The window that was, and wasn’t – Preview Friday, 1st Sep 2023 23:24 by Clive Whittingham Welcome to our annual long read on QPR’s transfer window activity, masquerading as a preview for tomorrow’s match at Middlesbrough because some enormous sex case thinks 23.00 on the Friday before a game is a great time for a transfer window close. Middlesbrough (0-1-3 LWLDLW 22nd) v QPR (1-0-3 LWLLL 19th)Mercantile Credit Trophy >>> Saturday September 2, 2023 >>> Kick Off 15.00 >>> Weather – Surprisingly nice >>> Riverside Stadium, Middlesbrough, Teesside That’s it then, summer transfer window “slammed shut”. Or, was that a coffin lid? Slammed shut, on this occasion, at 23.00 on the Friday night before a full round of fixtures (you remember those, the actual point of the whole sport). An idea only the sort of lobotomised shitgibbon who’d think a transfer window a decent concept and/or something to get excited about in the first place could come up with. Still, all done now: Jim White can lock his button mushroom back in its chastity cage; Sky Sports News can go back to filling airtime platforming irrelevant helmets the size of Thogden for audiences the size of Thogden’s dad; and managers can find something else to lie to our faces in interviews about. Well, for three and a half months or so at least. Worth pointing out the Sportwashing Window doesn’t close until this time next week. So, fear not, if you change your mind about that £150m for a 31-year-old Mo Salah, or need to distract attention away from hanging people for stuff they’ve said on the Facepaint, the Kingdom Of Executing All The Gay People is still open for business for a while yet. Amazing to think, just one division below all of that morally bankrupt sordidness, QPR have been begging (in vain) for somebody to bung them a few lousy bob for really quite a decent little footballer just so they can clear enough budget to borrow a competent right back. For a bit. Activity, quantity and quality wise, in the Mercantile Credit Trophy has been extremely mixed. Several teams have been ripped apart and reshaped entirely: some for much the better (Stoke, Birmingham, Norwich); some for much the worse (Swansea, Sheff Wed, Sunderland); and some just for the sake of doing it really (Leeds, Southampton). Middlesbrough, who we play tomorrow, have signed 12 players at press time, ten permanently. Twelve? I was going to do 15 but twelve’s alright, I guess. QPR have done almost exactly what we said they would before the window creaked (??) open. If it wasn’t tied down, it was tossed. That included an unwanted and unwelcome return to paying contracted players to leave (Stefan Johansen and Nico Travelman), something Les Ferdinand had hung his hat on as a situation he inherited that we could never repeat. Of the players who got minutes here in 2022/23, 15 are no longer with the club. Several other Charlie Owens types have also been jettisoned and, in almost every case, that was long overdue. Clearly the team was in such a rotten state by last May that a wholesale clear out/attack with a powerful flamethrower was much needed, and not a single one of the departures will be missed in any shape or form. Tellingly, many are yet to find another club. Still, the scale of QPR’s player turnover once more this summer, like all too many off seasons before it, is alarming. You simply cannot build any sort of anything in team sports doing this as often as we force ourselves into. Rangers would like to have done a couple more out to create financial wiggle room for more ins. Gareth Ainsworth has been trailing another “out or outs” for weeks now, and has caveated that by saying “now or in January” a couple of times so the closing down sale/giant barn fire may not be over quite yet.
Ilias Chair, 25 and with two years of contract still in the tank, was easily the fattest pig we had left for market. He changed agent earlier in the year from the smaller Belgian outfit he’d been with through his career to the sort of guy who carries a silver cane around with him – not the kind of decision you make if you’re intending to stick around for the foreseeable. There was ongoing, persistent, talk of a move to Leicester or Leeds, right up until 20 minutes ago, which does make you wonder whether the people peddling this are genuinely connected and well sourced, or just want some of the Fabrizio Romano action. After all, if that guy can earn a living shouting "HERE WE GO" 30 seconds before the embargoed press release gets emailed out, who can blame others for wanting a piece of that pie? I have to say I’m a bit disappointed for Chair. He’s mucked in, 100% effort, produced consistently in a tanking team, never shirked or shied away, remained committed and diligent, signed a contract rather than running down to a free transfer… if anybody deserves a bit of time in the sun it’s him, rather than several others who’ve been basking anyway having done far fucking less for our cause. He also consistently posts the sort of numbers the analytics types love to see – regularly in the top ten in the division for chances created, expected assists, successful dribbles, penalty box incursions and all of this jazz. All while, I repeat, playing in a shit team. For the fee you could have had him for in our desperate state this summer, and looking at some of the tat that did get moves for money, I can’t believe he’s been left on the shelf. The one thing that possibly counts against him, bar his physical stature, is the amount of goals he scores from outside the box (all of his goals) versus inside (none of his goals) – the xG evangelists don’t like this, because it doesn’t sustain. Well, it’s sustained with Chair but not with… … Chris Willock. This time last year probably the club’s best player, just named in FourFourTwo’s top ten players outside the Premier League, injury cited as a huge part of the reason the 21/22 promotion push fell short, world’s your oyster stuff. Had he come back fit and firing in the manner he did during Mick Beale’s short reign that might have moved the needle on a bid from somewhere. Sadly, irritatingly, Willock has been neither fit nor firing for the best part of a year now, and seems relatively content/thrilled to death about that. No goals in 22 appearances, seven starts in QPR’s last 28 games. It’s felt like Willock/his reps/his dad have basically been running his contract here down almost from the moment he signed the thing in the first place, Ryan Manning style, eyeing the 2024 free transfer market which often sees players able to command a higher salary than they would if a transfer fee was due. A desired figure of £40,000 a week for a player coming off the back of three bad hamstring injuries has done the rounds in the pubs of Shepherd’s Bush. What can you say? Little wonder half-hearted rumoured interest from Bristol City was dead on arrival if that’s the case. Sam Field, like Chair, does at least turn up for work. He was also briefly linked with a couple of other Championship sides by the sort of "Football Insider" clickbait sites that try to cover their ongoing dire need for a blow job by drawing the names of players and clubs out of a hat and guestimating figures off TransferMarkt.co.uk. I like Sam, brilliant professional, effective player, great lad, but for a second tier midfielder who doesn’t score or assist, and basically lives to break things up in front of a poor defence, what are we talking? £3m? That sort of mid-range market for players in this division has died away almost completely since Covid-19, apart from the last week of January when Scott Parker chucks his toys about and demands the board get him another six bodies under threat of not being able to 1-0 his way to second spot with a £100m squad after all. The death of that market is a big part of the reason we’re in the predicament we are, because since Ebere Eze every asset we have had to sell has basically fallen into that bracket. In the case of Instagram footballer Seny Dieng, and Rob Dickie post nervous breakdown, we were forced - with contracts coming to an end and zero interest in an extension in either case - to drag in whatever loose change was floating around for players who, in the pre-pandemic market at least, we’d been eyeing up as development projects with ceilings three or four times as high. What QPR have brought in has been, again predictably, exclusively on free transfers. We did the detailed pros and cons of Paul Smyth, Asmir Begovic, Morgan Fox, Jack Colback and Steve Cook at the time they arrived so treat yourself to a revisit via those links if you’re truly that bored and lonely.
In several cases we’ve had to offer two-year deals when you would be ideally (and therefore everybody else was) only offering one, once more spending tomorrow’s money today. And, let’s be honest, they’re limited players. If Sheff Wed had made the same signings I doubt we’d all be quaking in our boots. Asmir Begovic, another keeper signing led by the coach Gavin Ward, was lauded by Ainsworth in his interview with LFW back in July as some sort of Godsend who they couldn’t believe they’d got having offered significantly less money than Premier League Luton. But this is a 36-year-old goalkeeper, last two years spent on the bench at one of the worst teams in the Premier League, driven to move here by location. I’m not saying it’s not potentially a decent signing in our position, but let’s have it right about where he and we are – I’d have saved that first goal at Southampton myself. In the defence of those decisions, they had to do something. The team was woefully short of everything you needed to compete in this league even before you ditched 15+ players. We’d been talking about things like voice, experience, leadership, dealing with adversity, conceding from set pieces, pathetic centre backs, piss weak central midfield, easy to play against, easy to score against… for months if not years. You only had to look at the pre-season games in Austria and Oxford to know that if we’d sent the team as it stood then into a 48-game season it would barely have won a point. Watford would eventually have been looked back on as something of a highlight. No surprise to see Gareth spending what budget he did have on that sort of player, in that sort of position. It most definitely has been Gareth driving the signings too. He swore blind to us in July that reports saying he insisted on control over the transfers before moving here, and that Ferdinand departed because of the calibre and style of signing he was eyeing up, were bollocks. Him and Les are bezzie mates apparently, texting each other under the pillow at night. Make no mistake though, bar Ward’s input on Begovic, this is Gareth Ainsworth FC. In true QPR style we are trying to recover a meltdown caused by letting a manager do what he wanted last summer, by letting a different manager do what he wants this summer – albeit this time with purse strings drawn as tight as a mouse’s ear. While he may have control, Gareth hasn’t had money. His promised intricate knowledge of lower league football and leftfield signings from the two divisions below us has so far stretched only as far as Paul Smyth, who was here two years ago and has been a pet project of head of recruitment Andy Belk from the beginning, and links with several other players who played for Wycombe. Oh, and Max Power. One of those, Josh Knight, seemed set to move from Peterborough for a fee reported around £300k. According to The Athletic, and people we’ve spoken to, he not only got as far as clearing his locker at London Road and bidding his goodbyes, but was also in W12 with parents and agent to do the photographs and media before the finance peeps pulled the plug because “no transfer fees under any circumstances”, leaving Ainsworth embarrassed and the player heading back with his bag on his shoulder and his tail between his legs. Peterborough, one would presume, about as impressed with that one as Wycombe manager Matt Bloomfield was after his opening day 3-0 loss at home to Exeter when he told local media his defender Chris Forino had been unsettled by speculation as the Chairboys held firm for £400k which, again, we couldn’t pay.
I’m coming to learn not to really pay much attention to what Ainsworth says in interviews – and to be fair to him he’s trying to put a brave face on his attempt to fight the Towering Inferno he’s inherited with the SuperSoaker3000 we can afford – but these stories, and the way he bounces between “hoping to do six or seven more” to “happy with what we’ve got”, often within a couple of hours, does suggest a degree of disjointed chaos. Our owners are benevolent, but accident prone, absent (bar Richard Reilly, suddenly attending every game to check on how well ablaze his minority investment is), and now flying without their director of football. Wherever you are on the Lee Hoos debate, or indeed on whether this club needs a director of football or not, when Hoos first arrived here he steadfastly maintained in meetings that he was a numbers, budget and figures man and stayed out of the football decisions altogether – now it’s him supervising Ainsworth. Some of the criticism has been unfair – bit rich of me to say I know, but still. All of this, all of it, everything we’ve written here, is because of our FFP situation. The £20m Eze sale is rolling out of our rolling three-year calculation, the £25m we lost chasing promotion in 21/22 is still within it. The club loses £1.8m-£2m a month as per every set of accounts we’ve put out since relegation. You’re allowed to lose £39m over the rolling three years. Maths and the rules of the league. That’s all this is. Why this proves so difficult for people to get their heads around I don’t know. The amount of people still Tweeting Amit Bhatia telling him to do something, spend some money, sign a striker, show some ambition, back the manager… The Sultan of Brunei could own this club, it wouldn’t make any difference. Unless you sell players for big money, there is no FFP headroom for you to do any business. “What about Birmingham?” Sold both Bellingham’s, got a sell-on for Bellingham Snr, sold Chong to Luton. “What about Stoke?” Sold their ground to the chairman before that was outlawed, got the thick end of £18m from Leicester for Harry Souttar in January. “What about Boro?” Got £12m for Chuba Akpom. Now, by all means, criticise them for working us into such a tight spot in the first place. The most recent in a catalogue of errors that led to this was the Eze-driven spend they sanctioned in the summer of 2021 to chase a promotion, having promised solemnly for years they would never do such a thing again. We were all excited, I was excited. I thought we had a great chance with the momentum we’d built the previous spring, driven by four loans who were all made permanent and - in three of the four cases - bombed expensively. I’m not going to sit here and pretend I called it at the time, but in hindsight committing the money we did to Johansen and Austin in particular was disastrous. As much as I absolutely love and adore Charlie Austin, his Twitter barbs at the club, when he came back in that shape and form for 21/22, feel a little bit off, however spot on they often are. The other investments, in prospects like Jimmy Dunne and Andre Dozzell, didn’t yield a single sellable asset. Whether you think we didn’t sell a player at that time because we actively told clubs we wouldn’t – Hoos used his LFW interview that summer to say clubs shouldn’t even bother – or because, as the Championship transfer market collapsed, there simply wasn’t interest or offers, is another bone of contention to scrap over. The fact remains, having done that, our choice this summer without a significant player sale (or Ebere Eze move) was always going to be limited to dragging the wage bill down drastically to try and get us under the FFP wire. And you don’t do that by signing a lot of players. They’ve also been criticised for not getting rumoured deals done and over the line. At times this has also been unfair. For the reason given above, these transfers were either never likely (the return of Tim Iroegbunam, whose middling loan here gets hyped more with every passing day he’s gone), we were interested in but had moved away from (Lewis Wing), or simply weren’t much of a thing at all in the first place (Jay Stansfield). Partly this is agents just getting their client’s name in the press to drum up interest, as Ainsworth said this week and Sky’s David Jones infamously told The Football Ramble’s Luke Moore in interview he would happily just repeat on air single sourced and unchecked because “the player’s agent is a valid source”. There is also the fairly desperate “ITK” crowd. Certainly not new on the internet, or exclusive to QPR – remember, Danny Graham hasn’t bought that house in Sunbury for no reason has he? But, after Charlie Wise at Talking Rangers got a legitimate scoop about Les Ferdinand’s departure, a weird arms race has heated up this summer. It’s no longer enough to simply say QPR are interested in Lewis Wing (probably correct), you have to put the balls in as well (some like it, some don’t) and say that he’s “completed his medical and is flying out to join the squad in Austria” (palpably incorrect). Nobody’s subscribing to your Patreon to hear Orient have inquired about taking Charlie Kelman back (possibly correct), so let’s go all in with Kelman to Orient is all done, complete, gone, two-year contract (only for him to turn up at the open training session, and the ressies’ win at Peterborough). Anybody who’s actually ever been a “freelance journalist” would laugh at the idea of pretending you’re one for ‘status’, but I guess I understand the tactic of heaving enough plausible shit at a wall to see if you get lucky and a piece sticks by accident if you’re trying to build up a website, social media feed, podcast and the like – WeAreTheRangersBoys still exists today after all. The trend for creating an imaginary friend at the training ground (give it an older man’s name, for some gravitas, nobody’s gonna believe Tyler or Jaeden) with his own hashtag, however, is as lost and grating on me as the modern football parlance about people who “know ball” and are “cooking”. And why you’d follow, boost, and hang on the words of such people, even after all the misses (always surreptitiously deleted of course) puzzles me even more. I fear for these folk in a world of used car salesmen. To bash the club up for not completing deals that were all made up for clout in the first place… not for me Clive. Particularly as there’s plenty to go on anyway. The Taylor Richards deal, for instance, risks going down as one of the worst the club has ever done – and this is a club that replaced Les Ferdinand with Mark Hateley, spent its last £250k on Sammy Koejoe off a DVD viewing, replaced Darren Peacock with Karl Ready, Alan McDonald with Steve Morrow etc etc. Nobody would or should belittle what that kid (and he is, let’s be fair) went through with the killing of his friend in the middle of last season just a matter of months ago, least of all me who is still struggling daily with bereavements I went though 20 years ago. But Richards wasn’t particularly fit, interested, effective or available before that. His name is mud up in Birmingham, where a previous loan - that started with him injuring himself doing the jump test in the medical - ended with two starts and four ineffective sub appearances in six months. If Tony Bloom and Brighton, of all people and clubs, are willing to do a midrange six-figure deal up front for a 22-year-old they spent a couple of million on from Man City, running the risk of him having a breakout season on loan at QPR and them losing an investment, I’d be asking what the catch is. You’ve now had to pay money you don’t have for a player who, even if all of that wasn’t true and he’d been ace in 22/23, is so far away from being a Gareth Ainsworth player it would take an unmanned NASA probe 18 months to travel between the two. Given an opportunity to stake a claim for a place against a crap side in Austria, and then again at Oxford, he tossed it off both times – I’d say literally, but I work much harder than he did in those games when I wank these days. Nobody will be cheering harder and louder than me if he gets his act together, starts spraying passes and scoring bangers, answers all our prayers, and turns out to be a slow burn. But he’s taking his time about it. If we are to be relegated, this one will feature prominently in the subsequent inquiry. At the moment he’s not even in shape.
Not many of them are, to be honest. I’m still struggling to wrap my head around the idea that the way to avoid the muscle injuries that plagued last season is to forgo the usual pre-season fitness drills and have a slow build up instead. We’ll avoid muscle injuries by going into high octane Championship football matches less fit, and all cramp up after 60 minutes? Join me through the looking glass. But, then, I presume that’s why I sit here writing this crap for both regular readers and don’t get paid to get cycle teams up and down mountains. Setting the team up so it has to be so far ahead after an hour the opponent can’t catch up is punchy stuff when said team hasn’t scored three goals in a game for nearly a year, and has scored one goal or fewer in 32 of its last 36 matches. The pre-season, it feels, was basically a complete waste of time. The team isn’t fit. The style, formation, attitude and approach has been changed completely and utterly in the wake of the Watford game, where by Gareth’s own admission somebody/somebodies stood up and said they cannot by Wycombe MkII however hard he tries. Several really key players – Begovic, Fox, Cook, Colback – didn’t arrive until after it was done and are getting up to speed. Several who did big minutes – Joe Gubbins, Trent Rendall, Charlie Kelman – have been binned off. Gubbins, who started at centre half away at Watford, just five games ago, now at Accrington. Rendall – “Gareth likes him as a no nonsense centre back option” – will now do a month at Eastleigh, which is exactly what you want your 22-year-old centre half to be doing. Kelman, to be fair, has looked really good since his move to Orient. It has looked and felt like we’ve been watching the actual pre-season through August. The team has, undoubtedly, improved in every regard. They were desperately unlucky not to get anything from the Ipswich game, and only woeful finishing stopped us giving the ever-smug Russell Martin’s dance of a thousand passes the beating it so desperately deserved. Those two are good sides, there are more favourable fixtures to come, with Lyndon Dykes, Jimmy Dunne, Chris Willock (stop it) and Jake Clarke-Salter (I mean it) all to come back in. The team looks under equipped for a Championship season -woefully short of strength in depth, goals, and yet to keep a clean sheet. Going in with this strike force, and this central midfield, is asking for trouble. You just have to hope our second attempt at a pre-season and the forthcoming international break - with players coming back from injuries, what new arrivals there have been getting up to speed, some surprise sleeper hits in Kolli and Armstrong, some luck with injuries – give us just enough to get the hell out of Dodge and never speak of this one again. If Ainsworth pulls it off it’ll be rank up there with John Gregory salvaging the Oliseh-Czerkas-Rehman-Tchakounte fucktastrophe Paladini had assembled for Gary Waddock in escape stories. The tallest order since Peter Crouch asked for a Lambrini in the restaurant at the top of the CN Tower. Links >>> Another poor Boro start – Interview >>> Ferdinand silences Ayrsome Park – History >>> You again – Referee >>> Middlesbrough Official Website >>> Teeside Gazette — Local Paper >>> FMTTM — Message Board >>> Boro Breakdown – Podcast >>> One Boro — Forum >>> Bonkers for Boro — Blog >>> Boropolis — Podcast 90s Footballer Conspiracy Theories #3 In The Series - Temuri Ketsbaia says Australia is a myth made up by the Illuminati to support the cork industry. Below the foldTeam News: God, you’re still here are you? Jack Colback scored on his full debut at Southampton and has another week of full training under his belt along with fellow late summer arrival Steve Cook, which should improve matters. Jake Clarke-Salter and Chris Willock are both back out on the grass, but with their respective records we’ll see what the team sheet says at 14.00 and not before – Clarke-Salter was, according to WLS, due to play in the second string game at Peterborough but didn’t play after doing 45 minutes against Cov. Lyndon Dykes also has an outside chance, and that might be a better bet for your money with a Scotland England game approaching next week. Wouldn't want to miss that. Jimmy Dunne not until after the international break. Gareth had wanted, and was hopeful of getting, cover for Dykes up front and a new right back, where Osman Kakay and Paul Smyth are making do and it seems to have been decreed Aaron Drewe isn’t at the level, on loan late in the window. Neither had materialised at press time (23.01) but there are a number of free agents floating around so maybe we’re not done yet after all… Middlesbrough lost significant firepower from last season’s promotion push over the summer. I’m in the Neil Warnock camp of thinking £12m for Chuba Akpom is 64 carat mental and Boro should be laughing all the way to the bank – modern day Mike Sheron this one - but 28 league goals is a lot to lose from last season’s total when allied with Cameron Archer’s 11 and Ryan Giles string of assists. They’ve brought in 12 replacements, ten of them on permanent deals to try and reduce that reliance and fluctuation that comes with relying on too many loans. Lewis O’Brien, one of the Championship’s best midfielders at Huddersfield before allowing himself to be hoovered up into Forest’s nonsense attempt to conquer the world by signing all the players and winning games by default, is here now and only 24 so that looks a great acquisition. I’m very pleased they didn’t get Everton’s hairy Love Islander Tom Cannon over the line in time for this one. Riley McGree and Morgan Rogers both came off the bench to score on 90 and 90 at Bolton in the week to secure a confidence boosting League Cup win after a ropey start in the league, and are now presumably pushing for starts. Josh Coburn was going on loan to Plymouth, but has stuck around. Elsewhere: Let’s play three worse teams than us then. Sheffield Wednesday are in an absolute state. Derek Chansiri, whose shrewd financial planning got them into the shit in the first place, using the favourable FFP rules in League One to spend big forcing through a promotion with a team of 30+-year-olds who all need replacing in the division above, then binning the manager who got it over the line, was never a shrewd. They’ve done nine signings and Ashley Fletcher. Six of them are from the continent. Jeff Hendrick is circling the area in his car. Xisco Munoz has lost four out of four in the league. Get yourselves a Sheff Utd shirt in the sales guys, this is Jason’s little brother Jeremy. They’re playing Massive Leeds this weekend, suck it up, we need Farke and his portrait of the Fallen Madonna with the big boobies to prevail. Huddersfield Town are David Justice. Old man Warnock? He no happy. It always looked an uneasy fit him sticking around for a Sixteenth Annual Farewell Tour after Sharon gave him permission for his latest rescue mission last spring, and he’s sounded less than enthusiastic about sticking around in interviews so far – basically doing the new owner a favour, he reckons, for absolutely no financially beneficial renumeration I’m sure, of course. After a shambolic 4-0 defeat to Norwich the new owner expressed alarm, and Neil has been expressing some back: “It's been brought to my attention Kevin's comments that he was disappointed with that result on Saturday, but what disappoints me is getting the papers on a Sunday and seeing that of the four targets we had this summer, one has made a goal for a team smaller than us and my top midfield target has got star man. When I see things like that, because we couldn't afford those players, it disappoints me because I feel there's four or five players there would could have worked on, but I didn't realise at the time that my budget included the players that we re-signed.” Hook it to my veins. They’re at West Bromwich Albion. Rotherham are Scott Hatteberg. Who? Exactly, sounds like an Oakland A already. Four defeats and two draws so far, 19 goals conceded including ten in two games against Stoke. They’ve spent a club record just shy of £1m to bring striker Sam Nombe from Exeter to partner My Chemical Hugill (this is where we are guys, Rotherham can spend £1m on a player and we’re bullying Wycombe for Chris Forino), but are always going to struggle at this level with their wage bill. They haven’t done three consecutive seasons in this league since 2014/2017 and we need that to hold. Surprise fast starters Norwich are in town this weekend. On the maybe pile remain Cardiff City (nine in 13 out to go with last summer’s 20 in and 17 out, this a club under a partial transfer embargo remember) whose only league win so far is a narrow 2-1 at home to hapless Sheff Wed. They’ve now got a tough trip to Ipswich. I wonder if their South Wales rivals Swansea might be in a spot of bother. I fancied them to do quite well with the thrusting of Duffman but they’ve lost talismanic Joel Piroe to Leeds without significant replacement, player of the season Ryan Manning has gone for no monetary gain, Flynn Downes bled more quality out the door the previous year, and very little notable incoming action has been done – an ambitious pitch for Keinan Davis fell flat and they've had to settle for bringing back Jamal Lowe who, as we know, varies wildly in arsedness. I wonder about them, and will continue to wonder through their lunchtime clash with Bristol City. Sunderland were hotly tipped, not least by us, to follow up last season’s play off assault with another. They’ve now, however, not only lost loanees like Ellis Simms and Amad Diallo so key to that success, but also flogged Ross Stewart to Southampton without replacement, and pissed off the likes of Jack Clarke by forbidding him a move to Burnley only to then grant re quests to Patrick Roberts, Stewart and others right on the deadline. One to watch certainly. And a home game with Southampton probably not what you need at this stage – although they looked needlessly, arrogantly vulnerable against us last Saturday. I still think newly promoted Plymouth will be absolutely fine. Good manager, excellent summer signings, raucous home crowd, feel good factor, pace… Palace’s Roy Hodgson was effusive in his praise for the Pilgrims after a League Cup win there during the week when he recovered a 2-0 deficit by bringing a succession of big hitters on from the bench. Still, with the budget they’re operating on, always a possibility. We’ll look in again on them against Blackburn. Gareth’s assertion that Watford – sans Pedro and Sarr – might end up being champions after bumming us in the gob on the opening day have fallen rather flat. No wins, and no league goals scored, since then. It’s Coventry away next up, which isn’t easy, and then Birmingham, who’ve continued a remarkable summer of recruitment by dragging Leeds’ Cody Drameh in on deadline – wisely recognising if you’re relying on Ethan Laird to be your first choice right back it’s probably best to have a really good second choice right back. Probably getting towards time for the first Watford managerial change (my bet is Paul Ince gets the gig after whoever is next), Brum meanwhile are at home to Millwall who made yet another savvy deadline day addition in Luton’s Alan Campbell (“don’t you hurt me Camp-bell”) I thought Preston Knob End might be on our radar but they’ve started well and their trip to a revitalised and enthused Stoke is a weird candidate for game of the day. Leicester clearly don’t concern us at all, they’re beating Hull tomorrow. God bless. Referee: A second QPR game of the season already for fast tracked Prem referee Thomas Bramall, who has now had two of his three appointments this year with us following the opening day catastrophe at Watford. We’ve lost three of our four games with this official so far. Details. FormBoro: Boro have taken one point from their first four league games, a very similar start to 22/23 when they won none of their first six in league and cup (including a 3-2 loss at Loftus Road) and just two of their first dozen. Of course last season, after Chris Wilder was binned, the team went on a frankly ridiculous run that at one point included 15 wins in 19 games and reached the play-off semi-final. That included the recovery of a chunky 26 points from losing positions, more than any other side. They did rather limp through the end of the campaign though, resting players once automatic promotion was no longer a possibility and finishing with just two wins from eight games which has now stretched out to two wins from 12 in the league. They’re without a win in nine Championship home games including the two-legged semi against Coventry. At home they’ve lost 1-0 to Millwall and drawn 1-1 with Huddersfield to this point and are without a win in four going back to April. Prior to that they’d won ten and lost only one of 14 league games on this ground, scoring 35 times including three on our last visit here which saw Neil Critchley’s reign at Loftus Road come to an end. Only the top two, Burnley and Sheff Utd, scored more than Boro’s 46 goals at home in 22/23. Boro’s 84 goals scored overall was the best total apart from Vincent Kompany’s title winners. Perhaps it’s no surprise to see early struggles this month – three goals in four league games, two scoreless outings so far – with the players that went out of the building. Chuba Akpom (28) and Cameron Archer (11) contributed 39 league goals between them while Ryan Giles, now with Luton, had 11 assists. At the other end our former clothes horse Seny Dieng Has saved just 40% of the shots he’s faced since switching to the Riverside in the summer, easily the worst total in the Championship behind four keepers including Illan Meslier and Gavin Bazunu on 50%. Boro’s 3-1 victory in this fixture last time out ended QPR’s unbeaten run of seven against them which included three consecutive wins at the Riverside in Mark Warburton’s three years in charge. QPR: The R’s have undoubtedly improved in style, performance and competitiveness since the dire 4-0 opening day defeat at Watford. They have, however, still lost four of their five games so far, have failed to score in three of those, and are yet to keep a clean sheet. It’s the worst start to a season since Steve McClaren lost his first four games in 2018/19. It’s now 23 defeats and just five wins in the last 36 matches. Going further back QPR have won only 18 times in 72 outings, losing 39 of the others, since a 4-0 home win against Reading put Mark Warburton’s side third in the league at the end of January 2022. Missed chances against Ipswich and particularly Southampton cost Ainsworth’s team points they probably deserved. The Hoops have now scored one goal or fewer in four of their first five games in 23/24, and 32 of their last 36 games going all the way back to last October. They have failed to score at all in 18 of those and haven’t scored three goals in a game in 38 attempts going back to Cardiff H on October 19. They have only kept five clean sheets in those games. Only Rotherham (0.74) and Sheff Wed (0.71) have a worse average xG at this point, and nobody has a higher xGa than our 1.74. Last week’s starting 11 at Southampton have just 39 goals in 562 collective QPR appearances, and 28 of those belong to Ilias Chair. Andre Dozzell now has zero goals and one assist in 76 appearances for the club. Chris Willock has scored three goals in his last three appearances against Middlesbrough, and QPR still haven’t lost any of the 16 matches in which Willock has scored a goal - W13 D3. However, he’s now without a goal in 22 appearances and has only started seven of QPR’s last 28 games. Prediction: We’re once again indebted to The Art of Football for 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. What’s our reigning champion Aston got for us this week… “Middlesbrough have had a very poor start to the season, not replacing the goals of Akpom and Archer seems to be particularly problematic. This could be our best chance to get at a team while they are down and still trying to bed in the new players. If we play with the kind of confidence and energy that we did for spells v Southampton, we could cause them plenty of problems. They are still a very good squad on paper though and will have a couple of new additions in by the end of the window. With Dykes back and Smyth and Armstrong doing their thing, Chair in a free role (hopefully still at the club), I fancy us to get something up there. 1-1 - Paul Smyth to score.” Aston’s Prediction: Middlesbrough 1-1 QPR. Scorer – Paul Smyth LFW’s Prediction: Middlesbrough 2-1 QPR. Scorer – Sinclair Armstrong If you enjoy LoftforWords, please consider supporting the site through a subscription to our Patreon or tip us via our PayPal account loftforwords@yahoo.co.uk. Pictures — Ian Randall Photography The Twitter @loftforwords Ian Randall Photography Please report offensive, libellous or inappropriate posts by using the links provided.
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