Analyse this... 11:28 - Feb 27 with 2697 views | _tf_ | I was so traumatised by what I saw on Saturday that I have been forced to write something on this forum for the first time in about six years (Vacherin) in the hope that someone might explain things better to me… Clive’s metaphor of the plane falling out of the sky is excellent, if only because the far easier one would have been the warm golden glow of unseasonal sunshine that bathed LR for the first ten minutes of GA’s reign. In that glorious ten minutes there was a high press, snap in the tackle, Tim about thirty yards further up the pitch, Kakay bombing down the right and we were better. And then the sun went in, it got cold again and well, you know the rest. I wasn’t the only one on Saturday in the SAR left so perplexed by what I’d just watched that I actually caught myself staring at the pitch in an increasingly empty stadium about ten minutes after everyone had gone. I’ve seen the good the bad and the indifferent down the years at LR but this new iteration, this latest version of how badly wrong QPR can be, is unfathomable to me. There seems to be some kind of psychosis amongst the players, a sort of detachment from reality summed up perfectly by the two times Dozzell and Dunne, seemingly so schooled into this backwards/sideways nonsense that has blighted football generally and us in particular, managed to smack the ball Senywards in a game where we were 3-1 down at home and with space to move into going forward. This seems to be a club-wide phenomenon and has been going on for ages now. Sam Field is an excellent example. In a team stuffed with creativity you could just about see a role for him, breaking things down, dogging the midfield, a disruptor. But can this team really carry a midfielder who plays almost 100% of the time with his back to goal, whose go to pass is back, occasionally sideways? And, he’s one of the ones trying! One year ago Rob Dickie might reasonably have been looking upwards at a lower echelon Premier League team and be thinking, ‘yeah I could do that’. He is now a gibbering wreck. And he is just one of a handful of players who have actually become worse over time, rather than what QPR should be doing (needs to be doing) with young talent. And then Chair, the only irreplaceable player in Saturday’s team, falls to the ground clutching a hamstring, exit stage right leaving team that would spend the rest of the game clutching at straws. Our injury crisis is freakish, needs looking at. Dykes contracts pneumonia, Blackburns’ first goal is a direct result of a freakish deflection. And on and on it goes, this perfect storm of bad luck, poor management, lack of direction and perhaps more importantly a group of players who couldn’t give a sh*t about QPR. I suspect that what we are currently looking at is a group within a group. Anyone who has ever undertaken anything, in sport, in business, in life, will know that the joy of succeeding in a shared endeavour is the fact that it is a communal effort. It must be very difficult for those in the squad giving the proverbial 100% (who didn’t love Kakay’s effort on Saturday?) To know that there are those currently being payed by QPR who really do not care. If the constant absences (both on and off the pitch) are noticeable to me then why are the club’s management unwilling or unable to do something about it? Have we really ended up in a situation where a group of professional footballers have downed tools in the knowledge that they are irreplaceable? This is a question, not an assertion. Who knows where we go from here, but before fate dealt its mortal blow on Saturday, I saw enough to think that maybe, just maybe, there’s enough in GA to work this out, squeeze two wins and a couple of draws out of the season that we need and then give him the scope to undertake a complete summer clear out of the chancers, fakers and injury prone, the millstones dragging us all down. And to this end, in the spirit of this detachment from reality and in the face of incontrovertible evidence which would suggest we all know what is going to happen next Saturday I am going to cheer the Rs on at Rotherham next weekend. Come on you Rs. | | | | |
Analyse this... on 11:39 - Feb 27 with 2582 views | Superhoop83 | Great post and here's hoping Ainsworth can drag us over the line, although I doubt it myself. As someone who hardly ever leaves early - and even then only in injury time - I seriously contemplated leaving at half time on Saturday. I missed the Sheffield United match, so I've watched 6 defeats and a draw at Loftus Road since we beat Wigan in October and I also went to the match at Coventry, so it's 7 defeats and a draw since Wigan. Even by our standards, this is an epic run of horrendous results and there will be a cull this summer, wherever we finish the season. | |
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Analyse this... on 11:53 - Feb 27 with 2504 views | colinallcars | Yup, fine post. I agree about Dickie - from those buccaneering runs from his own half finishing with a blasting shot into the net and strong defensive play red in tooth and claw, into a nervous wreck in a matter of months. His fall from grace is the most marked of all of the players. | | | |
Analyse this... on 12:00 - Feb 27 with 2479 views | ozranger | I missed a few home matches, either through illness or owing to a long-standing family matter as was the case this past Saturday. And yes, I will be at Rotherham as well as I hope to be for the remaining games to the end. We all do recognise that the club is in a predicament. What we have to do, as fans, is to encourage the team. This may seem strange given, as you say, many of the players have chosen not to care, but it is our team. The players will come and go but we will be here for quite some time afterwards. It is our team that will play in League 1 if we are relegated and a good number of the players, especially these mentioned, will be long gone and would not care a bit. We need to get behind the team, cheer them and encourage them as we need to make sure that there is something there and the points needed are gained, even with the paucity of playing strength and attitude that exists. If we choose to hound them and shout abuse, that will only encourage them to play even worse and then we will be relegated and will have to watch League 1 football while they are enjoying another stint in the Championship or even the Premier League. Thus, let's get behind the team and help push them over that hill and not shout abuse or jeer and push the club over the precipice. When the season is over, or when we have finally got to the mathematical stage of having survived, then we can jeer, boo and shout as much abuse at these good for nothings as they deserve. But, until then we need our team to get those points, irrelevant of who is playing. | | | |
Analyse this... on 13:26 - Feb 27 with 2259 views | PinnerPaul | Good post. The togetherness thing is the essence of modern football management. In what other industry do the workers receive a guaranteed higher wage than the boss(es) with no, or at least very little, financial/contractual incentive to 'perform' That's the crux and changing every single player, staff member and every board member isn't going to change that! | | | |
Analyse this... on 14:08 - Feb 27 with 2142 views | bosh67 | Yes good post. I hope dearly that we survive but if we don't we have to stick with Gareth. Wherever we are we have to sort out the mentality and culture at this club. There are too many players here with terrible injury records. It fells like we have become the last chance saloon for some players and although that is admirable and sometimes works, in our case it feels like suicide. The biggest problem this season has been not giving the coach, manager the tools he needs to work with, ie, a squad of senior players who are available to play. It has crippled us, literally into this situation. I've supported the team for 50 years and I can't remember a squad this thin for fit players in decades. As I have said on other posts the mentality in the squad here to recover from bad runs is just terrible. The culture and mentality I hope will change under Gareth. | |
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Analyse this... on 20:52 - Feb 27 with 1909 views | Damo1962 |
Analyse this... on 14:08 - Feb 27 by bosh67 | Yes good post. I hope dearly that we survive but if we don't we have to stick with Gareth. Wherever we are we have to sort out the mentality and culture at this club. There are too many players here with terrible injury records. It fells like we have become the last chance saloon for some players and although that is admirable and sometimes works, in our case it feels like suicide. The biggest problem this season has been not giving the coach, manager the tools he needs to work with, ie, a squad of senior players who are available to play. It has crippled us, literally into this situation. I've supported the team for 50 years and I can't remember a squad this thin for fit players in decades. As I have said on other posts the mentality in the squad here to recover from bad runs is just terrible. The culture and mentality I hope will change under Gareth. |
It's always been players fault for me. If the club don't let Gareth start again next season, with a team in his own image..then that could be the end for me and QPR. | | | |
Analyse this... on 21:21 - Feb 27 with 1794 views | YokelR |
Analyse this... on 20:52 - Feb 27 by Damo1962 | It's always been players fault for me. If the club don't let Gareth start again next season, with a team in his own image..then that could be the end for me and QPR. |
We sure can pick a player at this club whether transfer or loan? Just how many injury prone players have we got in. Sod the new training ground we should build an a and e! | | | |
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