As QPR head to hapless Barnsley (two wins all season) on Saturday I promise very solemnly not to subject you all to another 3,000 words on John Jensen, Lloyd Doyley, and how Ian Holloway never gets the season right when he tells that bloody Swindon Town story.

Barnsley (2-8-19 LLLLLL 24th) v QPR (15-7-7 WWDWLD 4th)

Mercantile Credit Trophy >>> Saturday February 12, 2022 >>> Kick Off 15.00 >>> Weather — Hurricane Katrina >>> Oakwell, Barnsley, Yorkshire, Yorkshire, Yorkshire

I’ve been praying, for weeks now, that Barnsley might beat somebody, anybody, even if by accident. When they equalised at Luton Town on Tuesday night, and the local socials I follow from that part of the world were reporting how laboured and sluggish the home team looked, I got my hopes up for a final time. Alas, a penalty, scored by Adebayo, another loss to make it six in a row, 13 games since a league win, and just two Championship victories all season. Barnsley, to this point, have been record-breaking levels of dreadful. Fulham recently scored more goals in three games and one week than they have managed all season.

Which makes me, and no doubt you, very nervous indeed. Middlesbrough’s display on Wednesday night marks them down as the best team we’ve seen at Loftus Road this season. Te turnaround under Chris Wilder beautifully exemplified by the 26-pass and probe move which led to their second goal - in their final match under Neil Warnock away at West Brom they completed 27 passes in total in the entire second half. But, for my money, prior to that the best team we’ve played at home this season was Barnsley. Back in August the Tykes, in the first half at least, absolutely torched Rangers, laid waste to our entire team, led 2-0 by half time and should really have been double that ahead. Warbs Warburton had to make two substitutions on the half hour to stem the bleeding, and Dom Ball and Albert Adomah shared the star man award that day having been instrumental off the bench in turning the game around. Just as crucial though was Barnsley taking a first half of absolute domination and deciding to abandon it in favour of the Championship mean — if you’re in front immediately resort to ten men behind the ball and time wasting. From any score you like, they were hanging on for a point at the end, and I wonder whether since-sacked manager Markus Schopp has reflected on that decision to go from total football to total shithouse in his quieter moments of unemployment. A recent stat that shows the Championship third bottom of European leagues for ball in play time no surprise for any of us that have to suffer the current “shithousing” trend, and referees’ complete failure to do a single thing about any of it.

Since Mark Warburton has taken over there have been some teams that seem to suit us and we do very well against (Cardiff, Millwall, Luton, Stoke until their most recent visit) and others who we just don’t seem to get on with at all. Barnsley have gone from from 22 defeats and three draws in 25 visits to Loftus Road to seven points from nine, while our trips to Oakwell under Warbs have yielded a pair of heavy defeats and eight goals conceded. We’re yet to beat the Tykes in five attempts since Warburton arrived, four of those games have been defeats and 14 goals conceded.

But, we all know the real reason this game looms so large on the horizon. The Charity Park Rangers thing. That time when John Jensen scored. That time when Lloyd Doyley scored. That time, though Ian Holloway can never remember exactly what time it was, when we lost twice to Swindon bloody Town. Reports of driving rain, brought in on a gale force wind, only add to the sense of foreboding ahead of tomorrow’s trip. If you’re confident of victory, you haven’t been following QPR for very long — this a team who, for all their achievements over the last 14 months, have already lost rather shambolically to Peterborough on two occasions already this season. A close second behind standing on all those terraces and watching all those disasters play out down the years is now having to write about it all the bloody time. Match previews don’t write themselves, genuine angles are to be cherished, and QPR’s propensity to treat a basket case favourably is an obvious go-to on day like this, but I’m bloody sick of it now — both it happening, and talking about it happening. Typical bloody QPR, eye-roll, wharratheylike? My bloody phone’s autocorrect keeps offering me ‘Jensen’ now every time I hit the J on the keypad, and this is a phone so dim it still, after all this time, thinks I want to say ‘duck’.

As one door closes another one opens, and it was with some blessed relief that our latest set of accounts landed on the doorstep Thursday morning. I’d always recommend @nrogers959 on Twitter for the immediate analysis of these, our own Simon Dorset of course, and the experienced @JimFrayling, because they’re able to set it in the context of where QPR have been and the journey to get to here, as opposed to some of the more mainstream accounts that specialise in football finance which ignore a lot of the context, things like FFP/P&S headroom, and have painted this latest set of numbers in a sort of “it’s promotion or bust” manner when, in reality, it’s nothing like that at all.

The headline figure, straight away, is a loss of just £4.5m, down from £16.3m at the last count. On the FFP rolling three-year period QPR have lost £31m, half of what they lost in 2013 alone, and that gives theoretical FFP/P&S headroom of £8m. Our Simon Dorset estimates that disallowable costs (i.e. stuff that doesn’t count towards the P&S calculations) are about £4m a year, which would be £20m-worth of P&S headroom and effectively a breakeven for this latest set. This, from the 2013/14 season of an £80m wage bill and £65m loss, a historic FFP fine and the divisional bad boys, is a remarkable turnaround. It’s been done, as we can see, while performances have improved on the pitch — as Niall points out, QPR’s ‘cost per point’ has halved.

There are two extreme events to consider in these accounts and one of them is the Covid-19 pandemic, which meant we basically couldn’t sell a single ticket or hospitality package throughout the 2020/21 period they cover. Bar television revenue (fairly static at £8m), this is our biggest income, and predictably saw revenue drop by £3.8m for the year. Gate receipts went from north of £4m to a bare £207k which, I presume, is people leaving their season ticket refunds with the club — what else could it be, when there were only season ticket holders at the Reading and Stoke games and everything else was behind closed doors? In a normal year, QPR would have broken even, or even turned a small profit. To have brought the loss from north of £16m the year before to £4.5m while that’s going on is formidable, and it’s largely because of the other elephant in these numbers which is the sale of Ebere Eze to Crystal Palace which meant profits on player transfers of £17.6m. While we’ll always remember his silky skills, brilliant goals, and generational talent, we should never forget the cold, hard, financial fact that this boy has carried us through a once-in-a-hundred-years event in a far better state than just about anybody else in the league.

Some other numbers are heading in the wrong direction. The wage bill is on the creep again. While the average salary paid is static, and a good £5k a week below the Championship average, “football staff” increased by 16 bodies and the overall wage bill is back up at the £24.1m mark, despite £500k in furlough money. In ‘post accounting events’ it lists the summer just gone transfer activity as costing £2.9m which, considering that’s Dunne, Dozzell, Austin, Johansen, Field, De Wijs, McCallum and Gray, is outrageous business. But the issue with several of those players will be salaries. That wage bill will surely be higher again next time. It’s already 166% of turnover, and while that is a bit of a misnomer in a year when Covid decimated the ticket revenue, it’s not a good thing at all. Regularly running at that total, and then not being able to recover it with a player sale, is how Reading, Bristol City and others got into the mess they’re in now.

Without the Eze sale QPR would have lost £22.1m. The club now costs £1.8m per month to run and its quest for sustainability is wholly reliant on being able to sell at least one player for a sizeable transfer fee every couple of years — or a promotion. This is to be always born in mind when the owners are being harassed on Twitter, or people are getting up at the fans forum and demanding that “none of our best players will be sold”. It’s the opposite, they will be sold, and they have to be. If we don’t sell players, for big money, regularly, this is not a going concern. It also busts the league’s P&S rules, at which point you have to start offloading players and operating under a transfer embargo anyway. QPR have been open and honest that their strategy is to bring players in, develop them, and sell some for profit, and this latest set of accounts show starkly what happens when you do that and what it means if you don’t.

Despite the Eze sale, the team has got better. The recruitment team has shown itself capable of taking the chunk of the change they’re given, and reinvesting it wisely. I say again, £2.9m last summer got us all of those players, in a season where Bournemouth paid £4.5m for one part-used and frequently Covid-inflicted Kieffer Moore. If we’re not promoted, somebody is going to have to be sold somewhere for some serious money in pretty short order, but it doesn’t necessarily mean the team gets worse. Thanks to that recruitment work we do now have at least half a dozen players who other clubs might be interested in. Here’s hoping we’re talking about one of them, and input that moves us closer to the Premier League, this time tomorrow, rather than some Barnsley no-hoper that hadn’t previously scored since dinosaurs wandered the earth.

Links >>> Private grief — Interview >>> Mark Perry zero hour — History >>> Salisbury in charge — Referee >>> Barnsley Official Website >>> Yorkshire Post — Local Press >>> Sheffield Star — Local Press >>> BBS Fan Forum — Message Board >>> Barnsley Chronicle - Local Press >>> Red All Over— Podcast

Below the fold

Team News: Chris Willock went to pick Seny Dieng up from the airport on Thursday (totes adorbz guys) but the Senegal international will likely have to wait for his next chance from the bench, with David Marshall man of the match in the midweek draw with Boro. Stefan Johansen left that game early ill, and woefully short of his best, but has been passed fit to travel. Warbs is making noises about starting Jeff Hendrick and Luke Amos here, rotating and resting ahead of an awkward trip to Millwall on Tuesday. Other than Sam McCallum, who is feeling his way back in the reserve grades, and Jordan Archer, there is a fully fit squad to choose from.

Covid and injury problems have plagued an already wretched season for Barnsley. Cauley Woodrow top scores on just four, but hasn’t played since December 11, and is out medium to long term after knee surgery. Obbi Oulare was meant to be the next carefully scouted attacking gem to emerge from the business plan, but endured a nightmare spell in South Yorkshire, delayed initially by visa issues, and has made just two sub appearances before being loaned back to RWDM in the Belgian second tier. Clarke Odour, Victor Adeboyejo and Callum Brittain have all decided they’re best off out of it. Jordan Williams and Romal Palmer are pushing for recalls should the deckchairs require a further shuffle.

Elsewhere: Middlesbrough’s excellent showing at Loftus Road on Wednesday night extended their unbeaten league run to ten games and drew into sharp focus a clutch of four teams just outside the play-off places who are chasing ourselves and those around us very hard indeed. There’s an FFP grudge match waiting for them back at home this weekend with Wayne Rooney’s Derby County in town and they can move into the play-off places with a victory there. They’ll have to better Nottingham Florist’s result though after an impressive 2-0 win on the road at Blackburn during the week moved them into the six for the first time ahead of an eminently winnable home game with Stoke on Saturday. Rovers, with one win and three defeats in five, faltering almost as badly as West Brom, now down to ninth, and those two meet at The Hawthorns in this week’s Monday Night Football.

Sporting Huddersfield continue to defy expectation, unbeaten in 11 in the league and 13 in all comps. They’re at home on Saturday lunchtime to Sheffield Red Stripe, another of the chasing pack attracting a lot of attention at the moment. Jeffers and AJ, and Bournemouth, are both away this weekend, at Hull and Blackpool respectively. If only QPR weren’t so bloody prone to falling in holes in games like the one we have at Barnsley you’d say this could be a potentially great weekend for us, with several teams around us taking points off each other, and others facing tricky away games. In form Lutown, who we fancied back in the summer and are now running very hot indeed, should win at lousy Birmingham, but remember the Blues randomly won 5-0 at Kenilworth Road in the corresponding fixture.

Down at the other end it increasingly looks like Peterborough have given up for the year, though a surprise home win against Preston Knob End could change that perception. Outspoken chairman Darragh McAnthony’s decision to set ticket prices for their FA Cup fifth round tie with Man City at £42 for non-season ticket holders rather smacks of clawing in as much cash as possible before disappearing back to League One. With Cardiff (away the Marxist Hunters) pulling away it increasingly looks like being a question of whether Derby can complete their miracle recovery at the expense of Reading, who are in absolute freefall prior to this weekend’s home fixture with Coventry.

Swanselona v Bristol City is the Sunday lunchtime game. You can watch that if you like. But I fucking won’t be.

Referee: New Premier League referee Michael Salisbury, whose last game was also with Barnsley (lost 3-0 at Nottingham Forest) is in charge of this one. Just a fourteenth outing of the season for him after what we presume was an injury lay-off through December. Details.

Form

QPR: The defeat at Peterborough last week in the FA Cup was QPR’s first in eight in all comps, and only their third in 18 games. It ended an unbeaten run of six on the road stretching back to the previous loss at Peterborough in October — five wins and a draw, including four 2-1 wins in a row at Derby, Bristol City, Birmingham and Coventry through the winter. Rangers’ seven away wins so far, and just four defeats, is bettered only by top two Fulham and Bournemouth. The draw at home to Boro during the week took the R’s to the 52-point mark generally accepted as safety target at Championship level with 17 games still to play — it’s one more point than they managed in the whole of 2018/19 under Steve McClaren. QPR have scored in every away game they’ve played this season. The last time they failed to score in an away game was at Preston on Anthony Gordon’s birthday, 21 games ago. The 2-2 draw with Barnsley at Loftus Road in August continued their recent bogey over QPR. The Tykes are unbeaten in five meetings, and have won the last two on this ground scoring eight goals in the process. Prior to 2019/20 they had played 25 times at Loftus Road without winning, losing 22 of them, but their win in W12 in the first game out of lockdown was followed by another under Valerian Ismael last season and then this year’s 2-2. Rangers have lost four and drawn one of five meetings with the Tykes since Warbs took over, conceding 14 times. The last time they won at Oakwell was five visits ago, 3-2 in a dead rubber final day game of the 2013/14 season when Austin, Yun Suk-Young and a Mvoto own goal sealed the points — at that point we’d won three consecutive visits here.

Barnsley: My God. Barnsley have won three games all season out of 32 played, and one of those was a 5-4 against League Two Barrow here last month in the FA Cup third round which required extra time. They have lost 20 times already, including the last six matches leading into this one in which they have scored just two goals. They have scored just 18 times in the league, easily the worst record in the league five short of Peterborough — Fulham scored more goals in three games and one week against Reading, Birmingham and Bristol City than Barnsley have managed all season. Their 45 goals conceded, however, is not the Championship’s worst record — Posh (59), Reading (57), Bristol City (55), Birmingham (49) and Cardiff (48) have all let in more goals. The two victories they have managed in the Championship both came at Oakwell — 1-0 against Coventry in August, 2-1 against fellow strugglers Derby in November. They are now on a sequence of 13 league games without a win, of which ten have been lost, including the last six. They are yet to win under new manager Poya Asbaghi, who was appointed on November 17, 14 games ago. Their overall home record is 2-4-8 with West Brom, Huddersfield, Birmingham and Blackburn the four teams to draw here — two of them 0-0. The 2-2 at Loftus Road in August is one of only three occasions Barnsley have scored more than once in a league game. Poya Asbaghi has now broken a club record that has stood since 1952/53 of ten league games without a win as a new manager, with the eleventh coming on Tuesday at Luton. Cauley Woodrow is top scorer here with four — he hasn’t played since December 11. Barnsley are the lowest scorers in the whole EFL.

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. Last year’s champion Mick_S says…

“I think if we play well, we win this. They are a bogey team for us, but their record so far this season is awful. As long as we don’t get complacent we should be ok. Hope that’s not too Brentford. I’m going for a 1-2, with Dykes to nab the first. It’s getting twitchy.”

Mick’s Prediction: Barnsley 1-2 QPR. Scorer — Lyndon Dykes

LFW’s Prediction: Barnsley 1-2 QPR. Scorer — Andre Gray

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Paddyhoops added 19:57 - Feb 11 I see no reason why we can't win tomorrow. A fully fit squad, excellent away form and most of all we have better players in pretty much in every position. 2.0 to us!
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062259 added 21:13 - Feb 11 With a very tough away run-in looming, this game doesn’t necessarily inform the team’s play-off chances, but may very well inform their top-two chances. Away defeats to Barnsley AND Peterborough would be pretty big blemishes on an otherwise excellent season so far.
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TacticalR added 22:04 - Feb 11 Thanks for your preview. On the accounts...I presume the wage bill is creeping up because of Austin and Johansen (players we originally thought we couldn't get permanently). The more I read about Barnsley's terrible statistics, the more nervous I get. We haven't done well against them recently...but maybe this is another ghost we can exorcise this season?
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bob566 added 02:55 - Feb 12 Thanks Clive. Always interesting to hear the business side of things. 2-0 QPR.
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M40R added 08:18 - Feb 12 Great review and helpful financial analysis. Fortunately the wind forecast is not so bad as yesterday I was fearing another Wycombe 2003 type match with high balls favouring the team with the wind at it's back. Still got a bad feeling, though. BTW, not sure if this sentence is a Freudian error or inspired writing: "Covid and injury problems have plagued an already retched season for Barnsley". Probably the latter!

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CliveWilsonSaid added 10:13 - Feb 12 I did wonder whether no appearance from Amos on Wednesday would mean a start for him today. Who are we thinking he’d replace? If Hendrick is in for Stef then it would be one of Field, Chair or Willock I’d have thought. I’m hopeful that our recent form at Oakwell was just a blip and today will mark a return to the old ways for Rangers. Winning ways and a 3-0 victory, Barbet to score direct from a corner.

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