home swing at Luton who were fairly well battered by Burnley on Monday, while Boro follow up their 3-0 cup win away to the "champions of Europe” with a trip to Derby. The Rams, along with Plymouth, easily the worst teams from the opening round of fixtures.
Seven games privileged enough to land in the traditional 15.00 Saturday kick off slot. It’s almost like there’s something the broadcasters deem more important kicking off this weekend. They include Burnley, who scored four at Kenilworth Road to start with and have today fetched in another £40m for a teenager they spent £3m on a year ago. Scott Parker will surely walk the third promotion of his career with this squad, and it’s Cardiff in the firing line at Turf Moor.
There are intriguing opening day storylines in all of the fixtures we’re yet to mention.
Bristol City got a point at Hull. Their punt on a continental striker, Fally Mayulu, made a really impressive start. Scott Twine is a great pick up on a four year deal today. I think the Robins could push for the play-offs and they now go in at home to Millwall, who were abysmal in defeat to Watford and really do look like they’re gearing up for a big, thick, Neil Harris push to finish 20th. Bristol City 0-1 Millwall (Cooper 74).
Blackburn, who we had in the bottom three, and thought would "try to nil nil their way out of this under John Eustace”, scored four against a lousy Derby side, six at a very decent Stockport team in midweek, and now have a third act at Norwich who lost at relegation favs Oxford.
Wayne Rooney’s Plymouth were everything we expected Wayne Rooney’s Plymouth to be and more in a 4-0 opening dayer at Hillsborough. Hull are still well underdone recruitment wise. Genuinely fascinated to see how that goes down at Home Park.
Preston have dispensed with Ryan Lowe after a game. Deep sigh. A parting of the ways that could, perhaps should, have happened last December when we won there. Instead they’ve allowed it to fester through two more transfer windows in which they’ve failed to recruit a wing back for either side of Lowe’s wing back formation (six transfer windows and counting, still Brad Potts playing there), and an entire summer in which most of the budget is presumably now spent. The shortlist for the job apparently includes Alex Neil, Brian Barry-Murphy, John Eustace, Scott Lindsey, Paul Gallagher and Gary Rowett, which feels rather more like "who have you got in your WhatsApp contacts?” than "what direction do we want the club to go in now?”. Watch out for them potentially picking up a few results though, Swansea away tomorrow – those players fucking hated him.
Two of the dark horses got to work right away on day one. Sunderland won 2-0 at Cardiff (Willock lasted 78 minutes – so ruddy, bloody brave) while Danny Rohl’s Wednesday ran a pork sword so large through the back traps of Plymouth Argyle I was surprised I didn’t spend the whole afternoon closing down LiveJasmin pop-ups just to watch it. They face each other at the Stadium of Light over Sunday breakfast.
And of course no surprise to see England manager Sven Goran Eriksson in the crowd.
Referee: Anthony Backhouse from Carlisle is the man in the middle for this one. He last refereed QPR at Middlesbrough back in 2019 as a substitute for main referee Andy Madley. His only previous Sheff Utd appointment was a 2-1 win against Derby in the League Cup in August 2021. Details.
Sheff Utd: The Blades were horrific last season. Having sold star pair Iliman Ndiaye and Sande Berge immediately after winning promotion, they finished last in the Premier League with just 16 points – another 16 adrift of safety. They won only three games of 38 played, scored just 35 goals in those games and conceded 104 for a -69 goal difference. They conceded eight against Newcastle, six to Arsenal, five against Arsenal, Burnley, Villa, Brighton twice and Newcastle, four against Man Utd and Burnley. THEN THE LARGE WOMEN AGAIN. At Bramall Lane they won two, drew four, lost 13, scored 19 and conceded 57. Wolves and Brentford were the only teams they beat at home, Luton their only away win, and they finished with seven straight defeats and no wins in the final 14 fixtures.
We might, therefore, be about to get another indication of just how much parachute payments skew the Championship, because Chris Wilder’s sides have started this season like they’ve never been away. A 2-0 away win on opening night at Preston was followed by a 4-2 cup win over big spending League One circus Wrexham. It’s the first time they’ve won consecutive games since April 2023.
This week’s opposition striker in need of a bit of QPR in his life is Rhian Brewster. His missed penalty in the midweek cup win against Wrexham means it’s 20 appearances since he last scored, way back the season before last, October 2022, in a 3-1 away defeat to Stoke. That’s his only goal in 34 appearances going back to January 2022, and his overall Sheff Utd record is five goals in 79 appearances since the Blades bought him for £23.5m in 2020.
In 2023-24, only one player had more league goal involvements while aged 21 or under in the @EFL than Karamoko Dembélé (21 - 8 goals, 13 assists).
🔵#QPR⚪️ pic.twitter.com/HW4iIy8RmE— Jack Supple (@JTSupple) August 13, 2024
QPR: Rangers’ 3-1 defeat to West Brom was the first time they’d ever lost an opening day of the season at home in the second tier. Allied with the 1-0 loss at Blackburn and 4-0 at Watford in the preceding seasons it’s also the first time since losing to Villa (4-1), Man Utd (2-0) and Blackburn (1-0) in the Premier League in the 1990s that we’ve lost three opening games on the spin. Josh Maja scored 10% of his career league goals between the 26th and 65th minutes of that match.
Rangers won only two of their first 17 games last season, but both of those were away at Cardiff and Boro, and they were very unfortunate not to make that three from four at Southampton where a combination of poor finishing and dodgy refereeing helped Russell Martin’s death by 1,000 passes succeed 2-1. Eight away wins from 23 games was the best of any team in the bottom half of the Championship – West Brom and Norwich both made the play-offs winning only six on the road each.
Despite QPR’s three-manager meltdown in 2022/23, they did have a strangely good record against the automatically promoted sides. Burnley’s only home defeat all year as champions was against QPR in April, while the R’s won 1-0 on their last visit to Bramall Lane and were within seconds of beating Sheff Utd by the same scoreline at Loftus Road before John Egan’s deflected equaliser with the last kick of the game. Unfortunately, Chris Willock scored in the away game and Ilias Chair the home – neither will play for the R’s in the Steel City tomorrow. These sides have met eight times since this was rekindled as a league fixture in 2017/18 and Willock’s winner at Bramall Lane is one of only two QPR successes in that time – Idrissa Sylla’s vintage long ranger at Loftus Road in October 2017 the other. The Blades have won three of the last four meetings here. Rangers have scored one goal or fewer in each of the last nine meetings – the last time they did better were a pair of 3-0 wins during the promotion season of 2010/11.
Prediction: There’s still time to enter our Prediction League for 2024/25, where we’ll once again be handing out prizes for being top at Christmas and overall winner from The Art of Football - sample the merch from our sponsor’s newly extended QPR collection here. For the first time last year we had joint winners so this season you’ll be hearing from one or both WestonsuperR and SimplyNico in the match previews.
Nico says: "Well, thinking the defence and midfield was sorted for the West Brom game was way off beam. Even allowing for the team changes at the Cambridge game, we look wide open and we are still looking short of creativity with Chair out and Dembele unlikely to be up to speed. And Sheffield United are looking good.”
WestonSuperR adds: "With Sheffield United making a strong start to the season, two comfortable wins and six goals scored, this looks a tough assignment. Nothing I’ve seen from the WBA or Cambridge matches suggest we can upset the odds here so I would expect Sheffield to win by a couple.”
Nico’s Prediction: Sheff Utd 2-0 QPR. No scorer.
WestonSuperR’s Prediction: Sheff Utd 2-0 QPR. No scorer.
LFW’s Prediction: Sheff Utd 2-0 QPR. Harry Souttar, 30/1 first goal, 10/1 anytime.
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