A big statement piece from QPR, and their unorthodox target man Michael Frey, as they come from behind to win 2-1 at Kenilworth Road against Luton Town.
There was plenty here for the amateur tacticians, the Monday morning quarterbacks and Football Manager enthusiasts to get their teeth stuck into.
Queens Park Rangers, three games deep on their Championship season and yet to win, initially persisting with a play-out-from-the-back technique that seemed to be doing more harm than good. On one of the division’s tightest pitches, in arguably its most hostile ground, the attempt to play out and around Luton Town seemed only to encourage the hosts to step onto them, and onto them again.
By the time the ball did reach Karamoko Dembele, on the rare occasions it did, he was so wide, and so deep, as to be rendered completely ineffective. Eventually he collapsed to the ground holding his face, rather embarrassingly.
All high press and low block. A lot of death stares over the shoulder from captain Steve Cook towards goalkeeper Paul Nardi. When the Frenchman parried a downward header from McGuinness off a first half free kick the ball unfortunately rolled into the net off Jimmy Dunne. If the Hatters could have picked a visitor to suffer that fate, Dunne would have occupied the top three positions. He, and we, have history at Kenilworth Road, and it was starting to feel like a long old night at that stage.
One substitution and tactical twitch later, and Marti Cifuentes had his team completely in charge of the game. The decision to start Alfie Lloyd after he’d impressed against the same opponent in the cup on Tuesday was noble, worthy, but predictably quite the step for somebody who’d only played five Football League games in his life. Kenilworth Road on a Friday night? Come on Marti, you’re good but you can’t hold back the tide. With his second half removal came Paul Smyth to torment Alfie Doughty exactly as he had in the cup and, more crucially, a move to the ten role for Dembele. Big learning number one from the opening month is surely that Karamoko the winger is a decent player, Karamoko the ten is a different gravy. Half an hour later it was looking like a long old night for altogether different and more pleasurable reasons.
There was also plenty here for the amateur sports psychologist.
Why, when they finished last season so strongly, and are clearly in such a different place from this time last year, do QPR keep falling into these grief holes from which they seemingly cannot escape. Against West Brom and Sheff Utd the concession of one goal was immediately followed by more, and that could easily have been the case here. Cook’s goal saving challenge on Abebayo was enormous, his yellow card for walking away with the ball and delaying the restart less so. Adebayo and Doughty both hit shots that took deflections, went past Nardi, and missed the bottom corner by mere inches. Jack Colback collapsed on the ball on the edge of his own box under pressure from three men – good job Doughty chipped that free kick wide. A swift counter after Dembele got caught doing step overs would have been a second goal but for too many Luton players trying to get involved at the back post – there’s a surplus of kitchen staff here, and it’s ruining the product.
Pace and physicality all too much, Luton putting it in on us and in on us again, turning the defence around, squeezing the pitch. A footballing suffocation. All year long, we’ve played our game. Right now, you’re playing theirs.
And how, on the flip side, do Luton take that first half performance and turn it into their second half showing? Sure, QPR still needed Nardi to make a big save from Adebayo to keep the score at 1-0, and then late in the day sprawling through a crowd to maintain the 2-1 advantage, but the visitors took the second half away from their hosts and Rob Edwards’ team looked strangely passive about the whole thing. The Hatters, in this stadium, with those two massive bastards up front, are known as, and should at the very least be, an uncompromising opponent. They were praised for their pluck in the Premier League battling a deficiency in resources and enormous injury list, but it seems those 24 league defeats (11 at home) have softened them up somewhat. There was a fragility about them here that I haven’t seen before. Once relinquished, their grip on the game never returned.
Once Dembele had stolen gobby Doughty’s soul and charged him a yellow card to give it back right in front of the away end the power base in this match shifted entirely. Clark would also later take a card for chopping through the former Celtic youngster - really the only way they could stop him.
This was all exemplified and personified by the performance of lone striker Michael Frey. A figure of some fun in his QPR career so far, creaking about like a dad in a dads and lads match (not one of the young dads either), here he gave his best performance for the club, crawling all over £10m centre back Mark McGuinness (is there a cooling off period?) all night and physically beasting his opponent.
The Swiss striker’s work for the first goal was exceptional. Manoeuvring McGuinness exactly where he wanted him under a high ball, and then holding him off with upper body power across the best part of 15 yards into the area. As McGuinness clambered over him I wondered if he would enter the Frey, but when the ball was subsequently squared perfectly for Nicolas Madsen’s first QPR goal it was clear he’d have to get in the queue. Within two minutes Kenneth Paal had hung up a back post cross for Frey to walk onto and thunderbastard home with a beautifully executed side foot volley.
It could, should, have been more. Kaminski denied Dunne a personal equaliser, saving well when his downward, deflected header seemed certain to hit the net. Sub Lucas Andersen walked onto a golden chance midway through the second half but seemed spooked by the same ghost that plagues Mick McCarthy and actually stepped over the ball with nobody around or behind him. Typical of the Dane’s personality really. I do not like this chance, let us wait… for another chance. It mattered little, though it might have tempered the fear through the obligatory torturous period of stoppage time in which Joe Taylor headed over when, had he left it, Adebayo would surely have scored behind him.
But, honestly, nights like this aren’t about tactics and formations and what managers could or would or should have done differently. They’re not about pop psychology or body language reads or your bold take on it all. And if you think it is, you’re not doing it right.
It’s about the Thameslink to Shitsville and the train beers that prepare you for what’s to come. It’s about walking into a desolate cave like this one, like somewhere a knight would go to fight a demon in a Dürer etching, and standing there watching your team get battered. It’s about the helplessness you feel as those long balls to Adebayo drop out of the floodlights towards you, and how vulnerable your players look in dealing with them. It’s that here-we-go-again feeling after you fall behind, and the celebrations from the home crowd, and the shitgibbons to your immediate right doing the whole climb-the-fence, hold-me-back-Gaz routine in your direction. It’s the thought of the Oak Road blockade, the police-led snail trail back to the station, the early hours arrival home all for nothing. All for another defeat on the road. All for Luton bastard Town singing "Queens Park Rangers, it’s happened again.” All for what-on-earth-am-I-doing-with-my-life. And £6 for a Cruzcampo in a plastic glass. IT’S BREWED IN MANCHESTER, DON’T THINK WE DON’T KNOW. Cruzcampo my arse. One nil. May as well be eight.
But it is only one nil, isn’t it. Yehhhh, it is only one nil. And, as Mark Strong taught us in Fever Pitch, if you want to win a game 2-0 you’ve got more chance of doing so if it’s nil nil at half time than you have if you’re eight goals down. Of course, Mel, the biggest problem with Fever Pitch? If QPR had needed to win two nil at Anfield to win the league title… you’d have fucking been there. Because when you are there, and you see Dembele give Doughty the full pledge, turn and prestige right in front of you, and you remember this grown man with a blonde rinse giving the South Africa Road stand the big ‘un on Tuesday shortly before a penalty shoot out blew up in his face, you start to get back into it. You start to grow in a bit of belief. You start to think yehhhhh, it is only one nil. Fuck these.
Fuck these indeed. Soon Michael Frey starts to do exactly that. Dry slapping their £10m centre back around the gaff. Mark McGuinness, £10m (I keep repeating it because if you say these things often enough they become true, and it cannot possibly be true at this moment), flapping around like Christ in a crucifix shop under pressure from… Michael Frey. Out of my way puny boy. They’re coming towards you now, the pair of them, wrestling away. Frey’s got the right side of his man from a QPR point of view. The ball’s bobbling and bouncing all over the show. Two enemy hands on his shoulders, he’s surely going to fall. Just you be ready with that throaty penalty appeal. Now he is falling. God, I can’t take it. Last, desperate effort to fling out a leg and toe the ball across the box and… to where? Where’s this going? You follow it across. A flash of blue and white. Could literally be anybody. Ball in the net. And it’s live. Bodies over tired bodies. People going low as they lose their feet, friends disappearing from view like those couples who decided to jump together from the Titanic as it went down. Kath’s banged her head on the concrete. People going high, clambering up stanchions and pillars, less to escape the carnage, more to get a better vantage point to deliver their wanker sign to the right. So that it’s your wanker sign they remember most, so it’s your wanker sign they see when they close their yes tonight. Aggggggggggggggh.
Safe standing becomes flying death trap. We’re still dealing with the walking wounded. Still busy turning the song round – Luton Town, that’s twice in a week. Still trying to work out who scored. Still booking the Saturday morning trip to iSmash. That’s phone number one of the season. Still picking bits of metal out of our scalps. Barely noticing QPR are already working the ball from right to left again. Through Dembele, of course, and goalscorer Madsen, to Kenneth Paal who, if I bend my back slightly and lean sort of behind and to the right, I can peer around the goal, a post and a dividing fence and see him wrapping a left boot around the ball, sending it arcing up into the sky and out of my view.
Well, now we’re all heads on a swivel again. Working our field of vision back across the penalty area in a sweeping motion, counting the QPR players, counting the Luton players, trying to judge where this one’s going. Little do we know it’s got the curvature of a Brazilian underwear model’s lower back. Over and past Madsen, Colback, Field, Dembele and Smyth it bends. David Ginola mange, tomato ketchup. We’re running out of QPR players but, as they’re all marked, Luton defenders must be running in quite short supply as well. Surely? Simple maths innit. Suddenly there’s just me, staring out through the net, at Michael Frey, all by himself, kicking a football harder than a football has ever been kicked before, straight at my face. There’s an explosive sound off his boot, the click and collect of the net immediately, and the dissolution of common decency and society in the pit behind the goal once more. Dogs and cats living together. Mass hysteria. As QPR score two in two minutes. And Luton are rocking. Last orders at Mabel’s Tavern is it?
4 hours sleep and still absolutely buzzing!
That away end… 😮💨😮💨#QPR pic.twitter.com/Dpib7DKcWQ— S Michail (@smichail89) August 31, 2024
Michi Fucking Frey #QPR 🕺 pic.twitter.com/Ps8n2o422Y— JT (@jordthomasqpr) August 30, 2024
If you are doing this right, you’ll wake up tomorrow feeling like you’ve been fucked by a train. Because it’s all about vibes, a game like this. And, given I was three rows off the front, watching the whole thing through the goal and between Paul Nardi’s legs, that’s probably just as well.
Links >>> Ratings and Reports >>> Message Board Match Thread
Luton: Kaminski 6; Bell 5, McGuinness 4 (Walsh 75, 5), Burke 5 (Menghi 46, 5); Walters 6, Baptiste 6 (Nelson 84, -), Clark 5, Doughty 5; Morris 5, Adebayo 6, Chong 5 (Taylor 75, 5)
Subs not used: Holmes, Mpanzu, Nakamba, Shea, Woodrow
Goals: Dunne og 18 (unassisted)
Yellow Cards: Chong 1 (deliberate handball?), Doughty 48 (foul), Clark 79 (foul)
QPR: Nardi 7; Dunne 6, Cook 7, Clarke-Salter 6, Paal 7; Field 7, Colback 6 (Andersen 75, 6); Lloyd 4 (Smyth 57, 7), Madsen 6 (Varane 75, 6), Dembele 7 (Saito 83, -); Frey 8 (Celar 83, -)
Subs not used: Santos, Dixon-Bonner, Morrison, Walsh
Goals: Madsen 59 (assisted Frey), Frey 62 (assisted Paal)
Yellow Cards: Cook 30 (delaying restart), Field 51 (foul)
QPR Star Man – Michael Frey 8 Really looked the part.
Referee – Robert Madley (Huddersfield) 7 Booked Chong after a minute for, it seemed to me, falling onto the ball and handling it trying to referee the game himself. That’s a punchy yellow card early in a game like this. Jack Colback later did exactly the same thing, got a direct free kick given against him, but no card. He didn’t seem to really settle down until he’d been able to book a QPR player for something similar, and Steve Cook became that fall guy when he walked away with the ball in his hands just as Luton were trying to crank up the pressure with quick free kicks and throw ins. Mostly though, and certainly after that, I thought he had excellent, authoritative control of a difficult game.
Attendance 11,798 (1,250 QPR) They've celebrated in a certain way.
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