QPR eased into the third round of the League Cup with a comfortable 3-0 victory against Walsall at Loftus Road on Tuesday night.
Below decks, Julio Cesar: arguably one of the top ten goalkeepers in world football flying in from one of Europe’s biggest and best clubs to discuss terms with Queens Park Rangers.
Cesar swept through the Loftus Road reception in an Abercrombie and Fitch t-shirt a few hours before kick off, leaving a gang of bemused Walsall fans and Sky Sports’ Andy Burton trailing in his wake. Burton used to be Sky’s go to man in this transfer deadline week – sitting at the desk in the studio pretending to receive texts from Leroy Lita – but after a rather unprofessional comment in amongst the Richard Keys and Andy Gray misogyny he’s now relegated to South Africa Road in a blue suit and brown shoe combo.
Professionalism was a bit of a running theme on Tuesday night at Loftus Road – mercifully for Hughes and the 6,000 hardy souls who bothered to turn up the performance of the team on the pitch was a rare beacon of competence through a fog of transfer window farce.
QPR have gone out of their way to stress that Marseille bound (or perhaps not) Joey Barton would not have been signed by the current regime because of the due diligence now carried out on all aspects of any new signing. And yet while Cesar thrashed out the finer points of his deal downstairs, out on the field stood Robert Green. This new era and approach to transfers hasn’t, apparently, stopped QPR replacing an adequate goalkeeper with a similarly adequate goalkeeper on four times as much money, and then replacing him after three matches with a good one on twice as much money again.
Mark Hughes says it was always his intention to bring in two goalkeepers this summer. And if you believe that…
There’s a degree of early pressure on the QPR manager with things not exactly going to plan for his new look side, which perhaps explains the strength of the team he fielded here for this League Cup second round fixture. Green lined up behind Jose Bosingwa and Ryan Nelsen on their full QPR debuts as well as Anton Ferdinand and Fabio. Further forward there was a welcome return to first team action for Alejandro Faurlin who ruptured knee ligaments the last time Rangers faced a lower division side in a cup competition back in January. He played in the centre with Ji Sung Park while Junior Hoilett and Shaun Wright-Phillips manned the wings. Bobby Zamora and Andy Johnson resumed their Fulham partnership in attack.
When Jamie Paterson drilled over with the visitors’ first shot on goal after two minutes plenty in the ground must have feared a repeat of the numerous cup disasters QPR have conjured up against lower league sides recently. But unlike previous years there was a decent attitude and work rate about the QPR performance and they were able to cruise to a comfortable victory in third gear.
With Alejandro Faurlin pulling the strings at the heart of the midfield as if he’d never been away the R’s fired a couple of early warning shots across the Walsall bows. First Wright-Phillips saw a shot blocked away for the game’s first corner, and then he got on the end of a flowing move down the left which saw Park feed in Fabio on the overlap and Wright-Phillips toe his cross wide of the near post.
The difference between this QPR team and the one that, say, Neil Warnock turned out in defeat against Rochdale at this stage of the same competition last season was the amount of players with something to prove. Every one of these players needed a decent performance to maintain or win back their place in the starting 11 for the forthcoming league games and you could really tell. I was particularly impressed with the way Andy Johnson went about his business and he was unlucky not to finish with at least one goal to his name. In the eleventh minute his pace carried him onto a Zamora through ball behind the Walsall defence but his fierce drive was beaten away at the near post by Walsall keeper David Gróf. From the resulting corner Ryan Nelsen powered a header wide when he may have done better.
But that QPR defence still more comparable to the rope bridge Indiana Jones always seems to get stuck in the middle of, rather than any triumph of Victorian engineering. You wouldn’t want to rely on this back four against Premiership teams the way it’s playing – six goals in two league games so far tells its own story – and it was lucky not to ship a seventh goal of the season in the eighteenth minute.
Referee Michael Naylor – no doubt thrilled to be dragged down from South Yorkshire for such a prestigious midweek fixture – awarded a generous free kick to Ashley Hemmings after an alleged foul by Anton Ferdinand. One thing football players should be able to do regardless of their ability relative to their opposition is deliver a nice set piece and the resulting free kick here was an absolute peach. Hemmings whipped the ball in with real venom with his left foot, drawing it back towards the near post with Walsall attackers rushing towards it from left to right. Striker Will Grigg came closest to getting a touch, but the visitors were unfortunate not to see the ball sail all the way into the net without a touch. Ultimately it landed safely in the gloves of Rob Green.
Reprieved, Rangers played out from the back and after a fine turn and pass from Faurlin under pressure, and a similarly well weighted ball from Johnson to the right flank, Jose Bosingwa crossed low to the near post where Gróf was able to collect unchallenged.
More flowing football down that right wing at the midway point of the half saw Wright-Phillips play in Bosingwa whose inch perfect cross really should have been converted by Johnson at the near post but despite being left unmarked he contrived to head wide. Andy Butler led the Walsall defence on the night, and has been named the club’s Player of the Year the last two seasons, but he and his colleagues were being taught a lesson in movement by Zamora and Johnson here. Butler, you may recall, was Ian Holloway’s original transfer target when the club bought Ian Evatt from Chesterfield back in 2005 but the R’s were priced out of the running by Butler’s employers at the time Scunthorpe United.
A minute later and Johnson was in again, played through into the right channel by Wright-Phillips who just got a toe to a loose ball in midfield ahead of the onrushing Walsall man. Johnson cut the ball back from the byline to Faurlin whose shot from the edge of the area struck a defender in the face. The situation was retrieved by Hoilett down the QPR left and he in turn set up Park who struck from an almost identical position as Faurlin but again saw the effort blocked away to safety. As usual, the resulting corner was headed away at the near post.
It felt like a goal was coming, and sure enough QPR took the lead just before the half hour. Wright-Phillips fed the ball right to Zamora and then raced into the penalty area in time to reach the target man’s exquisite through ball and poke home his first ever competitive goal in QPR colours. Hard not to admire the quality of the pass from Zamora, but the time he was given to pick it and the lack of tracking on the goal scorer will not have pleased Walsall’s manager Dean Smith – hold your hands up if you’re beaten by genuine ability from a higher division side, but don’t lose goals through not doing the basics correctly.
Things didn’t get much better for Smith as he was forced into an early change: former Orient man Adam Chambers went off to be replace by James Baxendale. His side then picked up the night’s only caution as Dean Holden was accused of a gratuitous foul on Zamora as the striker held up a ball and awaited the arrival of supporting runners.
In between the sub and the booking Anton Ferdinand headed Wright-Phillips’ long, straight free kick down the throat of the goalkeeper
Rangers were reasonably decent value for their 1-0 half time advantage.
The Super Hoops started the second period on the front foot as well. Faurlin’s awareness and pass execution set Fabio free down the left flank and the loaned Man Utd full back embarked on a marauding run across the face of the penalty area which ended with a through ball for Wright-Phillips who hit a low shot seeking out the far bottom corner that Walsall did well to block away. The diminutive winger then took two quick fire corners low into the near post area – the first looked like a planned move and Walsall were perhaps fortunate to survive, the second looked like a load of crap.
One thing Rob Green probably could have done without was 45 minutes in front of a gang of boisterous Walsall fans big enough to make a racket in his ear, but small enough for him to hear what each individual was saying to him. Another thing is a low, bouncing, awkward shot from 25 yards by West Brom loanee Florent Cuvelier. When the two factors combined four minutes after half time the former West Ham man looked the very definition of nervous and he was extremely fortunate to turn a bungled save around the post after falling to earth in slow motion.
The goalkeeper’s nerves won’t have been calmed much by the resulting corner which was headed flush onto the cross bar by Grigg who was then unlucky not to convert at the second attempt as the ball bobbled around the six yard area. That’s the fourth time in three matches this season that a team has won a header in the QPR box and subsequently hit the cross bar.
Walsall were having their ten minutes in the game and after Park was adjudged to have fouled Cuvelier on the edge of the area the League One side executed a clever free kick routine that at first looked as if they’d made a complete mess of things, but then suddenly opened up for debutant Andy Taylor, a former QPR loanee, to have a smack with his left foot from the edge of the penalty box. Robert Green came to successfully claim the resulting corner after Aton Ferdinand had blocked Taylor’s shot behind. When Hemmings then shot wide after collecting the ball in broken play Mark Hughes reached for his cards for the first time and sent on Kieran Dyer instead of Junior Hoilett who had been fairly anonymous throughout.
Dyer had infamously only managed four minutes of competitive action for QPR in the previous 12 months but he, along with Fabio and Bobby Zamora, showed impressive attitude and work rate in the sixty second minute to repeatedly shut down Walsall possession in their own half and create a shooting opportunity for Park who lashed the ball off towards the corner flag.
For all of Hughes’ recent failings he deserves credit for the way he’s handling Zamora at the moment. He has a languid playing style that can at times give a false impression of laziness and disinterest, but it is an indisputable fact that when the going gets too tough and the cause seems lost, or things are too easy, then Zamora’s participation in proceedings dips noticeably. By leaving him out of the team initially Hughes has created a situation where Zamora is working hard regardless of circumstance to keep his place. He was the top QPR man at Norwich on Saturday and scored the equalising goal, and he was arguably man of the match again in this game which he put to bed in the sixty sixth minute with a glorious lobbed finish from the corner of the penalty area that made a mug out of Gróf and nestled satisfyingly in the back of the Loft End net. A great goal, and thoroughly deserved.
Rangers smelt blood and immediately after the restart Zamora was a matter of inches away from tapping home Johnson’s low cross. Then Park intercepted a nervous pass out of defence and struck from distance but saw his effort deflect wide.
Both managers had seen enough for differing reasons. Walsall replaced Grigg, who’d done reasonably well, with George Bowerman and Mark Hughes sent on Armand Traore and Djibril Cissé for Wright-Phillips and Zamora.
Cissé has looked strangely out of sorts in the opening league games after a prolific pre-season, but he looked back in the mood here against a tiring Walsall backline. First he intelligently played Traore into the area on an overlapping run but the Senegalese wideman fired high over the bar. Then he sought out the far corner of the net himself with a crisp finish from wide in the penalty area but he’d already been adjudged offside.
There was an offside flag down at the School End a moment later as QPR’s defence threatened to implode once more – although I can’t for the life of me tell you why it was raised. New arrival Bowerman seemed to have a clear run on Robert Green after Jose Bosingwa’s dreadful back header which was never going to reach his goalkeeper but as the substitute attempted a Zamora-like lob over the onrushing keeper he was interrupted by the flag and whistle. But surely Bosingwa had headed the ball back? Perhaps it was the angle I was sitting at – it didn’t seem the right decision to me at all.
Walsall subsequently sent on Jake Jones for Ashley Hemmings – who I’d been impressed with in parts – but quickly shipped a third goal when three defenders went to head clear the same corner, Ale Faurlin returned the ball with interest and forced a save from Gof via a deflection, and Bosingwa picked up the scraps and fired them into the roof of the net for his first ever QPR goal.
Once again Rangers then threatened straight from the kick off, but this worrying trend of Djibril Cissé being offside all the time continued as the Frenchman was pulled up as he fired a shot which Gof did well to save.
Three minutes of added time took on the appearance of a game of three-and-in between Cissé and Gof as first the keeper made a nervy stop from a mishit shot after Dyer had crossed from the byline, then the bleach-blonde striker fired tamely into his gloves after a long, mazy dribble.
Apparently there is another round to this cup now – I know, I was surprised as well – and we shall await the drawing of that on Thursday night with some interest. QPR have enough quality players at their disposal to have a real tilt at a competition that others perhaps don’t take quite so seriously until the latter rounds. There’s an opportunity here dying to be taken and unlike in previous years Rangers seem to be adopting a professional approach towards trying to take that.
Leeds United home or away looks pretty nailed on at some point but in the meantime it’s back to the wild thrashing about in the transfer window for another day or two. More blood.
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QPR: Green 6, Bosingwa 6, Ferdinand 5, Nelsen 6, Fabio 6, Wright-Phillips 6 (Traore 68, 6), Park 6, Faurlin 7, Hoilett 5 (Dyer 60, 6), Johnson 7, Zamora 7 (Cissé 69, 7)
Subs: Murphy, Onuoha, Derry, Mackie
Goals: Wright-Phillips 29 (assisted Zamora), Zamora 66 (assisted Dyer), Bosingwa 84 (assisted Faurlin)
Walsall Gróf 6, Butler 6, Holden 6, Purkiss 6, Taylor 5, Featherstone 6, Chambers 6 (Baxendale 37, 6), Cuvelier 6, Hemmings 7 (Jones 78, -), Grigg 7 (Bowerman 70, 6), Paterson 6
Subs: Walker, Benning, Downing, Williams
Bookings: Holden 42 (foul)
QPR Star Man – Bobby Zamora 7 A goal and an assist to cap a hard working display from the target man. I was impressed with him and Johnson, who both need to produce good performances to earn starting places in the QPR attack ahead of Cissé and Taarabt – and when Cissé came on he looked like he was going about things with rather more gusto than one might expect in such a fixture. It seems one thing Mark Hughes has got right in the transfer market is his strike force. Credit also to Alejandro Faurlin whose passing game belied his lengthy absence and added a much needed calm, creative dimension to our midfield.
Referee – Michael Naylor 8 Very little to referee in a pretty uncompetitive game, did what he had to do without fuss.
Attendance 6,129 (250 Walsall approx) You have to wonder how long this competition can continue in its present form when attendances like this are common place in the early rounds, and all clubs are closing big parts of their grounds for matches. When looking for solutions people always seem to talk about revising the format of the competition – seeding it, adding the Scottish clubs, whatever. Personally I think the solution to the attendance problems in both knock out cup competitions is very simple – you used to get in free with your season ticket, and now you don’t. QPR will have made somewhere in the region of £80,000 from this match before deducting costs such as policing, stewarding, matchday staff etc. That’s a pittance to a club in our position. Surely this is an opportunity to reward season ticket holders, give members discounted tickets and most importantly offload thousands of free tickets onto local school kids who may well then want to come back to another game at full price. It’s got to be better than this hasn’t it? The place was like a morgue. QPR, and others like us, need to start thinking about how to market these early round games more effectively.
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