QPR, in the midst of another significant squad overhaul, are in Reading on Thursday night to face the Championship's surprise package this season.
Mercantile Credit Trophy >>> Thursday January 12, 2017 >>> Kick Off 19.45 >>> Weather — Heavy snow, -1 >>> Madejski Stadium, M4
Oh for the heady days of November when Ian Holloway was here to "build on what Jimmy was trying to do here” and "work with what we’ve got” and "rub off on them a bit”. We are, clearly, not doing that any more. Not like QPR not to stick to a plan is it?
Amusing now to look back to the West London Sport piece on Holloway’s first impressions of the players he inherited a couple of months back.
Ben Gladwin: "He’s got unbelievable ability. I want to encourage him to use it.”
Massimo Luongo: "Has fantastic feet and puts his foot in as well.”
Tjaronn Chery: "He’s got the happiest feet I’ve seen. So sharp, great balance. I didn’t realise before looking at the running stats that he’s got a great engine — he really does keep going. And last weekend against Nottingham Forest I thought he was brilliant when he dropped back in midfield.”
Yeni Ngbakoto: "Crikey, he has got happy feet. Unbelievable. So quick.”
Olamide Shodipo: "All sorts of talent.”
Sebastian Polter: "Big Polts is getting better all the time. He’ll chase pigeons.”
Nasser El Khayati: "Wonderful feet! Has he fitted in here yet? I don’t know. But he’s a wonderful player I’m telling you.”
Of those Gladwin has rejoined Swindon on loan, Chery is in China ready to complete a move just as soon as the cheque clears, Polter has left to go back to Union Berlin and the jungle drums say El Khayati and Luongo are next out the door. Sandro who "needed to be shown some love” has finally been shifted to Turkey, Karl Henry has been bombed out after a row. Shodipo is permanently benched because they don’t trust his defending and Ngbakoto has publicly been told to lose weight.
There are various extenuating circumstances — Chery’s China deal is said to be immense, Polter has personal issues — but it’s clear that Holloway is fairly dismayed with what he’s found since returning for a second spell and isn’t in the mood to hang about before changing it. Some have already listened, taken heed, and earned their stripes — including Pawel Wszolek and Idrissa Sylla who Holloway wasn’t overly impressed with at the beginning. But the jokey figure that played up to the cameras in his first training session has been replaced by an angry man. Don’t get too attached to any of the current squad is probably sound advice.
To many supporters this is all good news. They didn’t like Hasselbaink, they don’t like Les Ferdinand, and they’re now going after our own players one by one until they’re gone. Ben Gladwin the latest to be shipped out, on loan to Swindon, to the delight of most. Gladwin, it seems isn’t going to cut it at our level, although after only nine starts for the club (several in cup competitions) it’s a bit premature to be reaching that conclusion 100%. Reach it most have though leading Holloway to say in his press conference before today’s game with Reading that he’d given Gladwin a chance v Blackburn, heard the crowd reaction to him and decided he’d be better off trying to build his confidence elsewhere. Several responded to the news by sending Tweets directly to the player along the lines of "don't come back".
Amidst all the delight that Gladwin, Henry and others are leaving, and before we properly set sail on Nedum Onuoha and James Perch, just stop and consider that for a moment. We’re now a club where a 24 year old lad who was playing for Hayes & Yeading and Margate just four years ago is given just nine first team starts before the crowd turns on him to such an extent that the manager feels he has little choice but to loan him out. Even if Gladwin isn’t good enough, which he probably isn’t, is that acceptable do we think? Imagine our reaction if Chelsea fans did that to one of their players. We used to laugh and take the piss out of Wolves fans for crucifying their own team at home games and making it easier for us to go there and win, and now we do the same thing. It’s, literally, a shame the way QPR has gone in recent years in so many ways.
Whether this night of the long knives is good news or not will only become clear in time. Holloway’s pointed comment that he’s getting a group together that want to be here, which wasn’t the case a week ago, suggests it needs doing. It’s certainly a bold, somewhat wild, approach to try and change so much midway through a season, in a month when it’s notoriously difficult to nail down players you’d actually want for a price they’re actually worth. It means, super short term, that we’re likely to be fielding a very young side this evening against the division’s third-placed team which has lost only once at home all season. Holloway isn’t making this easy for himself, which either suggests this absolutely had to be done and he had no other option, or he’s bloody mental.
Those running the football side of the club deserve credit for getting that crippling wage bill down — Sandro just about the last of the colossal earners to finally sling his hook, having cost the club somewhere in excess of £4,000 for every minute he was on the field.
goodbye Sandro: you are, and always will be, a #QPR legend pic.twitter.com/tDuYzqmABf– Jack Harry (@JackHarry) January 10, 2017
And it’s telling that as we start to get rid of the first of the signings made under Les Ferdinand’s director of football reign that there are clubs that want them, we are getting money for them, and we are turning a profit on them. That’s in stark contrast to the vast majority of the signings made before he arrived who were either sold at a loss, loaned out because nobody would pay their wages, or simply sat on their fat contracts not playing any football at all leaching money out of the club until their humungous deals finally expired. Will Ferdinand get any credit for this? Doubt it.
But the club is still stuck in a cycle where it sacks its managers far too often and always during the season. This leaves a new manager to pick up somebody else’s squad while surrounded by fixtures and, naturally, they want to bring their own players into it — particularly as going from Mark Hughes to Harry Redknapp to Chris Ramsey to Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink to Ian Holloway is about the biggest flip flop in managerial appointments you can imagine. Who next? Ron Atkinson followed by Nigel Pearson? Five more different managers — by every possible measurement — you could hardly wish to find and there are players in the QPR squad, still, signed by every one of them. Crafting a team from a squad assembled to Mark Hughes ideals, Harry Redknapp ideals, Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink ideals and so on is no easy task and Holloway will now layer his six or seven choices onto the top of what’s already here. And so the cycle continues.
It’s no way to build a squad or a team and we’re still enthusiastically engaged in it. We have to learn, as a club, to stick more than twist. At the moment we twist more than the Beatles.
Links >>> Routledge late show — History >>> Stam’s surprise package — Interview >>> Langford in charge — Referee
Here’s that Wayne Routledge goal again, cheer you all up.
Team News: With Sandro and Seb Polter gone, Tjaronn Chery and Karl Henry going, and several other injuries besides, it’s probably a case of whichever fit 11 turn up at the Madejski on Thursday will start. Expect Darnell Furlong to come in at right back for the poorly James Perch following his recall from Swindon, with Nedum Onuoha busy at centre back as Grant Hall will again be pushed into midfield. Alex Smithies will return in goal with Lynch and Bidwell making up the back four. A makeshift midfield will include one or both of Michael Doughty and Ryan Manning alongside Hall with Jordan Cousins now suffering a bad thigh injury in training. New boy Kazenga Lua Lua will push Jamie Mackie and Pawel Wzsolek for their starting places either side of Idrissa Sylla who should be fit to return after untangling his neck.
Reading captain Paul McShane still has wanker’s cramp and is ruled out. Winger Callum Harriott got a new dog for Christmas so he’s staying home to play with that.
Elsewhere: The Mercantile Credit Trophy returns this weekend after a week away for the Reserve Team Combination Cup, and fixtures have been scattered hither and thither so that as many supporters as possible are inconvenienced as they prepare to welcome round 4,198 of this year’s competition.
With Storm Lucifer blowing in from the west, an event the ever calm, rational and accurate Dail Express has downplayed as "the end of days”, perhaps it’s best we’re getting our game out of the way on Thursday because we’ll be in the teeth of it by the time the Derby Sheep meet the Champions of Europe on Friday and everybody will be dead before the Seventh Annual Neil Warnock Farewell Tour can take to the stage in Bristol on Saturday lunchtime.
For the vulcanised rubber that hasn’t perished, Doomsday offers eight fixtures at 15.00 before the main event of this or any other football season, Wolves v Leddorsford at 17.30.
Rattling through the early games for want of something better to do with our time, the Sheffield Owls v Borussia Huddersfield looks like a reasonably tasty north-off between two sides from Yorkshire, Yorkshire, Yorkshire who both have eyes on promotion this season. Ipswich v The Mad Indian Chicken Farmers, on the other hand, looks like potentially the worst football match ever staged.
See two bald men fighting over a comb as Nigel Clough’s Burton Albion host Wigan Warriors, or try your hand at extreme boredom as Brum host the Nottingham Trees — Gianfranco Zola still without a win after five matches as Gary Rowett comes into the crosshares of both the Trees and Ipswich, Stalin would have said that sacking looks better and better every day.
At the top end of the table Champions Newcastle are at Brentford and Promoted Brighton are at preston Knob End. A minute of silent prayer will be held in the seventeenth minute of Relegated Rotherham v The Carrot Crunching Casuals in the hope of inspiring the four-year-old granddaughter of Rotherham chairman Tony Stewart, Tabatha, to remember where she left her beloved stuffed rabbit, Mr Cuddleton, and bring an end to this week of pain and torture in South Yorkshire.
And that’s it. Back again next Friday for round 4,199.
Referee: Oliver Langford is usually considered to be one of the division’s most lenient officials, but he arrives into this fixture hot off a run of five red cards in six matches over Christmas (everything alright at home?) including a very harsh sending off for Norwich’s Robbie Brady at Brentford on New Year’s Eve. His last QPR appointment was in the balmy, optimistic days of August when he awarded the R’s a penalty to put the cherry on top of a comfortable 3-0 win against Leeds United at Loftus Road. Full details here.
Reading: The Royals are third in the league primarily thanks to formidable home form — eight wins, three draws and just one defeat here so far this season. Aston Villa, weirdly given their record, are the only side to leave here with a maximum point haul in the league. Prior to last weekend’s shellacking at Man Utd in the cup Reading had won three in a row scoring three goals on each occasion and come into this game having won the last five home games conceding just three goals in the process. They’re not inpenetrable though — 32 goals conceded this season is one worse than second bottom Wigan. That said, the total is boosted by a couple of random thrashings taken on the road at Fulham (5-0), Brentford and Newcastle (both 4-1).
QPR: Rangers’ late 2-1 win at Wolves on New Year’s Eve was their first away win in five attempts (lost four, drawn one) but did give them four wins on the road for the campaign so far (Cardiff, Wigan, Fulham, Wolves) which equals the four they managed in the whole of last season. One of those four was at Reading in Neil Warnock’s brief second stint in charge (1-0) and the R’s have are unbeaten in four here, winning two. The subsequent home win against Ipswich snapped a run of six straight defeats with six points in three days to lift QPR five points clear of the relegation zone. The four teams immediately below Holloway’s side have all scored more than the 12 goals managed on the road so far this season. Having managed only two goals from central midfield (Tozser v Shef Wed, Henry v Bristol City) in 2015/16 Rangers are stuck on nought in the league for this term.
Prediction: Never many goals, or much entertainment, in this one and I don’t expect that to change with Reading’s deep lying possession game, biblical weather and QPR’s ineptness combining into a real treat for the TV viewer. Given their form and ours, given everything that’s going on at QPR at the moment, given the players available, hard to be too positive.
LFW’s Prediction: Reading 1-0 QPR. No scorer.
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