QPR scored one goal or fewer in 28 of their final 31 games, failed to score on 18 different occasions, scored five goals at the Loft End all season (two of them penalties) and haven’t scored three goals in a game for seven and a half months — here’s the attack who made it all happen.

7 — Chris Willock D

Wow. When you talk about assets depreciating in value, this one is descending so fast he’s starting to whistle through the air.

A high-ranking nominee in FourFourTwo’s list of the best players outside the Premier League, his nasty hamstring injury suffered in the 3-1 loss at Nottingham Forest was seen as something of a final nail in the R’s 21/22 play-off push. Not only did he not feature anywhere in the 100-player countdown in this year’s issue, by the end of the season he wasn’t even in the QPR team either — one of the worst QPR teams in living memory at that.

Things began explosively. He scored in each of his first four appearances this term, and six of his first nine outings. In assessing him for this report we have been cautious about ‘recency bias’, because if he’d had his first eight games as his last eight games the mark would potentially be very different indeed. Still, aunty, wheels, bike etc.

The first, against Middlesbrough, was the best the team scored all season. Picking the ball up in his own half he displayed an apparently new-found upper body strength to thrust himself right through the heart of the visiting team, shrug through two robust tackles, and then unleash a shot into the top corner with such ferocity it actually lifted him clean off his feet as he wrapped his foot around the ball. Thirteen minutes into the first home game we've probably peaked, we joked. Ha ha ha ha. Ha. This thing on? Anyone in from Buda?

It got to the stage where whenever he drew his foot back from 20-ish yards, you just automatically assumed it would be a goal. “Big chance” I said as he opened his body up from that range against Millwall, and sure enough a second later it was nestling in the net right beneath my feet. The xG disciples will tell you never trust a player, or team, that is succeeding through a lot of long rangers, because they never keep going like that. Adam Reach once went on a hot streak of ridiculous strikesfor Sheff Wed and, well, look where he and they ended up. In that respect the sheer number of spectacular goals QPR scored in those early days did make Mick Beale’s table toppers a bit of a castle built on sand, but Willock was also scoring striker-type efforts from closer in — on the end of a beautiful move at Watford, and to win a game at Sheff Utd. Rangers have still never lost on any of the 16 occasions he’s scored for them.

Things started to turn sour that night in the Steel City, despite the victory. Another hamstring injury added quite the cloud to the silver lining of the 1-0 win, and Willock has never been the same since. He did hit the post late on in his comeback at Norwich, but it’s been 20 appearances since Bramall Lane and no goals. A real chance to get his eye back in at Fleetwood was passed up with a performance that was borderline pissing about. His physical conditioning, shape, commitment, interest and influence haven't so much declined as leapt off the side of a cliff. He is another who looks like he simply does not want to be here anymore. He finished with a trio of 3/10 ratings from us, including an 18-minute cameo against Coventry where his slack, lazy pass opened up the counter attacking opportunity for their second goal.

Last August he was our best player and most sellable asset. Given our FFP situation we needed him to hit the ground running in exactly the way he did and enhance that reputation further, then fetch us some reasonably big money this window. By May he couldn’t even get in what was, at that stage, the worst team in the league, and despite our predicament and desperate need for results there was zero clamour for him to be brought back in or outcry when he wasn’t. Let’s call it what it is, he didn’t, and doesn’t, look arsed.

It's interesting isn’t it. Ask me to run through our injured players, he’s the one I tend to give the benefit of the doubt to. The injury he suffered at The City Ground, where the hamstring comes off the bone, is a notoriously difficult one to recover from — essentially stick the two components back together with elastic bands and chewing gum and hope it takes. I sat in a room with Mick Beale last August where he admitted he’d played players, including Willock, before they were ready and for longer than he’d been advised to against Middlesbrough because we needed to “get this thing going”. Willock subsequently missed another three matches after that, then broke down in Sheffield. You could make a case here that he’s been mismanaged.

And yet… when I sit here and give players we don't own like Laird and Balogun a panning for their perceived tartishness there are no shortage of defenders from within the club happy to speak on or off the record in their defence. Gareth Ainsworth repeatedly came out to bat for Balogun in particular. Willock, on the other hand, who we do own, and have been trying to build up into a sellable asset to cure us of our financial ills, finds basically nobody at QPR with a good word to say about him on or off mic. Gareth would only be drawn as far as saying “Chris Willock needs to get fitter, he knows this.” Oof.

Lee Hoos took the chance of his ‘business questions’ interview on the official website to tell the story of a previous player they’d had here who was happy playing for the club, happy with where he lived, happy with the contract renewal he’d been offered; whose agent was happy with his progress, was happy with him being at the club, and was happy with the contract renewal he’d been offered; but who rejected the deal and moved on anyway because a pushy dad interfering in the background wasn’t having it. I believe that story is about Bright Osayi-Samuel, by the way, but let’s just say I thought it very interesting timing to crowbar it into that interview at that point. Willock, it’s been obvious for a long time, will not be signing a new deal here. QPR have taken up the one-year option for 23/24 as they were always going to, but it feels very much like they’ll be doing that just to try and copper up whatever they can get this summer for a player three hamstring injuries deep and currently playing so poorly he cannot even command a place in this team. How did it ever come to this?

In numbers…
21 starts, 8 sub appearances, W7 D8 L12, 25.93% win percentage
6 goals scored (Boro H, Rotherham H, Watford A, Hull H, Millwall A, Sheff Utd A) (1 goal every 277 minutes), 3 assists (Bristol City A, Huddersfield H, Sheff Utd H) (Goal contribution every 185 minutes)
0 yellow cards
2 LFW MOTM awards (Boro H, Rotherham H), 2 supporter MOTM awards (Boro H, Watford A)
LFW Ratings — 8, 7, 8, 8, 6, 7, 6, 7, 7, 7, 5, 5, 5, 4, 6, 4, 5, 6, 2, 5, 5, 2, 5, 4, 3, 3, -, 3 = 5.296
Interactive Ratings — 5.54

9 — Lyndon Dykes C

Lyndon Dykes began the year by running his own miss of the season competition. Played through on goal at home to Blackpool by a lousy back pass, and with Stefan Johansen up in support, he sportingly rolled the ball back to the goalkeeper. Against Hull in W12, with the game already won and the pressure off, he contrived to slot wide of the far post when receiving the ball unmarked a yard out from an open goal — even Jordan Hugill might have managed to net from there. There was a diving header from almost that close in against Luton at Loftus Road which, again, didn’t even hit the target. He is rather prone to one of these. There has been a debate from the moment Dykes walked through the door here as to whether he’s any good or not, and his propensity to spaff a chance you’d have fancied yourself for does add fuel to his critics’ fire.

One of the notions his fans put forward in his support is QPR don’t service him adequately or to his strengths. Ilias Chair’s Championship-leading numbers for chance creation say otherwise, but there is a perception that Chair in particular tends to hold onto the ball too long when players like Dykes need good, early service from wide areas. Goals in early home games against Boro, Cardiff, and particularly a flying header against Reading off a brilliant Osman Kakay cross, add weight to this. Later in the year, when Illy did swing over a peach of a cross at The Hawthorns, Dykes scored a flying header any centre forward would have been proud to call their own. In the home draw with Sheffield United, Neil Warnock on Sky co-coms duty sang Dykes’ praises all night, criticised QPR harshly for misusing him and not providing him with the service he needed, and made him the broadcaster’s man of the match.

One thing Dykes always has been reliable for is work rate, and his defending from the front — closing down, harassing, winning headers at both ends of the pitch. Again, I come back to the win away at Preston, in Neil Critchley’s first game, where we played well and notched a valuable away win with Dykes as a lone striker smashing the home centre backs up, creating space for an advanced midfield trio that had Tim Iroegbunam at its heart. This was very much the Lyndon Dykes Scotland tend to get, and I’d like to see a little bit more down here, and it worked a treat. Critchley went away from it immediately, in the next game. Je ne comprends. That work rate not only gets him a freer pass from supporters than others might enjoy, even when he is giving it the full Dean Coney routine, it’s also what the team missed most when he was struck down with pneumonia in January. You saw it most clearly in the game he had to be substituted in, at home to Swansea, which QPR were winning 1-0 and playing reasonably well in until his departure, and subsequently fell over and drew 1-1.

Dykes, we now know, has suffered with his chest since a bad bout of Covid, and the pneumonia he ended up with hospitalised him for a week on a ventilator. Such is our club’s communication around player absenteeism we only know these two things now because his old manager at Livingston put out a get well message, and Charlie Austin’s wife Tweeted a pic of him from the hospital. This is where we have to go for info now, Roddy McPartick’s post-match interviews and Bianca Austin’s Instagram account. Again, I implore the club to change their policy on this. While other injured players returned to the team pariahs in the eyes of fans who didn’t believe much was wrong with them, Lyndon came back some all-conquering hero — look at this, bloke climbing off a bloody ventilator to get back playing within a month, what an absolute chap. Less Leon Baloguns and more money for public schools. There was an outpouring of support and love for the bloke, simply because we’d been allowed to find out what was actually wrong with him and knew it was a serious and genuine problem.

Dykes’ performances after that health scare were commendable. Three of his four man of the match awards came in the final five games. There were further goals at West Brom and at home to Norwich, at Stoke in the crucial final away game he led the line superbly. Three of our pathetic total of five goals at the Loft End were his. In a season where the effort and commitment of multiple players was questioned, watching him come back strong in these circumstances was a rare moment of joy. Given the tanking value of others, he and Chair are probably your most sellable assets now in a summer where some money desperately needs to be recouped from somewhere. I have a suspicion that Millwall interest from last summer may not have gone away, and if Warnock is correct then playing in a side like that might see him really fly. After the season just gone he’s one of the few that would also leave with QPR fans’ best wishes.

In numbers…
36 starts, 4 sub appearances, W12 D10 L17, 30.77% win percentage
8 goals scored (Boro H, Reading H, Reading H, Cardiff H, Cardiff H, Huddersfield H, West Brom A, Norwich H) (1 goal every 370 minutes), 4 assists (Fleetwood A, Swansea H, Blackpool A, Stoke A) (Goal contribution every 247 minutes)
4 yellow cards (Blackburn A foul, Norwich A foul, PNE A repetitive fouling, Norwich H foul)
4 LFW MOTM awards (Sheff U H, WBA A, Norwich H, Stoke A), 4 supporter MOTM award (Reading H, Cardiff H, Sheff U H, WBA A)
LFW Ratings — 5, 7, 6, 4, 4, 7, 6, 6, 6, 6, -, 6, 7, 5, 8, 7, 4, 7, 6, 6, 5, 6, 7, 4, 4, 7, 2, 6, 6, 7, 3, 4, 5, 4, 7, 4, 7, 7, 7, 5 = 5.641
Interactive Ratings — 5.80

10 — Ilias Chair B/C

There is a tendency among football fans in general to overrate your own players. There was general consensus that Darnell Furlong, and certainly Alex Smithies, were cheap at the prices we sold them for, when actually that’s transpired to be about spot on and the market had them both right. There was big hype around Jimmy Dunne and Rob Dickie early in their QPR careers, and look at where they both are now. I wonder if we’re collectively now in danger of doing the opposite with Ilias Chair.

Come back at me if you think this unfair, but my perception of the general consensus around W12 on Chair is of quite a frustrating player. One who is prone to hanging onto the ball too long, trying to do too much himself, when certainly Lyndon Dykes in particular would thrive better on good, early ball into the box. One who will get himself into a passing position, look up, see who it is to receive the ball, and decide he’s better off checking back and going it alone — frequently breaking down moves and running into cul-de-sacs as a result. This one is particularly noticeable when he looks up and sees it’s Osman Kakay, or more recently Aaron Drewe. This is that New England Patriots thing about Do Your Job Well - Chair can be guilty of trying to do the jobs of everybody in the team he doesn't rate. The value of an earlier release to a support runner shown in two Albert Adomah goals at Watford and Stoke. One who lives too much inside his own head, growing increasingly angry and frustrated when things don’t go our way and doubling down and down again on both of the above the worse the situation gets. Also one who’s been guilty of missing some handsome chances in front of goal at really bad moments — he was more guilty than anyone of failing to capitalise on a second half battering of Rotherham at Loftus Road in August, there was a gut wrenching penalty miss in what turned into a blow-out loss at home to Sunderland, that farcical indirect free kick at home to Swansea, and his long stretch through on the goal against Preston which ended with a finish Ade Akinibiyi would have been proud of was a brutal moment for him and us. A Mick Beale quote about him being a good player, but possibly not one you could win with, has hung around like the stench of that tracksuit he used to slob around in.

Ask anybody else who supports a team in the Championship, or watches the division, who is QPR’s best player, and the answer is now instantaneous. It’s Ilias Chair. That full Beale quote was that he wasn’t sure he was a player you could win with before he came here, but having worked with him he’d completely changed his mind. FourFourTwo not only had him in their best 50 players outside the Premier League, they had him in the top ten. He was in the WhoScored.com statistical team of the year right up until the closing few weeks, despite the disintegration of everything around him. Five goals and nine assists is a little below his glide slope, but 14 goal contributions is not bad in a team as toothless as ours. It’s his other numbers though — things like chance creation, expected goals, expected assists, forward runs, successful dribbles, penalty box penetrations — that are not only good for this team, good for this player, they’re good for anybody in this division. A few of them are literally off the charts.

If you’re reading LFW chances are you’re a bit, ahem, older school, and perhaps don’t buy into all this xG stuff as much as the younger generations, but let me tell you some of Chair’s placings on the end of season graphs and charts are pretty extraordinary for a player who was in a team that won two of 28 games at one point. He’s often out and away in the far reaches of these scatter graphs, with only Burnley’s brilliant Anass Zaroury for company. The good news, from an FFP headroom point of view, is that in an increasingly analytics and data driven sport it’s this sort of stuff that’s going to stick out to scouts and recruitment teams elsewhere more than your horrible memory of him botching a sitter against Preston or some perceived selfishness on the ball.

I’m much more in the pro camp. There's obviously a lack of physicality - I do wonder whether more should have been done on his upper body strength by now - and no blinding pace, which perhaps gives him a lower ceiling than he might have had. Certainly going to the World Cup and not playing at all until the third placed play-off, when he looked sadly a bit overawed, won’t have helped. We’re probably set to find out this summer. He does hang on too long, he can delay too much in release, he needs to play with a calmer and clearer head when he’s frustrated — sure. But he’s our best player. He just is. The hamstring injury he went down with in the Blackburn home game looked a bad one, and the crowd fell silent in the knowledge that could have been the season disappearing down the tunnel with him, but unlike the rest of the sit-down army he was back in double quick time — just as well, QPR lost three of the four games without him and they were arguably the three worst performances of all against Rotherham, Blackpool and Birmingham.

He scored two direct free kicks — the club’s first for three years at Sunderland, and then a ridiculous 45 yarder at Boro that doesn’t get talked about nearly enough. Here (as discussed in the Chris Willock piece) his numbers will upset the xG enthusiasts, but it’s difficult to give much of a toss when you see a goal like the one he scored at home to Hull live. Shape and arc on it like the curved back of a Brazilian underwear model. I could sit and watch that thing all day.

Even in a Gareth Ainsworth team, when we were in our “possession can do one” phase of the development project, it was Ilias Chair getting on the ball and threatening late in the day at Burnley — leading to a corner from which Chris Martin won the game. Again, at Stoke, a week later, the only time all afternoon we put five passes together resulted in the winner for Albert Adomah, and Chair was in the thick of that move too. He got on the ball when there was no ball to get on.

If he is leaving then firstly I’m fascinated where he ends up, for what sort of price, and how he does. But, secondly, I hope it goes superbly for him. I think in a better team with better players he’ll excel. Even if he doesn’t, he turned up for us, nobody could have tried any harder, nobody battled the tide quite as much as he did. I wish he could have played in a more successful team here. Big fan.

In numbers…
40 starts, 2 sub appearances, W11 D12 L19, 26.19% win percentage
5 goals scored (Sunderland A, Watford A, Hull H, Sheff Utd H, Boro A) (1 goal every 658 minutes), 9 assists (Boro H, Sunderland A, Rotherham H, Millwall A, Millwall A, Cardiff H, Millwall H, West Brom A, Norwich H) (Goal contribution every 235 minutes)
2 yellow cards (Coventry A foul, Norwich H foul)
2 LFW MOTM awards (Watford A, Hull H), 1 supporter MOTM award (Hull H)
LFW Ratings — 5, 6, 5, 6, 6, 7, 8, 9, 6, 7, 7, 7, 7, 7, 5, 8, 7, 5, 7, 5, 6, 5, 5, 5, 7, 2, 6, 5, 3, 5, 5, 4, 6, 5, 5, 3, 6, 4, 6, 6, 6, 5 = 5,714
Interactive Ratings — 6.08

11 - Tyler Roberts E/F

Let me just get right through it.

Problem one: what are we grading here? What, exactly, is a Tyler Roberts? Because if you’re telling me he’s a striker, or a centre forward, or a partner for Lyndon Dykes, or anything in that realm, then I’m afraid four goals, one of them against a League One team in the cup and two of them in five minutes against a relegated Reading side, doth butter no parsnips. He now has a career total of 24 goals in 183 appearances over seven years - a goal every eight games or so. Conor Washington has a career average of a goal every 4.5 games. Chuba Akpom has scored 24 goals since November 1.

Is he a creative? An attacking midfielder? A winger? Because, again, if so, a grand total of one assist - and that at Sunderland away where he won a free kick which Ilias Chair scored, rather than any kind of visionary defence-splitting pass or cross — is the sort of total I’d expect of my goalkeeper. There are obviously all sorts of issues around availability, body language, attitude, which we’re coming onto, but on the 14 occasions he did manage to make it onto the pitch to grace us with his presence from the start I could rarely really tell exactly what the big picture was. Is he meant to be sniffing out chances in the penalty box? Is he meant to be creating for others? Is he meant to be dribbling past people? What’s meant to be happening here? And when might that show begin?

In the quest to answer that question, let’s do the good bits of Tyler’s year in Hoops. There were four of these specifically so they won’t take us long. I should say though, very early, when Honest Mick was here, there were a couple of games where you could just see with his pressing and positioning off the ball, defending from the front, that little hint of Marcelo Bielsa training in him. Certainly compared to when you watched Jamal Lowe try to do the same thing at the other end of a busted season at home to Norwich, there was just the merest hint of him knowing what he was doing there. Or, at least, knowing where to stand. Look, we’re going to be scrabbling around for nice things to say here so let’s have that one.

He scored a genuinely very beautiful goal on his debut at Charlton in the League Cup. We drew 1-1 and lost on penalties, Charlton finished tenth in the division below. Still, nice. Good start.

Picking Tyler Roberts’ best performance for QPR is like picking the best Ed Sheeran song but, for the record, it was, by a distance, in the win at Bristol City. The team was electric in the first half, he made great hay driving into the right channel with support from an in-form Chair and Willock, and scored the second goal. Ah, nice, this is what a Tyler Roberts is for, thinks I. Look forward to more of that. He followed up that performance at Ashton Gate with marks of 6, 6, 4, 3, 3, 4, 6, 2 and it took him the best part of four months to make those eight appearances.

He then, miraculously, and fleetingly, scored two goals in five minutes. Two nil down to Paul Ince’s Reading, creche next to the away end full of Red Bull and orange Smarties, Jeff fucking Hendrick at the double, Roberts proved an unlikely saviour, and given how utterly bleak that situation was I guess we should always be grateful to him for that — I tried to call The Samaritans at half time and all the lines were busy. Not only that, but sharing the points rather than giving Reading all three helped enormously with the situation we found ourselves in with the Royals come April. The first of his two goals there was really very stylish indeed. We thought he’d burst back into life, but actually it was just that thing corpses do sometimes where they release some residual gas during the period of rigor mortis. A week later at home to Swansea he went back to being crap again. His second, which you’d have scored yourself, was not only his last goal of the season, it was his final positive contribution of any sort whatsoever.

His availability was a problem from the moment he walked through the door with what Honest Mick described as “a bit of a calf problem” as far back as July. We were never permitted to know anything more about this “bit of a calf problem” other than it was a “bit of a calf problem”, but it would eventually keep him out for most of the next ten months. Really quite a bit of a calf problem indeed, it would seem. At Birmingham in October he decided he’d had enough after 27 minutes, just five minutes after his fellow physio-botherer Jake Clarke-Salter had done the same thing, and on this occasion was so swift to call it a day and get off the pitch we hadn’t got the substitution ready in time to replace him. Don’t worry about it mate. Three months later at Hull he, weirdly, stopped participating in the game while it was going on in his immediate vicinity, walked around for a bit and then, once again, parked his arse on the floor, signalled to the bench, and substituted himself. Three nil down by this point, he ambled around behind the goal and completely blanked the away fans who’d travelled the 200 miles to be there with the team, only turning to offer a token clap when a few of them justifiably got a bit aggy about that. Go get the statement for the Gram.

This, it would turn out, would be the last we’d see of him, although there were still four months to run at this point. Once more us mere paying customers were not privy to the information on why that was. A strain, a pull, “a bit of a calf problem”. It didn’t take David Busst this long for goodness sake. When Gareth Ainsworth arrived as manager number three he actually made this a stated policy, and told us no team news would be forthcoming at any point ever again for fear of tipping off the opposition. Information black-out then. Oh, no, wait. Tyler responded, on literally the same afternoon, by getting his reps to stick a statement on his Instagram stories that actually the problem wasn’t getting any better, he was basically done, and he’d now be going back to Leeds to “focus on being the best version of himself”. #backstronger. No indication at this point whether the “best version of himself” is horizontal or vertical, but Leeds found so much wrong with him when they had a rummage around under the bonnet that within a fortnight they’d sent him back.

Tyler was “back on the grass” once more, and Gareth suggested we might even get to see some of what he’d been showing in training out on the pitch during a proper game soon. He made it as far as the bench for the 3-0 home shellacking by Coventry, was sent out in full kit at half time ready to come on and managed to injure himself in that warmup. Anybody who’s had the misfortune to watch QPR’s half-arsed, wholly unprofessional, phoned-in excuses for half time warmups will tell you the same — you’d have to be made of fucking tissue paper to get injured in that thing. Many drew the conclusion that perhaps he wasn’t as interested in helping out against Coventry as he might have been.

A day later, back to the Instagram, this time with an artsy shot of him lying on his back (seems to spend a lot of time like this) having his chest tattoo touched up, captioned “art through pain”. No indication whether the “pain” in this instance referred to the tattooist’s needle or his fucking ten-month calf strain. Still, with this, the Hull incident, his farewell speech where he described experiencing “some magical moments together” (this must have been while I was shooting up in the bogs to dull the pain of having to watch him) I think it’s fair to surmise that self-awareness is not a massively strong suit of Tyler’s. A champion of his, of which there are weirdly quite a few among QPR’s online support, said I had to understand just how distraught he would have been at missing out on the Welsh World Cup squad, at which point I laughed so uproariously and for so long I actually pulled my own calf doing it — and I was still up and about again before he fucking was.

It's not like he was any good when he did play. Even when the going was good, and everybody was on the “you versus yourself” journey with Daddy Mick, I found Roberts a very weird watch.

Invited to go on and fill his boots against a woeful Hull side at Loftus Road, which Rangers had already put to bed by going 3-0 up at half time, he spent his half hour substitute appearance mooching about on the left wing with a face like a busted barrel of whelks, bitching and moaning and arguing backwards and forwards interminably with Albert Adomah for playing the ball to his feet when he wanted it over the top, and playing it over the top when he wanted it to feet. This happened again, between him and Ilias Chair, at Bristol City and Sheff Utd. Just ongoing, running bitchy, moany whinge-a-thons because some idiot Championship nobody had dared to make Tyler’s porridge slightly too hot or too cold. Goldilocks’ 20-minute cameo in the FA Cup humiliation at Fleetwood, which again should have been an ideal chance for him to get his eye in with a goal or two, was among the most feeble and disinterested performances from a professional footballer I’ve ever seen, and provoked an angry exchange in the seated section between QPR fans and a member of his family. There was another substitute appearance at Cardiff that bordered on strange — on from the bench, he went and stood offside and stayed there, immediately screaming at Jimmy Dunne for some perceived crime. He gave the ball away the first three times he had it, and on the third occasion his violent attempt to retrieve it should really have seen him sent off. Later, in the debacle at Hull, we were once again treated to him pointing and demanding Osman Kakay play a ball into space ahead of him, and then when he delayed it just too long and overhit it just too much he stopped playing altogether, threw his arms up in the air, and started publicly spraying the club’s reserve right back in front of the away end.

Not since the horrible mercenary days of Hughes and Redknap’s Premier League squad have I seen such rank poor attitude, body language and effort levels from a QPR player. This was somebody giving every outward indication that they had absolutely no interest whatsoever in contributing to the cause here, and in fact saw the whole thing as a bit beneath him.

Such is the standard of local newspapers these days, a local hack up in Leeds simultaneously confused Tyler Roberts and Taylor Richards (I guess you can forgive him that, given their respective inputs) and the clauses in their loan deals around QPR’s option to buy. Suddenly it went around that, if still in the Championship, QPR would be obligated to buy Roberts this summer for about half a million quid. A long, sleepless night ensued. The problem with this, apart from us being better off printing half a million quid out at the cash point and setting light to it for 20 minutes of warmth, is it would mean QPR had agreed to a buy-out clause of £4.5m upon promotion for a player both they and Leeds agreed was only really worth £500k. Now, that admittedly does sound like something we would do, but all the same the speed at which it took off and became fact online was surpassed in its stupidity only by the amount of QPR’s Twitterati who were in favour of the move. As I said in Tim Iroegbunam’s write up, nothing stiffens the pencil dicks of the FIFA Ultimate Teams veterans more than some tippy tappy Premier League academy boi they can place on a formation graphic and debate whether he’d “cook” more as a “six, eight or ten”. And so it began, through the looking glass: “Good deal, good player if we can get him fit.”

I’m in the wrong game. I go somewhere else on Saturdays, clearly. I know even less than I thought. I would honestly rather lie back and watch Gillian McKeith piss onto a glass coffee table than watch Tyler Roberts play for QPR one more time, and there are people out there who want us to pay some actual legal tender to keep him here?

All that remains now is to sit back and wait for next season, when either in Leeds colours, or somebody else’s, the top knot will hone into view, Dickie and Dunne will collapse in on themselves, and Roberts will score two of his four goals for 2023/24 into the Loft End net he never once got close to notching in for us. Inevitable as it is irritating.

Fin.

In numbers…
14 starts, 6 sub appearances, W5 D8 L7, 25% win percentage
4 goals scored (Charlton A, Bristol City A, Reading A, Reading A) (1 goal every 295 minutes), 1 assist (Sunderland A) (Goal contribution every 236 minutes)
2 yellow cards (Hull H foul, Cardiff A foul)
1 LFW MOTM award (Charlton A), 1 supporter MOTM award (Charlton A)
LFW Ratings — 7, 7, 6, 6, 5, 6, 5, 5, 8, 6, 6, 4, 3, 3, 4, 6, 2, 7, 5, 1 = 5.1
Interactive Ratings — 5.65

14 — Chris Martin C

There is simply no more damning indictment of the way this club has been run of late than the entire situation around Chris Martin.

Firstly, QPR is supposed to be a development club, with a director of football model, a head of recruitment, and an academy staffed by, among others, an international football manager in his own right and a guy who was the first team manager here not so long ago. Eight years into that structure you lose one target man to illness in January, himself only an eight-ten goal a season striker, and you don’t have a single player anywhere else in the building, not one academy or youth team prospect, capable of coming into the first team, standing up front and heading a few balls for ten games while he recovers. Not one.

That’s horrendous anyway, but the solution they came up with really rubbed it in. Martin, who looked like he was on the steady run down to a long retirement in Mykonos when he was 24 never mind 34, was only available because Bristol City, fourteenth in our league, had released him early from his deal there. They were able to do so because, with their shiny new stadium and training ground, they’d brought through so many academy prospects they didn’t really know what to do with them all. They’ve already sold Antoine Semenyo for £10m and will get twice that for the glorious Alex Scott. They played the final game at Loftus Road with six academy grads in their team and zero loans, while we lost 2-0 with two 34-year-olds in the line up including the one they’d released on a free.

Martin did, as predicted, score on his debut against Millwall, and ultimately do the job he was brought here to do. His fortuitous goal against West Brom was extremely timely, and his late winner at Burnley will go down in Rangers folklore. There were some utterly painful afternoons when he was played from the start of games, but that’s our fault not his — he was essentially retired, he’s never been svelte, he can’t really move about, you use him for the last ten minutes of games (as we did at Turf Moor), not the first 80. He is what he is, did what he does, and we marked him accordingly. You now shake hands and send him on his way with thanks, and we remember him fondly for the miracle of Burnley forever more.

But no, it gets worse. The beatings will continue until morale improves. Far from being brought in as a stopgap, and a ten minute impact at the end of games, to mind the shop while Lyndon got well again, within a fortnight or so of moving in here Martin had been made the captain. By the time we got bummed in the gob at home to Coventry City things had become so desperate that Martin — quite an erudite and thoughtful speaker, as it goes — felt compelled to speak publicly about the lack of dedication from the players off the pitch. Not only that, but the club was in such a try-anything meltdown by now that they aired the comment on their own official website, when surely anywhere else in the modern PR-driven world of sport that clip would have hit the floor faster than a QPR loanee with a Saturday night table booking at Reign. Now we want to keep him around for another entire season, with a new contract, into his thirty fifth year.

What you’re telling me by doing so is you have not only created a situation where you have to get Chris Martin in to prop up your attack on the back of one injury to one player, but you have also built a dressing room and squad either so utterly devoid of voice, leadership, experience and strength in adversity, or so wildly out of control and difficult to police, that you then need to spend some of your limited summer budget on keeping a player who has shown you very conclusively that he Cannot Move About Any More for another year essentially to act as some sort of surrogate dad.

I’m genuinely surprised we haven’t seen some quite significant staff changes and departures at the end of this season. I can’t believe nobody’s resigned. I’d genuinely be embarrassed to come to work.

In numbers…
12 starts, 4 sub appearances, W5 D8 L7, 25% win percentage
4 goals scored (Millwall H, Blackpool A, West Brom A, Burnley A) (1 goal every 260 minutes), 0 assists (Goal contribution every 260 minutes)
1 yellow card (Norwich H foul)
1 LFW MOTM award (Millwall H), 0 supporter MOTM award
LFW Ratings — 6, 5, 6, 5, 4, 7, 4, 4, 3, -, 6, 3, 4, -, 7, 4 = 4.4
Interactive Ratings — 5.18

18 — Jamal Lowe D

It’s time for another one of our recurring themes, this one last discussed when we were dissecting the costume of Ethan Laird we were left with by the end of the campaign.

One of the great frustrations with this team is they had shown themselves capable. If the team’s dog shit then there’s not a lot you can do with it, dog shit remains dog shit no matter how much you shout at it. You’re not going to bully Bob Malcolm into running faster, you’re not going to scream Sammy Koejoe into weight loss, you’re not going to harangue Zesh Rehman into some sort of footballer. You’re howling at the moon. You’re that fella that stands on the green and shouts at the cars as they pass by. But this team showed you through September and October that they could do it, and while I don’t think anybody expected us to maintain that league leader status we briefly held in the week of the Cardiff and Wigan wins, there was enough in performances like Millwall, Bristol City and Sheff Utd away to think we might be on for a half decent year. Certainly not a sodding relegation battle.

Jamal Lowe only arrived in January, but he was a microcosm of this issue. I thought this was a good signing. He’s somebody they’d wanted in the summer only for Macauley Bonne’s agent to get wind of things and start playing silly buggers over his pay off, leaving Rangers without the budget to do the deal at the eleventh hour of the summer deadline. With Bonne successfully jettisoned second time around the deal was done in January instead. A very QPR deal in the sense we could have had Lowe permanently, within our budget, at any point we’d liked during his early days when he played non-league football for a host of teams right on our doorstep but let him go to Portsmouth and then Wigan to make his name instead, and now he’s a Premier League player on a Premier League wage we suddenly want him on loan. But, still, he’s a player I’ve quite rated when he played against us. He’s also quite quick, and fuck me do we need a bit of that. Item 151 on today’s glitch list, this team of ours is chronically slow, and lacks any sort of counter attacking threat whatsoever as a result. It’s why Sinclair Armstrong can look so transformative when he comes on from the bench despite lacking essentially all the rudimentary basics of the sport.

Sure enough, his impact was pretty immediate. Tyler Roberts may have scored the goals at Reading, but it was Jamal Lowe whose introduction from the bench led that comeback and he was our man of the match on debut — a last-second diving header to win it agonisingly denied. A week later, when Tyler had gone back to playing not so much with a finger up his arse as eight fingers and at least one of his thumbs, Lowe was impressing again at home to Swansea where he scored a nicely taken goal which won another point. A fortnight further still and he was bagging again for another 1-1 draw at Huddersfield Town — steady on down lads, we’ll be taking a hammer to the Break Here In Case of European Football credit card at this rate.

Lowe had, like his teammates before him, shown himself capable of making a big impact on this division in our colours. And yet, from there, he scored one more goal in 16 games (that a late penalty at Rotherham) and, like so many others, quickly started carrying himself and inputting into games like somebody who would rather have been anywhere else but here. He was one of the worst offenders for simply not giving a single shit in the debacle at Blackpool, where we gave him a mark of one which was virtually unheard of in 20 years of LFW this season but has become pretty par for the course since Christmas. Given a reprieve that weekend against Birmingham he turned in a frankly pretty disgusting performance — touching the ball 18 times in 82 minutes, less than half of that managed by Seny Dieng and by far the lowest of any other starting player on the pitch. In an improved team showing at home to Norwich, by now a crucial game to our survival chances, an effective high press led by front two Dykes and Martin kept breaking down when it got to Lowe because he wasn’t putting in the same sort of hard yards, and Norwich were able to just play around the initial surge and then out down his flank.

This is where opinion divides.

Benefit of the doubt types say the team was over performing in the early rounds and was always going to regress; that regression was fuelled to the point of going nuclear by a catalogue of injuries which were all absolutely genuine; and the whole thing snowballed out of control as confidence drained from the team. Given the situation Lowe walked into here — the team won none of his first nine games — perhaps confidence and morale was sapped. It’s entirely plausible.

For suspicious, cynical types like me, I think there’s something more insidious at work. Lowe, like Laird, has an uncertain summer ahead now. Bournemouth have stayed up and he is surplus to requirements there. He needs another deal somewhere for next season, and that’s not going to be helped at all if he goes into the summer with a bad injury. The Covid-19 pandemic forced the players to pull back the magician’s curtain on this and admit it publicly. Lyle Taylor had a £35,000 a week contract lined up at Nottingham Forest, and chose to protect that by refusing to play the lockdown games for Charlton — a club that had given him his chance in the Championship in the first place and were subsequently relegated at the end of those seven matches they’d had to play without their top scorer. I couldn’t have lived with myself, but I’m a football fan not a football player. Grant Hall did similar for us to protect a summer move to Middlesbrough while Angel Rangel played on, and while we all revere and applaud Rangel for that he ended his career by blowing his Achilles out during those matches while Hall got his nice signing on bonus up at the Riverside. It’s a short career, to a certain extent you can see why they do it. You only need listen to Under the Cosh for a couple of episodes before a situation arises where a player downs tools or phones it in or pretends to be injured to protect himself or fuck over a club or manager he doesn’t like or feels wronged by — Jon Parkin sits there every week and says “I wouldn’t have played, me”. It’s rife.

It's my opinion that a lot of players here last season with uncertain summers ahead of them, particularly those who thought they were coming to push for promotion under Honest Mick only to find themselves plunged into a relegation battle playing Gazball, to one extent or another downed tools.

Whichever side of that debate you’re on, it’s clear that these players could do it, because we saw it. For whatever reason, they didn’t.

In numbers…
14 starts, 6 sub appearances, W3 D5 L12, 15% win percentage
3 goals scored (Swansea H, Huddersfield A, Rotherham A) (1 goal every 457 minutes), 2 assists (Reading A, Burnley A) (Goal contribution every 274 minutes)
5 yellow cards (Hull A dissent, Sunderland H time wasting, Blackburn H foul, Watford H foul, West Brom A foul)
1 LFW MOTM award (Reading A), 0 supporter MOTM award
LFW Ratings — 7, 6, 3, 6, 5, 4, 5, 3, 4, 6, 1, 2, 4, 3, 6, 3, 4, 6, 6, 4 = 4.696
Interactive Ratings — 4.87

30 — Sinclair Armstrong C

Very difficult one to mark this.

Sinclair Armstrong is 19-years-old, and prior to this season had played 11 games of senior football in his life — all of it at Conference level. He’s been plunged into a struggling team, with three very different managers, at second tier level. However you judge, you judge in that context.

At times he’s looked very good despite this situation. It’s only the Championship, you’re not playing against the 1994 AC Milan defence at this level, and at times Armstrong has shown how easy it can be and how difficult our other forwards make it look. The decision to award the penalty and the red card was hot nonsense from James Linington, but his direct run into the box to win a spot kick and break the deadlock on his first start for the club at home to Cardiff made the whole thing happen and was far from complex. In pathetic home losses to Blackpool and Birmingham at opposite ends of the campaign, and in the shameful collapse at Hull, despite him only being on the pitch for 22, 45 and 13 minutes respectively, we gave him the star man award simply because him picking the ball up and running at defenders with pace and purpose was in such stark contrast to the drudge that had gone before. If that explosive power and speed can be harnessed we’ve got a real weapon on our hands here, and boy do we need one of those because since Bright Osayi-Samuel left us I’ve seen queues at the Post Office shift faster than anybody in QPR colours. We are slow as rust.

Gareth Ainsworth gave a hint that he might be the one to channel that asset effectively in the upset victory at Burnley. Rangers spent the majority of that match giving up field position, possession, ambition and hope, but roped their dope successfully with a strong showing late in the game. That was led by the introduction of Armstrong who gave centre backs Jordan Beyer and Man City’s Taylor Harwood Bellis a torrid time — they simply didn’t know what to do with him, and they’re as good as defenders come in this division. Something to cling to for the future there.

But let’s be very clear here, Armstrong is the dictionary definition of raw. He lacks so many fundamental basics of the sport: his game intelligence simply does not exist, his decision making is wild even for a young and inexperienced player, and his composure can really be quite laughable. The one-on-one chance to win the game at Huddersfield, where he punted the ball into touch on the far side of the pitch, lives long in the memory. Attacking a cross at home to Millwall, only 1-0 down and with 21 minutes left to play, and trying to punch it in with his fist, leading to a yellow card and a cramp so bad he had to be substituted, likewise. It can be difficult to shake the feeling he’s actually wandered in from the track team, with blistering pace but no football ability whatsoever. His passion, post-game celebrations, and outward devastation when we lose, makes him a crowd pleaser, and it’s going to be a tremendous moment when he scores his first goal for us. That ‘when’, however, might well be an if — three starts and 22 sub appearances later and we’re still waiting for it. While we’re hammering others for lack of availability it’s only right that we also say he’s been rather prone to one week on and three weeks off himself.

That he won the Young Player of the Year award said more about that shortlist than anything else. Armstrong, Elijah Dixon-Bonner, Andre Dozzell, Aaron Drewe, Tim Iroegbunam, Ethan Laird, Taylor Richards and Tyler Roberts; a striker who hasn’t scored a goal yet, a Liverpool cast-off who hasn’t played, Andre the friendly ghost, a 22-year-old who’s started five games in his life and only got in this year because one of the other candidates on the list was being a knob, and four loan players of which three have been varying degrees of problematic.

The club are obviously desperate to get a couple of players through from the academy to stem the tide of criticism from gobshites like me about what exactly all of that staff is doing all day down there, and Armstrong’s certainly the most likely success story at this point. Lots and lots to go on, and he’s one of the few players I’m genuinely excited about and looking forward to seeing again in August. But, at the same time, miles and miles and miles still to travel.

In numbers…
3 starts, 22 sub appearances, W4 D3 L10, 23.53% win percentage
0 goals scored (531 minutes), 2 assists (Cardiff H, Rotherham A) (Goal contribution every 265.5 minutes)
4 yellow cards (Hull A foul, Millwall H handball, Birmingham H fight, Burnley A foul)
3 LFW MOTM awards (Blackpool H, Hull A, Birmingham H), 1 supporter MOTM award (Birmingham H)
LFW Ratings — 5, 7, 7, 7, 6, 7, -, -, 7, 5, 5, -, -, 6, -, 5, 4, 6, 4, 6, -, 3, 6, 7 = 5.722
Interactive Ratings — 5.69

Others

Mide Shodipo had actually qualified for a testimonial having spent ten years at Loftus Road. Easy to forget he was a starter at Blackburn on day one, and both Mick Beale and Neil Critchley tried their best with him through another three starts and nine sub appearances (6, 6, 5, 5, -, -, -, -, 6, 6, 4, 5 = 5.735). We even gave him the star man prize in a 3-0 home defeat to Burnley in which he came on at half time. A fifth loan spell of his career so far took him back to more like his level, at League One Lincoln, and saw him score twice (Derby A 1-1-, Plymouth A 0-2) in 15 starts and five sub apps. Luck finally out, he was not on the retained list in May. Another one who never got close to fulfilling early potential in our colours.

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LLoydy added 09:44 - May 24 thanks again for all the write ups, it really is appreciated. A little churlish of me to pick one thing out but like you I'm a fan of Chair and I'm not sure what more he could have done given his numbers, to make him a B/C seems to burden him with the cack that surrounded him, solid B.
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Northernr added 10:01 - May 24 Well we made an early call that, given the way the season went, there would be no As and no Bs. So originally he was on a C and Sam Field on a B/C. In the end we thought that too harsh on Chair so upped them both half a mark, and made Field the only B. Chair, who I like, has missed some huge chances in big games for us this year.
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QPunkR added 11:10 - May 24 Couldn't agree with you more on Chair, Clive. I'm definitely in the 'pro' camp
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BlackCrowe added 12:31 - May 24 I'm in the Chair camp too but his talent is wasted without any quality or shape around him and results in him having no confidence in his team mates, therefore holding onto the ball for too long and more often that not losing profession. I'm not GA's style of play gives much hope that it will bring out the best in Ilias once again. Ps. Am i the only one who thinks Jamal Lowe has great potential. I'd like him to be with us next season if that was possible.

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Northernr added 12:46 - May 24 I like Lowe too mate, which is kind of the point I'm making. he's well capable, and stopped showing it.
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E15Hoop added 17:16 - May 24 No happy-clapping from me, Clive, on anything you've said on the end of season reports, you'll be relieved to hear, given some of our previous conversations! I think you've made all your points as eruditely as we've all come to expect, and have been very balanced (with plenty of empirical evidence to back up all your statements, which, as you know, I'm a particularly big fan of!) There is, of course, a however coming, and its also in relation to Jamal Lowe. I absolutely get where you're coming from in general, but I thought he was excellent in the second half away at Burnley and throughout at Stoke, with his collect and hold-up game a valuable contribution - not especially great at home to Bristol City, to be fair, but he did at least show energy and some sense of purpose (and pace, as you mentioned). Given that these games came right at the end of the campaign, doesn't that point more towards the morale-sapped "what's the point" end of the spectrum in the matches preceding, rather than the "not prepared to sacrifice myself" end? He seemed also to be one of the players more directly engaged and enthused by the Haka than some of his colleagues, which leads me also to think he responded well to GA and RD's pep-talks.

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Dorse added 19:24 - May 24 I'm not exactly an xG xPert but, based on those figures, Chair might actually be Superman. I love his approach to games and he'll be missed if / when he goes.
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eastside_r added 22:26 - May 24 Four actual LOL moments for me which is incredible given how depressing reliving this was. Positively Reithian so one more big thank you from me. THANK YOU CLIVE.
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Royboy48 added 23:41 - May 24 Hard reads, all of them Clive. But good job; beats me how you have the mental strength to do it Hope you never have to repeat this season. Now how about End Of Term Report - 22/23 Managers. Add Warbs for compare and contrast...
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stainrodnee added 13:50 - May 27 Spot on Clive with all your assessments (and for all of your excellent articles throughout the season). You deserve a medal from the club. I completely agree with this … “ I’m genuinely surprised we haven’t seen some quite significant staff changes and departures at the end of this season. I can’t believe nobody’s resigned.” Who is taking responsibility for what’s gone on and what on earth are the board doing about it?

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PastCaringNW2 added 09:24 - Jun 3 These articles have been quite brilliant. I don't really have any fears about going down or losing 12 games at home or scoring a pitiful number of goals at the Loft End. It was awful but a lot of clubs thriving today had to suffer a great deal worse than that in order to rebuild (and before over-taking the likes of us). There is a very strong argument that throwing the kind money the owners are currently haemorrhaging to maintain the footballing equivalent of a failed state is doing us no favours medium or long term. The entire model has been proven to be wrong-headed and doomed both commercially and on the field. You can fiddle with the economy of that system all you like and sell off as many assets as you can to maintain respectability on the balance sheet but in the end this government has to go. If that means dropping a level or two then that is the price that needs to be paid eventually in any case. Why delay? I think I am right in saying that, based on the last set of accounts, in order for the club to have broken even it would need to have no paid players or staff. How does a business with the turnover of a club like ours get itself into that position? The worst thing in a way is the group-think. It's not like one evil bastard has decided to gut the club for personal gain as we have seen down the leagues in recent years. This has been a team effort managed by a group of apparently plausible individuals (many of whom are the proverbial football men) who have got it spectacularly wrong over and over again. The club's administrators should have an assessment category of their own. Fs all around. Including Ainsworth though at least he proved to be a lucky general when we needed one. Their solution to every problem is to break the piggy bank and to pay off the fans with increasingly tawdry exercises in nostalgia. The sporting equivalent of empty calories. We are endlessly encouraged to look back at a very rose tinted past because we are too gun-shy to look ahead. Coming back to the forwards, short term my worry in terms of my own enjoyment is having no-one in the squad who is likely to get game time who I will actually look forward to watching play. I can't remember feeling like that since a stultifying 0-0 pre-season friendly at Griffin Park back in the days of Vinnie. A few weeks later there was (IIRC) the first mass airing of "One Gerry Francis" at Watford and the start of the long road to playing Palace in their flip flops. If Chair, Willock, Dykes (and presumably Dickie, and Dieng) all depart then I'm afraid I can't summon any enthusiasm for the idea of spending my afternoons and evenings hoping that players who could just as easily be playing National League South are all going to punch above their weight at the same time often enough to win a dozen games. Our current scouting record does not suggest that we will get as lucky as Gerry got with Darlington and Wardley let alone achieving that in half a dozen positions. Gerry had a lot more to work with in terms of viable Championship players than Ainsworth will have. The starting position squad wise was much much healthier and the experienced players were able to provide a good foundation when properly utilised. There is no such foundation today. Nailed on for 23rd unless there are two or three FFP handicaps handed out along the way. For those who wanted their Rangers back I think that day is looming and the question is if that were to happen what do you want to do with it? Are you going to do the equivalent of a Union Berlin fan and pick up a shovel and build your own stadium? Cos that is probably what is going to be required in some form or another. Radical surgery top to bottom and a long painful rehab.

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