All the talk before the Easter Monday game at Loftus Road has been about QPR needing a win to seal promotion. But opponents Hull City come boasting the division’s best away record.
QPR’s attempts to finally seal the automatic promotion they have been threatening to achieve since day one back in August was compared to a team of willing volunteers working hard to refloat a beached whale by regular LFW reader (rare breed) Nik Speller on Saturday at Cardiff - hours of effort and sweat and blood and at the end of the day movement of roughly one inch has been achieved.
The benefit of the Easter weekend is we only need to keep the flesh moist, and the champagne on ice, for one more day before we get another crack at completing the mission. Of course sometimes it turns out these whales have been fatally wounded by a boat of some sort and merely float straight to the surface and die once they have been placed back in the water – you can all draw your own comparisons with the Alejandro Faurlin FA hearing for that one.
What QPR need now is a bit of cannon fodder. Some Bristol City like side who weren’t very good to begin with and have long since packed up and started planning their summer holidays. Somebody who will turn up, go through the motions, lose 2-0 and leave us to party. On the face of it Hull City fit the bill – their season of rebuilding is winding down, they are currently tenth and a dire 4-2 home defeat by a poor Middlesbrough team on Saturday hints at a group of players with their minds already on the beach. Throw into the bargain an extensive injury list, and poor record at Loftus Road which shows no win since 1962, and they appear to be ideal opponents.
But Hull are a better side away from home this season than even ourselves and the other league leaders. They break a new record with each passing week – currently unbeaten in 16 consecutive road trips and with nine away wins to their name. They are also the only side this season that actually got to Adel Taarabt to such an extent that the moody Championship Player of the Year demanded to be substituted in the first half of the game at the KC Stadium earlier this year. They can still make the play offs too, it’s unlikely but three wins may do it for them so they do have something to play for.
Still, QPR had their cannon fodder material here last Monday against Derby and couldn’t get the fuse to light, and a week before that they were smacked around by lowly Scunthorpe, so maybe a challenge like this will be good for Neil Warnock’s team. They certainly rose to the task at Cardiff on Saturday.
Their public awaits. A packed Loftus Road is desperate to hail their championship side. Can we finally finish the job against the Tigers?
Hull have been speaking for weeks, as players and managers tend to do, about their quest for a play off place this season but they have never looked like one of the sides capable of making it and a 4-2 home defeat to Middlesbrough on Saturday all but condemns them to another year in the Championship.
When relegated from the Premiership the parachute payment system makes it vital to return as soon as possible, certainly in no more than two seasons, or risk becoming the next Sheffield United who are about to tread the same path as us, Nottingham Forest, Leeds, Norwich, Bradford, Southampton and others down to League One and maybe even beyond just three years after relegation from the top flight. Hull will be under pressure next season but will be better equipped to compete at the top end of the division after what has happened this season.
As a former Premiership side not being able to make an immediate return to the top flight, particularly in a low quality league, as the Championship is this season, must be a disappointment. But they have three key things in their favour for next year that have been achieved this term. First of all they were able to attract a very promising managerial talent to the KC Stadium in the summer to set to work on a squad that was the Premiership’s worst, despite being one of its ten best paid.
I’ve been told before by my mates in Hull that I’m actually far too harsh on Phil Brown, who I see as little more than a clown and hold in the utmost contempt. I say that at Derby in his first job he took a team that had been narrowly beaten in the play offs the year before and turned it into a farcical relegation contender that boasted seven loan players in a division where only five are permitted to be used. His defenders say Derby were criminally run behind the scenes - Director of Football Murdo Mackay and finance director Andrew Mackenzie were subsequently found to have taken the best part of half a million pounds out of the club and were jailed for three years each for the fraud – and that no manager could have achieved success against such a backdrop.
I say that at Hull, where he was made manager after a reasonably successful caretaker spell following the sacking of Phil Parkinson, he was doing little more than continue to keep the Tigers bobbing around the lower reaches of this division until he hit the jackpot with the loan signing of Fraizer Campbell from Man Utd who turned them, almost single handedly, from also rans into contenders. They then pulled a terminally out of form Watford side in the play off semi final and won the dire final against Bristol City with a wonder goal from Dean Windass.
Yes they stayed in the Premiership in their first season, but they did so merely through the initial element of surprise. Rather than play 4-5-1 and cower on the edge of their penalty area hoping for the best, as was the approved style at the time, Hull actually went out and attacked sides, winning memorably at Arsenal as a result. When teams got wise to that, and Brown destroyed his team’s morale with his laughable on the pitch dressing down at half time of a thrashing at Man City they were screwed. They stayed up despite winning just once in the second half of the season and over the course of 18 months their top flight form was almost on a Derby County level of awful.
A good manager was required to clear the shambolic mess of a team up after relegation and to tempt Nigel Pearson from Leicester City was something of a masterstroke in my eyes. Pearson led Leicester to a play off semi final last season a year after promotion from League One but had grown weary of Milan Mandaric’s management of the Foxes and his unwillingness to loosen the purse strings sufficiently for them to push on towards the top flight. With Mandaric you’re only ever three defeats away from the sack so if an offer comes along it’s a good idea to take it but still moving to Hull rather seemed like he was cutting his nose off to spite his face because of the financial state of the club.
That brings me to the second big stride they have made this season - successfully completing a protracted takeover deal with the wealthy Allam family. While Brown was dragging his team down the table, up in the boardroom Paul Duffen, who took over from the excellent Adam Pearson and was Brown’s biggest ally, was overseeing a spending programme far beyond the reach of a club of Hull’s size. Jimmy Bullard’s £40,000 a week four year deal without medical insurance was the most lavish expenditure but there were many other examples and from being one of the best run clubs in the country under Adam Pearson first time around, Hull were millions in the red by the time Pearson returned to the club this summer.
Thirdly by the time next season starts Nigel Pearson will have had a full year to mould the squad as he wants it, and this summer he has the spending power of the Allam family to back him. He has already given a display of intent by adding Aaron Mclean and Matty Fryatt to his squad for a couple of million quid in January and I’d expect a good six to eight more new faces this summer. That they are still technically in contention with three games to go despite all the problems Pearson and Pearson inherited bodes very well for next season, and the team doesn’t need the drastic surgery it did 12 months ago.
Hull will be among the favourites next season because they now have a chairman who appears ready to throw some money at the team and more importantly somebody I believe is one of the division’s outstanding managers to spend it. Fail to win promotion and Allam may find that he has bought himself little more than an all consuming black hole for his money, but I think they will be one of the pace setters next year.
The Manager: I can’t help but think Nigel Pearson must have watched developments at the Walkers Stadium this season with a wry smile on his face. Transfer funds, or rather the lack of them, were a constant source of arguments between him and Milan Mandaric during his time there. No sooner did he leave than some far eastern businessmen arrived and suddenly fees Pearson was denied access to even for permanent signings are being spent on six month loan deals. Such is life and football.
The former Middlesbrough and Sheffield Wednesday centre half has built a very tidy coaching reputation for himself in the game since retiring – working with Stoke, West Brom, Newcastle and the England Under 21s. He stepped into management properly (an early spell as last man standing at Carlisle hardly counts, although he kept them up against all odds with the famous Jimmy Glass goal for the record) for the first time at Southampton. He found a skint club down on its luck and facing relegation from the Championship but kept them up, and in some style with a late in the day win at West Brom. His reward for that was the sack, as well known mentalist Rupert Lowe tried to instigate a joint first team and academy set up at St Mary’s with little known Dutchman Jan Poortvliet at the helm. Southampton were promptly relegated and plunged into administration which is nothing more than they deserved.
Pearson meanwhile rehabilitated Leicester who passed Southampton coming the other way 12 months later. After they won League One at a canter they made the play offs in the Championship last season and looked good for the final after recovering from losing the first leg at home to take Cardiff to penalties on their own patch only for Frenchman Yann Kermorgant to stupidly elect to chip his crucial spot kick in the shoot out and then watch in horror as it was easily saved. Still, Leicester looked good for a push this season which made it all the stranger when Pearson walked out to join cash strapped Hull City.
To move from a financially stable club that already had a team capable of making the play offs, and join a newly relegated side deeply mired in crisis, debt and takeover talks seemed foolish. I really rate Pearson, despite his dourness, but the job he has faced at Hull City is massive and I get the impression from his interviews that he is frustrated by the pace of change he has been able to affect. The transfer window system increases the time it takes to conduct a rebuilding job such as the one City clearly needed – a whole host of big earners needed to be moved out while maintaining a league position, and then another clutch of new faces needed to come in. Takeover now complete Pearson has made great strides in moulding a team as he wishes this January and I expect them to get better and better with every passing window.
Three to watch: This time last year Neil Warnock had just about seen QPR safe in the league and was going through the process of assessing a squad that boasted six loan players and several others on short term contracts seeing who he wanted to keep for his first full season in charge at Loftus Road. Most of the questions and answers were simple ones – Nigel Quashie, Matt Hill, Tamas Priskin and Marcus Bent? Thanks (for nothing) but no thanks. But a couple must have taken a little more thinking time – particularly left back Dusko Tosic, and striker Jay Simpson.
Warnock elected against keeping hold of either player, and the form of Clint Hill on the left side of the defence and Heidar Helguson at the top of the team this season have supported his calls. Simpson was allowed to leave Arsenal, who loaned him to QPR for the whole of last season, permanently last summer and after QPR passed up the chance to sign him he ended up at Hull City as one of Nigel Pearson’s first buys.
Simpson was slightly unfortunate at Rangers as his bad patch in the season, and all players have them, came just as Warnock had taken over. He’d done very nicely to bag 13 goals two thirds of the way through the season but a disastrous night of missed sitters in a home game against Plymouth knocked his confidence and he failed to score in any of his last 11 games, finishing the season with a missed one on one chance that would have earned ten man Rangers a point at home to champions Newcastle.
Warnock’s decision has been further justified by Simpson’s poor start to life at Hull. It took him 16 attempts to score his first goal and although he got two in that game against Bristol City and then two more in the next match at Sheff Utd he has only scored twice in 14 games since – including one in the defeat against Boro on Saturday. Still, we could do without QPR’s propensity to concede goals to former players and those out of form strikers needing a boost rearing its ugly head on Monday.
While Pearson may have been somewhat miffed at Leicester’s sudden willingness to throw good money after bad, paying big bucks just to secure players on loan who have subsequently failed to lift them into play off contention, he has wasted no time in returning to his former club to pick off the permanent players who have been ostracised by the policy of the new owners and Sven Goran Eriksson. Hull have needed a centre half since losing Michael Turner to Sunderland and Jack Hobbs strikes me as a shrewd pick up. He’s on loan at the moment, but may sign in the summer and having been named as Leicester’s Player of the Year last season I think he’d be a good option for them. Personally, if I was Sven, I’d be taking him back and pairing him with Sol Bamba for next season but I expect the former Liverpool man, who started his career in the juniors at Lincoln City, will be near the top of Hull’s shopping list.
Pearson also spent around £1.2m to pick up Matty Fryatt who ushered aside at the Walkers Stadium along with Martyn Waghorn, another likely target for Hull this summer, in favour of Yakubu, Diomansy Kamara and Roman Bednar on loan. Fryatt has scored nine goals in half a season for Hull, but missed two great chances against QPR in January including a one on one in stoppage time and will be keen to make amends and spoil our party this Monday.
Links >>> Hull City Official Website>> Hull City Message Board
QPR and Hull drew 0-0 at the KC Stadium back in January in a game rearranged from December when the health and safety nazis intervened to tell us what we should and shouldn’t do in the snow. Ishmael Miller had a first half goal disallowed for offside and Matty Fryatt missed a one on one chance to win the game in injury time but the big talking point of the whole game was the behaviour of Adel Taarabt who lost the plot well and truly for the only time this season. Tiring of the physical three man marking system employed against him and lack of service from his team mates he appeared to go on strike five minutes before half time refusing to play as the game went on around him. The astonishing passage of play saw him shove Shaun Derry when he tried to cajole him and twice ask Neil Warnock to take him off, much to the home fans’ delight.
Hull: Guzan 6, Rosenior 6, Chester 7, Gerrard 6, Dawson 6, Koren 6, Evans 6, Harper 7, Stewart 7 (Devitt 73, 6), Fryatt 5, Mclean 5 (Barmby 65, 6)
Subs Not Used: Duke, McShane, Cairney, Simpson, Belaid
Booked: Harper (foul)
QPR: Kenny 7, Orr 7, Gorkss 6, Connolly 6, Hill 6, Derry 7, Faurlin 5 (Moen 67, 6), Routledge 6, Taarabt 5, Smith 7 (Hulse 72, 5), Miller 7 (Ephraim 85, -)
Subs Not Used: Cerny, Hall, Chimbonda, Shittu
Luigi De Canio got his QPR reign off to a flying start against a poor Hull City side at Loftus Road. A fine first half strike from Ephraim, who cut in from the left flank before curling a low right footed shot into the corner from the edge of the area, preceded a vintage Mikele Ligertwood strike after the break. There was only really one team on the pitch which makes it all the more surprising that by the end of the season Rangers had stayed in much the same position while Hull won promotion into the Premiership.
QPR: Camp 7, Mancienne 7, Cranie 8, Stewart 7, Barker 7, Rowlands 7, Ephraim 8, Leigertwood 8, Buzsaky 7 (Ainsworth 86, -),Vine 7 (Nardiello 90, -), Nygaard 7 (Bolder 81, -)
Subs Not Used: Cole, Timoska
Booked: Mancienne (foul), Barker (foul), Stewart (foul), Vine (wasting time)
Goals: Ephraim 26 (assisted Rowlands) Leigertwood 56 (assisted Ephraim)
Hull: Myhill 5, Ricketts 5, Turner 6, Brown 7, Delaney 4, Garcia 5 (McPhee 58, 6), Ashbee 4, Marney 7, Okocha 4 (Featherstone 71, 6), Windass 7, Campbell 6
Subs Not Used: Duke, Dawson, Livermore
Booked: Turner (foul), Delaney (foul)
Head to Head >>> QPR wins 15 >>> Draws 13 >>> Hull wins 13
Previous Results:
2010/11 Hull 0 QPR 0
2007/08 Hull 1 QPR 1 (Blackstock)
2007/08 QPR 2 Hull 0 (Ephraim, Leigertwood)
2006/07 Hull 2 QPR 1 (Blackstock)
2006/07 QPR 2 Hull 0 (Blackstock, Jones)
2005/06 QPR 2 Hull 2 (Ainsworth 2)
2005/06 Hull 0 QPR 0
1991/92 QPR 5 Hull 1* (Thompson 2, Bailey 2, Bardsley)
1991/92 Hull 0 QPR 3* (Barker 2, Thompson)
1985/86 Hull 1 QPR 5 (Kerslake 2, Rosenior 2, Fillery)
1985/86 QPR 3 Hull 0 (Kerslake, Dawes, Bannister)
1972/73 QPR 1 Hull 1 (Bowles)
1972/73 Hull 4 QPR 1 (Givens)
Played for Both – Adam Bolder
Hull 1998-2000 >>> QPR 2007-2009
By the time Flavio Briatore and Bernie Ecclestone pitched up at Loftus Road QPR was a club, and a team, on its knees. About to enter administration and incur a ten point deduction, and already adrift at the bottom of the Championship with a terrible team guided by the increasingly forlorn John Gregory the takeover, Rangers certainly didn’t have a lot going for them.
But there were one or two decent pros who sort of got swept aside a little bit by the new money and influx of new signings, loans and players belonging to Flavio’s rich mates. One of them was midfielder Adam Bolder. Gregory brought him to Loftus Road from Derby in 2007 as he rebuilt the spine of the team he inherited from Gary Waddock. Bolder joined Lee Camp and Danny Cullip through the entrance door and with Lee Cook in the form of his life down the left and Dexter Blackstock banging them in up front almost overnight QPR went from having clearly the worst team in the division to one capable of staying in the league – which is exactly what they did. But a summer where the signings were of the calibre of John Curtis caught up with them a year later.
Bolder, who came through the junior ranks at Hull City before walking out on them for then Premiership Derby and then chose to come to Loftus Road rather than the KC Stadium when both teams made bids for him, did initially keep his place in the team. He scored a crucial winning goal for the R’s in a televised game at Charlton shortly after Gregory was sacked, and continued to serve as captain and a midfield engine room under Luigi De Canio.
However as the new players continued to arrive it became clear that Bolder’s face didn’t fit, although he deserved a little bit more than simply being cast aside after De Canio left without ever actually being told he was no longer required. Bolder initially joined Sheff Wed on loan, scoring in a Steel City derby against United, but having initially told Bolder he could leave for free in the summer QPR then asked Wednesday to pay a fee and they went for James O’Connor from Burnley instead. Bolder subsequently joined Kenny Jackett’s Millwall, initially on loan then permanently, where he impressed in their League One promotion pushes.
Now plays for League Two side Burton Albion where his season has been undermined by a series of persistent injuries. A good, honest pro who did a very steady job for QPR during a difficult time.
Links >>> Hull 0 QPR 0 Match Report >>> QPR 2 Hull City 0 Match Report >>> Hull 1 QPR 1 Match Report >>> Connections and Memories
Nigel Pearson would probably kill for QPR’s injury list at the moment – his Hull squad is running low on bodies. Nick Barmby (calf), Liam Rosenior (knee), Robert Koren (hamstring) and loaned Arsenal goalkeeper Vito Mannone (shoulder) are all out. James Harper is a doubt and Tom Cairney may get a start after a decent showing as a substitute in their weekend humbling by Middlesbrough.
Elsewhere: A full programme of Championship action all gets underway at 3pm on Monday. Cardiff have moaned like hell at being made to go to relegation haunted Preston just 48 hours after playing QPR while Norwich in second host Derby with an extra two days rest. It’s getting towards crunch time now and Sheffield United will be all but relegated if they lose at Reading, if Palace beat Leeds at home and Doncaster get anything at Barnsley then they’re down regardless given their inferior goal difference. Scunthorpe, three points adrift, stand the best chance of staying up but probably need maximum points at home to Millwall with their goal difference also much worse than that of Palace. There are four teams vying for the final play off spot. The team in possession Forest (66) go to Bristol City, Leeds (66) go to Palace, Burnley (66) host Portsmouth and Millwall (64) are at Scunthorpe. The remaining top six side Swansea host Ipswich.
Referee: Colin Webster from Tyne and Wear is the man in the middle for this game, almost a year to the day since he was last at Loftus Road. On Easter Monday last season he refereed our 1-1 home draw with Sheffield Wednesday and didn’t impress Neil Warnock with his performance. Of more concern this weekend, with Norwich trying to chase us down, is the presence of two linesmen from Norfolk. Full details available here.
Hull City: The Tigers’ form on the road this season is quite remarkable considering their relatively mediocre league position. They have the Championship’s outstanding away record and come into this game on a run of 16 road matches unbeaten. Overall they have won away on nine occasions – at Norwich, Preston, Sheff Utd, Portsmouth, Scunthorpe, Derby, Forest, Coventry and Watford. This is all the stranger considering they lost five of their first six away games, including a League Cup defeat at Brentford, and their home form has been almost relegation standard – Middlesbrough won 4-2 at the KC Stadium on Saturday making it just two wins from their last nine home matches.
Prediction: Well, given our run in, it’s a good job we’re not requiring too many points to seal promotion. Having slipped up against Derby and then battled so hard against Cardiff and come so close I wonder if the fact we can’t quite seem to get there will start to play on the minds. I expect Hull to come and be pretty mean and miserable, and no doubt utilising the three man marking system on Taarabt kicking him at every opportunity. But they need to win to keep their season alive which may play into our hands. I think we’ll do it to be honest, but in the interests of not cursing it and with one eye on their fantastic away form I’ll sit on the fence with a draw.
0-0, 10/1 with Tote Sport