QPR have a great chance to not only tighten their grip on the Championship, but also to show that their charitable days are long done, as they face bottom of the league Preston on Saturday.

 

Preston (24th) v QPR (1st)

Football, they say, is a funny old game. You won't find many smiles cracked on the red side of the Trent in Nottingham this week after one of Forest’s much talked about games in hand was lost on Wednesday night to second bottom Scunthorpe, who had previously only won one other home game all season. Nor in Watford where the Hornet's play off push is quickly subsiding into their traditional last third of the season collapse - a banker home win against basement side Preston on Tuesday quickly turned sour as the visitors raced into a two goal lead and although Malky Mackay’s men clawed their way back to 2-2 it was still a poor result.

I have written on LFW and in A Kick Up The R's this season about my puzzlement at the fixation some fans have with the teams below us. Some QPR supporters seem to pour over the form guide more than they do the actual league table, panicking about teams who have come flying up the league on good runs of form without ever recognising the value of our own consistency which has yielded just three defeats all season and a points total just shy of the promotion guaranteeing two points per match average.

The daftness of soiling oneself every time a team strings five or six wins together and flies up behind us can be illustrated no better than by looking at the recent form of the November panic causers Derby and Coventry. Both strung wins together for fun prior to Christmas, Derby winning eight of 11 and Coventry six out of ten, to climb into the play off picture only to then go on a run of no wins from ten games in Coventry's case, and one win in 13 in Derby's. Looking at their league positions now it's hard to imagine a time when they were ever a concern, but plenty were fretting about them in November.

They were then replaced on the panic radar by Forest who won seven on the spin prior to playing QPR. Suddenly now they're without a win in two, only have one game in hand, are seven points behind us and Billy Davies is bemoaning their lack of January transfer activity and claiming to only have 17 fit players. If they fall away expect Leicester and Hull to be the next two sources of message board distress.

This weekend Forest play Cardiff (October's source of terror as they won 4-0 at Leeds and briefly took over at the top of the league) while the axis of fear from December Norwich and Leeds meet at Carrow Road. This is excellent news for QPR as it means at least two and as many as four of our rivals will be dropping points this weekend while we're only playing bottom of the league Preston.

Only. There's that horrible word. Now we've all been doing this long enough to know there is no "only" where QPR are involved. Oh, it's "only" Swindon we cried back in 1993 when QPR faced a Wednesday night trip to the County Ground to face the newly promoted Robins. Swindon's record to that point was played 15, won none, lost nine, scored 13, conceded 35. QPR meanwhile would have gone second in the Premiership with a win, and had a side boasting Ferdinand, Wilkins, Sinclair, Impey and others among its number. Of course we lost, 1-0, and not only that but then lost 3-1 at Loftus Road in the return fixture against bloody Swindon as well - two of their five wins that year were against Rangers, their only double needless to say.

Rangers have become masters of footballing charity. If there's a striker out there who hasn't scored for 80 matches we'll find him and let him have a goal, if there's a team without a win in ten games they will beat us, any manager coming under pressure in his job prays that when he looks at the fixture list those three letters Q, P and R are somewhere to be found within the next few weeks. I always remember a Friday night match at Loftus Road during Gary Waddock's reign where Ipswich, rock bottom and without a win in Jim Magilton's first five games in charge, looked like a bunch of world beaters in winning 3-1. Not only that but Dean Bowditch, who had not scored in 33 Ipswich appearances stretching back across 16 months, got the third that night.

And do we need to talk about John Jensen? I think not.

So let's look at Preston - bottom of the league, without a win in ten matches, nine points adrift of safety and a whopping 38 points shy of QPR's running total. They also hold the distinction of being the worst team I can ever remember seeing at Loftus Road in 20 years of supporting QPR - Rangers beat them 3-1 at home earlier this season and it flattered the visitors. They have just appointed Phil Brown as manager, a ludicrous figure who I shall discuss in greater depth shortly, and he is yet to win any of his first seven games in charge. Signing former Hull City clogger Ian Ashbee and our very own candidate for the glue factory Leon Clarke hardly hints at him turning that around anytime soon.

But there are signs of life down at the bottom. Preston were unlucky not to win at Watford, Scunthorpe rode their good fortune a little but still beat Nottingham Forest. The season so far has been so atypically QPR, but how vintage of Rangers it would be to lose this game when a win could be so pivotal to our success this season bearing in mind the fixtures elsewhere.

Five minutes on Preston

The Story So Far: You would think that for a former chairman of Wigan Rugby League Club, being stuck on the bottom of the table and facing almost certain relegation would come as a new experience. Maurice Lindsay, the current Preston chairman, was on the board at Wigan when they mercilessly dominated the British game through the 1980s regularly winning league and cup doubles and leaving everybody else trailing in their wake. Even people with no interest in Rugby League whatsoever will have heard the names of the players Lindsay helped bring to Central Park during that all conquering spell — Martin Offiah, Jason Robinson, Ellery Hanley, Dennis Betts, Dean Bell and so on.

The experience isn’t as alien to him as you might think though. He left Wigan in 1992 but returned for a second spell from 1999 by which time a new summer Super League era had dawned and salary cap regulations had been imposed to create a more level playing field and better competition. Wigan subsequently only won the league and the Challenge Cup once from 1996 until 2010 when they finally triumphed again. In 2006 the unthinkable almost happened. Wigan, once giants of the game, found themselves firmly stuck to the bottom of the table for the majority of the season and two thirds of the way through the campaign, as we are in the Championship now, were starting to look like certainties for relegation.

So Lindsay has been here before, the difference is though back in 2006 his club cheated their way out whereas in football five years later there looks to be no such way pack for the Preston North End club he now runs. Faced with dropping out of the Super League, scarily close to the end of promotion and relegation from Super League, Lindsay and Wigan decided to quite deliberately ignore the league’s salary cap that restricted clubs to spending £1.6m per year on players’ salaries. They went out and brought in half back Michael Dobson on loan from Canberra who had previously been impressing with Catalans, Stuart Fielden from Bradford for a world record transfer fee of £450,000 and a wage to match, and the Bradford coach Brian Noble. It was the equivalent of a boxer well behind on points at the end of the eleventh going out for the twelfth with a machine gun in his hand.

It was a flagrant breach, everybody knew it bust the Wigan cap by some distance, but at that time punishments were only metered out for cap breaches a year later. Sure enough, the following season, Wigan were docked four points for their cheating but by then their new signings had helped them to survive and a promising, but rather young, Castleford team assembled within the rules was relegated instead.

Why so much talk of Rugby League? Well, I like Rugby League, and Wigan’s immoral escape still rankles with me five years on. But also, because it’s financial decisions of a rather different kind by the board at Preston which includes Lindsay as chairman and former Pontins boss Trevor Hemming as owner that have left North End in the state they are in now.

Last season you may recall Preston were beaten 4-0 at Loftus Road. They looked a poor side and were rather fortunate in my view to scrape together 54 points for an eighteenth placed finish. From that, at best, mediocre side the Preston board aimed to strip £3.5m from a £10m wage bill. Now personally I cannot for the life of me see where £10m in player wages was going when I look down their squad list for last season but according to Lindsay when he spoke to the BBC in September it was typical of a club that had 19 cars on lease, gave away free tickets by the four dozen, and had a clutch of company credit cards scattered around the place.

Cost cutting for a club on Preston’s average gate was clearly necessary, but aiming to cut a £10m wage bill down to £6.5m was always going to have adverse impacts on an already poor team. Chris Sedgwick, Ross Wallace, Neill Collins, Michael Hart, Liam Chilvers, Youl Mawene, Velice Shumulikoski, Richard Chaplow, Darren Carter, Stephen Elliott, Neil Mellor and more recently Eddie Nolan and Jon Parkin have all been sold or loaned out. Good players? Not particularly. Irreplaceable? Certainly not. But you cannot hack into a squad like that, taking away so many first team mainstays whatever their quality, and try to replace them all at once while at the same time trying to reduce the wage bill by £3.5m and expect any kind of success.

The man charged with the impossible task was former Peterborough boss Darren Ferguson. He added Paul Hayes, Scunthorpe’s reigning player of the year, David Gray from Man Utd, Darel Russell from Norwich, Wayne Brown fresh from his Leicester disgrace and Craig Morgan, who was his only cash signing at £400,000 from Peterborough. They looked then, and do now, like the summer transfer business of a team in the division below this one. They lost 2-0 at home to Doncaster on day one and things have not got a great deal better for them since. A bizarre 6-4 win at Leeds in September is the undoubted high point so far of a season that has included blowing a 3-1 lead in the last four minutes of the local derby with Burnley to lose 4-3, a 3-2 home defeat by Scunthorpe and a 4-0 home defeat by Bristol City.

One way to keep your squad competitive while hacking away at the wage bill is to play the loan market, and enough has been written about Darren Ferguson’s connections in the game for me not to have to recap in too much detail here. This season daddy leant Darren midfielder Matthew James, defender Ritchie De Laet, and striker Joshua King and when Darren got the tin tack in January Fergie Senior quite literally picked up his toys and took them all home with him. Ferguson recalled King and De Laet from their short term loans as he was entitled to do, and threatened a legal challenge if James was not released from a season long loan deal from which, league rules state, there should be no recall. Stoke City recalled Michael Tonge and Danny Pugh at the same time just for good measure.

When faced with this problem at Wigan Lindsay went out and brought Stuart Fielden for £450k, which equates in football to Preston going out and spending £40m on Wayne Rooney later today.

So we have a squad shorn of 13 senior professionals without adequate replacements, a massive cost cutting operation in place, low gates and discontent from fans who feel Hemmings should be using some more of his personal fortune to address the many problems facing the team, a nine point gap between PNE and safety and relegation to League One a racing certainty. Could things possibly get any worse? Well, in a word, yes.

The Manager: Or rather two words - Phil Brown. Maybe I should just leave this section at that and move on.

What more can possibly be said about Phil Brown that hasn’t already been said? If QPR do stay true to form and gift Preston their first win in ten and Brown his first win as their manager at the eighth attempt it will be one of the lowest moments of not only my time supporting QPR but also my time spent on earth full stop. Not because I have anything particularly against Preston, in fact I always used to say Preston copy was the hardest to write for LFW because I held no feelings towards them one way or the other, but because Phil Brown is an absolutely ridiculous, farcical and ludicrous figure to me. To lose a match to him would be an embarrassment from which I would doubtless recover, but one that I would always hold with me for the rest of my life.

Brown the player was an unremarkable right full back born on Tyneside who played more than 650 times for Blackpool, Bolton, Halifax and Hartlepool between 1978 and 1996 but never made an appearance in the top flight of English football. Following his retirement he coached at Blackpool and Bolton under Sam Allardyce before leaving the Reebok Stadium to become a manager in his own right at Derby in 2005.

Mitigation to start with — the first job for any manager is always likely to be tough and Brown picked a club in Derby where the expectations of the fans almost always outstrip what the Rams are capable of doing on the field of play. Derby fans assume that because 30,000 of them are turning up every week that Derby should automatically be good and there’s no better example of what utter bollocks that is than a league table with QPR sitting on the top of it averaging under 14,000 at home games. Also it’s worth pointing out that Derby County were at that time being run Jeremy Keith, Murdo Mackay and Andrew McKenzie who were later jailed for their corrupt management of the club at that time that included taking secret commissions for themselves.

So a tough gig, but having said that Brown took over a Derby side that had made the play offs the year before and included the likes of Lee Camp, Inigo Idiakez, Seth Johnson, Tommy Smith and Marcus Tudgay. Brown quickly and ruthlessly turned that side into a relegation candidate. He didn’t so much play the loan market as shag it half to death — Dexter Blackstock, Johnnie Jackson, Peter Whittingham, Alan Wright, Kevin Lisbie, Danny Graham, Andrew Davies and others all came in on temporary deals. The situation became so ridiculous that for QPR’s 2-1 win there in the October of that season Brown had seven players on loan when league rules restricted him to fielding five. The short termism and frantic Barry Fry style panic ridden transfer policy employed was probably best summed up by Dean Holdsworth who somehow popped up for three sub appearances at the age of 38 having previously been winding down his career with Rushden.

Brown didn’t make it to the end of his first season and rightly bloody so.

He then turned up at Hull City as an assistant to Phil Parkinson who had been picked up with much fanfare and at great expense by the Tigers from Colchester with whom he’d won promotion into the Championship. Parkinson had big boots to fill at the KC Stadium taking over from Peter Taylor who had won two promotions there and he lasted barely six months before being sacked in December with Hull sitting twenty second in the table. Brown was made the caretaker manager and then got the job permanently after winning half of his six matches in charge.

Critics, and I am certainly one if you hadn’t guessed by now, would say that Brown was lucky to get the Hull job and then lucky to get the success he did over the next 18 months. The word lucky is usually uttered in football by the bitter defeated, moaning into their beer deep into the night. Phil Brown’s success at Hull barely affected me, QPR took four points from them as they won promotion in 2007/08, but I firmly believe he was seriously lucky. Hull were a midtable team, and not a particularly good one at that, when they signed Fraizer Campbell on loan from Man Utd just before Christmas and without him that’s exactly what they would have remained. Of course the manager deserves credit when one of his signings pays off but such is Brown’s scatter gun approach to loaning players, and his judgement of talent before that and since, I definitely think this was a case of throwing just enough shit at the wall. This is a man, lest we forget, that has turned to Leon Clarke in his bid to save Preston this season.

So Hull were promoted into the top flight for the first time in their 104 year history and when they won six of their opening nine matches Brown looked like a bloody genius. This was a time before Ian Holloway’s Blackpool remember, where the object of the game in the Premiership was not to lose rather than to win. Hull won impressively at Arsenal and Spurs but did so in a period of time where teams like that were used to clubs like Hull coming to their ground, bunging everybody behind the ball, fielding three goalkeepers and hoping to hold out for a 0-0. Hull went to attack them with two strikers and Geovanni in midfield and caught them by surprise — by the middle of October clubs had figured this out and they only won two of their remaining 29 league fixtures staying up on goal difference on the final day of the season despite losing 1-0 at home to Man Utd’s reserve team. That’s right, two wins from 29 league fixtures.

On Boxing Day they came up against a Man City side in the first throws of new money, boasting a very decent team geared to attack at every opportunity. Hull needed to be right on their game to get anything at all and having collapsed to a 4-1 defeat at home to Sunderland the game before a further loss was always likely. Paul McShane against Robinho was never likely to be a conspicuous success and as it turned out City were 4-0 up at half time.

Phil Brown then, for reasons entirely ego related, delivered a half time bollocking, complete with exaggerated finger waggling, to his beleaguered team on the pitch in front of the spectators. “Brilliant” cried the radio phone in idiots, “about time these molly coddled footballers were brought down a peg or two.” The ex professionals in the media were less fulsome in their praise, preferring instead to suck their teeth and mutter things along the lines of: “I wouldn’t have done that if I were him.”

Brown’s team was sixth in the Premiership when he marched them back onto the pitch for a dressing down they probably wondered what they had done to deserve. They won only two more league games all season, out of 19 fixtures, and stayed up on the last day despite failing to win any of their last 11 matches on goal difference alone. Brown, discreetly, took to the field sporting a ridiculous beard to sing a few bars of “this is the best trip I’ve ever been on.” His image as a complete joke of a manager was firmly cemented.

Last season the poor form continued. Hull won only two of their first 11 league matches and between December and February failed to win at all. Brown had an important ally in chairman Paul Duffen, but while Hull were sinking deeper into the relegation mire Duffen was busy undoing the sterling work of his predecessor Adam Pearson by working up a mountain of debt paying vastly inflated wages to poor players. Jimmy Bullard arrived with a knee held together with elastic bands and chewing gum on £45,000 a week.

Ultimately it needed Pearson to retake control of the club in the spring and usher Duffen, who was just as big a liability as Brown, off to the side to stop it going into meltdown completely. Brown was finally replaced and far from learning from his mistakes took the opportunity of his recent appointment at the Championship’s bottom club to state his surprise at how long it had taken him to get another job. “We thought after the job we had done at Hull we’d have got back in almost straight away,” said Brown. “We” is Brown and Brown’s ego, in case you were wondering.

Three to watch:

Throughout Brown’s reign at Hull his midfield enforcer, his Shaun Derry if you like, was Ian Ashbee and if his quote about expecting to be back in the game sooner after his work at the KC Stadium didn’t already tell you everything you need to know about Phil Brown then his insistence that Hull’s hopes of staying in the Premiership were diminished by Ashbee’s year long absence with cruciate knee ligament damage should do.

Ashbee started at Derby as a trainee, played more than 200 times for Preston in the lower leagues, and then joined then Third Division Hull City in 2002. He became that oh so rare of things, a player to play in all four divisions for one club but opinion among the Hull fans remained divided on him for his entire time there. You will not find a QPR fan with a bad thing to say about Shaun Derry this season — Ashbee did the same job for the Tigers and half the fans thought he was vital but the other half failed to see what positive impact he made at all. After so long spent at the KC Stadium it seemed strange that Ashbee was so keen to join bottom side Preston that he put in a transfer request just prior to our visit to Humberside a couple of weeks back but he did, and has now signed an 18 month contract at Deepdale. Brown obviously rates him and we get another chance to see exactly what, if anything, he does this Saturday.

A man with something to prove to our manager Neil Warnock this Saturday is centre half Leon Cort. He’s another who improved his career no end by playing under Peter Taylor during Hull’s transformation from bottom division side to promotion candidates in the second tier. Prior to that he had been knocking around the likes of Southend, Stevenage and Forest Green with limited success. Taylor made him a player and then paid £1.25m to take him to Crystal Palace where I always found him to be one of the stand out performers in a mediocre Eagles side.

It’s there that Neil Warnock found him, and immediately got rid of him to Stoke City in exchange for Clint Hill. Warnock joked that Cort’s exemplary disciplinary record — he hadn’t been booked in 144 games spanning four seasons prior to Warnock’s arrival despite playing as a centre half — put him off him straight away and the decision was a stick this site regularly used to beat Warnock with when putting together previews like this on his teams. Cort, who has actually rebelled sufficiently into picking up a sending off this season (the two yellow cards that led to it for Burnley v Reading are his only bookings of the season mind), will be keen to show Warnock he made a mistake.

One of the first things Phil Brown has done since taking over has been to bring in some more strikers. We know all about our own Leon Clarke who presumably won’t be allowed to feature, although I’d have been tempted to make it a condition of his loan deal that he must play a full 90 minutes, and Fulham’s Eddie Johnson has been in this league before with Cardiff without a great deal of success.

But Nathan Ellington has also reappeared recently after a spell in Greece and he really is an interesting case. Time was, back in 2004/05 when Wigan were tearing this league apart under Paul Jewell, that Ellington was one of the division’s most feared forwards and formed a formidable partnership with Jason Roberts. One of Ian Holloway’s finds originally at Bristol Rovers he cost Wigan £1.2m and rewarded them with 67 goals before moving to West Brom for £3m and subsequently Watford for £3.25m.

He has never come close to matching that Wigan form since he left though, and has become something of a joke figure in recent years. He requested a transfer from West Brom in 2007 saying he had failed to settle in the area and took a month off with stress. At Watford he arrived for a club record fee on astronomical wages but couldn’t usurp Marlon King and Darius Henderson from the starting 11. His weight increased noticeably, and although Watford comprehensively beat QPR 3-1 last season the performance of Ellington in the match was an embarrassment to himself. He converted to Islam when he married his wife, but insisted the Ramadan fasting didn’t effect his performance despite his statistics screaming that it had. As a non-practising Christian Ellington scored 111 goals in 284 games for Bristol Rovers and Wigan. As a Muslim he has scored 28 goals 175 appearances across six years with West Brom, Watford, Derby on loan and now Preston. Another with plenty to prove.

Links >>> Preston official website >>> Preston Message Board >>> Travel Guide

History

Rather ominously for Preston Adel Taarabt seems to quite enjoy playing against them. After registering QPR’s goal of the season in a 4-0 win against the Lily Whites at Loftus Road last season Taarabt scored two more breathtaking goals against them in W12 this season. Taarabt made it 2-0 and then 3-0 from long range at the Loft End back in October after Rob Hulse had scored his one and only goal for the club to date from close range in the opening ten minutes. A soft own goal from Matt Connolly in injury time ruined Paddy Kenny’s clean sheet and gave the scoreline a flattering look when the gulf between the two sides on the day was taken into account.

QPR: Kenny 6, Walker 8, Hall 7 (Rowlands 81, -), Gorkss 8, Hill 7, Connolly 6, Faurlin 7, Mackie 7 (Andrade 88, -), Taarabt 8, Clarke 6, Hulse 7 (Agyemang 80, -)

Subs Not Used: Cerny, Leigertwood, Helguson, Ephraim

Goals: Hulse 4 (assisted Walker), Taarabt 56 (assisted Hulse), 84 (assisted Clarke)

Preston: Lonergan 3, Gray 5, Brown 5, St. Ledger 4, De Laet 5, Tonge 5, Barton 6, Russell 5, Pugh 4, Parkin 5, Hume 5

Subs Not Used: Arestidou, Morgan, James, Mayor, Parry, Jones, McLaughlin

Booked: St. Ledger (play acting/fighting)

Goals: Connolly 88 og (assisted Hume)

Adel Taarabt, promised an early substitution and trip home to France if he played well, was at his imperious best at Deepdale last season as Rangers battled back from two down to draw, and almost win. Static defending cost the R’s the opening goal before half time when Billy Jones had time for two touches and a finish in the area after Ross Wallace’s low free kick made it right through the box. Then after half time further defensive hesitancy allowed Jon Parkin in behind Kaspars Gorkss and when he was subsequently wrestled to the ground a penalty was the obvious result — Callum Davidson almost ripped the net off the back of the posts with the kick. So far so predictable, but then Taarabt started to play. He mesmerised the Preston defence time after time after time teeing up identical goals for first Peter Ramage and then Tamas Priskin before laying in Rowan Vine for what should have been a certain winner — Vine cleared the bar with his shot.

 

Preston: Lonergan 8, Jones 7, St. Ledger 6, Ward 5, Davidson 5, Wallace 6, James 7, Chaplow 6, Carter 6 (Sedgwick 59, 7), Mellor 6, Parkin 7 (Brown 71, 6)

Subs Not Used: Henderson, Hart, Mawene, Chilvers, Barton

Booked: Carter (foul), Chaplow (kicking ball away), St. Ledger (foul), Mellor (foul)

Goals: Jones 37 (assisted Wallace), Davidson 56 (penalty)

QPR: Ikeme 8, Ramage 7, Stewart 5, Gorkss 5, Hill 5, Faurlin 6, Leigertwood 7, Priskin 6, Ephraim 7, Taarabt 9 (Buzsaky 90), German 6 (Vine 46, 7)

Subs Not Used: Cerny, Cook, Balanta, Tosic, Oastler

Booked: Hill (repetitive fouling), Taarabt (kicking ball away)

Goals: Ramage 57 (assisted Taarabt), Priskin 66 (assisted Taarabt)

Head to Head >>> Preston wins 11 >>> Draws 13 >>> QPR wins 10

Previous Results

2010/11 QPR 3 Preston 1 (Taarabt 2, Hulse)

2009/10 Preston 2 QPR 2 (Priskin, Ramage)

2009/10 QPR 4 Preston 0 (Taarabt, Buzsaky, Simpson, Routledge)

2008/09 Preston 2 QPR 1 (Agyemang)

2008/09 QPR 3 Preston 2 (Helguson 2, Blackstock)

2007/08 QPR 2 Preston 2 (Blackstock, Ainsworth)

2007/08 Preston 0 QPR 0

2006/07 QPR 1 Preston 0 (Blackstock)

2006/07 Preston 1 QPR 1 (Ainsworth)

2005/06 QPR 0 Preston 2

2005/06 Preston 1 QPR 1 (Shittu)

2004/05 QPR 1 Preston 2 (Furlong)

2004/05 Preston 2 QPR 1 (Santos)

2000/01 Preston 5 QPR 0

2000/01 QPR 0 Preston 0

Played for Both - Gareth Ainsworth

Preston 1991-1995 & 2002 >>> QPR 2003-2010

Wild Thing first spread his wings at Preston, beginning his career at Deepdale. Like at many of the clubs Ains has played for he was a big fans’ favourite at North End in two different spells at the club. After scoring fourteen goals in just under four seasons at Preston, Gareth moved to Lincoln where he was such a cult hero he came fourth in a poll to find the 100 best players to play for the Imps. Two seasons at Port Vale followed before Ains got his big move to the Premier League with a £2 million transfer to Wimbledon. Unfortunately injuries hampered his career with the Dons and found himself struggling for a first team place. Craig Brown brought him back to Preston on loan and it looked like a permanent transfer was on the horizon until Gareth chose Cardiff instead.

He only lasted one season in Wales and in 2003 signed for QPR and he got off to the perfect start with two goals in an opening day 5-0 romp against Blackpool. That was followed up a month later with two of the greatest goals to ever come off a QPR boot in the 3-3 draw with Rushden and Diamonds. Over the next seven years Gareth would become one of the most popular players at Loftus Road and build a real bond with both the fans and the club — serving as player, coach and caretaker manager.

Ainsworth is the sort of player everybody would want at their club — talented, whole hearted and hard working. He scored some spectacular goals at QPR and won the hearts of the fans with his all round attitude to the game. It seemed he was destined for a permanent coaching career at Loftus Road when he started to move into that with Iain Dowie, Gigi De Canio and Paulo Sousa and served as caretaker boss between each of them but he felt he still had plenty of football left in him and is now winning hearts and minds at Wycombe in League Two. A true, modern day QPR legend — a man who once tried to “run off” a spiral fracture of his leg.

Links >>> QPR 3 Preston 1 Match Report >>> Preston 2 QPR 2 Match Report >>> QPR 4 Preston 0 Match Report >>> Connections and Memories

This Saturday

Preston are likely to be without Chris Brown and Paul Coutts again and Leon Clarke is forbidden from playing under the terms of his loan from QPR. He may yet be replaced by Iain Hume, who has scored against QPR previously for Leicester and Barnsley, who has been out for several weeks but has resumed training.

Elsewhere: Two massive matches at the top of the Championship mean that QPR and Swansea have a good chance to capitalise on dropped points elsewhere. Forest host Cardiff and Norwich travel to Leeds while QPR are at lowly Preston and Swansea have a home match against out of form Doncaster. On the other side of the play off pack Leicester can lay down a marker and move to within a point of the top six with a Friday night home game against a poor Bristol City side, Burnley are not playing owing to FA Cup commitments and Millwall have a winnable home game against struggling Middlesbrough. Hull’s trip to Ipswich is another meeting between in form teams. At the wrong end of the table Scunthorpe have a good chance to make it two wins from two home games after just one success in their previous 13 when they host Nigel Clough’s beleaguered Derby side at Glanford Park. No televised Championship football this weekend.

Referee: Bizarrely it’s the same referee we had for this fixture last season — Andy Haines of Tyne and Wear. This is his third full season on the league list. Last year he awarded Preston a penalty in a 2-2 draw with QPR at Deepdale. For more information please click here.

Form

QPR: Rangers have been draw specialists this season with 12 so far which has kept the chasing pack in touch more than they should be with a team that has only lost three times in 31 matches so far. The defeats, including away set backs against Leeds and Norwich, all came in a three week spell through December and into January. Since the defeat at Carrow Road Rangers have won three and drawn four of seven matches to maintain a five point lead at the top of the Championship. QPR have the league’s best defence with 19 conceded in 31 games, the best goal difference of +31, and are currently just shy of the magic two points a game average that would guarantee promotion.

Prediction: All the value in the markets is with Preston with the home team as long as 15/4 with Victor Chandler, while QPR are widely available at 5/6. Still, you could have had Scunthorpe at 4/1 on Wednesday morning with some outlets. We’ve all been following QPR for long enough to know that nothing is a forgone conclusion and we could very easily have Taarabt sent off or score a stupid own goal or just generally fail to turn up and embarrass ourselves. But with the players we have, if we play anything like we can, we should win.

QPR 2-0 17/2 on Betfair

Photo: Action Images

PinnerPaul added 09:40 - Feb 18 Small point, Buzacky on I Player hinted that he was ready for the subs bench at least now! Said knee was fine and when asked when he would be back said that "was up to the manager" - so good news there!
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NorwayRanger16 added 10:51 - Feb 18 We're entering the part of the season where you would preferably play a team at the top instead of a bottom team fighting for their lives, but then again i think Preston and Scunthorpe actually have been fighting for their lives some months now already without much prevail. Therefor this must be a golden opportunity to improve our record at Deepdale. My only concern is our lack of goals away of late, i would opt for 1-0 or 2-1 to QPR, hard fought. Hopefully Buz is back soon, our best replacement for Tommy Smith imo. And if he could string together a good run of games until Tommy's back we have another matchwinner fit and ready when the business end approaches. Come on you R's!

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Juzzie added 11:20 - Feb 18 Having been fighting for lives more times than I care to remember, I do sympathise with most clubs in this situation, PNE included. However, we have our own priorities and we have to be ruthless and get the job done irrespective of it driving another nail in their coffin.
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headhoops added 12:36 - Feb 18 Its just got to be business as usual for Warnocks warriors. Approach the game in exactly the same positive fashion. No sympathy for PNE because we need 3 points just as much as they do if not more. Colin is spot on - he will no doubt show the Wolves - Manure video on the coach. PNE 1 QPR 3
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Elliott42 added 12:42 - Feb 18 This is a test to see what were made of. Having seen Preston at Loftus Rd, i want to say it will be a comfortbale win. Everything is different this season, and all the traditions seem to be with us. If we play how we can it will be a comfortable win. Preston are going to come out fighting tomorrow, so it wont be easy! However, its a must win.
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nadera78 added 12:54 - Feb 18 Agree with everything you say there about both Maurice Lindsay and Phil Brown. Small point on Chairman Mo, when he joined the board at Wigan in the early 1980's they were in the second division and going nowhere. He was instrumental in turning them around so he's done it before, but Preston is a very different beast.
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BathRanger added 14:54 - Feb 18 Rather than starting with Hulse and Miller, I guess Warnock may opt to start with Vaagan Moen in place of Smith and Buzsaky on the bench?
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MrSheen added 19:16 - Feb 18 To be fair, Wigan spending £450,000 on Stuart Fielden in 2006 would be like Preston spending £40m on Marcus Bent.
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Northernr added 19:47 - Feb 18 Maybe nowadays that might be true Sheen, but Fielden was one of if not the best around in his position at that point.
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Monahoop added 21:06 - Feb 18 I hate predicting bottom v top games. Mediocre Bristol City went to Deepdale a couple of weeks back and battered poor old Preston 4-0. Can we do the same? Yes I suppose we could providing we don't carry the crass attitude that so many table toppers do in such games ie, we only have to turn up and...You know the rest. Look what happened to cocky Man Utd at Molineux recently. I'm sure the lads will turn up in the right frame of mind with a professional attitude. Another league double. R's to win 2-0.

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MrSheen added 11:10 - Feb 19 Willie Mason - CLANG!
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