Stop me if you heard this one before but, just as everybody was out, QPR dragged them all back in again with a performance and result bordering on the professional and competent, just when we least expected it, at Preston.
Riddle me this, "Championship”, if that is your name. A league of ravens, and writing desks.
A week ago it was my profound misfortune to sit through Queens Park Rangers v Burnley. I was nowhere near drunk enough and nowhere near warm enough to watch it, and Rangers were nowhere near good enough and nowhere near committed enough to participate in it. The whole thing played out like a segment from a Japanese gameshow where some coked up television executive who wears sunglasses indoors has come up with an idea to hook 11 overweight businessmen from a karaoke bar a little after one in the morning and immediately sling them into a football match against robot clones of the French World Cup winning side of 1998. Burnley were slick flicks and tricks, which makes them a challenge for any team in this division; QPR took a shit with their trousers on, which is never conducive to running around very quickly. Vincent Kompany’s team is obviously the best in the division, but the point was they didn’t need to be last Sunday afternoon and that’s where it starts to get a bit unforgiveable. They stirred the gear lever around between second and third, and our lot ran away scared of the grinding noise. My grandad used to occasionally, loudly, proclaim something to be "Brigg Town standard”, but Brigg Town would have got at least a point at Loftus Road last weekend.
What little daylight there was creeping through the blizzard of Monday morning succeeded in waking me a good deal of time after my alarm clock had failed, and the horror of whether I was about to be fired from my day job was at least equal to the realisation that the festering slop of the previous day would need to be committed to text to fulfil my obligations to both regular readers of this website (hi guys, wanna hear a joke? Let me just get right through it.). Pulling the cover back over my head and breathing in a haze of stale beer and partly digested curry I started compiling a mental list of things I’d rather be doing than 2,500 words on QPR 0 Burnley 3 which included, but was not limited to, skull-fucking the exhumed corpse of Margaret Thatcher.
By way of procrastination I spotted my recording of future opposition Preston North End running the rounds of the kitchen through Blackburn on the planner and decided to do that to myself for a bit (never let it be said that I don’t do the hard yards for this "poxy website”) while picking at bits of old grilled cheese off the oven tray. My takeaway (from the PNE game, not the cheese) was similar to the arrival of my self-assessment tax bill for January. Ryan Lowe’s team, missing a host of senior players through injury, emerged into a snow-bound second half of the campaign like a two-tonne sled. Ryan Ledson orphaned a couple of children with the first tackle of the game. Last time Ched Evans looked this dangerous he was standing in a dock. We miss out on the signing of Ben Whiteman and bring in Andre Dozzell instead. They spent the last ten minutes bringing some of their former players’ children off the bench for a trot about in the snow. We’ve got this lot next have we? Fuck my life indeed.
Deepdale has never been a fun trip. It’s far, it’s cold, one of our previous pre-matches here was spent in a pub that passed a collection around for the IRA, and even before the government-encouraged collapse of the Avanti West Coast franchise this was a three-hour trip on trains that tilt your stomach into a pukey knot, frequently reek of shit, have windows the size of piss-holes in the snow, and charge you minimum £70 one-way before you’ve even got out of bed. QPR’s record here sounds as good as one of the Now That’s What I Call Music albums from a time Scooter were doing half a dozen tracks a year — one win in 17 visits dating back to 1980, a run that includes a 5-0 final disintegration of Gerry Francis’ long association with the club. I’ve been to just about all of those, and in a league that now includes trips to Burnley, Blackburn, Preston, Blackpool and Wigan (Fleetwood in the FA Cup? But of course) I’ve come to dread the sight, sound, smell and feel of the gaff. Preston is a place where vague QPR hopes of marginally better come to die at the bare hands of a bloke with a board with a nail in it.
Even without all that - and let’s face it even Chaos Theory doesn’t think a QPR team containing Michel Ngonge and George Kulscar losing heavily here in 2001 has any bearing on what happens in the same fixture in 2022 - if you were studying the form then this is a home team with four wins from five playing well, facing an away team with one goal and one point from six games and looking utterly bereft. If you watched QPR v Burnley and Blackburn v Preston with me last weekend, predicted that Rangers would subsequently go to Deepdale and win to nil, and then rattle back home down the M6 combining Magic FM (more of the songs you love) with commentary from Norwich 0-2 Blackburn, then I take my hat off to you. Back in the day they’d have burned you as a witch on suspicion. At least you’d have been warm.
The QPR part of the bargain was on from the first whistle. Dressed in jazzy colours, and apparently fielding an entirely new team (because there’s no way that group from last week play like this unless they’ve been secretly replaced by a group of 11 entirely new boys disguised by a talented make-up department), they dominated the first half completely and entirely. They would finish with 17 shots on goal and six on target, as the away side.
There was a daft early yellow card for Andre Dozzell for a dumb and needless lunge at the far end of the field — Tim Sherwood spent a thick two minutes demanding a Preston penalty on Soccer Saturday before having it pointed out by 2017 BBC Mastermind semi-finalist Clinton Morrison that QPR were kicking the other way, penny for Eni Aluko’s thoughts — but after that it was pure Queens Park Rangers. Ethan Laird and Chris Willock, two of our recently most profound under-performers relative to their previous showings, started linking up and combining for threat as early as minute eight, resulting in a snatched shot that hit Lyndon Dykes in the bum and disappeared. Emboldened, Laird set off on a purposeful quest for goal that carried him past so many opponents we nearly had a full Wegerle on our hands, and we would have done but for the resulting shot striking a defender minding his own business who knew nothing about it. Get out of the bastard way, we're making music here.
QPR playing well, creating chances, looking good, posing threat, and not scoring through pure dumb luck would become a first half theme. Tim Iroegbunam liked Laird’s tasting notes so much he decided to fire up the stove himself, driving into some space of his own before unloading a powerful 25 yarder that Freddie Woodman heard only rumours of as it whistled past him, deviated weirdly at the last minute, struck the inside of the post, and rebounded back into play. Well, shit.
Willock’s subsequent shot to the near post was a little selfish and easily saved. Dykes, ploughing a lone furrow with aggression and purpose not seen since Preston at home a year ago (maybe he’s as sick of them as we are?), teed up Field immaculately, but his shot - like Laird’s before him - struck a defender by accident and deflected wide. Iroegbunam piled on through a deliberate attempt to snap his leg by Brad Potts but could only unload a weak shot at the end of the dribble — no yellow card in the post from referee Oliver Langford, intriguing to say the least. A scramble from a corner fell the way of Iroegbunam who snatched at a shot, saw it hit a marker, spin off towards the bottom corner, and skew just wide as Woodman watched it go. Whichever one of you sinned in a previous life, I hope it was worth it.
There was Preston threat, of course there was Preston threat, but it didn’t come through the sort of obvious gapes in ability or open-play structural collapses that made the Burnley result inevitable almost from the moment the game kicked off. QPR were on the end of some rum refereeing deals in the first half (though this more than equalled up in the second) and from these various free kicks Preston were able to hang it up, and keep hanging it up, on top of a back four with Jimmy Dunne and Jake Clarke-Salter at its heart. Kenneth Paal was excellent as always, Laird back to his best, Dunne sticking it straight to the children who like to troll him online, and Clarke-Salter recovered from a few 50p-head moments early doors to grow into a splendid performance.
A very soft free kick won cannily by Daniel Johnson on the edge of the box after 21 minutes, struck into the wall, was followed up by five separate headed clearances as PNE kept returning to sender, and this was indicative of the improvements in hooped efforts. Dykes was eventually handed a thick yellow, but I enjoyed watching him put himself about and smash a few people up. Whatever we think of his ability, touch, goalscoring record, haircut… he should at least be able to pose a physical threat up there. It’s the lack of that which annoys me most about him, not the missed sitters, and here he tenderised the home centre backs beautifully, and then managed the situation well once booked. Looks like somebody got him a Heider Helguson Ted Talk for Christmas. We’re a soft touch too often, I loved seeing my centre forward choosing violence in the sort of cold and snowy and windy and bleak northern awayday where QPR usually fold like a set of Ikea furniture. More. More like this. Show me your balls. Windmill them around. Not fucking amateur hour is it?
The closest the home side came to taking the lead in the first half was, not surprisingly, from one of the many free kicks they were awarded. Delivered towards an offside player at the back post, and cleared away from him, it was subsequently loaded back in towards the same offside player, still offside, and in the scramble to try and clear it from the offside player, QPR inadvertently diverted it to the offside player, who now had the ball four yards out from the Rangers goal on a tight angle, and required the charge of the White City brigade to shut him down and force a corner. At no stage of this move was the geezer ever onside, and at no point was the flag raised. This is modern football, this is the mess of the offside law we have made, and this is Championship officiating. Anybody, with any brain in their head, who has ever watched or played football at any level, understands this to be offside. And yet, somehow, now, it is not. A situation so ridiculously perverse that referee Langford, the second the corner was delivered, blew long, loud and decisively for a QPR free kick that did not exist. Out of jail free. How and why have we let a simple rule of our game descend to this level of stupidity and farce? The linesman on that side of the pitch, so desperate to re-assert his authority, then embarked on the sort of pub-bore contrariness you often see from these drips when they know they've fucked up — ball a foot and a half over the touchline waved play-on, throw ins very firmly awarded in the wrong direction… Couldn’t find his own nipples with a fucking sat nav.
Half time, nil nil, QPR very good, Preston very poor. I’d usually do a bit here about how important it is to score when on top, but after the last few games I was just pleased to see us looking like a coherent, committed, competitive entity in the game. PNE revved themselves up for the second stanza by bringing an Abe Simpson character on for a long and drawn out half time Jackanory about a 1-0 defeat to Stockport County. Back then nickels had pictures of bumble bees on em - 'gimme five bees for a quarter', you'd say. Into em R’s, this is here for you. Jesus Christ.
Here for you, and seized. Chris Willock should have been the man, when Albert Adomah crossed brilliantly to his free space at the far post but his snatched, high finish belied his lack of form, fitness and confidence — compare it to his pristine side foot into the top corner at Derby from the same spot of the field last season. In the end it was Jimmy Dunne, kneeing in off the underside of the bar, after an inswinging corner (more please) from the consistently excellent Kenneth Paal fell his way. When I kiss your lips, oh I start to shiver, can't control the quiver. One in the eye for the very small, very vocal band of Fifa Ultimate Teams children who make it their mission to make the life of one of our most genuine and committed players a misery online. I’d love to hear about their journey to and from Preston yesterday. Spent vaping their way around Bluewater, SnapChatting Ronaldo memes more like. Talk to me again about why we shouldn't have loyalty points. Dunne one, Spotty Little Virgins nil. Couldn’t have happened to a more deserving bloke, or team on the balance of play. I’m with the 504 behind the goal. Everything else is noise.
I’d have liked us to pile on and make it two or three. We’d been the better team, we’d finally got in front, it was all there for us. The outstanding Iroegbunam thought he’d got the goal his performance sorely deserved when Adomah’s brilliance freed him into a channel and his firm shot on an angle flew towards the top corner only for Woodman to produce a fantastic save. But I do get it, if you’re low on confidence, results haven’t been going your way, you’ve taken a lead, there is going to be an element of sit in, see it out, and, yes, panic.
Preston finally started to function after a weirdly insipid first hour. Ched Evans got so physical I’m surprised he didn’t invite his brother down to film it. QPR, so dominant to this point, started looking as vulnerable as a hymen at one of his banterous lads' nights out. From calm and composed it all got a bit chucking bodies in the way.
A miskick from Dunne allowed Evans to lay Woodburn in one on one - Dieng’s charge and save was massive and won the points every bit as much as the goal. Later an overlap was worked so well that Brad Potts was totally vacant with the goal at his mercy ready to execute a first-time volley. A similar chance in the first half was skewed so horrifically it barely stayed in the same postcode, but this time he caught it flush and, to this day, I still think it went in but passed through a hole in the net. You do start to think it’s your day at that point, when Iroegbunam’s one off the post in the first half had me fearing the opposite. Still, I was surprised how much this team, supposedly managed by a forward-thinking coach in Ryan Lowe, went quite so long quite so often, and that most of the football out of midfield was played not by Ledson-Johnson-Whiteman, but Dozzell-Field-and particularly Iroegbunam. An immediate takeaway from Neil Critchley’s first week is our midfield now get up and beyond the centre forward, something sadly lacking under the previous three managers, and all three could/should have scored in this game.
Every QPR manager likes to try a bit of Mide Shodipo at first. It’s like teenagers with cigarettes: they do it because it’s cool, and most of them quickly realise it’s expensive, it tastes like shit, it makes you smell and your teeth look like tombstones, but every now and again Jimmy Floyd-Hasselbaink gets addicted to 25 Mide Shodipos a day. On he came for Critchley’s first puff, and he mostly did that thing he does where looks like he should be quick but actually it’s a trick of the light. In return Preston introduced Bambo Diaby, a sort of Danny Shittu-style centre back character, to play right wing back, and run very powerfully and aggressively past Shodpio with the ball down that side of the pitch at every possible opportunity. I’d never seen anything quite like that, and neither had Mide. It was like one of those episodes of Air Crash Investigation where they get deep into the manual 36,000ft over the Atlantic while smoke continues to pour into the cockpit. "To complete the checklist for Giant Centre Back Rampaging About On The Wing takes 20 minutes, the nearest runway is 5 minutes of stoppage time away but Captain Shodipo has chosen an airport he knows…”
It wasn’t an airport any of us had been to for a while. Landing gear down and locked, QPR saw the whole thing through for an away win. The shithousing and time wasting was biblical, Seny Dieng’s token yellow card a slim price to pay, and I’d have been absolutely stewing if a referee had controlled all of that the other way around quite as loosely as Langford did in our favour. I don’t want us to do this. It’s only the Championship, there are plenty of other goals for the getting, and Adomah crowning a very decent personal performance by humiliating a pair of Preston plonkers out by the corner flag confirmed it every bit as much as Willock’s earlier click and collect over the stricken head of Cunningham. Go. Go again, win the game, 2-0, 3-0. Don’t sit in and try and drain the life out of a game you were dominating and the better team. I hate it. I will not sing the "take your time, take your time” song. It’s the Christians banging their feet on the floor and chanting "lions, lions, lions”, rejoicing and wallowing in their own sordid bloody death.
But…
There is context around QPR’s recent circumstances — manager defection, mounting FFP issues, dire results, players clocking off, slop phoned in — that makes any vaguely positive result a good outcome however it is achieved. It also may have been mentioned a time or two before, but I feel like I’ve spent my entire life watching Sean Maguire and Alan Browne and Ben Pearson sit on the floor and pretend they’ve been mortally wounded while also conveniently leading a game by a single goal against QPR. I’ve sat through years of this lot screaming in the referee’s ear, I’ve seen them run literally a third of the game off a clock for three minutes of added time. I’d have liked us to pile on and get the 2-0, the 3-0, the performance deserved, and I didn’t enjoy pacing around the back row of the away end wishing the time away at all, but actually it couldn’t have been any more beautiful. Out shithousing Preston — Preston — in Preston. Sexiest thing I’ve seen since Jessica Rabbit stepped up and sang Why Don’t You Do Right. The shithousee becomes the shithouser and seizes power — "AH HA” he cries, "I’ve caught a geezer shithousing”. How do you like them apples? Couldn’t have happened to a nicer bunch.
There were 504 QPR fans there on Saturday, and that’s the 504 QPR fans that will be there for the post-nuclear holocaust first round League Cup tie at Northampton. Cockroaches. Faithful, loyal, numbed, indestructible, steely, determined, cockroaches. It’s these people who keep a club alive through its bleakest times. If the whole thing went to shit, and the club went bust, and had to start again, these 504 people would be there, moaning about the water pressure in the ladies’ toilet. They go to places like this, over distances like this, at this expense, at this time of year, with zero public transport available. They deserve more than that sloppy, disinterested nonsense phoned in last week, however good Burnley were. They got that here. In return for the shit they sit through, over literally years at a time, they also deserve the odd moment where Jimmy Dunne accidentally nuts one in off his knob end via the crossbar every now and again. They got that here too. It was a privilege to stand among you.
The Crown and Sceptre regulars numbered two, and our rock and roll dreams had come true. We spent a further five hours in a borrowed car dodging speed cameras back down the M6 singing badly along to power ballads. Paradise by the dashboard light.
Links >>> Ratings and Reports >>> Message Board Match Thread
PNE: Woodman 6; Storey 5, Lindsay 5, Cunningham 5 (O’Neill 86, -); Potts 4 (Diaby 90, -), Whiteman 6, Ledson 5 (Cross-Adair 68, 5), Fernandez 7; Johnson 6, Woodburn 5, Evans 6
Subs not used: Bauer, Cornell University, Slater, Mawene
Bookings: Lindsay 74 (handball)
QPR: Dieng 7; Laird 7, Dunne 7, Clarke-Salter 7, Paal 7; Dozzell 6 (Dickie 90+2, -), Field 7, Iroegbunam 7; Adomah 7, Dykes 7, Willock 6 (Shodipo 78, 6)
Subs not used: Kakay, Thomas, Archer, Richards, Armstrong
Goals: Dunne 58 (assisted Paal)
Bookings: Dozzell 2 (foul), Dykes 27 (repetitive fouling), Dieng 77 (time wasting)
QPR Star Man — Tim Iroegbunam 7 Look, listen, and take heed. An ordinary Championship away game, the sort of occasion we all enjoy, the opposition are exchanging accurate passes, and look at the QPR midfielders, aren’t they pretty? But now the football game turns to more serious matters. And, oh dear, what’s this? One of the QPR midfielders is about to embarrass us all: "I think QPR midfielders should move up the field and join the attack, occasionally get beyond the centre forward should the need arise”. The midfielder has foolishly attempted to join the conversation with a wild and dangerous forward run of his own. What half-baked drivel. See how the other midfielders look at him with utter contempt. Iroegbunam, know your limits.
Referee — Oliver Langford (West Midlands) 5 Agh, what can you say? I thought we got rolled over the cobbles in the first half, lots of stuff that was a free kick, and a yellow card, their way wasn’t the same for us. Dozzell’s booking, fair enough, standard set, but when Iroegbunam later breaks through on goal and Potts tries to deliberately hack him down an advantage is waved but there’s no comeback. Preston, as they do, got in his ear about Dykes and he started rushing around like a panicked husband on Christmas Eve buying whatever they were selling. Second half, all the other way around - loads of benefit of the doubt to QPR, time wasting and shit-housing aided and abetted, a skinny five minutes at the end, we couldn’t have asked for a more complicit official really. Any hope that the World Cup would set a standard on clock running and added time completely blown out here, and while that suited us on this occasion we’ll be livid when this is done to us in the coming fixtures. Depressing really, I hoped the mid-season break might have been an opportunity to gather the Championship officials and re-assess, but on the evidence of our first two games back it’s a stubborn double down on shit that isn’t working.
Attendance 14,534 (504 QPR) I’ve said this before, give a shit I repeat it again… if you’re wondering why you don’t have enough loyalty points for tickets for attractive, limited capacity, high demand, summer away trips to local rivals, and you feel the need to bitch and moan and snipe at people about that on social media, well let me tell you this is where the 504 get our loyalty points and this is why. A privilege to be among you as always. Jingle bells indeed.
If you enjoy LoftforWords, please consider supporting the site through a subscription to our Patreon or tip us via our PayPal account loftforwords@yahoo.co.uk.
Pictures — Ian Randall Photography
The Twitter @loftforwords