 Thursday, 4th Oct 2012 23:36 by Clive Whittingham It’s been almost a calendar year since QPR last won away from home, and given the mood following consecutive home defeats by Reading and West Ham this Saturday’s trip to West Brom wouldn’t be a bad place to break that duck. West Brom (6th) v QPR (20th)Premier League >>> Saturday October 6, 2012 >>> Kick Off 3pm >>> The Hawthorns, West BromwichWell, I’ve a feeling this is going to be quite unpleasant. Imagine a tough week at work being immediately followed by a Friday night dinner party at a friend of your wife’s who went to the same school as you both and got the same education but now lives in a bigger house, with a faster car and more hair . We’re about to experience the footballing equivalent. We are QPR – 15 permanent or caretaker managers in the last ten years and apparently considering making that 16, 26 players signed in the last three transfer windows, 23 released or sold. Booking the team hotel for the trip to Stoke in a month counts as long term planning at QPR and for all the chopping and changing, all the money spent, all the players brought in, we’re bottom of the Premier League and without a victory this season. On Saturday we go to West Bromwich Albion, where the long term vision often stretches so far into the future that even a relegation to the division below isn’t the end of the world. They have had half as many managers as QPR over the past ten years, made half as many signings over the past 18 months, and got rid of six less players. They’re currently sixth in the Premier League. I concluded the introduction to our West Ham match preview by saying that replacing Mark Hughes now would be “mindless.” Of course the Welshman then sent a team out designed to play to West Ham’s strengths in every possible way and made Sam Allardyce, of all people. look like a tactical Adonis in the process. He also made an absolute mockery of his own pre-match assertion that he prepares the team “meticulously” for each match because QPR couldn’t have been less prepared to face that West Ham midfield if they’d spent five hours pre-match getting lashed up in the Crown and Sceptre. It was a managerial display of breathtaking incompetence. And suddenly where most were taking the numerous positives from the Chelsea and Spurs games and looking forward to more winnable fixtures with optimism, now increasing numbers are wondering whether Harry Redknapp wouldn’t be such a bad idea after all. The change in mood on the back of two matches with Reading and West Ham has been staggering even by QPR standards. Important, as ever, not to get too carried away in the good or bad times in my opinion. We were good, but not that good, at Spurs; and we were bad, but with mitigation, against West Ham. Hughes, and his chairman Tony Fernandes, rightly pointed to an injury crisis gripping the defence after Monday’s defeat. The back four is the one part of the team above all others that you want consistency of selection but QPR are hamstrung by injuries to five potential starters in that area of the field. However the issue here is that the defence was only part of the problem in the two recent home defeats. Esteban Granero and Alejandro Faurlin are no weak lightweights by any stretch of the imagination, and against Chelsea and Spurs they more than held their own and in fact dominated more illustrious opponents at times. But against more limited opposition, who want to take them on physically rather than with football ability, they need a more muscular presence alongside them. Hughes will know this, the difference for the 15 minutes that Samba Diakite managed to stay on against West Ham was there for all to see, and I suspect he intends to play Stephane Mbia between the two when he’s no longer required to cover in defence. But even allowing for Mbia being seconded to help out the defence while it’s low on numbers, having been physically bullied by Reading on Wednesday to then send out the midfield he did on the Monday against an even more robust Hammers team was amazing. Apparently at no stage during his meticulous preparation did it occur to Hughes that a tightly packed midfield three of Kevin Nolan, Mo Diame and Mark Noble would dominate a strung out four of Granero, Faurlin, Ji-Sung Park and Shaun Wright-Phillips. And apparently at no point in the first 55 minutes was there a chance to rectify this obvious mismatch. Hughes spent a hell of a lot of goodwill credit on Monday night. He’ll be running on fumes by Saturday at 5pm if he doesn’t show that some lessons were learnt because in West Brom we’re effectively facing the same challenge again. The Baggies are well drilled and coached, physical at the back and in the holding midfield positions with creativity and presence in the attack. It’s West Ham mark II, only slightly more talented, and if QPR play the same way again for a third time they’ll be beaten again. Clearly a victory is needed, but personally I’ll just be satisfied to see some lessons learnt and both the system and the midfield changed, rather than fielding the same team for the same result followed by the same excuses about injuries to the back four. If he picks a four man set up with Park on the left wing and Wright-Phillips on the right again I may well head back to the pub before the game even kicks off. It’s probably worth calling back up an article I wrote in the summer (link) which doesn’t really do Hughes’ case a lot of good. The Premiership television deal for next season is almost treble the one we have now thanks to BT ratcheting up the bidding, and a foreign rights deal yet to be signed off is likely to increase by a similar amount. QPR got £43m in television money and prize funds for finishing seventeenth last season – do so again next season and they’ll pull more than double that. Meanwhile in the division below they’re bringing in rules preventing you from spending more than you bring in – so gambling to reach the Premier League in the way Blackpool and QPR did successfully will cost you a hefty amount in a fine if you’re successful in future. The gap between the top two divisions that seemed to be narrowing when all three promoted teams survived last season is about to become a chasm. This is not the time to be relegated from the Premier League. And yes, despite all this, I do think it would be mindless to sack Hughes. It’s the short termism, constant rafts of transfer window signings, panic and rashness that causes QPR’s problems, and I don’t see that repeating these mistakes again is going to solve them. Faith, time, patience and calm remain the key to success as we’ll see from our opposition this weekend. Links >>> Oppositiion Focus >>> Fixture History >>> Referee >>> Travel Guide >>> Podcast This SaturdayTeam News: We await news on the injuries currently crippling QPR’s back four. Jose Bosingwa, Fabio Da Silva, Anton Ferdinand, Kieron Dyer and Armand Traore were all out for the West Ham game and at varying stages of recovery. We’ll know more after Mark Hughes’ Friday press conference. Samba Diakite with a one game ban for his West Ham red card and Andy Johnson with his season ending knee injury are both definitely out. West Brom, like QPR, have issues at full back. Steven Reid is injured and Billy Jones left the Villa game early. Liam Ridgwell will slot in there at right back if he is back to full fitness or Gabriel Tamas if not. Chris Brunt also left the Villa match early last weekend with what appeared to be a hamstring injury so he must be doubtful for this game and will likely be replaced by Graeme Dorrans if he doesn’t make it. Elsewhere: The weekend action kicks off at 12.45 on Saturday with a re-run of the match which sparked Man City’s collapse last season which almost cost them the title. They drew 3-3 at home to Sunderland last season and clearly Sky will be hoping for similar entertainment this weekend. Incidentally, we’re now less than six weeks away from the December fixtures and Sky still haven’t seen fit to furnish us with information about what games they’ll be showing live during the winter. With cheap train tickets for Christmas selling fast it’s absolutely ridiculous that QPR fans still don’t know what day or time their December 22 game at Newcastle will take place. Expect me to rant about this repeatedly over the coming weeks. The games they’ve deemed to leave at 3pm on the Saturday this week include a great chance for Everton to press home their advantage at the top end of the table with a trip to Wigan. Chelsea are the early pace setters and will be similarly confident of maintaining their position as Norwich come to Stamford Bridge. Swansea and Reading could both do with a league win from their meeting at the Liberty Stadium. The evening match on ESPN is West Ham v Arsenal – which already looks like the sort of game that’s going to have Arsene Wenger flinging his arms around on the touchline. TV and European commitments dictates a shift of four games to the Sunday. Southampton v Fulham is the early game on Sky, followed by Newcastle v Man Utd at 4. Spurs v Villa and Liverpool v Stoke conclude the programme. Referee: Cheshire official Mike Jones sent off a QPR player – Djibril Cisse at Sunderland – on his last appointment with us, but that’s not really saying a lot considering how frequently Rangers collect red cards. Away wins on the other hand are much rarer – it’s 16 matches since QPR last won a league game on the road, and Jones was the referee that day last November when Neil Warnock’s side won 3-2 at Stoke. A omen perhaps? Here’s his full QPR case file. FormWest Brom: West Brom have won all three league games at home this season without conceding a goal, including a 3-0 success against Liverpool on day one and a 2-0 win against Everton after that. If the pattern continues though this game will finish 0-0 as they only beat lowly Reading 1-0 last time out on this ground in the league. They have scored 12 league goals so far, with nine different players on the scoresheet, compared to QPR’s four of which three have gone to Bobby Zamora. Last season their home form wasn’t all that – they won just six and lost ten of 19 home games in the league and actually had a better record on the road where they won seven times and drew five.QPR: Everything from pre-Tottenham plus one… It’s now 17 league and cup games on the road without a win for QPR dating back to last November at Stoke. The draw at Norwich in August is only the second point Mark Hughes has won on the road in nine months as QPR manager. Only Blackburn (45) conceded more goals on their travels last season than Rangers (41) although the Hoops’ total was skewed slightly by two six goal defeats in West London derbies. They lost more away games (14 out of 19) than any other team in the division last season - bottom placed Wolves lost just ten. Mark Hughes has zero wins from 11 away games as QPR manager and has won just seven of his last 58 road trips if you include his time at Fulham and Man City. At Blackburn he won a more respectable 23 from 76 but that’s still a total of 30 from 134. Betting: Professional odds compiler Owen Goulding says… “It’s been a poor start to the season, that’s for sure. Monday night was probably the low point as a fan. Losing so comfortably to such a poor side is never much fun but the way the team lined up was the most disappointing thing. Hughes' hands were tied in relation to playing two centre halves in the full back positions, but then to put SWP and Park in front of them seemed extremely negative. Hill and Onuoha are not the type of players who bomb forward a la Fabio and Bosingwa and therefore as a football analyst, it perplexed me (and by the look of the board prior to kick off, many others) as to why the boss would be so negative against a team such as West Ham. “It’s one of the reasons I have a dislike for the Premiership. More managers than not set their teams out to not concede first, and then think about the creativity afterwards. Long gone are the days in which Kevin Keegan would send a team out to score as many as they could and adopt the ethos that if you score three, we will score four. Many 'purists' may not agree with these tactics but when I part with the best part of £70 all in to go watch a game, I'd like to be entertained. And here-in lies the basis for the frustration of the QPR faithful. We have a squad with players in that CAN and WILL entertain given the licence. My company, along with many other bookies, saw a barrage of money for West Ham once the teams came out on Monday and I fear for us again, depending on injuries, on Saturday. “West Brom are a very good side. They have come on leaps and bounds in last two years and are a very entertaining proposition at home. Odemwingie is back from his ban, although Chris Brunt faces a late fitness test and will be a sore miss for the Baggies if he fails to make it. One of the main reasons for West Brom's excellent start of season is Mulumbu. If he is on form, they are hard to stop - an engine of immense proportions who has an eye for a pass too. It will be an intriguing battle between him and Granero come Saturday and this could be the key to where the points go. “It’s hard to assess from a betting point of view where the value lies. If Hughes sends out a team like Monday, the 10/11 West Brom looks very big, but with Bosingwa, Traore, Taarabt and Hoilett all hopeful of starting, I would recommend not getting involved in match prices till teams are confirmed. I do think however, the game does seem to have goals in it whichever way Hughes sends his team out and the 4/5 over 2.5 goals (generally) appeals. I will be hoping for a good result, but to soften any blow, my recommended bet for the game is James Morrison to score at anytime at 5/1 with William Hill. Prediction: The reigning champion in LoftforWords’ Predicition League Nathan McAllister says… “In the LFW post mortem that traditionally follows a poor performance and/or result , there has been much talk on the board this week of formations. Clearly the match was a tactical triumph for Allardyce over Hughes, and many – and I count myself in this number – have been calling for the Rangers manager to abandon the traditional 4-4-2 (i.e. two up front supported by two banks of four) in favour of the 4-2-3-1 which you might remember was the formation that got Rangers promoted in the first place. “The stats over Mark Hughes’ reign so far bear this view out. In 24 league games Hughes has started with a 4-4-2, with two recognised strikers up front, on 14 occasions: winning two, drawing three and losing nine – an average of 0.64 points per game. A dismal return even before you consider that in one of those wins (Liverpool at home) the winner came when only one of those strikers was still on the pitch. Over a 38 game season that would put Rangers at 24 points, one point less than bottom placed Wolves finished with last season. However, when Hughes has played a 4-2-3-1 (or something very similar) they have won four drawn one and lost five – an average of 1.3 points a game. That would make 49 points over a season - two points more than tenth placed West Brom. Now, I know there are a few variables there, but even accounting for those that is a pretty damning indictment of Hughes’ supposedly preferred formation. “I’m not saying that 4-4-2 cannot ever be successful, but to me it’s looking increasingly outdated and anyway, surely you have to play the formation that best suits the players you have at your disposal. When Zamora and Johnson played together earlier in the season I could kind of see the benefits as Johnson’s intelligent running and movement can pull defenders out of position, but Zamora and Cisse together just hasn’t worked. In fact, in the ten matches Cisse has started for Rangers they have only won once, and in that game Cisse was off the pitch when Rangers scored the winner. To be fair he did score the winner when he came on against Stoke, but that was our only win in the six games in which he came on as a substitute. Now I’m not denying Cisse is the best finisher at the club, but I don’t see how he fits into the side at the moment as he doesn’t seem suited to the lone striker role either. I think he has become a luxury that, in terms of our overall pattern of play, we cannot afford. “If Hughes plays Zamora up front on Saturday with Hoilett and Taarabt in support either side and three in midfeld – maybe Faurlin and Park sitting in front of the defence and Granero linking play slightly further forward - then I really fancy us to get something. If he persists with a 4-4-2 with Zamora and Cisse up front then we can pretty much forget it. For the Prediction League I’ll wait and see the starting eleven before logging my prediction. For now, I’m going to hope Hughes and his team see the light and pick Adel and Junior to start. If they do, I fancy us to cause them problems, although I imagine our makeshift back four will experience just as many at the other end. For now, then, an open, entertaining game with honours even.” Prediction: WBA 2 QPR 2 First scorer: Hoilett Tweet @Loftforwords Pictures – Action Images Photo: Action Images Please report offensive, libellous or inappropriate posts by using the links provided.
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