QPR are due to travel to the KC Stadium on Saturday to face Hull City in the Championship — that is, unless “common sense” is applied.
QPR have arrived. I received official confirmation of this fact in the Newlands Shopping Centre in Kettering on Thursday afternoon. I’d popped in there to escape the icy wind whistling down the high street that was dissuading unsuspecting members of the public from stopping to give me their opinions on the student protests and let me take their photograph. All journalists hate doing vox pops because people tend to not be too keen to stop, and are often rude in their refusals, and it’s impossible to shake the thought that the task is ultimately pointless because even those people who do care what some randomer thinks of today’s top story would concede that it makes not a jot of difference to them or the story. Most people simply ignore them, and rightly so. More on pointless tasks shortly.
Anyway while gearing up my meagre self confidence for another harassment of happy shoppers I stumbled across a stall in the middle of the precinct selling calendars and such like. And there, standing proudly with Manchester United’s 2011 annual to its right, and Cheryl Cole’s 2011 wankathon to the left, was the QPR annual 2011. I didn’t even know such a beast existed but there it was, slap bang in the middle of the stand in Kettering town centre. And better still, if you bought it you got Cheryl’s half price. The stallholder looked at me with the eyes of somebody who was considering alerting the authorities as I took out my phone and photographed the glorious moment. He probably thought I was snatching a free picture of the chain smoking, racist Geordie, rather than the God like figure of Alejandro Faurlin, but I didn’t feel correcting him would have helped my cause much.
Suitably buoyed, I went on with the menial job of asking strangers for their opinion and now, some eight hours later, I’m back in my warm house engaging in another utterly pointless activity — writing a match preview for a game that is unlikely to take place.
I’ve written on LFW before about the frustration of match postponements. Last season we had the freak storm that put paid to our home match with Crystal Palace — although not before I’d paid for my train ticket and got as far as London St Pancras from Sheffield. Prior to that there was the infamous FA Cup third round replay at Luton, called off just over half an hour from kick off with QPR fans queuing to enter the away end. In the defence of both QPR and Luton on those occasions the rain was biblical, and the pitches very much waterlogged. But such is that feeling of anger when you have £60 worth of match and train tickets or petrol receipts in your pocket and you’re actually there ready to go through the turnstile I always feel like demanding to see and inspect the pitch myself. Should this be allowed to happen I have no doubt I’d slosh around the sodden turf, sinking ankle deep into the mud while shouting things like "what’s wrong with you tarts, get your arses out here and get playing.” Ultimately though all there is left to do in such circumstances is skulk home muttering things about the pitch they used to play on at the Baseball Ground in the 1960s.
This Saturday though we face a new phenomena in the world of match postponements. A football match that doesn’t take place, even though there is a perfectly fine and playable pitch for it to take place on. The KC Stadium has the best undersoil heating system money can buy — a system that has enabled the ground staff to steadily increase the temperature of the pitch during this week so it has melted its snow covering gradually, without waterlogging the grass, and allowed it to drain away. At 3pm on Saturday there will not be a pitch in the country in better shape to stage a football match. Chances are though no football will be played.
That’s because it is now acceptable to call matches off because the roads and approaches to the ground are not safe for spectators. I’m not sure how we’ve let this nonsense sneak up on us, but sneak up on us it has and now nobody says a bloody thing as one game after another falls by the wayside because the "safety of supporters cannot be guaranteed” and anybody asked to justify the ludicrousness of calling a match off while four times as many people go shopping on the same icy roads half a mile away trots out a line about "common sense.”
The health and safety Nazis and nanny state strikes again. If you called a game off whenever the safety of supporters could not be guaranteed just how many home games would Stoke City be allowed to play? Oh, apparently they don’t mind some 44-year-old unemployed pottery worker smashing a window with a lump of wood and showering you with glass, but if there’s half a chance you might slip on some ice the game has to be off.
Now if you have a relative who was horribly maimed slipping on some ice outside Shrewsbury Town’s ground in 1994 then please forgive my insensitivity here but in my opinion the sole, one and only consideration in this circumstance should be the state of the pitch. Can you play football on that pitch? Good, let’s play football then and if people would like to come and watch and feel it is safe to do so then let them come and if they think it’s a bit cold and snowy then let them stay at home. It’s their choice. Remember that? When we made our own choices rather than have them made for us?
Hull have lost a game this way before, against Chelsea, as have we at Loftus Road against Swansea. On both occasions the pitches were playable, on both occasions the police voiced concerns about spectator safety, on both occasions the games were called off and on both occasions the police expressed no concerns about four times the number of people due to attend the matches making their way to shopping centres within walking distance of the stadiums.
Three weekends before Christmas will Humberside Police be in touch with the Princess Quay shopping centre this weekend saying that while it’s all very nice and cosy inside, the approach roads are covered in snow and therefore it must close? No, of course not, and even if they did they’d be quickly told to piss off. And there will be far more people in Princess Quay this weekend than there will be at the KC Stadium on Saturday.
Hull City even said on Thursday that they may leave the decision until Saturday morning — which would surely defeat the object of ensuring the safety of supporters travelling to the game. Unless they make the decision at 6am on Saturday morning three coach loads of QPR fans will already be on the road, and many more besides will be at Kings Cross station. Is the snow going to get any better between now and Saturday? Is there suddenly going to be some blast of heat to melt it away? I’ll be angry if this game is called off anyway, but if it’s called off on Saturday I’ll unleash a Fatwa on somebody — or whatever the good people of Hull believe it is that we do in our "town full of bombers.” If the pitch is playable then the game should be played. End of story.
Recent History: I had to afford myself a small smile this morning when former Hull City player and subsequently rent-a-gob for the newspapers and radio stations in that part of the world Peter Swan proffered his thoughts on this weekend’s game. While admitting that he’d seen nothing of QPR this season Swan said he had noticed that Rangers have won quite a lot of games by the odd goal (in fact only two of our 11 wins so far have been by that margin) and that Neil Warnock (a man with six promotions to his name over the past 20 years) has had his fair share of luck.
I smiled because ordinarily I’d go to town on such utter clap trap, regularly spewed forth from next to no research whatsoever from the Swan’s and Peter Beagrie’s of this world and given air time and column inches by bone idol newspapers and broadcasters because they think that as these people used to play the game a bit they are suitably qualified to henceforth with whatever half truth and nonsense dressed up as opinion they like. However, as I’m about to contend that Phil Brown struck a bit lucky himself after taking over at Hull City perhaps I’ll back off on this occasion.
It probably hasn’t escaped your notice that we’ve been without Hull City on our fixture list for the last two seasons while they have been gallivanting off in the big time. The distance of the place, QPR’s recent record and a frosty relationship with the supporters in this part of the world probably means you haven’t missed them too much but despite all of our recent history with the Tigers it was hard not to admire the way they initially went about attacking the top flight. By simply sticking to the same sort of game plan as they’d had in the Championship they caught several big names on the hop after promotion, most notably Arsenal at the Emirates Stadium although that game is now remembered by most people outside Hull more for the visiting supporter’s laughable "you’re getting mauled by the Tigers” chant coupled with mauling hand actions. Start pitching pink tents now and I’ll let you know when you’re as camp as that.
Hull won six of their first eight games in the Premiership, and picked up another six points through November and the start of December to sit a creditable fifth in the table as the midway point of the campaign approached — European qualification beckoned if they could maintain their form. Everybody knows what happened next. On Boxing Day they came up against a Man City side in the first throws of new money, boasting a very decent team geared to attack at every opportunity. Hull needed to be right on their game to get anything at all and having collapsed to a 4-1 defeat at home to Sunderland the game before a further loss was always likely. Paul McShane against Robinho was never likely to be a conspicuous success and as it turned out City were 4-0 up at half time. Shit happens, move onto the next game. If we get promoted this season one thing we must accept is that next year there will be some thrashings on the road.
Manager Phil Brown then, for reasons entirely ego related, delivered a half time bollocking, complete with exaggerated finger waggling, to his beleaguered team on the pitch in front of the spectators. "Brilliant” cried the radio phone in indiots, "about time these molly coddled footballers were brought down a peg or two.” The ex professionals in the media were less fulsome in their praise, preferring instead to suck their teeth and mutter things along the lines of: "I wouldn’t have done that if I were him.”
Nobody will ever do it again. Brown, in my opinion, was lucky on several counts to this point. Firstly he was lucky to get the Hull job at all. He’d started his managerial career at Derby County, taking over a side that had made the play offs the year before under George Burley and quickly turning it into an outside bet for relegation from this division. So much so that Derby sacked him before he’d completed a full season in charge for fear of the damage he would do if he stayed. His policy of loaning players at a rate of one a week to the point where, for our visit to Pride Park that season, he had two more than he was allowed to name in the squad smacked of an idiot out of his depth. He pitched up next at the KC Stadium as an assistant manager to Phil Parkinson and was lucky to get that.
Hull were the original Swansea City — a lovely new ground married up with a manager at the top of his game and a fine team. Attendances increased four fold (don’t let Hull Cty fans tell you they were all there through thick and thin, their home gate for a match with Bournemouth at this point of the 1994/95 season was 3,056) and the team flew up the leagues under the guidance of Peter Taylor. When he left City turned to Parkinson, who had done remarkable things with Colchester United in his first role as a boss but found Taylor’s shoes hard to fill on Humberside. Brown stepped into the subsequent breach as caretaker and despite a series of poor results — including home defeats by Ipswich (2-5), Plymouth (1-2), Norwich (1-2) and West Brom (0-1) — he kept them up and was given the job permanently.
And that seemed to work out as you would expect, with Hull knocking around 18th position in the league in October 2007. Step forward Fraizer Campbell and 15 goals later, almost one every two games, Hull had beaten Bristol City in the play offs and were on their way to the big time. It’s unfair to accuse managers of luck when their signings turn out well because that’s a big part of their job — but Brown’s other signings were so mediocre, and Man Utd are so good it was almost a no brainer. If he wasn’t lucky, he certainly dropped on nicely with Campbell and they would never have been promoted in a million years without him. That they managed to pull a declining Watford side in the play off semi final, almost a free pass to Wembley such was the magnitude of the Hornets’ collapse that season, only adds to my scepticism.
Brown’s team was sixth in the Premiership when he marched them back onto the pitch for a dressing down they probably wondered what they had done to deserve. They won only two more league games all season, out of 19 fixtures, and stayed up on the last day despite failing to win any of their last 11 matches on goal difference alone. Brown, discreetly, took to the field sporting a ridiculous beard to sing a few bars of "this is the best trip I’ve ever been on.” His image as a complete joke of a manager was firmly cemented.
Last season the poor form continued. They won only two of their first 11 league matches and between December and February failed to win at all. Brown had an important ally in chairman Paul Duffen, but while Hull were sinking deeper into the relegation mire he was busy undoing the sterling work of his predecessor Adam Pearson by working up a mountain of debt paying vastly inflated wages to poor players. Hull had the worst side in the league, but were in the top ten wage payers in the league. Ultimately it needed Pearson to retake control of the club in the spring, ushering the ridiculous Duffen off to the side, to stop it going into meltdown completely. Brown was finally replaced, and has spent time since getting his agent to link him with every available job while fans of the clubs in question hide behind their sofas with the lights off hoping he’ll think they’re out and go away.
This summer, a good appointment. In the midst of a deep Duffen/Brown created financial crisis the Tigers tempted Leicester manager Nigel Pearson to move north and a long and painful rebuilding process has now begun.
The Manager: Pearson’s decision to leave the Walkers Stadium seemed like a strange one on the face of it.
The former Middlesbrough and Sheffield Wednesday centre half has built a very tidy coaching reputation for himself in the game since retiring — working with Stoke, West Brom, Newcastle and the England Under 21s. He stepped into management properly (an early spell as last man standing at Carlisle hardly counts, although he kept them up against all odds with the famous Jimmy Glass goal for the record) for the first time at Southampton. He found a skint club down on its luck and facing relegation from the Championship but kept them up, and in some style with a late in the day win at West Brom. His reward for that was the sack, as well known mentalist Rupert Lowe tried to instigate a joint first team and academy set up at St Mary’s with little known Dutchman Jan Poortvliet at the helm. Southampton were promptly relegated and plunged into administration which is nothing more than they deserved.
Pearson meanwhile rehabilitated Leicester who passed Southampton coming the other way 12 months later. After the won League One at a canter they made the play offs in the Championship last season and looked good for the final after recovering from losing the first leg at home to take Cardiff to penalties on their own patch only for Frenchman Yann Kermorgant to stupidly elect to chip his crucial spot kick in the shoot out and then watch in horror as it was easily saved. Still, Leicester looked good for a push this season which made it all the stranger when Pearson walked out to join cash strapped Hull City.
Pearson was regularly at odds with Leicester chairman Milan Manadaric over how much money he had to spend on players, and managers that work under the Serb always know the sack is never more than three bad results away, but by moving into the cash crisis at the KC Stadium he seemed to be cutting off his nose to spite his face.
I really rate Pearson, despite his dourness, but the job at Hull City is a massive one. It may take three seasons for Pearson to have the team looking and functioning how he wishes and in that time their Premiership parachute payments will end adding pressure on him to get it right sooner.
Three to watch: Looking down the Hull City squad list there are some eye catching names who actually aren’t in the team at the moment. John Bostock, Jimmy Bullard, Nolberto Solano, Jay Simpson, Kevin Kilbane, Peter Halmosi, Craig Fagan and Caleb Folan are all on the pay roll but didn’t start at Middlesbrough last week for one reason or another.
A man that did was Manchester United winger or striker Cameron Stewart, who played 70 minutes at the Riverside Stadium but made little impact in difficult conditions. Comparisons are already being drawn between him and Fraizer Campbell as they arrived at the same point in the season, from Man Utd, and they look a bit alike. Stewart has already spent a month on loan with Yeovil this season, where he made one start and four sub appearances, and it remains to be seen whether he can emulate Campbell’s immense success in this part of the world.
Stewart was replaced by Jay Simpson last week, a man who will be familiar to QPR fans after a season long loan deal at Loftus Road last term. Simpson signed from Arsenal last August and seemed to be the ideal man for Jim Magilton’s QPR side — a striker the team had long been crying out for. Initially, as Magilton’s ideas clicked into place, Simpson was a success. He scored twice in his third match at Cardiff as the R’s won 2-0 and had ten goals to his name by the turn of the year. Sadly, as the team fell apart and worked its way through three managers, Simpson lost confidence and form completely. He seemed to have his touch back at the end of February with three goals in five matches as Neil Warnock arrived but a succession of bad misses in a home game against Plymouth knocked his confidence again and he failed to score in any of his last 11 games at Rangers. When Arsenal said they would sell him in the summer, Warnock showed no interest, which said a lot.
Simpson is yet to score in 14 Hull City appearances, although you wouldn’t back against that changing on Saturday. He divided opinion by the end of his time at QPR and all in all it doesn’t look as if he will fulfil the potential he showed in his early Arsenal days as part of their youthful League Cup side.
Finally Robert Koren seems to have settled in a lot better than Simpson and made a much bigger impact. The Slovenian international, capped 44 times, was a surprise release from West Brom in the summer and seemed set for Leicester for most of the close season before City swooped in. His debut wasn’t a conspicuous success, losing 4-0 at Millwall, but he has scored five goals already since then including two in his last two games and Shaun Derry will have to be on his guard against the threat he poses from midfield.
Links >>> Hull City Official Website>> Hull City Message Board >>> KC Stadium Travel Guide
A feature of the Luigi De Canio reign at Loftus Road, and our recent visits to Hull City, has been late goals against. The Tigers broke Rangers’ hearts in 2007 when Stuart Elliott scored twice in the last five minutes to turn an away win into yet another defeat, and the Tigers were at it again on our last visit here — keeping their promotion push just about on track with an injury time goal by defender Michael Turner. Earlier Dexter Blackstock had been awarded the first goal after a mistake by Bo Myhill, although the ball barely seemed to cross the line and Rangers were fortunate to be awarded the goal.
Hull City: Myhill 6, Ricketts 6, Turner 7, Brown 7, Dawson 7, Garcia 6 (Hughes 54, 7), Ashbee 4, Marney 6, Pedersen 6 (Folan 61, 7), Windass 6 (Fagan 75, 7), Campbell 7
Subs Not Used: Duke, France
Booked: Fagan (foul)
Goals: Turner 90 (assisted Folan)
QPR: Camp 7, Mancienne 6, Stewart 7, Hall 7, Delaney 7, Ephraim 7, Ainsworth 7 (Connolly 90, -), Mahon 6, Rowlands 7, Blackstock 6 (Leigertwood 55, 5), Agyemang 7 (Balanta 80, -)
Subs Not Used: Pickens, Lee
Booked: Rowlands (foul), Camp (time wasting), Leigertwood (foul)
Goals: Blackstock 14 (assisted Ephraim)
Luigi De Canio got his QPR reign off to a flying start against a poor Hull City side at Loftus Road. A fine first half strike from Ephraim, who cut in from the left flank before curling a low right footed shot into the corner from the edge of the area, preceded a vintage Mikele Ligertwood strike after the break. There was only really one team on the pitch which makes it all the more surprising that by the end of the season Rangers had stayed in much the same position while Hull won promotion into the Premiership.
QPR: Camp 7, Mancienne 7, Cranie 8, Stewart 7, Barker 7, Rowlands 7, Ephraim 8, Leigertwood 8, Buzsaky 7 (Ainsworth 86, -),Vine 7 (Nardiello 90, -), Nygaard 7 (Bolder 81, -)
Subs Not Used: Cole, Timoska
Booked: Mancienne (foul), Barker (foul), Stewart (foul), Vine (wasting time)
Goals: Ephraim 26 (assisted Rowlands) Leigertwood 56 (assisted Ephraim)
Hull: Myhill 5, Ricketts 5, Turner 6, Brown 7, Delaney 4, Garcia 5 (McPhee 58, 6), Ashbee 4, Marney 7, Okocha 4 (Featherstone 71, 6), Windass 7, Campbell 6
Subs Not Used: Duke, Dawson, Livermore
Booked: Turner (foul), Delaney (foul)
Head to Head >>> Hull wins 13 >>> Draws 13 >>> QPR wins 15
Previous Results:
2007/08 Hull 1 QPR 1 (Blackstock)
2007/08 QPR 2 Hull 0 (Ephraim, Leigertwood)
2006/07 Hull 2 QPR 1 (Blackstock)
2006/07 QPR 2 Hull 0 (Blackstock, Jones)
2005/06 QPR 2 Hull 2 (Ainsworth 2)
2005/06 Hull 0 QPR 0
1991/92 QPR 5 Hull 1 (League Cup)
1991/92 Hull 0 QPR 3 (League Cup)
1985/86 Hull 1 QPR 5 (League Cup)
1985/86 QPR 3 Hull 0 (League Cup)
Played for Both — Mark Hateley
QPR 1995-97 >>> Hull City 1997-98
To say Mark Hateley isn’t fondly remembered at Loftus Road is quite an understatement. When Ray Wilkins was given £6 million to spend on finding a replacement for Les Ferdinand following his departure to Newcastle it was more money than any other QPR manager had ever been given in the history of the club. In fact it was more than all of Wilkin’s predecessors had been given put together. Ferdinand needed replacing, as did Clive Wilson, and a new goalkeeper was required but with Kasey Keller, Andy Booth and others out there in their prime options were available.
Wilkins may as well have piled the money up and set fire to it. He spunked it on Ned Zelic, Jurgeon Sommer, Gregory Goodridge, Smon Osbourn and, perhaps most damagingly of all, Mark Hateley. His pedigree was not in doubt — AC Milan, Monaco, Glasgow Rangers, 32 England caps. But Hateley was long past his best when he arrived in W12 and infamously waved to the fans on his opening night having appeared on the field on crutches. It was soon apparent once he had donned the hoops that he’d spent far too long terrorising the defenders of Motherwell and Dundee and was no longer a threat in the English league. Just five goals in 30 odd appearances, each one followed by his cheeky ‘ear cupping’ celebration to the supporters who slated him the rest of the time was all he offered Rangers in two inglorious seasons in London during which time the R’s were relegated out of the top flight never to return.
Hateley spent time at Leeds, and was then signed back by Glasgow Rangers during an injury crisis in 1997 but distinguished himself only by getting sent off in an Old Firm derby for headbutting Stewart Kerr. As you do.
Hateley was then made the manager at Hull City. Cash strapped, playing in a creaking Boothferry Park ground in front of miniscule attendances and faced with the persistent threat of extinction this didn’t seem like the easiest place to start a managerial career. And so it proved. Hateley lasted about a season and a half, during which time he played 29 times and scored three goals, before being sacked. He later had his contract terminated by Ross County for poor performances.
Since then he has appeared on television, sporting ridiculous tans and ear rings, and waxing lyrical about how brilliant he was.
Links >>> QPR 2 Hull City 0 Match Report >>> Hull 1 QPR 1 Match Report >>> Connections and Memories
Team News: QPR are expected to be unchanged following last weekend’s fantastic home win against Cardiff City. The players have trained as normal this week despite the snow. The R’s are without Lee Cook and Peter Ramage who have long term injuries and Akos Buzsaky who has only just returned to light training after minor knee surgery. Martin Rowlands remains out of favour.
Hull are waiting for news on midfielder Ian Ashbee after he picked up a knock against Middlesbrough last weekend. The 34-year-old was substituted after just half an hour at the Riverside Stadium and recently spent a year out of the game through injury. City boss Nigel Pearson said: "It's his Achilles but we'll have to wait and see what the damage is. It's disappointing because he's worked very hard to get back to a level of fitness that he's more happy with. That's helped him to have an impact on the games recently so it's disappointing for him for sure."
Elsewhere: Three Championship games have already fallen victim to the weather including, rather ominously for our fixture in Yorkshire, the games at Sheffield United and Doncaster. Portsmouth’s home match with Burnley has also gone although as Stuart Attwell was supposed to be refereeing that they may see it as a blessing in disguise. Of the remaining games the Saturday evening clash between Millwall and Scunthorpe live on Sky remains on as I write this, as does Cardiff’s banker home win against Preston in South Wales. Ipswich v Swansea is the televised Saturday lunchtime offering while Derby v Norwich looks to be the pick of the remaining games.
Referee: Fresh from sending off former Hull and QPR left back Damien Delaney in the East Anglia derby last week, experienced Football League official Keith Hill is the man in the middle on Saturday. For full details of his history with QPR, including last year’s game at Swansea where he sent off two of our players, please click here.
Hull City: Hull have won three, drawn three and lost three of their nine home matches this season but the three defeats have come in the last four home matches — Sheff Utd, Scunthorpe and Portsmouth have all won here before Ipswich were vanquished last time out. Hull kept five clean sheets in their first five home games this season but have only scored six home goals of their own and have failed to score in five home games. Since an embarrassing loss at home to Scunthorpe in the Humber derby they are unbeaten in four games — two 2-2 draws and two wins.
QPR: Rangers are closing in on another club record — 20 matches unbeaten. They have managed this a couple of times, including across the 1971/72 and 1972/73 seasons when the run was then brought to a shuddering halt with a 4-1 loss at Hull City. Could history repeat itself on Saturday? Rangers have won four and drawn five of their away matches this season scoring 14 and conceding five. Wins have been hard to come by of late on the road and the R’s come into this game on a run of four straight draws — although coming against Portsmouth, Forest, Swansea and improving Bristol City none could really be considered a bad result. Rangers have won three of their last five games to open up a five point gap at the top of the Championship.
Prediction: Well my honest prediction is a postponement, probably coming about an hour after I’ve finished writing this bloody thing. Neil Warnock has advised QPR fans not to travel because of the weather, which hints that he knows it’s probably going to be off. I understand his point about safety being more important but my safety is my concern. Nobody has seemed that concerned about my safety since Monday this week when the snow started — I’ve been expected to be at work every day. Why they should suddenly give a toss on the Saturday I don’t know. Anyway, if the game does go ahead I anticipate a goalless draw, which will be well worth all the hassle if it happens.
0-0, 9/1 with Stan James and various others