Despite consecutive defeats at home, a change in style and approach from QPR, along with a win at Cardiff, has lifted spirits among fans, players, and notably the manager ahead of tomorrow's tough trip to Southampton.

Southampton (2-1-0 WLDW 5th) v QPR (1-0-2 LWLL 17th)

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Given QPR’s tendency to change manager with at times alarming frequency, there have been no shortage of opportunities over the last decade to bring Gareth Ainsworth back to the club as reward for the fine work he did at Wycombe Wanderers.

In theory a manager achieving promotions and play-off pushes in the lower divisions, used to scrapping against odds and working with the sort of budget you struggle to feed a family of four on these days, is the ideal candidate for Queens Park Rangers in its present state. The idea of it being Gareth, though, always made me suck my teeth and feel a little bit wary about pushing that button.

The first reason is, sadly, QPR are a club that tends to eat its young. Watching Gerry Francis walk across the pitch at Luton under a hail of fire from the away end during a dreadful FA Cup tie, and then later during a 5-0 loss at Preston North End, was horrible for somebody who got into football and QPR watching his brilliant side of the early 1990s. Likewise the grief Ian Holloway got towards the end of his first spell over tactics, results and style of football, despite everything he’d achieved initially having picked the club up in administration and League One, and with scant acknowledgement of the challenges of working under Gianni Paladini, felt extremely harsh. Olly had gone a bit mad by the time he came back for his second stint, but again some of the criticism he got – particularly on social media – was cruel, overly personal in nature and excessive. There was plenty to criticise in Les Ferdinand’s performance as director of football, but hearing a QPR away end at The Hawthorns last Easter singing “fuck off Les Ferdinand”… I mean I could hardly bring myself to listen to that, never mind join in.

A product of the angry times we live in? A vocal section of our support too young to remember, or care, what these people did for our club in the past? Either way, it’s a horrible moment when it happens, and the thought of a man as decent as Gareth Ainsworth, who represented our club in the wholehearted and committed manner that he did as a player, copping similar abuse and Frank Gallagher memes over a few bad results filled me with a growing sense of foreboding and despair. Don’t do it to Gareth, not to Gareth, somebody else but not him, come on.

The second, more practical and less emotional, reason was the style of football Wycombe played and their reliance on the sport’s dark arts. The idea QPR can and should only play one way is a delusion up there with West Ham’s “academy of football” horseshit, but the Chairboys’ approach was extreme and that sort of thing wears very thin on a Loftus Road crowd very quickly. Ainsworth had and has been at pains to say he had to play that way at Adams Park because he had Akinfenwa up front, but Akinfenwa wasn’t there for all of his reign and it was Ainsworth that signed him in any case – nobody forced him. The idea this was simply a horse for a course quickly dissipated when you saw how QPR were set up and approaching games early after Ainsworth’s arrival here, and sure enough soon the increasingly vitriolic and personal criticism and abuse started to pour forward from the smellier corners of the internet.

By the time we got to interview the manager in July, he looked and sounded fairly spent to me. We’ve said a lot of several people in recent times that they’ve been “QPR’d” – sometimes in a short while, sometimes after a long period of time, but when even Les Ferdinand is going grey you know it’s a club that’ll get you in the end. With Ainsworth it looked and sounded like it had taken just three months and 12 games. He described himself as “completely frazzled” by the end of 22/23. Hearing him say “there’s always a team that blows out and loses 4-0, 5-0 on the opening day, I just hope that’s not us” rang all sorts of bells with those of us in the room that day, and sure enough within ten days we’d been beaten 5-0 at Oxford and 4-0 at Watford. The tactics and manner of the defeat at Vicarage Road, Ainsworth’s demeanour and quotes about how we might have just played the league champions, it all just felt a little bit much for him.

And so, while it’s a bit much and all too “isn’t football brilliant”, I am pleased he’s looking and sounding so much more upbeat ahead of the trip to Southampton. Whether it will last the weekend, because I think we might be on for a hiding tomorrow I’ve got to be honest, we’ll see, but at least he’s talking about going to St Mary’s and Middlesbrough next week to win the games, rather than that weird period in the summer where apparently we were just honoured to be taking the field with such illustrious clubs, and can you believe Asmir Begovic wants to sign for little old us.

That’s been brought about by a change in style, system and performance in the games since the opening day. QPR won at Cardiff, a victory a good deal better than the scoreline suggested, and quite how they didn’t get at least a point from the Ipswich match having done everything but score I don’t know. Whether you could call it a revolt or not I don’t know, but the players spoke up about not being able to play as a Wycombe MkII after the first game, Ainsworth has listened and adapted, and the mood music around the place is a lot more soulful than it was previously.

We are still very much in trouble this season, though.

Ainsworth’s signing bingo, which just a couple of weeks ago was up around the five to seven new arrivals mark, then dipped down to one or two possibilities, now seems to have bottomed out at us probably being done with what we’ve already got. There is some frustration around the club that in the weird world of QPR internet, where you can pick up followers and clout by making up the name of an imaginary friend at the training ground and chucking some transfer rumour shit at the walls to see if you get lucky with a sticky piece, they’ve been criticised for not getting deals over the line or missing out on players they were never really that seriously in for in the first place. Fulham’s Jay Stansfield going on loan to Birmingham is the latest one of those. But they have undoubtedly struggled to reshape the squad this summer for all the FFP headroom reasons we telegraphed months ago and have been banging on about week after week. I think it’s pretty obvious they expected one of Chair, Willock or Field to be sold for some money – Gareth has repeatedly said there will be another “out or outs”- which could then get things moving a little bit, but that hasn’t materialised to this point and so there hasn’t been money to spend.

If that situation holds for another week then it’s a team with zero strength in depth for a 48-game Championship season. It’s currently a team only fit to play for 60 minutes because of this frankly bizarre strategy of avoiding muscle injuries by rowing back on all the standard pre-season fitness and conditioning work. It’s a team that has lost four senior first team players to injuries four games into the campaign regardless – Jake Clarke-Salter, Jimmy Dunne, Sam Field and Lyndon Dykes. It’s a team now really relying on not only breakout star Sinclair Armstrong but also the likes of Osman Kakay, Rayan Kolli and Alex Auroha doing far bigger minutes and competing at this level of football much quicker than you would ideally want at this stage. Only really at left back, where we’ve covered Kenneth Paal with Ziyad Lakerche, are we not one injury away from a huge drop off in quality.

It's also a team, crucially, that’s going to struggle for goals. The way Southampton play and defend who knows what might happen tomorrow, but already this season we’ve failed to score in three of our four games, and against Ipswich in particular that inability to put the ball in the net cost us a more positive result we really deserved. The team hasn’t scored three goals in a game in nearly 11 months now, since it beat Cardiff 3-0 in October last year 36 matches ago. It hasn’t scored two goals in a home game since later that same week against Wigan. When we have scored the first goal under Ainsworth we’ve won four and drawn one of the five, but once we’ve conceded we’ve only recovered one point in 11 games.

I’ve enjoyed watching us in the last three games, and I haven’t been able to say that for a long time. The explosive emergence of Armstrong, combined with Paul Smyth becoming the player we always hoped he might down the right, has been a breath of fresh air for a stodgy team, previously wholly devoid of any pace at all. With players to come back in, including Lyndon Dykes up front, there is certainly more hope than I felt standing behind the goal at Vicarage Road. But if financial realities and circumstances dictate that we are really going to go at this season with what we’ve got now and nothing more, then that’s a long old winter ahead. Wonderful to see and hear Gareth so chipper again, but we’ll wait and see how long that lasts.

Links >>> Ringing in the New Year in style – History >>> Russell Martin’s sponsored pass-a-thon – Interview >>> Newbie – Referee >>> Southampton Official Website >>> Southampton Echo – Local Press >>> Ugly Inside – Forum >>> Saints Marching – Blog >>> Saints Analysis – Blog

90s Footballers’ Conspiracy Theories #2 In The Series – Darren Peacock reckons King Charles is actually three midgets in a man costume.

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Team News: Jake Clarke-Salter played 45 minutes of the development squad’s midweek 4-2 win against Coventry so he’s nearly ready to move onto solids now. Sinclair Armstrong, as we suspected, only had cramp when he was forced off early against Ipswich so he’ll start again. Sam Field was forced off in that game after a kamikaze mission to stop a counter attack but he has trained at the back end of this week. Field has been booked in three of the four games this season so is already just two off a ban, while Armstrong has been booked in four of his last five and six of his last 12 appearances. We’re probably a week too soon for Lyndon Dykes and Jimmy Dunne is a medium term absentee with his shoulder injury – post international break return for him.

Elsewhere: Hull City were one of our more difficult season preview calls, with only Aaron Connolly done by way of any serious transfer business for promising manager Liam Rosenior. However, they’ve really kicked on this week with the arrival of Scott Twine from Burnley and a bid to sign Villa’s giant striker Keinan Davis permanently along with Jaden Philogene. They’ve won their last two against Sheff Wed and Blackburn and kick us off this weekend with the Friday night TV game at home to Bristol City. Blackburn, meanwhile, round the weekend out with a Sunday lunchtime trip to Watford.

The other ten games are all in the traditional slot and the pick of those is probably unbeaten, table-topping Ipswich Town looking to make it four wins from four since promotion at a packed out Portman Road against Massive Leeds. The Whites, as we suspected they might, have stuttered to begin with as a whole host of big names and earners try to force exits following a relegation they caused, but with £12m Joel Piroe inbound from Swansea and Wilfried Gnonto deciding he might want to play for the club after all offer them a much needed boost. With former Norwich boss Daniel Farke, and the portrait of the fallen Madonna with the big boobies, on the touchline there’s some added spice to a great looking game.

The loss of Piroe would be a huge blow to Duffman’s attempts to thrust Swanselona further up the table after a mediocre start to his life in South Wales. The swans have already lost Flynn Downes and Michael Obafemi from their team over the last 12 months, but are said to be keen on spending some of their new found readies on rivalling Hull for the signature of Davis. They’re at Preston Knob End this weekend who’ve started with seven points, confounding pre-season predictions of doom at Deepdale.

Let’s rattle around some of the other slow starters because there are some surprising ones amongst them. Middlesbrough and Sunderland both featured heavily in the predicted top sixes around the various season previews, but the former hasn’t adequately replaced the likes of Giles, Akpom and Archer who starred in last year’s team, while the latter is still missing key players like Ross Stewart through injury. They have one win between them as Boro prepare to go to West Brom and Sunderland travel to a team dealing with play-off heartbreak rather better, Coventry. Millwall won at Boro on day one but just two weeks later Gary Rowett is under heavy fire from supporters for his tactics and style of football. They’ve added Brooke Norton-Coffey on loan from Arsenal ahead of the arrival of Stoke, who are showing some signs of stirring into life themselves after five years in the Championship wilderness.

No real surprise to see both Cardiff and Sheff Wed struggling early on, they meet in South Wales. Rotherham are also yet to win, and they’ve now got a tough game with Leicester who are one of only two sides to have maintained a 100% record so far.

Norwich, who for once were pretty unfancied this year, have started brilliantly and will really fancy their chances on the Sixteenth Annual Neil Warnock Farewell Tour this weekend. Birmingham, meanwhile, have topped up a squad hit by injuries to Tyler Roberts and Ethan Laird (no seriously) with the loan of Fulham’s Jay Stansfield ahead of the visit of Plymouth.

Referee: It’s up and coming Sheffield referee James Bell for this one, his first appointment with either Southampton or QPR. There is an interesting tale about how an internet campaign got the Sheff Wed-supporting official booted from an Ipswich Town game last year after Preston manager Ryan Lowe dobbed him in among this week’s details though.

Form

Southampton: It’s been a very Russell Martin start to the season for Southampton, who have beaten two of the three newly promoted teams away 2-1 with late goals, drawn 4-4 at home to Norwich, and crashed out of the League Cup at League Two Gillingham. Against Sheff Wed on the opening night they completed a Championship record 477 passes before half time, and 931 in total, for 80% possession, but conceded off Wednesday’s first corner and only won the game 2-1 thanks to a late Che Adams goal. Against Norwich they had 70% of the ball, but still conceded four goals, and only salvaged a point thanks to a hotly disputed 97th minute penalty. At Plymouth things were more even, just the 61% of the ball there, and Adams again won the match with a goal in the 94th minute.

Freakishly, the Norwich result means Southampton’s last two games at St Mary’s have both finished 4-4 after a chaotic draw with Liverpool on the final day of the Premier League season. They’re without a home win in eight attempts dating back to a 1-0 win against Leicester on March 4, conceding 22 goals in the process. They were relegated dead last of the top flight in 22/23, 11 points adrift of safety, and won only two home games in the league all season (Chelsea the other victim way back in August). They finished with an overall record of 2-5-12 on this ground in the league and were also beaten at home by Grimsby Town in the FA Cup.

QPR: QPR are as long as 8/1 to win this game if you fancy your chances and given the respective teams on paper and resources you can probably understand that. Rangers, however, have only lost one of their last five away games, with three victories including last time out at Cardiff and at last season’s runaway total footballing champions Burnley. The 4-0 at Watford on day one is our only loss on the road since Wigan A on April 1. That’s in stark contrast to the form at Loftus Road where it’s now just one win in 16 games, none in the last seven, with just seven goals scored across that run and never more than one in a game. The last time we scored two goals in a game at home was the 2-1 win at home to Wigan last October, and the last time we scored three in any game at all was the week before that when we beat Cardiff 3-0 in W12 – 36 games and getting on for a year ago. The R’s have failed to score in three of their four matches so far.

The Cardiff win, unsurprisingly, came after QPR scored the first goal. On the five occasions they’ve done that in Gareth Ainsworth’s 15 matches in charge they’ve won four and drawn one. In the other 11 games where the oppo have scored first Rangers have recorded just one point, away at West Brom last Easter when they trailed 2-0 but drew. They have failed to score at all in eight of those 11 when conceding first.

For all the improvements since Watford, only Rotherham (6.4) have a higher xG against them in the games played so far than QPR (6.2).

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. Our reigning champion Aston was spot on with the Watford prediction, what’s he got for us today…

“I think August is a good time to be playing a new Russell Martin team, while their defence are not up to speed and they’re passing the ball amongst themselves 100 times in a sequence. We'll need Armstrong and Smyth to be at their hassling best, trying to force those defenders into mistakes and if we do that well, we give ourselves a chance. Feels like it could be an open high scoring game if that happens. 2-2, Armstrong first scorer (our one, not their two).”

Aston’s Prediction: Southampton 2-2 QPR. Scorer – Sinclair Armstrong

LFW’s Prediction: Southampton 2-0 QPR. No scorer.

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062259 added 04:13 - Aug 26 …..not to mention Gerry Francis’ monumental and years-long contributions to QPR as a player….
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TacticalR added 13:50 - Aug 26 Thanks for your preview. This season looked like it was going to be absolutely terrible. The result at Cardiff and the performance against Ipswich have given us some hope. Those goal statistics aren't good. We have been crying out for a striker for years. There was an interesting discussion about our fitness problems on this week's Open All R's. The following points were made: 1. Sinclair Armstrong is tearing around like a sprinter. It's not that surprising he can't last beyond 60 minutes. 2. Under Warburton the team was trying to play possession football, which was less tiring. Switching to pressing football is going to take time. If Southampton are going to out-possession us, let's hope it's 'ineffective possession'.

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