QPR's stars were at the extreme ends of the field, as Michy Frey and Paul Nardi excelled in an otherwise deeply frustrating and boring Saturday morning draw at home to Millwall.

Perhaps we should tip the balance of genuine match previews versus tenuous links to a story about a dead relative back in favour of the actual football.

Bar the prediction, naturally, so much of what we published on Friday night came to pass on Saturday morning I’m tempted to just copy and paste the thing here and get myself off to bed with a book.

It would certainly save us all the considerable bother of reliving QPR 1 Millwall 1. The 12.30 kick off to end all 12.30 kick offs (if only). An insurance renewal, conducted via telephone. Less something you’d show your baby to get it off to sleep, more a blunt instrument you’d use to Louise Woodward it off this mortal coil altogether. An outright early morning tedium played out by one team that would have won if only it knew how to score, and another that errantly believes it’s going to do so through the medium of pisballing about 100 yards from the opposition goal.

Millwall, as tipped in the preview, were a good deal better than their early results suggested they would be.

Just one league win, at home to Sheff Wed, to show for their efforts so far, with defeats to Watford, Bristol City and Luton and a draw at struggling Hull – hardly a collection of this division’s leading lights. And yet only Josh Maja (five) had scored more than Duncan Watmore’s four prior to kick off, and only Coventry’s Haji Wright and Boro’s Emmanuel Latte Lath have had more touches in the opposition box so far than Watmore who scored twice against Boro, one at Bristol City and one at home to Sheff Wed. Despite their ropey results, Millwall had created the most ‘big chances’ in the league (18) and their xG of 9.04 is bettered only by Boro (9.76).

They call us the Stripey Nigels. We take the piss about their Peaky Blinders flat cap cosplay, QPR’s uncanny knack of scoring just as they’re all in the middle of one of those “Milllllllll” dirges, their sudden interest in and knowledge of cultural Marxism right around the point people starting kneeling down before kick-off, that time they stuck Mellow Magic on during half time because the Queen had corked it, Neil Harris talking about what is Wawll and isn’t Wawll, and this manager’s spit-on-it-and-call-it-foreplay approach to football tactics and style. This was their game though. And very quickly a victory for xG evangelists. Millwall were good. At times very good. Certainly, their best performance here that I can remember.

All the usual stuff you expect around physicality and shape. Georges Saville and Honeyman made the most of lenient refereeing from John Busby to dominate the midfield. The purposeful savagery of Jake Cooper, rampaging about pillaging villages and stealing the young from their beds. A good deal of enterprising football besides though. And an absolute barrowload of chances.

Watmore, as predicted, opened the scoring after 34 minutes, and it had been coming for at least 33 of those. Cooper started his reign of terror from a first minute corner. Watmore mishit a presentable chance on six minutes and Nardi was grateful to grasp the ball as successive defenders in front of him took a swing and a miss. Steve Cook staged a vital interception on a tenth minute through ball, fumbled possession, recovered as Watmore tried to pounce, then inadvertently played Langstaff clean through on goal - Nardi to the rescue again. Steady on Steve, we’ve all had a drink (Crown opens at 10am for these bastard early kick offs). Esse shot when everybody thought he was going to cross on 20 minutes – everybody except Nardi, that is, as the Frenchman read his intentions smartly down by his near post. That’s a goal last year, like several other incidents Nardi retrieved for us on Saturday. Two minutes later Nardi was beaten all ends up though as QPR were caught weak in possession and appealing for a foul on Dembele this referee had made it clear he was never going to give – Langstaff’s shot ruffled the side netting on its way an inch past the post.

That was all in the first 20 minutes, by the way, and there was plenty more to come after Watmore had scored at the end of a crisp passing move that busted QPR all ends up once Field had tracked the wrong man and Dunne was required to mark two players at once – just keep shifting it until the opposition numbers run out and you’ve got an open goal, and so it proved.

Honeyman hit the side netting in first half injury time after Lucas Andersen’s dreadful afternoon and worst performance for the club spiralled through a daft loss of possession just at the point Rangers needed to be keeping things tight and getting back into the sheds. Saville curled one wide of the top corner seven minutes into the second half as QPR were caught in passive mode again, then had a shot blocked in the box off a Joe Bryan assist in the visitors’ move of the match. There were two free kicks on the edge of the box to come - Bryan curled the one I was worried about most over the bar. Honeyman’s miss 12 from time off Esse’s fine set up was a logistical impossibility – I still don’t know how he hasn’t scored. A stone-cold sitter. Successive corners and goalmouth scrambles in five minutes of injury time necessitated the latest, and in this instance greatest, save from Nardi to preserve a point. I wasn’t even that tense by this stage, more resigned to that fact that if/when the Lions did score they’d thoroughly deserve it and we could have no complaints. Nardi bailed his team out, and if we’re looking for positives his performances so far are in the top one of the list. A very fine example of modern goalkeeping under heavy fire.

A big STOP in stoppage time ⏹ pic.twitter.com/jrH6R1bgOg— QPR FC (@QPR) September 22, 2024

Thankfully QPR, as we’d wiffled on about in advance, are suddenly very good at recovering the problematic situations they’ve worked themselves into.

Six of the seven points the R’s have won so far have been in games they trailed at some point. At Sheff Utd they were 2-0 down after ten minutes, at Sheff Wed they were 1-0 down after 95. A team that recovered zero points from losing positions on the road last season already has five from its three away league games. There’s resilience and spirit about this side that had drained away when Mark Warburton’s 2021/22 promotion push collapsed and has been sadly absent for almost all of the two years since.

No sooner had Millwall taken the lead and set the away end alight, than Steve Cook intercepted well in his own penalty box and played a forward ball to Lucas Andsersen who released a quick, purposeful ball to Dembele beyond the visitors’ press. He displayed tremendous composure and maturity to eat up exactly the right amount of space and release the pass just so. Michy Frey’s had a tough couple of years, but the muscle memory for this stuff is still there and his finish for goal number four of a promising start to this season was precise and unsavable. Off he charged down the touchline, absolute madhead. Moves like season three of the West Wing until there’s a chance of a goal or a shithouse celebration and then he’s away like a white Donovan Bailey. I’m growing to love him. He’s just the right QPR levels of fucking mental: not so far over the line they lock you down in a secure unit, but close enough to it that no other club would touch him with a shitty stick.

There were, naturally, one or two other moments when a second goal may have been forced over the line allowing me to sit here and give it two thousand words of “nobody wants to know how the sausage is made” and “these are the sort of results nobody remembers in a promotion campaign” narrative-heavy bullshit.

Dembele had Rangers’ first, weak, shot on goal after six minutes, then escaped the clutches of two defenders to set up Madsen for a drive over the top corner on 16. Saito’s terrific approach play tight to the left touchline midway through the first half put an opening goal on a plate for Andersen and the Dane was unfortunate to see a well struck shot deflected over – how different his, and our, afternoon would have looked had that flown a foot lower. Kenneth Paal, once again inverting into midfield in possession with mixed results, hung one up to the back post late on which Jimmy Dunne nodded past Jensen but only down into a six-yard box occupied only by the impressive Tanganga rather than the net. Not a particularly promising sign, requiring a goal to break a deadlock at home in a game Rangers were favourites to win, when Cifuentes only reached for Zan Celar from his bench in the 93rd minute. Paul Smyth was summoned earlier, but we didn’t get him one on one with his full back once, and when a better first touch of a high clearance might have taken him beyond Tanganga and through on goal he was predictably found wanting.

The main frustration here though, sorry to labour the point, was as we laid it out in the match preview.

Only against Plymouth have QPR successfully imposed themselves and their style on a game from the start. In every other match they’ve been too passive and meek without the ball, too slow and ponderous with it, and only once a goal has been conceded have they played with any sort of attacking intensity and freedom.

Here the return to Jake Clarke-Salter was a welcome boost to start with but far, far too much of the play, possession and focus was on him, Cook and Nardi knocking the ball between them.

I get the principle, even if I do find this approach to football every bit as dull and unwatchable as Tony Pulis firing the thing out of a cannon and yawping “Go on Jon” from beneath an old tracksuit top and baseball cap. You draw the opposition on, beat them with a pass (and we have now got a goalkeeper who can do that, as Nardi showed in stoppage time when he decided to start taking on the opposition himself and knocked the ball of the day down the line) and then you’re in with them committed high up the field.

That only works if you’re brave with it, and quick with it. QPR were neither brave nor quick here. You've got to be brave enough to play a more difficult, risky forward ball rather than a safer backwards and sideways option - none of ours were. You've got to be brave enough to show for those forward passes, offer an option, and perhaps receive a ball under pressure, while marked - none of ours did. And you've then got to be brave enough to turn on that ball and play it forwards yourself, rather than just bang it straight back first time from whence it came. Again… The one time we did all three of these things we scored. Three good, quick, forward passes – goal. It really can be that simple.

Another problem is pace, tempo, intensity. There were moments of excruciating frustration with the officiating late on – an obvious trip on Dembele on the edge of the box not spotted then Varane carded in the resulting counter attack, a bounce ball restart to the Millwall goalkeeper I’m genuinely surprised we’re not still there now waiting for him to Get. The. Fuck. On. With. It. - but if you play this slowly it just allows the opposition to file back into shape and watch you do it in front of them. That’s not the referee’s fault. We've got to move the ball far, far quicker. The one time we did that we scored. The rest of the morning it was Millwall standing there, in shape, looking at us like we’d lost our minds. What, really, the fuck are they doing? Over there... In their own half…

We spent the summer asking whether the final third of last season was Marti Cifuentes’ Road to Damascus moment where he just accepted the Championship is a difficult beast and he’d have to change his ideals and methods to suit, or whether that was him just desperately scrambling around for anything (anything at all) to make the Ocean Gate Submarine he’d been handed the keys for float and he’d get all Cruyffian again given a summer of signings and a pre-season training. At the moment it feels very much the latter, and we only really get good, effective and threatening again when we’re losing, sack it all off and chuck a few bouncing bombs about – Madsen’s equaliser at Luton a long punt down the field from Cook which Frey turned into pure gold. Five home games played, no wins. A-fucking-gain.

This was also always going to take a serious amount of time and patience. QPR made ten signings this summer and, apart from Paul Nardi (30), they’re all 25 or younger. They’ve come from Westerlo, Lugano, Sporting Gijon, Gent, Perth Glory, Bayern Munich B, Estrela, Brest (giggity) and Newcastle (oooh, know that one). At the moment it looks like we’re trying to artificially force a style that doesn’t really work for the players, or the division. It also looks like Cifuentes is tying himself in knots trying to crowbar the team together. Andersen - whose clean break into the Millwall half on 65 minutes offered a hope soon extinguished by him dallying so long he got caught back up by the opponent he’d originally beaten 40 yards back down the field summing up his and our collective ponderance - seemingly has to play ‘ten’. But Dembele looks a better ‘ten’, and certainly more effective there than out wide. Madsen, meanwhile, looks and feels like the same player as Andersen, and they spent Saturday morning casually occupying the same places and passing lanes to no effect whatsoever. But this was always going to be the case with this profile of signing. Good days and bad days. A lot of bedding in to be done.

Finding our best team will take time. These players getting up to speed in this league likewise. The ‘slow burn’ fitness thing seems to be in evidence, with Colback, Chair and others parked in the stand and Clarke-Salter spending much of the final ten minutes stretching out the calf injury he missed last week’s games with. It feels like Cifuentes is juggling his Rubik’s Cube around in much the same way he did when he first arrived. That is, predictably, being made more difficult by new players looking like world beaters one week and no hopers the next – Madsen, Dembele, Varane and Santos have all had performances so far which could be deemed the best and worst in the team on those days. Saito was rocks and diamonds again in this hour showing. Such is the nature of the beast – just look at Michy Frey, something of a laughingstock in his first five months here, now settled, fit, four goals scored and flying. You have to give this stuff time and sit through a lot of days like this while you do so. Meanwhile, we’re not losing. We didn’t lose here. We haven’t lost a league game since day one. A far cry from a year ago.

It would be fascinating to hear Marti Cifuentes talk about some of this stuff. Why Andersen is steadfastly picked at ‘ten’, with Dembele forced out wide. Why we’re persisting with the slow build up out of the back when it seems to benefit the opposition more than us. Why we seem to score almost immediately once we’ve fallen behind and abandoned that approach. And why we don’t just play like that all the time anyway. Who signed who this summer, and to what end…

These are the sort of questions usually posed at the annual fans’ forum. Often when you hear professional football managers explain their thinking and reasoning, with the added context of what they’re dealing with behind the curtain, it buys time, sympathy, empathy and support. I reckon it would take Cifuentes a bare ten minutes to have that room eating out of his hand, topping up the credit in the bank this team is clearly going to need as it clunks and moulds into shape over the autumn. A real shame, therefore, that Cifuentes will apparently (per the club release today) be the first manager not to appear at one of these events when the latest one takes place next Monday. Either because he personally doesn’t want to/feel the need, or because the club are suddenly trying to keep the manager away from the gentle prodding of the likes of you and I.

Whatever the reason, it’s poor, and misjudged. Much like this performance from his team.

Links >>> Photo Gallery >>> Ratings and Reports >>> Message Board Match Thread

QPR: Nardi 7; Dunne 5, Cook 6, Clarke-Salter 6, Paal 6; Field 6, Madsen 5 (Varane 69, 6); Dembele 6 (Celar 90+3, -), Andersen 4 (Lloyd 69, 6), Saito 6 (Smyth 60, 5); Frey 7

Subs not used: Ashby, Santos, Dixon-Bonner, Morgan, Walsh

Goals: Frey 40 (assisted Dembele)

Yellow Cards: Paal 60 (foul), Varane 84 (foul)

Millwall: Jensen 6; Leonard 6, Cooper 7, Tanganga 7, Bryan 6; De Noore 7, Saville 7; Esse 7, Honeyman 6 (Wintle 90+3), Watmore 7 (Azeez 75, 6); Langstaff 6 (Ivanovic 75, 6)

Subs not used: Emakhu, Hutchinson, Kelly, McNamara, Wallace, Roberts

Goals: Watmore 34 (assisted Langstaff)

Yellow Cards: Saville 86 (foul)

QPR Star Man – Michy Frey 7 The only QPR player who really played with the aggression and urgency required to do well in this fixture, and another smartly finished goal to continue his hot start to the season. That the only other candidate was Paul Nardi, excellent again in goal and a big save in injury time to preserve even one point, says a lot about how this game played out.

Referee – John Busby (Oxfordshire) 5 Suspect we may get a few letters about that mark, but I’m always liable to mark referees up who try to give the game every chance, keep the cards in their pocket, and adopt a hands-off approach. The problem it can give as you, as we saw at times here, is players take liberties. George Honeyman’s tackle just before half time was a yellow card all day long, Steve Cook was rightly furious about it, and Joe Bryan wasn’t far behind him in the moments leading up to the break. I think, ordinarily, you’d expect two yellow cards there. Having let both off with a warning you’re then sort of duty bound to give others the same benefit of doubt and things can spiral out of control. Savile took it as carte blanche to pursue the official around screaming in his face. Sam Field and Jake Clarke-Salter two of several in the second half who can count himself fortunate not to be booked for fouls that would be yellow cards on any other Championship day with any other Championship referee. Still, I’d rather this approach than Gavin Ward’s attempt to be involved in absolutely every little thing that goes on.

Attendance 15,350 (1,800 Millwall approx.) Millllllllllllllllllllllllllllllll. Repeat.

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Pictures - Ian Randall Photography

connell10 added 00:21 - Sep 23 Agree with your report, apart from Millwall being good, they were average and we made them look good by us playing shite.
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londonscottish added 10:38 - Sep 23 God that was a grim watch. The social after was great. But the game was sludge.
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Geoff78 added 10:41 - Sep 23 The inability to play the ball forward from the centre backs is striking and definitely brings back (unhappy) memories of the worst periods under Warburton. Field almost seems to avoid the ball. There were moments when I thought his arm waving was saying "don't pass to me". This isn't new for Field, but I'd expect better of Andersen, Madsen, Paal at least making themselves available. Although he produces some lovely moments I've never been convinced by Andersen and fear Madsen may be similar. It's obviously a cliche but they look like they need to toughen up. I'd prefer Varane as a starter, but maybe he wasn't ready after the Palace game. And Colback is better at progressing the ball when he's not looking for a card. You're right Marti is still looking for the best combination of these players. I trust him to get it right soon as there are some promising signs. Excellent report!

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Marshy added 12:21 - Sep 23 The worrying thing is on paper this looked a decent team, but it was lacking in so many areas. Millwall pressed us fairly high, but we didn’t move the ball quickly enough, or high enough up the pitch. The one time we did, Frey scores a brilliant goal. When you watch it back the pass and movement was perfect. More of this please. Marti needs to sort the midfield out. We are not creative enough, and we are missing Chair big time. The sooner he returns the better!

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nightwish added 14:50 - Sep 23 Personally thought the referee had a really good game didnt think he did much wrong
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