QPR put their steady start to the season, and impressive away run, on the line at Blackburn on Saturday morning – a place they’ve been a time or two before.

Blackburn (3-3-0 DWLDWD 4th) v QPR (1-4-1 DDWDLD 14th)

Sky’s Super Saturday Brunch Spectacular >>> Saturday September 28, 2024 >>> Kick Off 12.30 >>> Weather – Wet >>> Ewood Park, Blackburn, The North

Hello, and good afternoon, from Avanti West Coast’s bold attempt at a 14.53 from London to Manchester Piccadilly. We’re on time, and I’ve got a seat. Awaiting news of hell/Euston freezing over.

Without wishing to draw the curtain too far back on what goes on behind the scenes in a home churning out 48 match previews and reports a year alongside a day job, the person with whom I’ve chosen to spend my life heard me shouting “YES”, “GO ON THEN” and “ABSOLUTELY FUCKING NOT” from the living quarters recently and descended the stairs to enquire what on earth was going on.

The answer – of course, Jesus – was a cup draw. Quite an alien environment to Queens Park Rangers and their supporters, but here we were. As the home teams tumbled out of the pot, so the immediate judgement was announced: West Ham, YES; Wimbledon, GO ON THEN; Coventry, ABSOLUTELY FUCKING NOT.

Tell me I’m not the only person who does this. You’ll miss me when they scrape me off the front of one of these things.

This sparked some interest in the non-footbally side of the household and a series of intrusive questions about why 5,500 QPR fans squinting to see the pitch from the away end at West Ham’s new monstrosity for the first time would be good, while 500 of us traipsing up to Coventry’s inaccessible pleasuredome for the billionth time would be a ball ache to rival testicular cancer itself. This drowned out the draw QPR did actually end up with – Luton bastard Town – but was quickly replaced with uproarious laughter when I said this meant we’d be playing Luton bastard Town twice in about 72 hours. “So, you have to play Luton on Tuesday and then Luton again on Friday?” Then the cackling. Then the WhatsApping of my face to a collection of mutual friends. If anybody does have a spare room…

The questions, as they’re rather prone to do, soon returned. Why, exactly, is Coventry away so bad? Why do none of your friends want to go with you to Millwall, or Luton, or Reading, all (relatively) on our doorstep, but you had to buy 22 separate away end tickets for last season’s trip to Plymouth, which was further away, and on a Tuesday? You moan all the time about the cup ties you do get, Clive. What exactly do you want?

With an hour and 45 to go to Manchester, let’s have a swing at a proper answer to that question – I believe my previous attempt was “never mind that, stop moving my bloody stuff around the gaff”.

When it comes to cup draws specifically, priority one is a new ground. My 92 count topped out at 78, and is now going in the opposite direction as Brentford, West Ham and Spurs move to new dwellings and the likes of Scunthorpe, Oldham, Barnet and Yeovil sink into non-league to be replaced by Bromley, Harrogate and Salford. All that effort the 2,000 of us made to cram into that three-coach horsedrawn affair to Yeovil Junction (neither a junction, nor in Yeovil) only for them to piss back off from whence they came. Selfish. There can’t be many people sitting there wishing for Barrow away (Allen reckons he knows a pub called The Dog) but I was among their number. Morecambe, Accrington, also fine. Of course, it would be much easier if we’d finally get the Bristol Rovers draw you think we’d have had by now, given the early rounds are separated north v south, and then seeded again so Bristol Rovers are one of about eight teams we can get. Alas, it turns out that’s simply a return ticket to Swindon or Northampton. Where we’ve been before. A lot. Mark Hateley cupped his ear at me. The fat mess.

After that it’s very much a geographical thing. Is this going to require an overnight stay? Work have started to notice me taking 38 days of my 30-day holiday allowance. Are we going to have to drive? Sit in somebody’s else’s car and I exist on the bones of my arse, balanced equally between trying to not to throw up and hyper ventilation about their attempts to kill me. Drive my own car and I become so infuriated with the many 50, 50, 50, 50, 50, 40, 50, 50 outright cuntish attempts of the “smart motorway” to extract money from me/crush some poor pensioner in a Micra under a Polish lorry on what used to be the hard shoulder, that I end up fantasising about what would happen if I just did 120 down the opposite carriageway and helpfully removed myself and as many other people as I can from this miserable existence. It’s best if it’s accessible by train, to be honest.

But which train? Am I going to be on the publicly owned East Coast, which runs frequent and fast trains at (relatively, RELATIVELY) affordable prices to places like Doncaster, Leeds and York in a couple of hours. Or Hull Trains, who are nice, and new, and cheap, but if this one’s cancelled there isn’t another until a week Thursday, and you’re not allowed to get on anybody else’s. Will we be in the same commuter hell as we are on the way home from work every day? Will it be EMR, running a five carriage (two and half of those an empty first class) diesel chugger at a slower speed than we achieved on that line in the days of steam? Will we be on GWR, who have new trains, but think it’s acceptable to pick you up by the ankles and shake you up and down until your spleen falls out by way of payment for a midweek trip to… let’s see now… Cardiff. CARDIFF? 200 sheets. Or will it be boss level railway arseholery? Will it be the worst of all worlds? Will it be Avanti West Coast? Who operate trains from what is now essentially a giant advertising hoarding, and an obvious deathtrap waiting to happen, are the least reliable, and charge you the most money. A company with a first class ticket available to Preston for a cool £600.

Next up, is it a nice place? Do we know a good pub? Obviously sitting out on the Plymouth Hoe (down Wayne) with the sun on your face and a cold beer in hand is ideal after a week trekking around Devon and Cornwall. You think Hull is terrible? You haven’t eaten the fish and chips in The Minerva. Sunderland’s Roker Hotel, with the North Sea lapping at its foresaw under a pearly sunrise, and the chunky bride from Friday’s wedding padding around in bare feet and a stretched “GOT LAID” t-shirt, has its charms. We have good pubs in non-coastal locations as well: Green King’s makeover of Doncaster’s Tut ‘n Shive is tantamount to a war crime, but I still have a nice beer in there between trains. Burnley’s Ministry of Ales was an institution. There was a hand towel in the gents that greeted you as you went in. Sadly, Covid did for that one. Probably where it started.

Next priority, are we likely to win? You could be fooled by QPR’s recent cup record but we do, at least in theory, want to win. How much fun, really, was it for West Ham to lose 5-1 at Liverpool (again)? Poor Watford pulled Man City away, which is in theory a complete waste of time. They kept it competitive right to the end, scored a perfectly legitimate goal at the death to make it 2-2 and take it to penalties, and had it disallowed. Afterwards Pep said he’s not going to take this competition seriously anymore and will pick his second team in the next round, because he’s so badly done to. You want to be part of this? You’re a less jaded man than me. It doesn’t even need to be one of the clubs artificially doped into superstardom by some evil petro-chemical dictatorship which would hack your balls off with a rusty blade for opening your Grindr on their premises. QPR have shockingly abysmal records on a great many grounds – one win in 19 trips to Grimsby for goodness’ sake. Are we going to win here? Are we? Really?

And then – clubs we play all the time, grounds we go to all the time. This is negated somewhat if they’ve got an old school Bramall Lane, Hillsborough type stadium, and exacerbated if it’s Middlesbrough, Derby, Leicester playing in the same stadium as everybody else on the edge of a retail park surrounded by car dealerships and meth heads. Worse still - clubs and grounds we’re playing/going to in the next few weeks anyway. QPR have been in the Championship for a decade now. That’s so many trips to Deepdale even some of the club’s diehards had started to speculate whether relegation to League One might be good for us to liven things up a bit. Ten years of Euston (public inquiry in waiting), Avanti (robbing bastards), and all you’ve got at the other end of it is Preston (1-0 defeat). Just a bit of variation. Sky, BBC, ITV, love nothing more than an FA Cup draw between Liverpool and Wolves, or Brighton and Man Utd, so they can show you the Liverpool v Wolves, or Brighton v Man Utd game they show you every bloody Sunday anyway. Take that unimaginative, stupefyingly boring bullshit and times it by… Stoke v QPR.

The crossing of these particular streams came in January 2016, when the FA Cup draw contrived to send QPR to Nottingham Forest. Not far from home, not a particularly expensive train, and some great pubs in a wonderful city – fine. But QPR never win at Nottingham Forest (at that point we’d had 32 swings at it and not succeeded once), and they play them all the time. In fact, they were due to play them at The City Ground just 17 days later in the league. They duly lost 1-0 in the cup, drew 0-0 in the league, achieved nothing, and emptied somewhere in the region of £400 from our current accounts in the process – reward, zero goals scored. Not even a goal. Motherfckers… Liverpool got Exeter away. Can we not just… can we not just have a nice time?

I wonder how other clubs view us in this regard? As an awayer at Loftus Road I feel like I’d park the obvious crush hazard on the School End concourses in the same back of my mind where I keep concerns about how much that Leicester away end wibbles about underfoot when your team scores a goal in front of it. Instead, I’d focus on the myriad transport links, the old school stadium in the housing estate, the proximity to the pitch, the day out in London, more often than not a win, and the pubs… But, do they? Do they perhaps instead see it as an expensive trip to stand in a deathtrap you may not even be able to see the game from? They have to use Avanti to get to us as well. Do they roll their eyes at QPR away? There was a wonderful Viz cartoon of two Martians watching the FA Cup third round draw and saying “eurgh, Earth again”. Is this like family Christmas, where all the various bits of the family are sitting around separately bitching and moaning about what a complete chore it is going to the other, only to go through with the façade anyway? Helen, hi, do tell us how Jean you used to teach with is getting on. Cold turkey salad? Marvellous. Just, marvellous.

If you did add it all up though, in an attempt to find the worst awayday. If you did take the formula above and boil it down. If you looked for one of the furthest trips. On the worst railway line. At the greatest expense. And the most inconvenience. For the least chance of winning. And the worst pubs… If you took that Avanti West Coast trip to Preston, and added a change and an extra leg on the country’s next biggest railway shitfest Northern Rail (A 99, LIKE A 69 BUT 30 WORSE). If you took a cold, quite angry, northern place QPR have to come to all the time. A place where the best pub in the town is a Wetherspoons. If it was a place the R’s lose religiously – a 2-1 scrape here last season the first success in 25 years, during which they’d tried on 11 occasions and not only failed but also failed by the same 1-0 scoreline in five of those. If you put all of that together, and you add in an unbeaten start for the hosts, a former QPR assistant manager probably still a bit pissed he stuck around here so long for our job and then didn’t get it, the first of the biblical winter storms which are now just occurring per routine for some indiscernible reason, and you stick it all in the Saturday breakfast kick off our Sky overlords now inflict on half the teams in the league every week… what you get is something approaching the worst awayday imaginable.

What you get is Blackburn. And I’m now arriving at Manchester Piccadilly.

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Below the fold

Team News: The good news for Marti Cifuentes is he has Morgan Fox, who he likes, and Ilias Chair, who everybody else does, back in training. Neither have played a minute of the season so far so I’d expect bench spots to begin with but we’re getting there. Jack Colback, however, remains out with a knee injury picked up in the draw at Sheff Wed, and young defender Liam Morrison will be sidelined for six weeks after minor surgery on a torn meniscus.

Blackburn full back and QPR summer transfer target Owen Beck serves the first of a three game ban picked up for having the temerity to resist Preston’s Milutin Osmajic’s affectionate attempt to take a chunk out of his neck in last weekend’s Lancashire derby. BUT I THOUGHT YOU LIKED THAT? No Milutin, he’s never liked that. Blackburn have seven ever-presents in their unbeaten start to the league season, and those waiting patiently for their chance were given a run in a 6-0 U21s win at Carlisle in the week which featured an outing for summer signing Todd Cantwell and a hat trick for Brighton loanee Amario Cozier-Duberry.

Elsewhere: If you did want to strike back at the annual LFW moaning and groaning about QPR’s lack of progress in the League Cup then here’s one for you… No Championship side that was involved in a midweek League Cup game last week won their game at the weekend. We’ll see if Watford can buck that trend this week at home to Sunderland after their controversial loss at Man City.

Early firing season is well and truly underway now, and the only thing less surprising than Stoke going first with Stephen Schumacher is it’s Cardiff next. A summer of protracted contract negotiations with Erol Bulut succeeds only in increasing the size of his pay-off six matches into the season with the Bluebirds yet to win. Another masterstroke career move for one of the Willock boys that one. The Welsh side are under caretaker charge for their trip to Hull, who got their first win of the season away at Stoke last Friday. Stoke are away at Boro this weekend.

The other sides cursed with the early kick off this Saturday are Derby hosting Norwich, and Sheff Wed at home to high flying West Brom – Danny Rohl’s Owls quietly haven’t won a league game since the opening weekend.

Coventry, like Wednesday, were tipped by many (okay, us) for a promotion push this year but are once again hamstringing themselves with a sluggish start. One win from six league games and consecutive home defeats to Norwich and Swansea ahead of this week’s challenging trip to Leeds. Burnley are Scott Parkering their way through it exactly as we expected – another single goal win off appalling xG stats at home to Portsmouth last week ahead of a trip to surprise package Oxford. Pompey, meanwhile, host Sheffield Red Strip while Millwall are at home to Preston Knob End.

The whole thing gets underway tonight with Wayne Rooney’s Plymouth at home to Luton, and finishes on Sunday with Swanselona v Bristol City.

Referee: Not quite sure why, but Premier League referee and mainstay on the European circuit Craig Pawson is slumming it with us this weekend. His last Championship fixture was at Ewood Park as well weirdly. Details.

Form

Blackburn: Rovers looked for a long time like they were destined to sink into last season’s relegation whirlpool. QPR’s 2-1 win here in January was part of a run of one win in11 and two in 21 which saw Jon Dahl Tomasson leave and John Eustace arrive to pull them out of their death spiral. Eustace got a lot of draws – nine of their last 16 games finished level – but not a lot of wins. Rovers won none of their final eight home games. They stayed up, ultimately thanks to a trio of fairly remarkable away wins – 5-1 at Sunderland (a first win in a dozen games and two months), 1-0 at promotion chasing Leeds, and then 2-0 at champions Leicester on the final day. They ended up three places and points ahead of third bottom Birmingham.

A week and a half before the start of the new season you wouldn’t have put a lot of money on things going much better this time around – in fact we had them bottom three in our season preview. With Sammie Szmodics shortly to leave for Ipswich and Sam Gallagher already sold to Stoke, 40 of the team’s 60 league goals were out of the door. No signings had been made the infamous Venkys were nowhere to be seen amidst ongoing legal wrangles back in India. Since then it’s been all plain sailing. Rovers scored ten goals in winning their first two games, 4-2 at home to Derby and 6-1 at Stockport in the League Cup. They remain unbeaten in the Championship – three wins and three draws. A dozen points from six games is their best league start in seven years – a win here will be their best start since 94-95, when they went on to win the Premier League (unbeaten in first seven that season). This would also be the first time since then they’ve won their first four league games at home in a season because, although they lost here to Blackpool in the League Cup, they’ve won all three Championship matches at Ewood Park so far – 4-2 against Derby, 2-1 v Oxford and a 3-0 whitewash of Bristol City. They are drawing a fair bit again though – three of those, and just two wins, in the six games coming into this one.

The whole thing has been driven by a late flurry of transfers in the final two weeks of the window – seven permanents and three loans proof of the folly of doing season previews in the first rather than the last week of August. By far the most successful of those has been J-League striker Yuki Ohashi (28) who has already scored five goals in four different games for Rovers.

#QPR have both scored and conceded in each of their last 10 games in all competitions, their longest such run since September-November 1966 (11 games). pic.twitter.com/JGj7aWW8y9— Jack Supple (@JTSupple) September 27, 2024

QPR: Yet another 12.30 kick off this weekend at the behest of our Sky overlords – four of Rangers’ first seven league games have kicked off in this fucking awful graveyard slot. That includes all three home games so far – the only side across the whole EFL and Premier League to have had all its home games moved into the early time slot (hat tip @AnalyticsQPR).

QPR haven’t lost a league game since the opening day against West Brom, but have only won one of their six Championship matches so far – that away at Luton. The good news is the R’s are unbeaten in five in the league and have lost only five of their last 25 Championship fixtures. Away from home Marti Cifuentes’ team has only lost two of its last 13 matches. No Championship team has won more points from losing positions (six) and Rangers have five of those away from home having not recovered a single point from a losing position on the road last season. The bad news is too many draws. Four of the first six league games so far have finished level, and that away record is tempered by five draws along with the six wins. It’s not for want of trying – QPR have scored in 12 consecutive games and have had 29 shots on target already this season which is second only to Leeds (32) in this division. Michy Frey now has four goals in six appearances as top scorer, after bagging only one in his first ten games for the club. Frey’s three league goals have been worth four points, only Josh Maja’s goals for West Brom have been more valuable (six goals, seven points).

QPR’s 2-1 win here in January was key to turning round a seemingly hopeless situation. It was also Rangers’ first win at Ewood Park in 25 years, going back to Stuart Wardley and Kevin Gallen scoring in a 2-0 win here in 1999/00 which got Brian Kidd the sack as Rovers boss. The R’s had lost six in a row on this ground prior to that, four of those by the same 1-0 scoreline. They’d lost nine and drawn two of the 11 meetings since they last won, five of those 1-0. It really isn’t a happy hunting ground because running up to the 1999/00 victory Rangers had lost four and drawn one of five visits. A win here will be the first time they’ve won consecutive games at Ewood Park since September 1970 when they put together a run of three. Blackburn have lost just four of their 22 league games against QPR this century (W12 D6), failing to score in just four of those matches.

Prediction: There’s still time to enter our Prediction League for 2024/25, where we’ll once again be handing out prizes for being top at Christmas and overall winner from The Art of Football - sample the merch from our sponsor’s newly extended QPR collection here. For the first time last year we had joint winners so this season you’ll be hearing from one or both WestonsuperR and SimplyNico in the match previews and the former had it spot on for the second week running with score and scorer against Millwall.

Nico’s Prediction: “A tricky trip to Blackburn (where, historically, we do not win) who are outperforming under Warbs’ assistant manager, John Eustace. We are hard to beat, but not winning many. I see another draw.”

Weston’s Call “Blackburn have surprised me with a strong start to the season, their form combined with two rather poor displays in our previous couple of league matches means I have little confidence in our chances of grabbing our second win of the season at Ewood. I’m on a hat-trick after predicting 1-1 in our previous two matches but hoping I am completely wrong with this one.”

Nico’s Prediction: Blackburn 1-1 QPR. Scorer – Michy Frey

WestonSuperR’s Prediction: Blackburn 2-0 QPR. No scorer.

LFW’s Prediction: Blackburn 1-1 QPR. Scorer – Jimmy Dunne

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Pictures - Reuters Connect

captainmycaptian added 20:56 - Sep 27 Clive thanks seriously fantastic read. You bring the true relationship of being a real football fan to life. Its like some poor battered wife retur ing to her spouse " this time it will be different " I hope they trounce rovers in typical QPR bizarre performance against all odds. Just so you have to write a flabbergast unanticipated report while still cursing the corporate shit shower.that is our first world train service.

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derbyhoop added 21:29 - Sep 27 The first half of that preview was one of your best. Laugh out loud funny. Then you ruined it by writing about football to come. Good luck to the 600+ travelling to Blackburn. Again.
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Burnleyhoop added 09:36 - Sep 28 Well, at least it’s not pissing down in Lancashire this morning. Small mercies. Can’t promise any better on the pitch, but you never know, this team of strangers have to click at some point. Maybe today is the day and it is that hope that makes you do the things you do. Bonkers.
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londonscottish added 10:03 - Sep 28 I think I'll frame the part about taking a lift/driving yourself/taking a train. So true........
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GaryBannister86 added 11:42 - Sep 28 No, you are definitely not alone in shouting at the cup draw. "YES! PLEASE! PLEASE!" when Spurs or Arsenal come out replaced with "NO FOR LORD'S SAKE NOT THEM". I miss the days of my youth when all you wanted was a rubbish side at home as we actually had a decent side. And who do we get in that QF? The one and only draw where we wouldn't have been at the very least 50/50 to win. Still gutted.

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TacticalR added 12:17 - Sep 28 Thanks for your preview. Visiting Blackburn? A Sisyphean task. Visiting Loftus Road? We did win Adrian Durham's award for the top ground in the country this week, so surely an entirely different matter? It looks like Ohashi can score from anywhere so we need to contain him.
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