Another London Road slump, another QPR FA Cup embarrassment, another big travelling following disappointed - QPR were back fulfilling sterotypes in Peterborough on Saturday.
When five separate people have said "good luck writing that one up” before I’ve even left the ground at the end of the game, I know it’s going to be a tough Sunday ahead, and so it has proved. I’m publishing now, because this is my deadline, and much like the team I have to get on with Middlesbrough stuff (and the small matter of the day job) but, being perfectly honest, I’m still not sure I know what I think about yesterday.
My feeling walking across the rubble car park at London Road last night was more of a resigned shrug, not really too concerned, and immediately focused on Wednesday night’s huge game with Chris Wilder's team, and then ensuring we don’t repeat this second Peterborough shambles of the season in a very similar game at Barnsley next weekend — another ground, like this one, where we are rather prone to falling in a big hole. Not ideal, but not another midweek fixture to throw on the pile at the start of March, several key players rested, no injuries to any of the others, a few very firm answers on experiments about who could do what job where… A draw and a win or - hands classed together in prayer - a full six points, through the rest of this week and yesterday will all be entirely forgotten. That is the real quiz for QPR this season. Does anybody look back at the Neil Warnock title winning campaign of 2010/11 and think "yeh, but Port Vale and Blackburn punted us out of both cups in the first round”? If they do, they need to get out more. I’ll whip a QPR team that collapses out of the cups to focus on the "serious business” of finishing sixteenth in the Championship — the most egregious recent example being Steve McClaren’s ten-change team for a League Cup tie at Blackpool, followed by a heavy league defeat for the ‘rested’ team at Swansea in the league that weekend anyway. But you only need look at the league table this season, and the size and value of squad we’re competing against, to know this obviously isn’t the priority in 2021/22.
That does, however, largely set me against my own historic position and thoughts towards cup competitions, and the willingness of clubs like ours to just bail out of the only two things they’ve ever got any hope of winning in order to focus on an often-hopeless cause in something they never will. QPR’s record in this competition is an abject embarrassment and should shame the club and those that have run it over the years. Presented with a tie against one of the worst teams in our division, with the Championship’s worst defence, and a vastly inferior playing budget to ours, for chance of a rare passage into the fifth round, and passing it up in these circumstances, is certainly another chapter in that sorry tale -exacerbated as yet another failure in front of a large travelling support. QPR have won only six of their last 28 FA Cup ties, they have lost in round three more than any other club, they haven’t won away in round four since 1973, they’ve been to round five once in 25 years, they’ve been further than that once since 1990 — this is pathetic. Pathetic. It does matter, and this isn’t good enough.
I don’t subscribe to the idea that cups are a nuisance, and hindrance to league progression — Brighton, Newcastle, Leicester and Brentford all combined promotion seasons from this division with runs to at least the quarter final of the League Cup. Cup runs bring prestige, attention, confidence and momentum. See how Nottingham Forest are supplementing their Championship surge, and the sycophantic media coverage that’s coming with it, with wins against Arsenal and now Leicester. That place is buzzing, that team feels like it can beat anybody, they’ve destroyed not only two Premier League teams, but two of the better Premier League teams. Do you think they’re sweating one extra game in March? Jealous? You bet. But not of their league position compared to ours, and there comes the confliction.
It also brings in money, through prize funds, gate receipts and television picks — Peterborough have since drawn Man City at home, which would have been a full house under the lights at Loftus Road, almost certainly a TV pick, probably the thick end of a £1m in extra cash. QPR, often while pleading poverty, have been far too willing to chuck away these windfalls because of some perceived mortal threat they apparently pose to our prospects of getting a point from the weekend league trip to Rotherham. It is, largely, a nonsense. Smashing Leicester 4-1 in front of a full house and a big television audience does nothing for footballers other than give them a big, stiff hard on. These opportunities should be embraced, treasured, savoured. What, exactly, are any of us in football for, if it’s not moments like that? We’re trying to build a support base, we’re trying to develop players to sell, what better showcase for either than a big run deep into a cup competition? Sure, Man City might have beaten us 5-0, Willock might have broken his leg. They might not. He might not. Ilias Chair got more attention nationally - in the press, on socials, among the trendy "analytics” type - from his performance against Everton, than anything he’s done in the Championship all season. The atmosphere in W12 was better that night than it’s been for any game this season bar West Brom. Cups stir the senses, get the blood flowing. DJ Campbell made an entire, lucrative career, which we contributed to, largely off the back of one performance for Yeading v Newcastle at Loftus Road, and then Brentford's destruction of Sunderland in this competition. You only need Rob Dickie to mark somebody out of a game against City, even in defeat, for him to move from a £3m punt West Ham might consider taking, to an Adam Webster-style £20m lunacy that ten Premier League clubs are chasing.
Make no mistake, passing up a fifth round, home tie, midweek, on television, against Manchester City, is a really bloody stupid thing to do when you’re trying to build our club in the way our club says it is. Half a dozen players in our squad with ideas about furthering their career — Chair, Willock, Dickie, Dunne, Dykes, Dozzell — should be absolutely cursing this missed chance to put themselves on display to a watching public against the sort of players they want to face every week. The CEO, DOF, manager and board who are eyeing what they might be able to do with an Eze-sized transfer fee should, likewise, be lamenting this as a huge boob — not rejoicing in slightly less March fixture congestion. When we see that video, of that Kenny Sansom goal, going in at that end, against that Arsenal team, in that rain, do you think any of the responses, any of the memories, are about how multiple replays in that Don Howe-led run clogged our fixtures in the back half of the season? Get real.
But then, QPR didn’t pass this up, throw this away, toss it off, opt out, bail out, pay it disrespect, phone it in, or anything else. As we’ve come to expect since Warbs Warburton moved into the hot seat, there were changes to the team, and I doubt in a league game you’d have seen Willock, Field and Barbet left out, nor Johansen and Chair withdrawn after an hour which weakened the team and its performance in this game alarmingly. But this was absolutely not one of the afternoons of bullshit and disingenuous platitudes that ‘Arry used to subject us to, where 11 changes were made, long forgotten players were summoned from the far reaches of the bomb squad, games were lost (heavily) at home to MK Dons, and his only response was to wobble his head around and feed out lies to favourable media men about how "players couldn’t come knocking on his door any more” and "we’ll need five or six more in before the end of the window… you’ll have to ask the chairman”.
The team selection wasn’t out of keeping with a similar league fixture. I was amazed to see Lee Wallace risked. Remember, Chris Willock was rested for the game here in October, and Rangers’ abject lack of cutting edge in the final third in both fixtures really hammers home his influence on this season — as if that were required. Having given miracle-minute man Yoann Barbet an afternoon on the bench, I thought it was a curious decision to also shuffle the back three — Rob Dickie’s marauding forward runs completely neutralised by moving him to the middle of the three, Jimmy Dunne not able to replicate Barbet’s distribution from the left. Perhaps, with hindsight, simply sticking Dion Sanderson, who revelled in a physical contest with a fast-expanding Jonson Clarke-Harris, in as a straight swap for the Frenchman may have yielded better results — though, maybe finding that out was the whole point of this. Lyndon Dykes toiled to such an extent, and Charlie Austin was so sadly and embarrassingly off the pace of the game, that actually there was some regret among the travelling 4,000 that young Sinclair Armstrong wasn’t fit enough for a bench cameo.
There’s been much said and written about Charlie. I think he deserves respect for what he's done for the club over two spells. Some of the stuff on social media is disgusting. I also think it's worth bearing in mind how much pressure the entire support base put on the club to sign him permanently, how much grief they'd have got if they didn't, how much stick certain podcasters got for merely suggesting Austin probably wasn't what he once was. But, on the evidence of what we've seen, he's now at the impact sub stage of his career. West Brom home, pretty perfectly summed up where he is for us. Might stage a big comeback, hope he does, but that was very, very poor yesterday and his fitness, mobility etc isn't where it should be. He's not 38/39, but he looks and plays like it.
Nor, really, did Rangers play that badly. For the first hour of the game, at least, I wasn’t that worried about the direction of travel, and considered the performance superior to that we produced here in the league in October. Ilias Chair’s 20 yarder looked in, before Swansea loanee Steven Benda stretched late and full to turn it around the post as part of a man of the match performance. Charlie Austin peeled away at a corner, was found, but shot over. Moses Odubajo, starting at right wing back and moved to the left in the second, received a ball at the back post on a huge overlap and drew another save from Benda. QPR had five corners in the game, and it felt like more because in the first half all of them caused panic, scrambles, but somehow no goal for the visitors. Peterborough had one attack, one shot on target, and one moment of fluency in the whole half, and scored from that — David Marshall out of his area and scrambling the ball out for a throw, QPR sloppy and lacking in concentration from the delivery, several desperate blocks and lucky breaks later, and Joe Ward could hardly miss.
Wallace’s withdrawal, and Odubajo’s switch of wings, almost paid immediate dividends after half time. Moses’ cross from left to right was perfect, new boy Albert Adomah timed his arrival perfectly, the save from Benda was excellent, but he really shouldn’t have been in the equation. Albert should have scored with his first touch. Soon it was Adomah’s turn to provide — this time an inswinging cross just out of reach of Dykes. As shots rained down on goal, Johansen’s effort was blocked by a hand presenting Chair with a free kick opportunity which he curved delightful over wall and keeper but back into play off the crossbar. Take out the context of QPR’s FA Cup record, where it lies in our priorities, and what you think about any of it, and you could increasingly make an argument for this simply being one of those days. One of those days, that can happen at any moment, that simply wasn’t ours. On another, we win very comfortably. QPR had 72% of the ball, and 16 shots to Peterborough’s three, though to lean on such stats risks veering into Thomas Frank levels of delusion and hubris. We lost because, of those 16, only three were on target. Both strikers were poor again. Both of Peterborough’s two shots on the goal went in — teenage substitute Ricky-Jade Jones’ 71st minute finish was precise, though beat David Marshall disturbingly easily, and the home team piled through meek midfield resistance embarrassingly easily. Warburton said two duels had been lost, and that was a seriously kind way of putting it.
I think much of the criticism stems from the final third of the game. A bald pitch, and high wind, might be worthy of mention, but Peterborough aren’t a long ball team by any stretch, so both sets of players had to cope with that. Andre Dozzell was no kind of replacement for Stefan Johansen. George Thomas, bless him, after a couple of promising substitute appearances in recent weeks, came on for Ilias Chair, big opportunity, and was pretty dire. Odubajo went from all-action dangerman to Todd Kane-style crosser of presentable opportunities straight into the exasperated away end. Those changes occurred prior to the second goal, and such was their negative impact on the performance that the game felt gone even before Jones struck. Austin’s influence now so laboured that a sizeable away crowd began to turn on a club legend. He did manage one nod down which looked to give a sight of goal to Dykes, but he collided with Benda and a defender and the ball squirted out for what referee David Webb completely guessed might be a goal kick - Dykes wanted a penalty. Webb, as ever, woefully inadequate in the policing of outrageous time wasting — Benda consistently placing his goal kicks outside the six-yard box creating a series of prolonged exchanges between linesman and referee about whether the game could proceed, when a nice early yellow card around the 60 minute mark would have nipped the farce right in the bud. To only, eventually, show a yellow for time wasting in the sixth minute of stoppage time, to a player who’d only just stepped off the bench, was fucking disgusting. His assessor shouldn’t so much file a report as beat the bloke round the head with it.
I suspect where I, and perhaps you, land after this, much like McClaren’s Blackpool nadir, rather depends what goes on against Middlesbrough on Wednesday. A day, and 3,000 words, later, and I don’t know. Which I think is ok, though I appreciate if you don't.
Links >>> Ratings and Reports >>> Message Board Match Thread
Posh: Benda 7; Ward 6 (Coulson 65, 6), Kent 7, Edwards 7, Beevers 7, Mumba 6 (Thompson 90+2, -); Fuchs 6, Norburn 6, Poku 6 (Brown 57, 6); Marriott 5 (Jones 65, 7), Clarke-Harris 4 (Szmodics 45, 5)
Subs not used: Brown, Grant, Knight, Cornell, Randall
Goals: Ward 25 (unassisted), Jones 71 (assisted Mumba)
Bookings: Clarke Harris 29 (foul), Edwards 45 (foul), Fuchs 63 (foul), Jones 83 (foul), Norburn 87 (foul), Thompson 90+6 (time wasting)
QPR: Marshall 5; Odubajo 6, Sanderson 6, Dickie 5, Dunne 6, Wallace 6 (Adomah 45, 6); Amos 5 (Hendrick 45, 6), Johansen 6 (Dozzell 62, 4), Chair 6 (Thomas 62, 5); Austin 4, Dykes 5
Subs not used: Kakay, Barbet, Ball, Walsh
Bookings: Dunne 43 (dissent), Dozzell 90+2 (foul)
QPR Star Man — Stef Johansen 6 Really tough to pick anybody from a mediocre team performance, the exact opposite of last week against Reading, but I thought Johansen was the best midfielder on show here and QPR were a far, far worse team when he and Chair had been withdrawn for Thomas, and particularly Dozzell who was fairly awful.
Referee — David Webb (Durham) 5 I almost knocked this down to a four for the yellow card he gave Nathan Thompson in the sixth minute of stoppage time. To tolerate the level of time wasting he did, for as long as he did, particularly from Benda, with nothing more than an ongoing serious of elaborate hand gestures but no meaningful action, only to then book somebody who’d only been on the pitch two minutes for taking their time over a throw in when there was 30 seconds left, the game was over and done with, and the card had no effect as either punishment nor deterrent, was an absolute fucking embarrassment to him and his profession. Allowing Benda’s clever ruse of placing all the goal kicks outside the six yard box, provoking a debate between lino and referee every time, without just booking him straight away and bringing a halt to it, was so dumb. This referee cannot police time. This was to QPR’s benefit earlier in the season when they were beating Blackburn 1-0 at Loftus Road, the ball disappeared into the Loft for a long old while, wasn’t returned by the crowd, and somehow he still only added four minutes on at the end of the game, which caused a fully justified meltdown from Moany Towbury. Here it was to our disadvantage. I can’t believe anybody assessing and training this official, who has had the misfortune to sit through his games, hasn’t at least spoken to him about some of the flagrant clock running and time wasting he tolerates, and encourages. Other than that there was plenty of inconsistency and irritation, not least at the end of the first half where he not only bought a dive by Jonson Clarke-Harris but then booked Jimmy Dunne for dissent when actually it was little more than incredulity that the referee had fallen for it and given a free kick. Within 45 seconds a much more obvious foul on Ilias Chair hadn’t even been given as a free kick, and with players now aggravated and the game moving out of the referee’s control you then had a big, meaty tackle from Edwards that felt like a very thick yellow card, players charging in from both sides, getting in each others’ faces, screaming at the referee. This was a really good, specific example, across five minutes, of how a referee can lose control of the game through his own action and inaction — Clarke-Harris had dived, Chair had been fouled, get those two very basic decisions right, and there’s no card for Dunne, no card for Edwards, no agg, no incident, no problem. Ten minutes from time Rob Dickie carrying the ball out of defence had his Achilles stamped on by Jones — a really nasty tackle, somehow worthy of the same punishment that Dunne and Thompson received. Bullshit. Bull. Shit. A poor referee, refereeing poorly, creating problems for himself.
Attendance 10,119 (3,790 QPR) When will we learn?
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