QPR boss Iain Dowie was left with much to ponder after another below par display produced only one goal, from a retaken penalty, and a third successive summer defeat this time against Chievo Verona.
Beer is not your friend children, listen to your uncle Clive.
I had intended to go to Northampton this pre-season and that was about it – Northampton isn’t that far from my work and I’m normally at a loose end on a Wednesday so that seemed like a good idea however a prior engagement got in the way and I missed that. Any brief consideration I might have given to attending the Chievo game was extinguished last week when the club set the ticket prices at a frankly scandalous £17, plus £3.50 booking fee of course must not forget that.
Even if I had wanted to pay that I cannot currently speak to the box office to buy a ticket and keep ending up speaking to some thick as pig shit brainless oik in the Ticketmaster call centre in Manchester – they insist that neither they nor QPR take Maestro payments and tell me I should speak to the QPR box office, the number for which takes me back to Ticketmaster of course.
So even had I wanted to buy a ticket I couldn’t have done so because they don’t take my card and won’t let me speak to anybody that does – “thank you for calling QPR” they say at the end of the call. Cheeky bastards, if only I could speak to QPR.
Then I started drinking.
Well it was Friday, Hull FC were about to take an embarrassing smack in the face from Wigan and my working week was over so beer seemed like a good idea. Sadly Drunk Clive is a bit like Evil Homer from the Simpsons and when Sober Clive wakes up the following morning he often finds that Drunk Clive has left him with some mess or other to deal with. Or, in the case of this morning, a £40 train ticket to London apparently booked at the height of the Cobra lager fest on Friday night. So quite unexpectedly I found myself, hungover and shying away from the light, on the half past ten train from Sheffield this morning and consequently you’re stuck with me for the match report this week.
First the ground. I arrived at about half past one and had a bit of a look around. Stories of “oooh you won’t recognise the place” and “it’s like a building site” are greatly exaggerated. Clearly it’s a long way from being finished but for fans who basically use the club shop, the turnstile, the concourse and the seats everything seemed fine and normal – somebody has done a roaring trade in blue and silver paint but that’s about your lot. The club shop looks very good but full of tat, and the Springbok is certainly unrecognisable from what it was. The stadium itself looks a million times better for a lick of paint and the new seats in Ellerslie Road. The big screen wasn’t working today, and was being held up by a hotch potch mess of scaffolding behind the goal at the School End, but it too looks like a welcome addition. The old score board was still bravely clinging to life, apparently it’s being moved to the Loft End shortly – whether it will survive the trip without finally croaking I’m not sure.
The man everybody wanted to see was re-introduced to the crowd ten minutes before the kick off. Lee Cook came out onto the field in a fetching grey cardigan and said a few words over the public address system. He got a great reception but, and hopefully this isn’t an omen, the heavens opened with a sharp thunder storm as soon as he stepped onto the pitch and then immediately dispersed and returned bright sunshine to W12 the second he returned to the stand. The return of Cook means the return of the lovely Mrs Cook to the South Africa Road stand of course and frankly if I was going out with her, you wouldn’t catch me wasting my time getting up every morning to play for Fulham either. Lucky git.
Rangers, in their superb new home shirt, lined up in an unorthodox 4-2-3-1 formation to match up exactly with their Serie A opponents. Simon Walton was left out of the match day squad altogether, he will sign a four year contract at Plymouth Argyle next week, and Martin Rowlands was also not considered with his suspension ruling him out of the three games next week. Add to that Matt Connolly (ankle) Hogan Ephraim (shin) Rowan Vine (leg) and Akos Buzsaky (ankle) and it’s fair to say that there was a fair amount of talent missing from the QPR line up for this one.
Radek Cerny started in goal behind what is likely to be Iain Dowie’s first choice back four for the start of the season Ramage, Gorkss, Hall and Delaney. From then on it got a little bit complicated and to be honest I’m not sure the players really understood what was expected of them – or if they did they certainly had trouble implementing it. Mahon and Leigertwood partnered each other as holding midfielders and, as usual, spent most of the match getting in each other’s way. Blackstock was the lone front man with Agyemang wide right, Ledesma wide left and Angelo Balanta through the middle as a supporting trio behind him.
Cheivo Verona, backed by a noisy and tuneful gang of forty odd supporters in A block of South Africa Road, lined up with Albanian target man Erjon Bogdani as their lone front man in an identical system to the one used by QPR. Bogdani is wanted by Ipswich Town if the rumour mill is to be belived and if Jim Magilton or his scouts were at Loftus Road they will have been impressed as he looked a real handful as a target man and very skilful on the deck. Certainly one of the outstanding players on display on the day.
Whatever Dowie’s reasoning behind the system, be it to match up with the opposition or a genuine hope that he could use this against Barnsley next week, it was clear from the very first minute that Chievo had played it a long time and were very comfortable with it while QPR had never used it before and didn’t know what the hell they were doing.
Chievo started the stronger and could have been in front inside five minutes when lax defending from QPR down at the Loft End allowed Bogdani to nick a toe poke past Cerny from 15 yards out and seemingly give the Italians the lead. Gorkss was having none of it though and chased the ball right down to the goal line before executing a tremendous last ditch clearance from under his own cross bar. The ball fell to Bentivoglio who smashed the rebound goal wards but saw the ball deflected out for a corner by a desperate lunge from Fitz Hall – Cerny was nowhere to be seen and wouldn’t have got to the shot had Hall missed it.
With QPR seemingly still in the dressing room Chievo went close again in the ninth minute when loose control on the edge of the area from Gavin Mahon gave midfielder Vincenzo Italiano an invitation to hit a first time half volley from the edge of the area. Again Hall got a good block on the shot to deny the visitors the lead but it was certainly by more luck than judgement that the scoreline remained deadlocked.
Dowie certainly seems to be staying true to his word about the style of football though. There was very little long ball from QPR and at times they overplayed, stringing passes together in their own half without making any progress at all – in the second half there was clearly more emphasis on forward rather than sideways passes but it was nice to see us trying to play out from the back all the same. Certainly the style of play was very encouraging and it’s a mouth watering prospect to think that Cook, Buzsaky, Vine and possibly Parejo are going to come into a side playing that way.
A nine pass move from back to front down the left hand side with Balanta and Ledesma at its heart drew warm applause from the three and a half thousand QPR fans and hopefully they’ll be more of that when the season starts for real. Ledesma had QPR’s first effort on goal in the tenth minute, drawing his foot back from 30 yards and clearing the cross bar by no more than a foot with a stinging drive.
Sadly though Chievo were soon back on the attack themselves and the impressive Bentivoglio had two chances to open the scoring either side of the quarter hour mark. First he met a cross to the back post full on the volley Gareth Ainsworth style but only succeeded in finding the sparsely populated Loft End. Then 60 seconds later he skinned Ledesma who was covering the left back slot and fired a shot goalwards that caught Delaney square between the legs and left the big Irishman requiring an extended breather behind the goal.
Despite being second best to this point QPR actually got the ball in the net after 24 minutes only to find the goal very harshly disallowed by Premiership referee Howard Webb. This was QPR’s first corner of the game and it was immediately noticeable that Chievo approached the situation by leaving three men right up on the halfway line – one on the centre spot, one on the extreme wide right and one wide left. I’m a great believer in leaving men up when defending a corner because it forces the opposition to pull threats out of the penalty area and Chievo’s unusually ambitious set up meant that Gorkss, who scored eight goals for Blackpool last season, was back on the halfway line with Mahon, Leigertwood and Ramage – none of them slouches in the air.
Still from Ledesma’s delivery Damien Delaney bundled the ball in at the back post only to find Webb whistling for a foul by Hall at the near post – the fact that Hall had been wrestled into submission and almost had the shirt ripped from his back by his marker apparently worthy of a free kick against him. The decision was typical of Webb on the day who, with the assistance of a diabolical linesman on the South Africa Road side, looked very, very rusty himself making poor decisions and being needlessly picky throughout the game. QPR could count themselves unlucky to have this one chalked off.
To make matters worse Chievo went down the other end and opened the scoring on the half hour. Not for the first or last time Leigertwood gave the ball away in his own half and from that point on QPR were always stetched. A cross from Bentivoglio found Bogdani on the edge of the box and after poor defending from Ramage and hesitant keeping by Cerny the Albanian was able to coolly poke the ball into the bottom corner to the delight of the noisy travelling faithful.
Leigertwood and Mahon just don’t work together in midfield for me. They’re both good players in their own right but they’re far too similar and the team always looks very unbalanced when they both play together. It was Leigertwood that gave the ball away for the goal but it could easily have been Mahon who did the same on countless occasions – the frustration of the situation was clearly getting to the Watford man and five minutes after the goal he crudely slid through the back of Marcolini for the second time in the game and was lucky to escape a booking.
As half time approached both teams had a chance to score – first a set move from a free kick by Cheivo ended up with Luciano volleying a wicked cross through the six yard box that only needed a touch to convert it. Then at the other end a trademark rampaging run from Delaney ended with a cute through ball that Patrick Agyemang really should have got to but was beaten to it by the keeper. I’m sorry to say that Agyemang looks heavier and slower than he did last season and had a poor game – leggy, ineffective and providing no threat whatsoever, albeit from an unfamiliar position of right forwards.
Unusually for a friendly neither team made a change at half time and QPR nearly brought themselves back into the game in spectacular fashion three minutes after the oranges. A loose ball wide on the right sat up perfectly for Fitz Hall who, despite being fully forty yards from the goal, decided to have a swing at it. He was so far out there was time for me to say “what’s he trying that from there for” before his missile like shot flew inches wide of the top corner. It would have ripped the net off the back of the posts had it found the top corner and it really wasn’t far away at all. Hall looks fitter, quicker and leaner than he did last season and really impressed me.
As the hour approached the substitutions began and QPR altered their system. Dowie replaced Balanta with Alberti and went to a 4-4-2 formation with Agyemang and Blackstock together up front. Balanta could consider himself unlucky to go off so early and must stand a decent chance of starting against Barnsley – despite playing an unfamiliar position and not being used often enough by his team mates he was at the heart of the best moves QPR put together and really looked the part. I’d certainly be tempted to start him.
The change of system was much needed but frustratingly Chievo doubled their lead within seconds of the change – again the R’s were caught napping badly at a set piece. A corner down the Chievo left was played short and with nobody closing the ball down at any point the Italians were able to calmly tee up Bentivoglio on the edge of the penalty area and he sent a rasping low drive through the crowd of players and into the bottom corner of the net. It was no more than the visitors deserved in truth but the nature of the goal and the abysmal defending that led to it will be a massive concern to Iain Dowie – we’ve conceded from set pieces with worrying regularity this summer but to be fair the back four itself looks solid, confident and competent. Everybody just switches off as soon as the ball goes out of play.
A minute or two later Rangers tried a set piece of their own – Ledesma whipped a wicked low delivery in from the right wing that keeper Lorenzo Squizzi did well to keep out at the near post with Blackstock waiting to pounce. It was the first real save that Squizzi had to make in the match.
He was called into more strenuous action three minutes later. Matteo Alberti fell theatrically in the corner of the penalty area and a generous flag from the linesman presented Dexter Blackstock with a chance to double his summer goal haul from the penalty spot. Squizzi is your typical Italian keeper – tall, tanned, imposing, good looking and confident. He looked huge between the sticks and Blackstock never looked confident – ultimately rolling a tame effort a few feet to the keeper’s left and watching on as his opponent calmly dived on the ball and saved.
Howard Webb, picky and fussy all afternoon, saved Blackstock’s blushes by ordering a retake and this time the striker made no mistake with a similarly tame effort to the other side of the keeper – the Chievo man dived the wrong way on this occasion. In fairness it was hard to get excited, it wasn’t a penalty in the first place and Blackstock’s first kick was so poor that Webb seemed to order a retake out of pity and charity, a point made rather too forcefully by Marco Malago who was booked for his comments to the referee in the aftermath of the goal.
Blackstock was replaced by Sam Di Carmine after this and in truth he’d done little in the 65 odd minutes he was on the pitch. I wasn’t impressed with Di Carmine either. He won little in the air, didn’t hold the ball up well enough, showed a poor touch on numerous occasions and posed Chievo no threat whatsoever.
The last half hour of friendly games are turgid to watch and seemingly pointless to take part in because every time the ball goes dead, and with Webb in an uncharacteristically whistle happy mood that was very frequently, both teams make substitutions. Dowie sent on Bolder for Mahon, Stewart for Gorkss and Ainsworth for Leigertwood and Chievo responded with four or five changes of their own. Gorkss certainly did himself no harm with a calm and composed display at the back and he really looks the part, particularly bringing the ball out from the back and distributing it. I have great hopes for the partnership between him and Hall on this evidence.
Having said that Stewart almost scored with his first touch ten seconds after entering the field. Another good corner from Ledesma found the Jamaican unmarked at the back post but Squizzi just about managed to palm the ball off his forehead and out for another corner in an aerial battle. Webb’s insistence on lecturing everybody in the penalty area before every set piece only added to the stop start nature of the game.
Ramone Rose replaced Ledesma and Camp came on for Cerny to a great reception from the crowd in the final ten minutes but there was little other action of note until two minutes from time when a flowing move that included at least 20 passes, each cheered by the travelling fans, ended with Gasparetto heading over at the near post when he should have scored.
A minute of uneventful stoppage time followed before the final whistle and a few mumbles and grumbles from the home faithful. Plenty of positives but plenty of negatives as well.
On the positive side I like the look of Hall and Gorkss as a partnership. They’re both good in the air, quick across the ground and composed in possession. Hall looks a lot more stream lined than he did last season and he’s not stretching and lumbering about as he was last season while clearly suffering with a groin injury. He looked more like the player I remember at Oldham and Palace and is going to be a fine part of our team this season I think. Likewise Gorkss who showed some real moments of class. Ramage was solid but looked short of pace and not entirely impressive while Delaney was excellent as usual. Stick Connolly in at right back and that’s a back four to be very proud of and one we can rely on.
In midfield Mahon and Leigertwood did ok, but they really can’t play together. It’s got to be one or the other. Both showed good flashes followed by poor possession conceding moments. Ledesma looked neat and tidy with the ball, delivered good balls into the penalty area and looks well capable of playing a key role for us in this league. Likewise, although to a lesser extent, Alberti who came on in the second half. Both players must learn to stay on their feet and cut out the theatrics if they’re to survive at this level though – Ledesma was particularly guilty of some histrionics under minimal contact but worked well and tackled hard to win the ball back to show that he’s not as lightweight as he might look or behave. Angelo Balanta too improves every time I see him and could have a big part to play.
On the negative side we didn’t score from open play, and never really looked like doing so. Blackstock certainly isn’t suited to playing up front alone and got little joy while Agyemang was as poor as I’ve ever seen him. One run past a full back in the first five minutes apart he looked laboured and miles off the pace. On this evidence I’d start Balanta ahead of him next week. Di Carmine was equally ineffective when he came on.
Clearly a striker is a very, very pressing priority for QPR before the end of the August transfer window – we just don’t look like we’ve got goals in us to me and while it could be said that we’re not creating a load of chances that wasn’t the case at Kilmarnock by all accounts and with Cook, Buzsaky, Vine and Rowlands to come back in that problem is well in hand. Finishing any chances that quartet lay on is an issue that needs addressing.
Chievo are of course no mugs – a Serie A team after winning Serie B last season. In Bentivoglio and Bogdani they had the two outstanding players on the pitch and if Ipswich really are looking at the latter they’ll have seen plenty to admire in this performance, he could be a big threat should they sign him. QPR were also missing six of their best players who would certainly have been involved and it’s pre-season so we shouldn’t read anything into it.
However Cheivo’s season starts several weeks later than ours and therefore their pre-season is only just beginning while we kick off for real next week. That makes it concerning for me just how easily they outplayed us at times. Still, we’ll know if the concerns are with or without merit this time next week.
QPR Cerny 6 (Camp -), Ramage 6, Hall 7, Gorkss 7 (Stewart -), Delaney 7, Mahon 6 (Bolder -), Leigertwood 6 (Ainsworth -), Agyemang 5, Balanta 7 (Alberti 6), Ledesma 7 (Rose -), Blackstock 5 (Di Carmine 5)
Goals: Blackstock pen 69 (assisted Alberti)
Chievo: Squizzi, Mantovani (Scardina), Mandelli, Malago (Frey), Maroclini (Rigoni), Bentivoglio, De Oliveira (D’Anna), Iunco (Farias), Rickler, Bogdani, Italiano
Subs not used: Aldegani, Gasparetto, Moro, Sorrentino, Pellissier, Sabe, Grippo
Goal: Bogdani, Bentivoglio
Referee – Howard Webb (Rotherham) 5 - Normally a superb referee, certainly the best in the country, but got key decisions wrong today and was fussy throughout. Shouldn’t have disallowed the goal in the first half and it was never a penalty in the second half, although that decision was given by one of the equally poor linesmen. Like everybody else looked rusty after a summer break.
Attendance – 3540 Extortionate ticket prices limited the crowd and everybody was able to spread out in the South Africa Road and Loftus Road stands. The Chievo fans were great value, arriving outside the ground two hours before kick off and announcing their arrival with several loud and vociferous chants that frightened those queuing at the box office half to death. Great range of tunes and songs on display throughout the match and a credit to their club.
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