Further indications of whether QPR can walk the walk as well as talk the talk will be served up to the hardy few making the long trek up to Middlesbrough on Wednesday night.
Mercantile Credit Trophy >>> Wednesday August 18, 2021 >>> Kick Off 19.45 >>> Weather — Grey >>> Riverside Stadium, Middlesbrough, THE NORTH
The pre-match interview. An interview, by definition, about something that hasn’t happened yet. Plenty of banality around of course — "you must be delighted… how does it feel… another tough game Mark/Rog/Keith…” — but just think about that task facing the interviewer for a moment. An interview about a football game that hasn’t happened yet. Filling another five minutes, feeding the insatiable hunger of the modern day rolling news agenda, sure. But usefulness? Incisiveness? Takeaway? Almost always, less than zero.
The one thing everybody wants to know before the game is played is the team news, and that’s obviously the one thing the manager doesn’t want to tell you for fear of tipping the opposition. So you get a series of banal questions, because there are no questions to ask yet, and bland wallpaper paste answers, because the questions are so banal, until it gets to the team news bit when, even after the team sheet has been revealed, the manager wants to tell you as little as possible about his thinking to the point of lying.
When Middlesbrough came to Loftus Road the season before last, Mastermind champion in waiting Jonathan Woodgate played the poor, hard-done-to, down-on-his-luck waif in the pre-game as he listed the dozen or more Boro players who wouldn’t be making the journey to London — 24 hours later, eight of them started the game. Ahead of Saturday’s trip to Hull, Warbs Warburton — about as straight and down the line as managers come — was happy to confirm long termers Luke Amos and Sam Field were still out and Sam McCallum was still plague-ridden, but apart from that there was "nothing you don’t already know about”. Not, technically, a fib, if you presume in hindsight he was referring to interviewer Paul Morrissey, who would certainly have known Charlie Austin wasn’t in the travelling party, rather than the watching audience, who did not.
The other pitfall to avoid is giving the opposition something to fulfil the ‘sitcking it up on the dressing room wall’ cliché. In other sports, particularly boxing, the purpose of the pre-match interviews are to stoke it up, talk up your chances, trash talk the other guy, call him pathetic, say you’re going to knock him the fuck out. My first question to every losing fighter after every bout would be along the lines of "what about all that stuff you said before?”, but it’s just sort of understood that it’s all nonsense designed to ramp up expensive ticket sales and pay-per-view subs. Nobody means what they say in those things, and football is exactly the same in the other direction. Play everything down, keep expectation low, give the opponent nothing to go on or get riled up about, draw attention and pressure away from the team. In the dressing room before kick off, one presumes/hopes, very different story. Though probably not with Paul Hart.
Every manager has their own shtick for this. Neil Warnock, our brilliant former boss, now enjoying another ‘one last season in football’ at our opponent tomorrow night, was one of the best. Launch into a referee, sling out a comment about Brexit, take the piss out of one of the reporters, do a story about Sharon, trot out one of those comedy tropes of his, and he goes viral for days, without anybody noticing that no focus, attention, questions, criticism or anything else is heading the way of his players. A week before the 2011/12 season, with takeover talk swirling in the air, a disastrous summer transfer window playing out around him, a first Premier League campaign in 15 years just a week away, his QPR team were very soundly beaten in a friendly at lower league Luton. This, like every other result in every other friendly we ever played under Warnock, was "just what we needed if I’m honest”. ‘If I’m honest’ being the Warnock tick that let’s you know he’s absolutely not being honest at all.
Every manager has his own version. Going after the referee, even taking the fine on the chin to do it, is pretty much 1.1 in the syllabus on this. Dean Smith likes this one. Nathan Jones. Paul Cook. Grant McCann found enough controversy in that 3-0 QPR win at the weekend to spend ten minutes on the referee on Radio Roverside after the game — bar a pair of obviously theatrical penalty appeals and a straight red that was exactly that we saw nothing in it and gave Matt Donohue (not a referee we like particularly) a seven. Afterwards, all the talk about how Smith/Jones/Cook/McCann believed the referee cost him the game, none of it about whether their team selection, subs, tactics, motivation was in question. Ian Holloway likes to put on that "I’m just a nutty bloke from Bristol” routine, still talking ten minutes after the question has been asked but never once venturing close to answering it. Paul Lambert, and others, go out of their way to be as boring as possible — giving reporters not only nothing on the playing group, but nothing on anything at all. Alex Ferguson, infamously, would pick a fight in an empty telephone box, simultaneously drawing attention from his players while also creating a siege mentality, us vs the world, within the club. None of them, none of them, actually believe anything they're saying.
When you look back on the 2019/20 play-off final in this division, you can see exactly why. Brentford manager Thomas Frank is, it’s fair to say, not short of self belief, nor shy of expressing that. His method of swatting aside questions on the futures of Said Benrahma and Ollie Watkins was to say that they’d still be at Brentford, because Brentford would be in the Premier League. He would say repeatedly he was 100% sure they would win the next game, win the play-offs, beat Swansea, beat Fulham, be promoted. When they subsequently contrived to blow automatic promotion by losing their final two games against Stoke and Barnsley, and then got caught out by further hubris from goalkeeper David Raya in the Wembley final, Joe Bryan referenced these interviews as Fulham’s motivation immediately after the final whistle, and a string of players not involved, and the population of Leeds, at all queued up for a pound of flesh. Frank, afterwards, retreated immediately to what a fantastic achievement it was for "little old Brentford” to be in the final in the first place. Too late mate.
It didn’t deter him though. The public over-confidence last season stretched to such an extent that he walked around the pitch before the second leg of the semi-final stoking the crowd up with a "three-nil” hand gesture, only to send all ten outfield players up for the first corner and concede a length of the field breakaway. Brentford, of course though, had the last laugh, and now do play Premier League football after all.
It’s been noticeable this season that Mark Warburton has not shied away from publicly stating his high expectations for this QPR team. He could, perhaps should, simply stick to the trite and tried lines about taking each game as it comes and looking to progress year on year. Technically QPR finishing eighth in this season’s Championship would be progress on last year’s ninth. You could make the argument we’re moving in the right direction. But he told LFW back in July he’d be "stupid” to try that on with intelligent people, and after the way last season finished, and having come so close to seventh because of it, to be making genuine, significant progress this year we’ve got to be aiming for the top six for the first time since 2014 when the wage bill here was £80m for the year. He’s also spoken, in our interview and with others, about how clever and shrewd he felt Brentford’s quiet but definite shift in public message from ‘little old Brentford’ to "I’m 100% confident we’re going to win” was.
"I felt in the first eight, ten, 12 months here if I was the opposing manager I’d think ‘we’ve got QPR this weekend, we’ll beat them’. Then second year they weren’t sure. I want the third year to be ‘oooof’. I’ll be careful what I say here but as an example, I think Brentford’s media has been very clever. How did they get from ‘little old Brentford’ in 2013/14, to teams last year thinking ‘oooof, Brentford at the weekend’. What’s happened there? It was a clever message, they used recruitment of players like Watkins, Toney, Benrahma, as their big tool and now people are saying ‘bloody hell we’ve got them at the weekend’. We went to Brentford and should have at least got a point out of that if the guy had been sent off, and we beat them at home. There’s an aura about Brentford and we’ve got to get that back here. I want people to think ‘we’ve got QPR, they can hurt us’. If we get that in place it’s a huge plus for us.” Warbs Warburton, July 2021
On the one hand it can intimidate opponents into sitting in, believing a point to be a good outcome, and perhaps the best they can hope for against you. On the other it builds expectation among your own support, and we’ve seen in recent years how quickly that can turn toxic at QPR, particularly on social media but in the ground as well, if the team as a whole or individual players go through tough spells. I wondered at the start of that second half on Saturday, when Hull had 38 players on the field and all of them were chucking steel rivets at us, whether the pressure of knowing new, ambitious, promotion chasing QPR really should be winning games against Hull who were in League One last year, was weighing heavy. In the end, the team stood strong and tall through the struggles, and came out of the other end with a 3-0 win, which is exactly what you have to do if you want to be those guys.
"You know why Birmingham away niggles? Stef got forwards great and scored some good goals for us but that one, he’ll say himself, I don’t know how he missed and at 2-0 they were dead in the water. They said it themselves. One nil up, eight minutes to go, just get the points. They’re the type of moments that you look back on and learn from. That cannot happen this season. We cannot be 1-0 up at Birmingham and let ourselves down like that.” Warbs Warburton, July 2021
He's been equally bullish about players staying at the club. For years Les Ferdinand, Lee Hoos, and the manager of the day have very patiently sat through fans forum after fans forum and fielded the Man Shouts At Cloud question asking them to guarantee our best players will not be sold by patiently explaining of course they will be sold, otherwise we won’t be buying any new players at all, nor existing even in our present form for very long. The £20m received for Ebere Eze has relieved that pressure to a certain extent, and Warbs is now speaking very openly about how the lack of departures this summer shows our ambition for the season, and that bids for Seny Dieng, Rob Dickie, Ilias Chair at the amounts speculated are laughable. Again, sorry to bring them up again, but that was another journey Brentford went down, from getting £8m for Scott Hogan, to £28m for Watkins. The more you sell, the smarter you reinvest, the more you get for the sales, the better the team gets.
It's a fascinating season in so many ways. Watching how this outward self belief manifests in results, crowd reaction to bad times, opposition approach to us, transfer dealings and more. Most obviously, seeing if we can walk the walk as well as talk the talk. Further clues in that at least at Middlesbrough on Wednesday night, a tough away assignment for sure, one the fairly pathetic QPR teams we’ve suffered through over the last ten years would have lost before even disembarking from the coach, but now… well let’s see shall we.
Links >>> Annual Neil Warnock farewell tour — Interview >>> Ferdinand pushes Boro towards doom — History >>> Martin in charge — Referee >>> Middlesbrough Official Website >>> Teeside Gazette — Local Paper >>> FMTTM — Message Board >>> One Boro — Forum >>> Bonkers for Boro — Blog
Team News: Charlie Austin was scheduled to travel for this one after missing the win at Hull with a knee knock suffered against Millwall, but Sam McCallum must wait for the weekend against Barnsley at the earliest for his QPR debut as he recovers from PLAGUE. It remains to be seen whether Jimmy Dunne will come in for Jordy De Wijs in the midweekers this season, as we expect McCallum to do for Wallace when available, and whether it’s Charlie and Lyndon or Charlie or Lyndon if both players are fit and ready to go from the start. Sam Field and Luke Amos are the long termers.
Boro’s team news is rather more up in the air. Hyped summer signing Martin Payero has had to make do with the bench for his first two Championship games, and he’s likely to be joined shortly by Sporting’s Slovenian forward Andraz Sporar, though not in time for this fixture. Marcus Browne is the only definite absentee but Chuba Akpom is no so far out of favour he’s unlikely to be anywhere near the matchday squad and there are muscle fatigue doubts over Duncan Watmore, and keyman James Tavernier who both missed out from the weekend win against Bristol City. Young Isiah Jones was given a first start on the wing in that game, and he has two assists for the season already, so expect to see more of him in those big spaces around our wing backs.
Elsewhere: Six Championship games this evening, with Tarquin and Rupert slumming it over at Miiiiillllllllllllll in what is clearly the game of the night, and Preston Knob End heading to Sporting Huddersfield for this week’s goat rodeo. Huddersfield’s decision to appoint a Bielsa-lite manager but have the recruitment handled by a guy he’s seemingly never met or spoken to, who crawled out of Steve Evans’ back passage clutching Richard Keogh and Matty Pearson by way of an offering for his supposed master, has so far yielded a draw at the corpse formally known as Wayne Rooney’s Derby County, and a 5-1 loss to Fulham at home despite the visitors going down to ten men at 3-1. Preston, meanwhile, whose manager, it says here, is "Frankie McAvoy”, have begun with a 4-1 home loss to Hull and 2-1 defeat at Reading. God bless all who sail in that shambles tonight.
Speaking of comedic failure, Wazza’s latest managerial triumph saw his hapless Rams take a 1-0 lead into stoppage time at newly promoted Peterborough at the weekend and come out the other side with a defensively calamitous 2-1 defeat. The Posh will look to build on that at home to Cardiff tonight, while Mr Potato Head will certainly find plenty to slake his niche thirst for a certain type of lady up in Hull of a Wednesday eve.
Bristol City haven’t done much to dissuade us a season of struggle lies in store for them, with one point from Blackpool H and Boro A and a League Cup exit at Forest Green. They head down the M4 to Reading while their opening day opponent, newly promoted Pool, host Coventry after a weekend home loss to Cardiff. Battle of the progressives at Barnsley v Luton, battle of two teams beginning with S at Swanselona v Stoke.
The Swans drew 0-0 on Saturday night at home to newly relegated Sheffield Red Stripe who, despite carrying a £50m forward line down the divisions with them and essentially picking all of them at once in South Wales, are yet to score in the league. Rhian Brewster won’t help with that much if he spends quite as much time at left wing back as he did against the Swans in a quite bizarre game, tactically, in which nothing either manager tried seemed to be any kind of conspicuous success and Ryan Manning was the Sky man of the match playing at left centre back, inside Jake Bidwell. The Blades play fellow fallers West Brom at The Hawthorns in the pick of the Wednesday action.
Nottingham Florist, a pair of 2-1 defeats to begin with and trigger fingers starting to itch once more, have Blackburn at home, who’ve gone raiding the Liverpool larder again for Leighton Clarkson on loan hoping for some form of Harvey Elliott repeat. Birmingham, half the ground still closed, host Bournemouth in this week’s exciting game between two teams beginning with B.
Referee: Steve Martin starred alongside Michael Caine and Glenne Headly in the Frank Oz-directed American comedy film Dirty Rotten Scoundrels (1988). Details.
Boro: Neil Warnock’s side have started this season with a 1-1 draw at Fulham, a 3-0 loss with a scratchy team out in the League Cup against Blackpool, and a 2-1 home win against Bristol City at the weekend. Their home record last season 11-4-8 was identical to QPR’s. No team outside the top seven won as many as 11 on their own patch, but eight defeats was one more than Sheff Wed (24th) suffered at Hillsborough and the same as 20th-placed Huddersfield. Coventry, Blackburn, Luton and Millwall all lost fewer home games despite finishing lower in the table as well. QPR have won their last two visits to the Riverside Stadium and are unbeaten across four matches with Boro since Mark Warburton and Neil Warnock took over in their respective roles. The 2-1 Rangers win here last season was part of a fairly ropey end to the campaign that included two wins from the final nine games and one win from the final four at home with Wycombe winning 3-0 on this ground on the final day and Watford taking a point the week before QPR turned up. Norwich, Birmingham, Blackburn, Rotherham, Brentford, Bristol City, QPR and Wycombe all won on Teesside in 2020/21
QPR: Rob Dickie’s goal at Hull City at the weekend made him the first QPR player to score in the opening three games of the season since Andy King did so in 1981/82. He has now scored four goals in his last eight games in all competitions, a run that began with a 30-yard barnburner in a 2-1 win against Middlesbrough at the Riverside in April. That was the start of an ongoing run of four consecutive away league wins (Boro 2-1, Swansea 1-0, Stoke 2-0, Hull 3-0), QPR’s best sequence on the road since Ian Holloway’s side won at Gillingham (1-0), Crewe (2-0), Brighton (3-2) and Stoke (1-0) in October 2004. If they make it five, it’ll be their best run since 1927 (hat tip @JTSupple). Dickie is also part of a defence that has kept clean sheets in its last three away games, while his contributions at the other end mean it’s now 15 games since Rangers failed to score in a match. QPR won eight away games in the Championship in 2020/21, one more than in 2019/20, and level with their 2013/14 promotion season. It was their best total since they managed ten in Neil Warnock’s 2010/11 title winning year.
Prediction: We’re indebted to The Art of Football for once again agreeing to sponsor our Prediction League and provide prizes. You can get involved by lodging your prediction here or sample the merch from our sponsor’s QPR collection here. Mick_S took the title on the very final weekend of the season last year giving him the dubious honour of finishing our match previews in 2021/22. Here are his thoughts on Boro…
"It’s been a very good start to a tough opening month. Boro away, midweek and I fancy us. I’d be happy with a draw if we are up against it, but wouldn’t take it just yet. I’ll go 1-2 with Willock to score first Rangers goal.”
Mick’s Prediction: Middlesbrough 1-2 QPR. Scorer — Chris Willock
LFW’s Prediction: Middlesbrough 1-1 QPR. Scorer — Charlie Austin
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