Another Loft End goal from our former trainee Josh Bowler was enough to secure Blackpool’s first win in W12 for 50 years on a deeply, deeply frustrating evening for QPR on Tuesday.
"I just wanted to say to you by the way of introductory remarks that I'm extremely miffed about last night’s events and in my quest to try to make you understand the level of my unhappiness, I'm likely to use an awful lot of - what we would call - violent sexual imagery, and I just wanted to check that neither of you would be terribly offended by that.”
Few caveats at the start, before we crack open the head and feast on the goo within. Blackpool, I thought, were good value for their win. There’ll be occasional mention of QPR’s absentees, led by Chris Willock without whom our attack does not function, and Luke Amos without whom our midfield resembles Night of the Living Dead — but Blackpool were missing players too, including last season’s top league scorer Gary Madine and midfield mainstay Keshi Anderson.
I’ll do a bit — more than a bit actually, three paragraphs maybe — on my dearly beloved late grandmother, who in her later years was bedridden and immobile to the point of not even being able to get herself to the toilet in the night, with all of the dramatic consequences that came with for those of us looking after her, and how five years after her death I’d still have fancied her to take at least one of several gilt-edged chances laid on a silver platter for QPR’s "strikers”. Score even one of them, and it’s a different game entirely. But I don’t think that should detract from Pool’s efforts, a fine goal by Josh Bowler against his former club, and a great result for a team that had only won two of 17 away games prior to this, hadn’t scored since the ninth minute of the first game of the season, and hadn’t won at Loftus Road in 13 goes dating back to 1972. I thought they looked a more cohesive team than us, certainly a lot more dangerous on transitions, and in Bowler had the game’s best player. They did this with a team constructed on a much lower budget, even than ours, which is something I often hold up as an excuse and reason for QPR churning out such slop. There can be no such talk after this one. Pool, too, have been through a summer managerial change, and in Michael Appleton they’ve appointed a geezer none of them even like or want that much.
I’m going to recycle the old LFW routine about clock running, injury feigning, the dangerous and contradictory mess the sport has worked itself into regarding head injuries, the supposed clampdown on all of these things this season which seems to have lasted precisely one week and now already been abandoned, and whether "referee" Andy Davies would have any better understanding of the concept and passage of time if I were able to remove the clock from the roof of Waterloo Station and shove it up his fucking arse. For new comers looking in, welcome, this usually takes me about 20, sometimes 25 minutes. But it’ll be longer today. Add four minutes to your day to compensate.
Nevertheless, QPR cannot, should not, allow Blackpool’s shithousing, or Championship refereeing’s depressing incompetence and rapidly decelerating standards of work, let them off the hook of a poor performance, that was never good enough to win the game, and got everything it deserved on the scoreboard.
Right, housekeeping and parish noticeboard out of the way, let’s begin, because I don’t want to be here any more than you. Once, drunk, was more than enough. Reliving, sober, is not the one.
QPR’s remarkable late comeback at Sunderland on Saturday, completed in the final two minutes of the game with the first goal from a direct free kick in the best part of 150 games, and the club’s first ever goal from its goalkeeper, made it four points from a tough start of Blackburn A, Boro H and Sunderland A. If you’d offered me that before the kick off at Ewood Park, in return for not bothering with two weeks of hell on this country’s collapsed rail network trying to get to the bloody games, I’d have shaken you warmly by the penis and said 'thank you very much indeed'. Now, with three out of four and five out of eight at home, including visits by two of last season’s lower table teams and a newly promoted side everybody fancies to go straight back down, it was time, as Neil Warnock would say, to dip us bread.
Fools. Given the choice between dipping bread or burning the house down with the kids inside, QPR always choose the latter. Two nil win I said in the preview. What a dickhead.
QPR spent the first half mostly dispelling the idea they don’t provide adequate service to their strikers, and that lack of service is our forwards’ biggest problem. Lyndon Dykes, inadvertently played into good space on two minutes, should have shot, delayed too long for the chance to still be there, but Tyler Roberts following in behind him on a first start for the club forced a save from Daniel Grimshaw in the visiting goal. Ethan Laird was thrown straight in at right back after just a single training session since joining on loan from next season’s losing Championship play-off semi-finalists Manchester United, and his value to the attack shone through for the first time on 23 minutes when he broke away down the right, held the ball intelligently awaiting support, and then cut it back perfectly for Dykes to shoot straight at the goalkeeper. Marge Simpson grumbling noise.
Ten minutes from the break there was a perfect delivery from Ilias Chair passed up again by Dykes and no sooner had I finished noting down my frustration at that than Grimshaw had dallied too long in his area, Johansen had charged in on a mega-high press and won the ball back, and Dykes was now alone in the area, with the ball, onside, eight yards out, with only Grimshaw in front of him, and Johansen available for a return pass of five yards to score into an open net, and somehow Robert the Bruce passed that up as well. Didn’t fancy that one either, no? Maybe a ball with a bell in it might help. Or we could stick some bright lights up on the goal posts perhaps?
Blackpool had already looked well capable of capitalising on all this profligacy. Without Amos, QPR’s midfield lacks dynamism, speed and bite. Pool were able to walk around and through it too easily, and get in on a back four with a new right back on one side, and Kenneth Paal looking decidedly Dutch league on the other. Jerry Yates turned an eleventh minute low cross past Dieng and very gently against the base of the far post, and in the ensuing carnage a big brave block from Dickie was required to avert further problems. Only a lung-busting track back and interception by Andre Dozzell (bit better here) interrupted a potential three v one situation at the back on 32 minutes. On the stoppage time board Johansen gave the ball away in midfield, an all-hands-to-the-pump recovery, led by Lyndon Dykes charging back to be fair to him, looked to have retrieved the situation by blocking Bowler’s first attempt. The ball fell plum back to the former QPR junior and he whipped it expertly around Dieng into the far corner of the net — two in two visits to Loftus Road for him now. Piss flaps.
QPR’s attempt to get back into this game after half time was - shoot me down if you like, overly miserable, over the top, too invested, wasting my life, blah, blah, blah — pretty dismal. Grimshaw had made first half saves, but barely had anything of note to do after the break. Running at Dominic Thompson in the first half had drawn a long overdue yellow card for the former Brentford man from referee Andy Davies, but instead of targeting him through the second half Rangers largely left him alone. Game smarts. Thick as pig shit.
There was some pressure around 53 minutes: half a chance for Chair, Dykes weirdly facing the wrong way, crowd getting aggy. Laird’s click and collect down the right on 74 minutes culminated in a cross past Grimshaw, into the six-yard box, to serve an equaliser up on a silver platter for any striker with half a brain in his head who’d gambled on a run, but everybody was back at the penalty spot scratching their pubics. I want no more talk of lack of service to our strikers — Rowan Atkinson couldn’t have gift wrapped this for him any better. Sprig of holly, Lyndon?
But what threat was posed tended to be down at the School End — Bowler’s curling shot through a crowd on 66 was well watched and saved by Dieng, Lavery quickly stuck another shot wide of the post. An overload counter attack off our own corner on 72 involving half the population of Blackpool was brilliantly rescued by Laird — do not get some of the naysaying comments on socials about his debut at all, what exactly more did you want from him?
Not for the first time this season, it wasn’t until Sinclair Armstrong stepped off the bench that QPR attacked with pace, intent and danger. He should be out on loan developing now, instead he’s our best striker and is surely now pushing towards a start. I was particularly disappointed Tyler Roberts wasn’t able to follow up his impressive substitute cameos in the early games with greater impact from the start here.
Armstrong immediately pointed the way to Damascus with a forceful piece of play down the left which drew a horrid foul from Marvin Ekpiteta and the game’s second yellow card. There should have been another booking at least when he did the same down the other side and was pulled back so blatantly and for so long it looked like the Blackpool player was taking his bastard dog for a walk — one of several curious decisions from assistant referee Sunny Gill on the Stan Bowles side of the ground in the second half, culminating in a late QPR corner, incorrectly guessed as a goal kick, which led to Jimmy Dunne being booked for dissent. Armstrong hit one drive at the near post to sting Grimshaw’s fingers as much as anybody else had done, and then headed over when he should have scored in the final minute — though from an offside position, and the goal would have been disallowed had it been scored. That decision was correct, perhaps Gill should print it out for a frame.
Other substitutions were slow in coming. Shodipo got ten minutes at the end, and may as well not have bothered. Adomah just four. Macauley Bonne was absent entirely, amidst whispers of Wigan interest - charging in offside and hoping the referee ignores it would fit in well up there, though possibly not for the Athletic side of the business. Felt weird given what a poor job we were doing of chasing the score down. I could have kept goal for Pool second half.
QPR should, should, have had plenty more time to try and get that right next time. Blackpool’s clock running started before half time at nil nil, and really kicked in in earnest after the break, with every trick in the book rolled out and bled to death over every throw in, every free kick, every goal kick, every thing, everything. Every. Thing. Thompson, already on a booking, took the piss like few before him. His theft of up to ten yards at every throw in took place in plain sight in front of the referee, who allowed it to take place unchecked all evening.
The ball is in play, on average, for 50% of Championship matches, by far and away the worst total of any European league. Blackpool fans travelling here this Tuesday night, Hull next week, at a disgusting £36 a ticket, plus train, plus hotel, plus petrol... can expect to witness a game in which the ball is out of play as much as it is in. The EFL and PGMOL had made this a priority in the summer, and promised a clampdown, which so far seems to have consisted of a couple of yellow cards scattered around on the opening day, and absolutely Jack shit since.
Davies, here, did less than nothing at all about it, encouraging it and increasing it with every moment of indecisive inaction. He then added just four minutes to the end of the game, as the equally piss weak Jeremy Simpson had in similar circumstances at Sunderland on Saturday. If four minutes was correct here, then we may as well just pack in now. Just make every game 94 minutes and be done with it. If this game, and Saturday’s at Sunderland, only warranted four minutes of added time, then truly what are we doing here? What’s the point? Complete horseshit. Just laughable really. Four minutes. Even Davies must have known deep down that this was a complete crock of absolute shit. All those subs, all those injuries, all that time wasting. Four minutes. Fuck off mate, and, when you arrive, fuck off from there as well. Useless, limp-dicked waste of flesh.
Let’s go a jump further on this high horse. Thompson, Ekpiteta and others all tried repeatedly, and succeeded frequently, to stop the game for "head injuries”. They no more had head injuries than rabies. They know this, their team mates know this, the opposition knows it, the medics know it, and the referee knows it, but in 2022 we have to go through this embarrassing, pathetic, childish rigmarole of stopping the match to ascertain that they are, in fact, lying. At that point, having been made to trudge to the sideline, they come sprinting straight back onto the field, in Thompson’s case shaking his apparently injured head around to toss his dreadlocks back and forth at the crowd.
There’s a cloud heading football’s way on head injuries, concussions, and illness in later life. Panic, compensation claims and insurance issues have already changed the way rugby union is played and refereed fundamentally, torching what meagre spectacle that sport was able to provide in the first place in the name of making safe something that is fundamentally always going to be unsafe. Rugby league is trapped in a similar spiral, tying itself in horrible knots, suspending half the players in the competition, wrecking matches, in the forlorn quest to somehow make driving a car into a brick wall at 50 miles per hour safe. Sport, taken, analysed, handed to medics, dissected, chewed up, and turned out into a scientific practice, with "protocols” to follow. Referees now stand in front of screens going through step-by-step tick box exercises to eventually reach the conclusion that a big bloke could have dipped his shoulder a little bit more and therefore should be sent off and that's the game over with now as a contest.
Football, starting with the verdict of ‘industrial disease’ in Jeff Astle’s inquest, and continuing with cases like the tragedy that now adorns the Ellerslie Road side of our ground, has all this coming and more. Moves are already being made to ban heading in training, and youth games. I don’t think it’s beyond the realms of possibility that in 30 years’ time heading won’t be allowed in the sport, and will be looked back on like doctors recommending cigarettes, or tossers riding around on orcas in Sea World, by future generations as "what the hell were they doing?”. Kids who grow up wanting to play football, and their parents, want to know the sport is safe, that they’re not going to end their days in various vegetative states.
Every footballer, every single footballer, who goes down pretending they’ve got a head injury to stop the match and waste time is complicit and guilty in undermining and damaging the sport, and every single genuine effort to make it safer. They are trivialising the whole thing, for the short-term gain of a 1-0, midweek, early season, away win nobody will ever remember 18 months from now. They damage that cause a little bit more every time they do it. Because what is a serious issue, with dozens of deaths and illnesses already, is weaponised in the name of cheating and shithousing. Head injuries are serious business, they’re not to be pissed around with and used like this. The trained medical professionals who come onto the field and partake in this absolute charade of checking pupils and neck flexion of a player who has nothing wrong with him are complicit and should be ashamed to be so. Some of these people have taken a literal oath, and yet we sit through them trundling onto the pitch — in the case of the Peterborough medical team last year winking at people in the Paddocks on the way off — to facilitate this con job. It is scandalous. It is a scandal.
At the moment every footballer knows if their team is under pressure, if they’re holding onto a lead, if they’re running the clock down, they can sit down, hold their head, and get the game stopped. If they’re lying and there’s nothing wrong with them, nothing will happen to them. Not only no punishment, but when only four minutes is added to the end of the game, and they’re waved straight back onto the field afterwards, they’re actually rewarded for the act. The referees and the sport as a whole are encouraging them to do it more. There’s incentive for you to cloud and mask a serious problem with fallacy and fake. It’s proper ‘boy who cried wolf’ stuff. I want no lawsuits and legal actions 20 years from now from people who sat down on the turf and held the back of their neck because they were frightened they might end up with a 1-1 from a midweek trip to a crap QPR side rather than a 0-1. If Dominic Thompson makes a claim and I’m defending in court I’m showing a clip of this game, him demanding treatment, the game being stopped, the medics coming on, the rigmarole they went through, the trudge to the sideline, and then the spring back onto the field at the first possible opportunity, and the big, exaggerated waggle of his head, dreadlocks flailing this way and that, to confirm to absolutely everybody present what they already knew — that the whole thing was a lie.
If we’re actually taking this seriously, if these head injuries are genuine, if it’s not a cynical ploy, if we do actually care about this… then let’s fucking do it right shall we? Balls deep. You go down clutching your head, fine, we believe you. We believe you. We believe you so much, and we’re so concerned about you, that as well as stopping the game, we’ll remove you from the field for the 15-minute concussion check now in place in the rugby codes. This may mean your best centre back is off for a crucial bit of the game, it may mean we play added time of 15, 20 minutes each game, but, come on, this stuff is important right? To make sure you’re properly ok. If an independent doctor passes you, you can return to the field. But your health is paramount. At all times. Football is just football, come on, there are more important things. And we’re worried about you. A substitute will play in your place in the meantime — I mean, we’ve got five of the fuckers to use haven’t we? To try and stop Klopp moaning for 20 minutes. Let’s use one for this charade.
What, do you suppose, might be the result of this? How do you think it might alter things like the last half an hour of last night’s match? Lots and lots of previously undiagnosed and missed concussions? Or lots and lots of players for whom there was fuck all wrong in the first place packing in this shameless act? Real, genuine head injuries would get the immediate medical treatment they need and deserve. Referees would not be in this invidious position of having no choice but to stop the match, even when they know they’re being conned. I don’t see a downside personally. I’d put every penny I own on Dominic Thompson being absolutely fine if that was the ‘protocol’.
We’re either serious about this shit or we’re not, and the last half an hour of that game last night, with then a paltry four minutes added to the end of it, was not a sport taking this seriously at all, nor one that should be taken seriously by anybody else. It was a farce. A farce for which everybody involved, including and specifically the medics coming onto the field, should be abjectly ashamed to be involved in.
Not, as I stressed at the start, why QPR lost though. We asked in the preview for them to take the good bits of the first half hour at Blackburn, the first half against Boro, the last 20 against Charlton, the comeback against Sunderland, and knit that together into a complete performance. Instead, they took all the bad bits from the rest of those games and squished it together to make a turd. We should be used to it I guess but this one has stung and irritated me more than most, and more than usual for some reason. It takes a prevailing mood of optimism after the Stadium of Light, and switches it back to the concern and worry that this is a very thin QPR squad, heavily reliant on one or two key players being fit and available for every game — a queue led by a street by Chris Willock.
I had a beer with Mel afterwards and he managed five fucks and three cunts in a single sentence, which was some going. Never seen it done. You couldn’t really disagree with him.
Links >>> Photo Gallery >>> Ratings and Reports >>> Message Board Match Thread
QPR: Dieng 6; Laird 6, Dickie 6, Dunne 5, Paal 5 (Adomah 86, -); Dozzell 6, Johansen 5 (Armstrong 68, 7), Field 6; Chair 6, Dykes 4, Roberts 6 (Shodipo 80, 5)
Subs not used: Kakay, Travelman, Masterson, Walsh
Bookings: Dunne 88 (dissent)
Blackpool: Grimshaw 7; Connolly 7, Ekpiteta 7, Williams 7, Thompson 5; Bowler 8 (Corbeanu 87, -), Patino 7 (Carey 45, 6), Dougall 7, Fiorini 6 (Gabriel 64, 6), Lavery 7 (Thorniley 90+4, -); Yates 6
Subs not used: Maxwell, Husband, Hamilton
Goals: Bowler 45 (unassisted)
QPR Star Man — Sinclair Armstrong 7 It is not as hard as our other strikers are making it look.
Referee — Andy Davies (Hampshire) 4 If you can’t tell time you can suck a four out of my arse. They teach kids time in Year One.
Attendance — 12,575 (500 Pool approx.) Terracing in the Lower Loft looked absolutely fantastic, love it already, looking forward to seeing what we can make of that as a support. Enormous credit and best wishes to the Blackpool fans who made that journey, at that expense, for a midweek game, with their away record. They and their team deserved their result.
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 — Action Images
The Twitter @loftforwords