On Monday evening, for reasons barely even known by ourselves, Neil Dejyothin and I travelled to St Albans to watch QPR’s reserve side continue its pre-season build up. And it went about as well as could be expected.
Last Thursday I got a text from my other half at about 5pm saying she had two tickets to the opening night of a new Mexican bar and grill in the middle of London. All we had to do was turn up after 6.30pm, give our names to the doorman and then enjoy a whole evening of free beer, free burritos, and free beer.
This happens a lot. Lindsey works with a combination of celebrities and food in her job so when restaurants are opening or The Only Way is Essex people are holding a shindig she tends to get invited, and there’s usually a plus one, and that usually means I get invited, and usually I say no. I said no the Mexican thing as well, and Lindsey went with her mate instead. I went home and drank beer I’d paid for, picked my feet and watched The Killing on Channel 4.
I did take her up on her offer to go to a post Wimbledon party in central London a couple of weeks back. I don’t know, maybe I was off guard when she asked me or something. Anyway I felt most out of place standing next to Liz Locke from last year’s Apprentice and one of the talking head psychologists they used to use on Big Brother and left early, stealing a giant novelty Slazenger tennis ball on the way that I later inadvertently caused a bomb scare with in a Soho restaurant.
Celebrities aren’t my thing, but Becks beer definitely is so you’d think I would probably take more advantage of free invitations to events where free Becks beers are brought to you on a tray by a waiter every 13 and a half minutes until you can’t even see straight. You’d be wrong though. We’ve lived down here for nearly four months now and I’m already into double figures on the count of seemingly attractive invitations rejected.
Which makes what happened at about 5pm on Monday evening all the more bizarre. During some brief downtime in the office I happened across something trying to pass as an official QPR report into the weekend defeat by Hampton and Richmond Borough. Clearly the reserves is largely made up of players Neil Warnock would rather forget he had on his books – they haven’t been entered into the Premiership Reserve League this season despite it offering our younger players some much needed reasonable quality of opponent and the coverage, if you can call it that, on the club’s official website barely exists at all. Glancing across the starting 11 from Hampton I was surprised to find that half of them had been first team regulars at one time or another. Surely a team with Martin Rowlands, Lee Cook, Peter Ramage, Gary Borrowdale and Leon Clarke in it should be able to beat bloody Hampton. I mean I know it’s only pre-season and I know those names aren’t exactly awe inspiring but please, Hampton and Richmond Borough? Do me a favour love, as Richard Keys may once have said.
And then I came across the crucial line. Not literally, but almost. “Ronnie Jepson’s boys take on St Albans City tonight at Clarence Park, kick off is 7.15pm.” Well what happened next was inevitable wasn’t it? I had to go and find out what on earth was going on here for myself. Tools now officially downed I quickly ascertained that there was a fast train up to St Albans at half six and before you can say “I really think you should seek professional help you stupid, mad, bastard” I had hauled the official LFW photographer (not a salaried position) Neil Dejyothin out of a shop where he had been buying luggage for his forthcoming holiday and we were supping expensive bottles of Birra Moretti on the northbound Thameslink service. Free beer and Mexican food in London and I make my excuses, £8 to stand on a crowded Thameslink up to St Albans to see QPR reserves and I'm there.
Well what else would I have done with my Monday night? Sat at home and watched Dispatches? I don’t need to sit in front of the television for an hour to know that football is bent and Bryan Robson is an absolute bell-end thank you very much indeed, I realised both of those things for myself a long time ago.
So, anyway, St Albans. You’ll find the Saints in the football record books as a team that once scored seven times in an FA Cup tie and still lost. The decision to pick half back Alf Fearn in goal for the 1922 first round replay match with Dulwich Hamlet turned out to be flawed when Wilfred Minter scored seven times but still ended up on the wrong end of an 8-7 defeat after extra time. Minter finished his St Albans career with a reasonably tidy record of 356 goals in 362 games, so not a million miles away from our own Patrick Agyemang’s strike rate in fact.
Dean Austin played here once, a man best known for deliberately starting a punch up with Les Ferdinand to get him sent off in a match between Spurs and QPR at White Hart Lane. Still bitter? Not much.
Austin’s sale to Spurs from Southend saw £90,000 heading to St Albans by way of a Taarabt-like sell on clause in the original deal. Sadly money, and goals, and success of any kind is a little thinner on the ground in this part of Hertfordshire these days. Having reached the heady heights of the Conference National in 2006 a steady drop down the divisions allied with financial problems came to a head last season when the club was fined £7,500 and deducted ten points for illegal payments made to players in the 2008/09 season. They were relegated in April and will play in the Zamaretto Premier League next season. Friend of LFW Dave Howell nevertheless agreed to leave Harrow Borough and become their new manager this summer and so it was no surprise to see QPR, who Dave supports, heading that way this pre-season.
The ground is called Clarence Park, and that’s because it is actually part of Clarence Park in the middle of the city. Surrounded on all four sides by trees this quaint little place shares its car park with the local cricket and tennis clubs and as we walked a round-about route to the only open turnstile it seemed to be a bustling hive of sporting activity with a great deal more interest being shown in the kids’ cricket match than the QPR game. We forked over out eight English pounds after patiently queuing for almost three minutes and clicked through into the strange, mundane world of non-competitive football.
In light rain and gloom the match kicked off almost as soon as we had taken up our position on the covered terrace down one side of the pitch. Within a minute QPR had swept to the end of the field they were attacking and created a gilt edged chance for Angelo Balanta who somehow contrived to miss the target altogether from less than a yard out with the goalkeeper nowhere to be seen. A group of the local reprobates behind the goal found this absolutely hilarious, and Balanta did too it seemed.
The QPR team ostensibly lined up in the same 4-2-3-1 formation that the first team uses with Martin Rowlands and young Michael Doughty in the holding midfield roles, Lee Cook, Balanta and Mo Shariff the three man supporting cast and Leon Clarke up front. Elvis Putnins played in goal, and made an outstanding first half save at full stretch to keep out a well flighted header before celebrating as if he’d scored one himself, behind a back four of Harriman, Parmenter, Max Ehmer and the mythical Gary Borrowdale.
The Putnins wonder save, along with a couple of other very smart stops, and the Balanta miss apart the first half just sort of trundled along at an arthritic pace. Leon Clarke gave QPR the lead midway through, running onto the ball from an offside position and calmly hammering it home like the consummate pro and talented player he obviously is. Clarke was offside all night, except for the odd occasion when he tracked back to contest (and more often than not lose) an aerial ball with one of the centre halves. Presumably the linesman had his mind on other things when he scored but still, a goal is a goal and I’d never seen Clarke score in QPR colours to this point so it was quite a moment summed up nicely by the tannoy announcer: “The scorer for QPR was number eight, and that’s as much as I can tell you I’m afraid.” Magic stuff.
It transpired that on the other side of the ground there was a club house and poorly policed hospitality section where beer could be purchased and drunk in the ramshackle main stand so we moved over there before half time and watched the second half from a more comfortably seated position, and more forgiving alcohol induced haze. St Albans’ main tactic appeared to be the art of confusion, as they appeared for the second half in a yellow and blue strip having played the first half in red and with a whole new set of outfield players on the pitch.
This seemed to confuse big Norm (quite possibly not his real name) on the tannoy more than Rangers. With the look of a 1980s local radio DJ and a grip of the remote microphone more akin to an experienced pub singer he gamely battled on through stifled giggles to bring us the news that Styrus Mentis, Marcus Sparticus and Marvin Alebiosu (apparently pronounced Marvin Aly Boo Shoo) would all be playing their part in the second half. After another 45 minutes of trying to keep up with this farce he retreated to the police box at the back of the main stand, slumped in his chair, wiped a bead of sweat from his brow and whacked on an old copy of Breakfast at Tiffany’s at what could have been considered indecent volume. He was great value, a real character, and brightened our night up no end.
Rangers saw through the cunning camouflage plot eventually and added a second when Leon Clarke headed in a corner, and a third when Antonio German went round the keeper and then did his very best to roll the ball wide of the empty net but just about managed to creep a shot inside the post.
Now I’m about to get quite miserable and cynical about all of this (for a change) so let’s at least start with a positive. I’d been very keen to catch a look at young Max Ehmer this summer given that he had bucked the recent trend for young QPR players and actually made the most of a loan spell last season and been a success at Yeovil rather than returning early, or not being picked, or getting fined for turning up late to matches as other players we’ve loaned out have done.
Ehmer, half German, played at centre half in the first half with his socks pulled up over his knees to give the appearance of wearing green super-hero tights and the beginnings of a sleeve tattoo that I believe the league now insists all professional players have before they are registered. He stood out for several reasons – firstly he was one of the few QPR players who actually looked like he wanted to be there. He was vocal, with his team mates and the officials, and marshalled the defence very well. In the air he won 90 per cent of the ball against St Albans’ stereotypical rugged non-league centre forwards and on the ground his touch was assured and his passing crisp, accurate and uncomplicated. He could have played in his club suit to be fair and Neil and myself agreed at half time that we’d quite like to see him move forward into midfield where he could perhaps have some more influence on the game, rather than trying to make an impact in the basic head-it kick-it world of the centre half.
Sure enough after the break Jepson, flanked by youth coach Marc Bircham, did indeed move Ehmer forward and while he didn’t do too badly at all, he didn’t really go and grab the game by the bollocks and dictate the play as we’d hoped he would. Still, he was head and shoulders our best player on the night and perhaps with another six months out on loan at a reasonable level he could well be knocking on the door. A return to Yeovil has been mentioned, personally I think we should be pushing him in the direction of a Doncaster/Peterborough type Championship club for a real test.
As for the rest? Well Putnins didn’t put a foot wrong all night, and I accept the qualifying remarks about it being a pre-season friendly and summer fitness levels and young kids and all the rest of it but by God it was depressing. Neil and myself didn’t have enough fingers between us to keep count of the amount of times Mo Shariff tried, and failed, with a Cruyff turn on the touchline, the amount of times Antonio German miscontrolled the football, and the amount of times Bruno Andrade accelerated at lightning speed into the penalty area and then duffed his shot straight at the St Albans keeper or high into the trees behind the goal. Had you been a neutral with no QPR knowledge attending this game and been asked to pick out the player many see as our brightest young hope who spent last season as a first team regular in League One, and an experienced Football League defender with hundreds of appearances for Coventry and Crystal Palace to his name you would never have gone for Angelo Balanta and Gary Borrowdale. Neither stood out, even against this level of opposition. In fact Borrowdale actually found himself skinned by his winger a couple of times in the first half. Lee Cook too, carrying weight, looks like a shadow of his former self. I think of some of his performances for us in the Gregory and Waddock era and I honestly can’t believe it’s the same player.
Martin Rowlands you probably would pick out as somebody who can play a bit, because he sprayed some lovely long range passes around on the night, but nine times out of ten when I looked at him he was walking, strolling and ambling around.
Now for Borrowdale, Rowlands, Cook and Clarke I accept that morale and motivation must be non-existent. If Neil Warnock is so sure that he won’t have use for these players this season that he won’t even take them on the Cornwall tour to look at them, despite all the restrictions he’s under this summer, then it’s clear that their QPR careers have reached a dead end. Why bother busting a gut in a poxy reserve friendly at St Albans when you know for a fact that you could score eight amazing goals and still be no nearer the first team when you wake up in the morning? Well, what if somebody from another club was there watching? Watford are local, and recruiting, and would probably be the sort of club interested in a Cook or a Rowlands should one become available. If they were and they went to see this game they wouldn’t be any more. Maybe they’re happy to just stay here not playing and picking up their money.
And my old gripe about our youth set up came to mind repeatedly. All of the youngsters on show did some nice things – Michael Doughty I haven’t mentioned yet, passed the ball reasonably well. But all of them still have massive flaws in all of their games. Balanta and German are no better than they were when we first saw them two years ago – no improvement whatsoever. These youngsters are being brought through a youth team that plays Barnet and Colchester on park pitches to play in a reserve side that plays in matches like this on a non-competitive basis. Not only are they not being prepared adequately for our first team like this, but they’re not being prepared adequately for anybody’s first team which is why, Ehmer apart, when the likes of Romone Rose, Josh Parker and Antonio German have gone out on loan they’ve struggled for game time, even at League Two level. We’re producing nothing here, if it wasn’t for Ehmer (and he’s got a long way to go) I’d have left last night questioning the point of us having a youth team at all.
To cheer me up, Ronnie Jepson sent on Alessandro Pellicori. Now if you thought the Pellican was a big hefty and slow for a professional footballer before, make a point of trying to catch sight of him now. He’s cropped his hair short since I last saw him, and added three stone to his frame. I wasn’t even sure it was him at first – Neil and myself considered that it might be his father Mr Pelican Senior – but big Norm had been armed with a team sheet by this point and confirmed our worst fears. The Pellican played in the hole behind the strikers while he was on, although this didn’t seem to be a deliberate ploy. When the ball was knocked forward he was too slow to keep up with the last defender and lagged behind, then when it was cleared away he was too slow to get back towards the halfway line so sort of ended up playing in the hole by default. He did score to be fair to him, a nice header to round off a 4-0 win, but everything about him reminded me of my granddad just before he had his massive fatal heart attack. After the match he came out to warm down with the rest of the lads but only managed a half width of the field in that old Paul Gerrard style run – the one that’s slower than a walk that the former Oldham, Everton and Forest stopper used to use to fetch the ball for goal kicks when his team was winning – before disappearing down the field to talk to Gavin Mahon who had come along to watch and looked a whole lot trimmer than a few of those actually on the pitch.
A three year contract that guy got, ahead of fellow trialist at the time Davide Somma who has since gone on to impress at Leeds, in a transfer we billed as a £1m deal - although reading the FA report into the Faurlin case I highly suspect that was another one of our “puffs”. One goal in Serie B in the whole of last season while out on loan, and I bet he’s earning a decent crust here as well. Bigged up by those with the ear of Paladini as somebody who “might surprise a few” when he signed, then said to have been “sold for a profit” six months later when he turned out to be awful and now back again for a third season. Fuck it’s depressing sometimes at our club. He’s built like a lorry driver now. Utterly, utterly useless to us in every possible sense of the word.
We retired to a pub called The Horn which was apparently the country’s top live music pub 2008 and 2009. A rock band belted out some original material to an audience of one man, standing in the middle of the hall and gently swaying. The stopping service to Kentish Town called too soon, and we found ourselves sharing the carriage with Styrus Mentis. No sign of Marvin Aly Boo Shoo though. Another time perhaps.
Recommended.