Wembey awaits winner of Wigan one-off - preview Monday, 12th May 2014 00:55 by Clive Whittingham QPR and Wigan are both just 90 minutes away from Wembley as they prepare to meet for the second leg of their Championship play-off semi-final at Loftus Road on Monday. Queens Park Rangers (0) v Wigan Athletic (0)Championship play-off semi-final, second leg >>> Monday May 12, 2014 >>> Kick Off 19.45 >>> Loftus Road, London, W12 >>> Live on Sky Sports 1 There are moments when football can be so beautiful it almost becomes an art form. On Saturday evening, amidst the barely-organised chaos of a League One play-off semi-final, Joe Garner saw another long hoof dropping from the sky and decided he’d had enough. He controlled the ball immaculately with his first touch, lifted it softly over an onrushing defender with his second and then unleashed the fires of hell from 25 yards, sending the ball flying over the goalkeeper and into the far corner of the net with his third. It was all done in one fluid motion, without the ball touching the ground. It was enough to bring you out of your seat and applaud. Even if you didn’t care about Preston North End or Rotherham United. Even if you were at home in your living room. Even if you were alone. It was the sort of goal QPR used to score in the not too dim and distant past. Instinctive, from nothing, usually screaming off the boot of Adel Taarabt, often when a stalemate in a game seemed terminally, sometimes just when QPR needed it most. Taarabt was/is a footballing Monet or Picasso to QPR fans. Capable of the most beautiful work, sure to be talked about by those who saw him operate for decades to come — a flawed genius. He was somebody who gave QPR a chance of winning a game, even when they were playing poorly, and when he and his team mates were on song he was capable of absolutely annihilating teams and humiliating their better players. But for every Van Gogh there are a million other paintings in the world to which nobody gives a second glance. The QPR fans stationed in budget hotels in Wigan on Friday evening will have had bland landscapes in plain wooden frames hanging from their walls and probably not even noticed they were there. Nevertheless, these pictures need painting, and there are talented people out there doing that for a living. Is painting watercolour landscapes to hang in the room at the Wigan Premier Inn what they aspired to when they were growing up? No. Does it sap the soul and suck the life out of painting as an art form, filling orders for office block reception areas? Yes. But tell that to Swalec when the combined gas and electricity bill for December, January and February arrives. On Friday QPR proved, seemingly once and for all, that there is to be no artistry about their quest for promotion in 2013/14. This is a workmanlike team, here to grind its way through a very specific job — get this club and its £160m debt back to the Premier League so the television companies and the South Koreans come back with their cameras and bundles of cash. It’s been like this all season — stay in shape, stay compact, stay in possession, stay tight at the back, wait and see if somebody makes a mistake or Charlie Austin scores. We could wonder, as I often do when I hear Sam Allardyce justify his approach to the sport, why attractive, passing, attacking football automatically has to mean football that puts you at risk of defeat. But then I don’t agree with the modern day thinking that having a tilt at one of the cup competitions automatically jeopardises your precious Premier League status. We could also ask why a team with Austin, Ravel Morrison, Junior Hoilett, Armand Traore, Joey Barton, Yossi Benayoun, Niko Kranjcar and others to pick from isn’t permitted to cut loose a little bit more on a mediocre Championship division. But at this stage, what’s the point? The stall was laid out long ago, and any hope that QPR were simply keeping their powder dry ready for a big fireworks display in the play-offs was extinguished at the DW Stadium. No, this is it, this is what we are. Marc Bircham and Kevin Gallen — two QPR fans who have watched from outside and worked inside the organisation in recent times — have both recently praised the work Harry Redknapp has done this season, steadying the ship and rebuilding the team. Neither has been shy to speak their mind about Rangers before, nor are they under any obligation to be nice about the current regime, so perhaps we should reflect on a job well done to get QPR to fourth, and now within 90 minutes of Wembley, rather than complaining about the composition and lighting. The question is, will it be enough? Wigan looked dangerous despite losing at Loftus Road in March, and Derby County have absolutely flown into the Wembley final and await the winner. QPR have shown they can keep it tight and hold these sides at bay — Wigan are yet to score in three attempts against the R’s this season and across five games with them and the Rams Rangers have lost just one and conceded only two goals. But — and this is especially pertinent given QPR’s poor penalty shoot-out record over the last 15 years — have they got that bit of something extra? Can Ravel Morrison produce a game-changing moment? Is there another goal in Charlie Austin? Is Bobby Zamora’ super-sub act going to continue? Is none of that going to happen and Rangers are, in fact, just going to grind their way through the knock-outs and off to the Premier League as well as the regular season? West Ham did exactly that two seasons ago. Or, as happened against Oldham Athletic in QPR’s only previous play-off experience back in 2003, is the crowd going to play a part? Can the Loftus Road crowd, so quiet and bored for almost the whole of this season, rouse itself and drag the team, kicking and screaming, over the line. Is, in fact, the outdated little blue shack on the cusp of the White City Estate the secret weapon? We find out from 19.45 tonight. Come on you R’s, Wembley awaits. Links >>>Opposition Profile>>>History>>>Referee>>>Podcast>>> First leg match report
Yossi Benayoun celebrates opening the scoring in QPR’s 1-0 league win against Wigan at Loftus Road at the end of March — the only goal that’s been scored in three meetings between these sides this season, including Friday night’s stalemate at the DW Stadium. MondayTeam News: After springing surprises with shape and personnel on Friday night at Wigan, God only knows what Harry Redknapp and his tombola machine will churn out for this home leg. Let’s try again with what we definitely know — Rob Green, Danny Simpson, Joey Barton and Charlie Austin will all definitely start. Ravel Morrison should do as well, although his anonymous performance (admittedly in a very defensive set up ill-suited to his game) and tetchy reaction to being substituted on Friday could have opened the door for Niko Kranjcar or Yossi Benayoun — a real surprise that neither he nor Bobby Zamora were even on the bench on Friday night. Clint Hill has avoided retrospective action for his elbow on Rob Kiernan early in the first-leg so I’d expect the back four to stay the same, with Benoit Assou-Ekotto bombed out altogether for now. Barton will be partnered by one of Karl henry, Gary O’Neil or Little Tom Carroll. Matt Phillips, Ale Faurlin and Jermaine Jenas are the long term absentees. Wigan could still be without leading scorer Nick Powell who has tonsillitis. Whether that means another start for Marc-Antoine Fortuné, who was absolutely pony on Friday night, or a start for either Martyn Waghorn or Nicky Maynard remains to be seen. Chris McCann and former QPR loanee Ben Watson are their long termers. Elsewhere: Oscar Garcia played for Barcelona once you know. And coached in their youth set up. In an age where we want to rip up a 125-year structure of the Football League to introduce Premier League B Teams, and clubs rush to appoint anybody who once cleared up Jose Mourinho’s coffee cup in a Madrid restaurant, that’s more than enough qualification to manage Brighton and Hove Albion. The Spaniard has done reasonably well with the Seagulls this season — no more than that considering the players and facilities at his disposal. Well enough, according to his agent at least, to warrant a big glossy spread in the Sunday newspapers every week — journalists on this country’s Sunday broadsheets have grown weary and perplexed with the volume of pitches they’ve received from his representatives. Well enough, according to himself if stories of his resignation this evening are true, to walk into a Premier League or La Liga job for next season. Tonight, at Pride Park, Brighton needed at least one goal to get level with Derby County after losing the first leg 1-0. They responded to this challenge by, again, leaving Craig Mackail-Smith and Kazenga Lualua on the bench and seemingly trying to hold Derby scoreless for another hour. Only after 60 minutes, with Steve McClaren’s team 1-0 up on the night and 3-1 ahead on aggregate thanks to a fabulous first from young Will Hughes, were Mackail-Smith and LuaLua summoned from the bench and during a very long, drawn-out, gratuitous, detailed, intrinsic, modern-day, new fangled way of saying “we need you to score us some goal almost immediately” Derby scored again through Chris Martin. Game over before they’d even got on the pitch, Brighton fell apart thereafter and shipped four — although in LuaLua they did finally carry a goal threat and he scored once and went close on another occasion. There’s a degree of the emperor’s new clothes about all this isn’t there? All this possession and bus parking and game management and trying to hold teams for an hour and playing deep-lying five man midfields and false nines when you need to win? Brighton have scored 55 goals this season — the worst record north of eighteenth in the Championship — and yet already The Guardian is reporting that Garcia’s commitment to “attacking, possession based football” will make him attractive an attractive candidate for bigger clubs. I’m missing something here. What’s wrong with just bloody going for it and trying to score a few goals? Not much actually, judging by Derby tonight. They won 6-1 on aggregate and will be incredibly difficult final opponents for whoever wins through at Loftus Road on Monday. Garcia heads home to watch his own career highlights on DVD and admire his reflection in the mirror while his agent continues to work the national media. Referee: The fascination with appointing Mark Clattenburg to referee crucial QPR games at the end of seasons is starting to feel a little bit bizarre and deliberate — Rangers have only ever been involved in one play-off semi final, and have only been promoted twice in the last 30 years, but Clattenburg has been in charge of all three. He was the referee for the memorable 1-0 win at Loftus Road against Oldham in the second leg of the 2002/03 Second Division play-off semi-final where a Paul Furlong goal eight minutes from time sealed passage to the final in Cardiff. A year later, having lost that match, Rangers were promoted automatically with a 3-1 win at Sheffield Wednesday on the final day which he was also in charge of. And when Neil Warnock’s side discovered there would be no points deduction in 2010/11, and finished their title winning season with a 2-1 home defeat by Leeds, Clattenburg was there in the middle again. Please God let this be a good omen. For his extensive QPR history and recent stats please click here. FormQPR: Although QPR’s form has been patchy (at best) since the end of January — seven wins, five draws, eight defeats — their home record has remained formidable. Only Reading (3-1) and Leicester (1-0) have won at Loftus Road during the 23 regular season home matches and Rangers won 15 of the other 21 games. The R’s are unbeaten in seven on their own patch, winning four including a 1-0 victory against Wigan at the end of March. They’ve also only ever been beaten once at home by Wigan — 1-0 in 2002/03 — and have won three of the other five meetings in W12. QPR have kept 18 clean sheets in the league this season, second only to Brighton, including three against Wigan in the two regular season games and Friday night’s first-leg. Wigan: The Latics don’t draw many away games — just three out of 23 in the regular season. That means their total of nine wins on the road is respectable — level with Brighton, one more than QPR — but their 11 defeats away from the DW Stadium is the worst record of any team in the top 14. The positive side of that total was topped up considerably during a run of nine wins and a draw from ten games just after Christmas which propelled them from mid-table mediocrity into play-off contenders — League wins at Ipswich, Forest, Brighton and Sheff Wed were included in that. That run came to an end with a 1-0 loss at Loftus Road and since then Uwe Rosler’s side has won only one away game in five attempts — at Birmingham City, who have been hopeless at home all season — losing to Blackburn and Burnley and drawing at Bolton. Wigan have become knock-out specialists in recent times with four trips to Wembley in two years, and just one FA Cup defeat in 13 matches across 24 months. Prediction: Reigning Prediction League champion Mase, possibly for the final time, tells us… “If this transpires to be the last game QPR play this season then I take the opportunity to congratulate WestonSuperR on his or her magnificent run to this season's Prediction League title. You must be an individual not cursed with my unfailing pessimism and worries as you clearly didn't misjudge our form throughout the season. My early season low-balling of our capabilities lead me to a rose tinted view when the wheels (or Austin's shoulder) became a bit loose and results started to suffer after January. “I wonder if whoever loses will be saying the same come Tuesday morning. Both clubs would like an immediate return to the Premier League, and it is probably marginally more important to QPR to secure it immediately than Wigan, who seem to have rebuilt adequately for the Championship next season, should the need arise, and who in Uwe Rosler have a manager highly sought after - at least in the lower leagues. “Friday's game was tense but of patchy quality and chances were at a premium. One thing that struck me was how limp Wigan's set plays were; considering that has been a notable vulnerability in or side this season I was surprised to see players of the dead ball as competent as Maloney and Gomez waste chance after chance to get service into the box. Perhaps Wigan will have worked on their tactics on corners over the weekend, they damn well should. The other thing I was pleasantly surprised by was the absence of Nick Powell, who was to my eyes their standout player in the league fixture in March. Hopefully he will continue to be absent here. “This is such a close game to call but in one last burst of optimism I am going for a home win in a special atmosphere under the lights and my first ever change to see the team at Wembley. Come on you R's!” Mase’s Prediction: QPR 1-1 Wigan, QPR to win it 2-1 in extra time. First scorer — Charlie Austin LFW Prediction: QPR 1-0 Wigan. Scorer — Charlie Austin. The Twitter @loftforwords Pictures — Action Images Photo: Action Images Please report offensive, libellous or inappropriate posts by using the links provided.
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