QPR welcome Huddersfield to Loftus Road on Saturday with resident mentalist Samba Diakite either on his way to Watford, or set for a recall, depending on what mood Harry Redknapp wakes up in.
Old First Division, Old, Old Second Division >>> Saturday January 17, 2014 >>> Kick Off 15.00 >>> Loftus Road , London , W12
The interviews with Frankie Sutherland, Max Ehmer and Tom Hitchcock, http://www.fansnetwork.co.uk/football/queensparkrangers/news/33358/from-youths-t on LFW back in November necessitated an afternoon at QPR's Harlington training ground. It's an odd place, with a secondary school feel to it, where players practice free kicks for 45 minutes without scoring once and Jermain Jenas prowls the canteen area in his vest.
But it's also the only place you can currently see the rare and beautiful sight of Samba Diakite in full flight. There he was, three mile grin affixed permanently to his otherwise vacant face, dribbling around Kevin 'Bondy' Bond who'd put on a full suit of armour for the occasion, before hammering a shot on goal that was so outrageously high and off target that it troubled the stomach lining of the air traffic controllers at nearby Heathrow Airport more than young goalkeeper Aaron Lennox. Diakite seemed thrilled as the ball bounced off down the M4, laughing and punching his hands in the air, as if that's what he meant to do. Perhaps it was — his grasp of the rules of the sport from which he makes his living has always seemed somewhat loose.
Diakite was an encouraging bucker of QPR's Premier League trend when he arrived here from Nancy, initially on loan and later permanently. He was/is young (22 when he arrived, 24 now) and totally unproven — suggesting that Rangers had done a little bit of scouting to find him, and were prepared to work with him and develop him. There was clearly plenty of work to do, as 11 brutal assaults on Bryan Ruiz in the first 33 minutes of his first team debut against Fulham — resulting in an inevitable red card — showed all too clearly. But there was enough potential in the initial loan spell for his signing to be universally welcomed that summer — indeed, the guests on the Open All R's Podcast and I tipped him as a potential Player of the Year for the 2012/13 season so he certainly had something about him.
So what has gone wrong? Because sadly Samba Diakite is essentially the same raw player he was when QPR first clapped eyes on him two years ago — one of an ever growing list of professional footballers who sign for Rangers and promptly stagnate, or in many cases actually regress, and then just sort of sit there not playing any football while picking up big money and struggling to attract interest from elsewhere. In actual fact, can anybody name the last player QPR have actually developed and improved? The place is becoming football's equivalent of the elephant graveyard.
Well, it's worth saying first of all that Diakite had played very little senior professional football before arriving at QPR, and was always very raw. Given Rangers' thirst for short-term fixes, instant results, big names and more signings, perhaps it's no surprise that this didn't turn out to be the best place for him to play catch up in his development. There's also the strong possibility that he was never actually very good in the first place. There was the depression/stress related issue that the Daily Mail, bless them, decided to make a big public deal out of as well, and of course QPR have been mostly dreadful since he arrived which isn't exactly the ideal situation to be in as a young player developing your game in a foreign country.
Whatever the reason, Harry Redknapp clearly doesn't fancy him much, and has hardly used him at all since Rangers were massacred at Loftus Road by Liverpool last Christmas and Diakite was withdrawn early. After the match Redknapp said he and Stephane Mbia hadn't understood the instructions they'd been given, and so — tragically — Rangers' obsession with mad African footballers ground to a halt.
And that's a terrible shame, because what do we go to football for if it's not to see Taye Taiwo tackling Danny Graham with his face? Or emptying an entire bottle of Lucozade Sport very, very, very slowly over Joey Barton's head while laughing the laugh of a giant man who knows his victim can do nothing other than stand there and smile along? Diakite's debut was traumatic at the time — given the importance of the game, and the sheer brutality of seeing three Fulham players killed in front of us — but, again, there's wonderful comedy in seeing a player who clearly hasn't been informed of the rules of the sport charging around like a maniac hacking into players so viciously and regularly that it even stunned card-happy referee Phil Dowd into half an hour of inaction. Some of us were lucky enough to be there the day DouDou chipped the Oldham goalkeeper at the Loft End, and that time Alan Lee decided it was a shrewd idea to punch Danny Shittu in his gentleman's area and suffered an hour of gratuitous violence as a result.
Mad African footballers are worth the entrance fee, and they're very QPR, which is why the news this week that Diakite may be heading to Watford on loan with a view to a permanent move seemed a bit of a shame. Fairly typical of the club's long term planning and strategy that by the end of the week the Watford move was apparently off, and Diakite is now in contention for this weekend's game with Huddersfield because of fitness worries around Joey Barton and others. Given that he's only played once, badly, in the League Cup against Swindon this season, Diakite is likely to be even further off the pace than usual, and a violent rampage is almost guaranteed. How wonderful.
There is, as ever on LFW, an opportunity here to flag up the ongoing, serious, issue about just how short-sighted the thinking at QPR has become, with the likes of Diakite, Luke Young, Bobby Zamora, Shaun Wright-Phillips and others all signed to great fanfare in the not too distant past, all picking up colossal wages, all contributing next to nothing to the first team, and all having almost no sell on value whatsoever. Having adopted this strategy where all problems are papered over with another signing some time ago, it was only ever going to get worst under the ultimate short-term manager Harry Redknapp who has no more interest in developing QPR's young players and securing the club's future even five or six years into the future than flying to the moon in Bondy's BMW.
We've seen it manifest itself again this week in the departure of Marc Bircham, a wonderful clubman whose talents and potential have been recognised by Millwall with a first team coach role. Bircham is green as a coach, and surely the far more-experienced Steve Gallen is also being eyed elsewhere, but he's a QPR man and that's something that QPR don't have a lot of. The club has seemed to deliberately shy away from employing people at all levels with QPR at the heart — a trend started by Gianni Paladini and pursued enthusiastically ever since for reasons known only to the people enforcing it. Harry Redknapp has shown he'd rather bring in Steve McClaren — a shrewd move — or Steve bloody Cotterill — an absolute travesty - than give Marc Bircham a go with the first team, and he'd rather continue to pick Jose Bosingwa than give Michael Harriman or one of Bircham's EDS graduates in meaningless league games with relegation already confirmed. So Bircham has left, as you would do.
Meanwhile, on the same day, chairman Tony Fernandes says the club are looking at making another couple of signings, but have learnt lessons and will not make the same mistakes as previously. The fact that they're heading off into the transfer market again at all, with the wage bill as it is and the sheer number of experienced, senior professionals they have slobbing around the place doing nothing, suggests they've learnt next to nothing, and somebody like Marc Bircham heading off into a role QPR should have been considering for him at Millwall, all but confirms it.
Still, Huddersfield tomorrow, bring on the Diakite rampage I say.
Links >>> http://www.fansnetwork.co.uk/football/queensparkrangers/news/33816/progress-on-a Profile >>> http://www.fansnetwork.co.uk/football/queensparkrangers/news/33797/jermaine-darl >>> http://www.fansnetwork.co.uk/football/queensparkrangers/news/33794/hoopers-secon >>> http://www.fansnetwork.co.uk/football/queensparkrangers/news/33793/austin-flower
Jermaine Darlington celebrates his spectacular goal against Huddersfield on the opening day of the 1999/00 season. Cash-strapped QPR beat the big spending visitors 3-1.
Team News: Joey Barton hobbled out of last week's win at Ipswich Town before half time and the thigh strain that did for him there looks set to keep him out of action this week. Much-maligned Karl Henry replaced him, and did a decent job, at Portman Road and must be the favourite to step in again, however unpalatable a midfield containing both him and Gary O'Neil for a winnable home game may seem to the layman. Junior Hoilett's piano-wire hamstring keeps him out. Bobby Zamora is stll an absolute cart horse. Ale Faurlin is a long term absentee.
Huddersfield may have 12-goal leading scorer James Vaughan back in contention, and new signing Nahki Wells is pushing for a full debut after winning last week's home match with Millwall from the bench. At the back Joel Lynch is out with a hip problem and captain Peter Clarke is a long term absentee with a knee problem.
Elsewhere: Genesis 1:1 says that in the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And, presumably, at some point, he got onto creating Barnsley. And God looked at what he had done, and God was pleased. And why not? With its Metrodome Leisure Centre and integrated bus and rail station, Barnsley is a fine place indeed. "And lo” said God, "one day there shall be a mighty battle here between Barnsley and Blackpool.” And that day is this Saturday. Contain yourselves please, a little decorum.
It seems the reason we were all put on this earth was to play out a series of football matches that, in the grand scheme of both life and even the Football League over the course of 150 years, are totally and utterly irrelevant. Birmingham v Yeovil, Bournemouth v Watford, Doncaster v Globetrotters — I mean who really cares about all of this? It’s only when you go out of the Championship for a while and then come back that you realise just how much of it there is, for just how long, and jost how little each individual result matters until about April.
Middlesbrough v Charlton, Millwall v Ipswich and Reading v Champions Elect Bolton are also taking place this weekend. Sigh.
Stuff that sort of matters — Leicester go to out-of-form Champions of their own lunch hour Leeds in the Saturday lunchtime match, second placed Burney host Sheffield Wednesday, high flying Trees welcome Blackburn. Derby are at home to Brighton, for want of something better to do with their time.
Referee: Simon Hooper is listed as our official this weekend — hi second QPR appointment of the season, although he dropped out of the first one late on. The Wiltshire official, who has only ever previously refereed the R's in a 0-0 draw at Swansea back in 2010, is clearly highly thought of with appointments at Forest v Derby and Burnley v QPR (second v first at the time) already, but he missed our date at Turf Moor so this will be his first outing with Rangers this campaign. His full QPR case file and stats for the past couple of seasons, as well as the rest of the appointments around the league this weekend, can be viewed by http://www.fansnetwork.co.uk/football/queensparkrangers/news/33794/hoopers-secon here.
QPR: Rangers’ defensive record at Loftus Road remains on the awesome side of formidable. Just four goals conceded in 12 matches — Burnley have the next best record with seven and Blackburn come next with ten — and eight clean sheets is a big part of the reason that Harry Redknapp’s side sit as high in the league as they do. Especially true when you consider that their total of 29 goals is the worst in the top nine and you have to look down as low as Blackpool in fourteenth for a team who has scored less than Rangers’ 16 home goals. Having won nine, drawn two and lost just one of the first 12 games, Rangers have only won six and drawn five of the next 16.
Huddersfield: The Terriers are sitting dead level on nine wins, nine defeats and seven draws for the season so far. Away from home they’re three, three and six with victories at Sheffield Wednesday, Millwall and Bolton. The Bolton and Wednesday wins came consecutively at the end of November and beginning of December but since then they’ve lost narrowly at Ipswich and Bolton, drawn at Brighton and recovered from two goals down to win 3-2 at Conference outfit Grimsby in the FA Cup. That Burnley defeat was Huddersfield’s only loss in their last six games and they have scored 11 goals in their last four outings.
Betting: Professional odds compiler Alex Rowe writes…
"Huddersfield sit comfortably in the under-rated category of the division for me & should prove tough opposition for Barton-less QPR. Mark Robins’ switched to three centre halves and wing backs towards the end of last season and the change in formation has allowed them to be well organised yet still carrying the goal threat required to win games at this level. I’m surprised to see Huddersfield as big as 5/1 with some firms to win this and I fully expect to see plenty of punters be with the Terries at what strikes me as a juicy price for an away win in this league.
"The news of Barton’s absence is clearly a huge blow and means in all likelihood we’ll see a midfield trio of Henry, O’Neil & Carroll (which rubbishes the myth we’ve got great depth to our squad). Against an organised back three (or five) runners beyond Austin from midfield are more vital than ever and looking at the above personnel we’re struggling. I’d also expect Mark Robins (as most away managers seem to be this season) to be satisfied with keeping things tight and level for as long as possible so I’ll be having an interest in the ‘time of first goal market’ being after the twenty seventh minute (evens with Boylesports).
"If you’re an under/over 2.5 goals punter the under is available at 4/5 & the over can be backed at evens, personally looks like an 'unders' game to me.
"Two other weekend picks. I’ve had some joy in the Scottish Football League in recent months so I’ve put my faith in Dumbarton 11/4 away at out of form Alloa. A morale sapping defeat at lowly Queen of the South continued what’s been a terrible month or so for Alloa add to that key midfielder Stephen Simmons being ruled out means I make Dumbarton much shorter than the current market price.
"If you prefer small stakes and big returns (well hoping for big returns !) then my final pick could be of interest.
"Bury have been improving of late under David Flitcroft and if you ignore last weekend’s defeat title favourites Chesterfield (a contentious red card gave Chesterfield a helping hand) you’ll see my point. The upturn in results has been helped by Flitcroft’s brave decision to change formation to 3-4-3. Frederic Veseli has been asked to switch position and play wide of the midfield four and with firms still offering odds accustomed to a defender 40/1 first goal & 16/1 anytime (Coral) he’s definitely worth a small interest for the chance of decent return."
Prediction: Reigning Prediction League champion Mase says…
"Don't piss on my back and tell me it's raining. By dint of a couple of good results, and one half of outplaying an in-form but ultimately limited opposition much excited chatter has been generated around the message boards this week. Some glass half-empty merchants have attributed our success at Portman Road to the enforced substitution of Joey Barton in the first half and the freedom that Tom Thumb was then able to enjoy with Karl Henry mopping up behind him. If that is indeed the case (and I wasn't there) then we can only hope lessons have been learnt.
"While the frailties and deficiencies that have been exposed by the better teams we have played this season remain, I just don't think Huddersfield are the kind of opposition to exploit it. The headline name on their teamsheet is new signing Nakhi Wells, and he is something of a coup for this club who not long ago were mixing it and coming up short against Bradford, his erstwhile employers. Town are the dictionary-definition of mid-table this season, but Wells' arrival could herald a charge for the playoff's.
"Huddersfield are five points off sixth at present, and it is clear that highly-rated young manager Mark Robins has identified attack as an area for improvement in his team. He has just added, in addition to Wells, Joe Lolley, who was one of the hottest properties in the Conference and so has added new, young and promising options upfront. Town have run the knife through two new joiners to this league (Bouremouth and Yeovil, five goals apiece) but these successes have bookended poor runs of form, particularly in December and September. Still, to be in the picture at this stage is a decent achievement and I don't expect them to sink from where they are now particularly with the new blood.
"Meanwhile at QPR, rumours have been more about who is leaving than joining. At time of writing it is status quo (I am not including Onyewu) and the big loss has been that of Mr QPR Marc Bircham to join Ian Holloway at Millwall as first team coach. Having witnessed the infectious enthusiasm and desire he offers on countless Player clips it would seem quite a tricky task to replace him. But all that is for another day.
"Assuming we have no fresh injury concerns, I think we will have just about enough to get through this game, the first of three consecutive home matches. It is worth remembering that for all our struggles scoring we have only conceded four at home in the league, by far the best record in the league. I can foresee another tight scoreline with accompanying steady-Eddie performance being enough."
Mase's Prediction: QPR 1-0 Huddersfield . Scorer — Austin
LFW prediction: QPR 1-1 Huddersfield. Scorer - Austin
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Pictures — Action Images