QPR are proving far more adept at playing the media game off the field than they have been the football matches on it as they prepare for a visit from in form Arsenal.
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QPR fans could have been forgiven for thinking they’d been plunged into some personalised real life version of that hideous Rory McIllroy/Jenson Button Santander advert this week. Turn on the TV there’s Tony Fernandes, turn on the radio and it’s Tony Fernandes coming up after the break, log onto the internet and there’s Tony Fernandes, open the airing cupboard and there he is again, look in the fridge and there’s Tony basting himself in the butter. Brother goes for a drink in Victoria after work – ends up talking to Tony Fernandes. I’ve started checking under my bed before I go to sleep for fear Tony might jump out in the night just to make sure I didn’t want the Joey Barton situation clarifying again.
Tony thinks Barton should come back and honour his contract if a deal cannot be agreed with Marseille. He also thinks that season tickets should go back to the price they were before promotion; that the board has learnt from the mistakes of the past; that the players lacked sufficient heart; that the club should be looking to sign younger, hungrier players next time around; that we should be looking for players based on attitude rather than name and much more besides. Tony has been thinking a lot this week – as I guess you would after spunking the money he has on the disaster that QPR has become – and on the face of it the thought he has expressed are absolutely spot on.
The chairman is, as ever, playing the PR game very well. Manager Harry Redknapp was asked at his pre-match press conference this morning whether he thought his boss’ regular media appearances and public persona were healthy for the club, which was a bit like asking Lindsay Lohan what she thought of other crystal meth addicts. Redknapp responded by saying Fernandes is free to express his opinions, and he could hardly have said anything else.
QPR, never more than two weeks away from some sort of media storm anyway, have worked themselves into a position over the past two years where they have the chairman and manager who like to use the press, media and PR opportunities to their advantage the most.
Harry Redknapp has (probably justifiably) been given a free pass from most QPR supporters for his part in the 2012/13 relegation season because people recognise what an absolute mess he inherited when he arrived at the club. That suits Redknapp just fine. Last week’s draw at Reading sealed relegation for the R’s and was met with a smile from the manager every bit as wide as the one his maligned full back Jose Bosingwa sported, and further dented his win percentage at Rangers which is now worse than either Neil Warnock or Mark Hughes who were fired before him. Far from raising such points in the wake of the demotion one newspaper ran a full page puff piece written by Redknapp’s biographer – each career failure dismissed in half a line, each triumph poured over for three paragraphs.
Redknapp is now very firmly at it again. A squad that even a fortnight ago he claimed to still believe was capable of winning five of its last six games and escaping relegation was now apparently not good enough from the start. Unbalanced, poor at the back, toothless up front – no manager would have kept it up. Start the season over again with a new manager in charge and this squad would still be relegated says Redknapp – a far cry from his firm belief it would survive that he was still expressing just a matter of days ago. Now we suddenly can’t move for Rednapp quotes about how “’ard” the Championship is and even the sly suggestion that Rangers actually have more chance of plummeting through the league into the third tier Wolves-style than they do of staging a West Ham-like bounce back.
The moral of course is don’t listen to anything Harry Redknapp says – or at least don’t take it at face value. He was singing the praises of Ale Faurlin as a “great lad, hard worker, good player” a fortnight before he bummed him out on loan to Palermo and replaced him with Jermaine Jenas, whose main attribute seems to be an uncanny Casper the Friendly Ghost impression that enables him to vanish from matches for prolonged periods of time. Redknapp had to talk up the team’s chances to instil confidence and belief, and now he has to talk it down so that Fernandes gets the cheque book out again and lets him buy a load more new players. No wonder he disagreed with his chairman’s assertion that the players haven’t tried hard enough – to agree would be to suggest that this situation can be turned around simply through his famed powers of motivation and then he’d really have his work cut out this summer. Claiming they were never any good in the first place (despite a sizeable medal collection and plenty of evidence to the contrary from their performances at previous clubs) means they have to be replaced. And Harry likes replacing players. Not a wheeler dealer though, you can ”fuck off” if you think that.
All of which leaves a slightly uneasy feeling. Redknapp has hardly been banging the drum and oozing enthusiasm for the Championship campaign that he’s now committed to. In fact he’s inspiring as much confidence as an airline mechanic idly kicking the front tyre of a fully laden 747 before declaring “it might be alright”. He is, as he admitted himself at the fans forum, focused on short term objectives – signing players, winning football matches – when in fact the reason QPR aren’t successful on the pitch is because of a whole series of infrastructure issues and long term problems off it. Is Redknapp staying and signing a load more players for a tilt at a division he gives the impression he’s going into solely for the want of a better offer elsewhere and something to do with his time going to do QPR any good in the long run? We’ll see.
Anyway, Arsenal in the meantime; good team playing well meets poor team playing poorly. Roll up, roll up.
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Team News: QPR will assess the fitness of defender Chris Samba with Nedum Onuoha poised to deputise for the second week in a row if the big African doesn’t make it. Bobby Zamora is back from a three match ban but it remains to be seen whether he will be risked over the closing three matches given the lack of importance to QPR and his long standing hip and ankle injuries. Andros Townsend is fit again after a hamstring complaint, and will no doubt want to play and try to throw a spanner into Arsenal’s Champions League works for his parent club Tottenham. Max Ehmer and Michael Harriman have both returned from lower league loan spells at the conclusion of the League One and Two seasons and are available for selection should Redknapp wish to cast an eye over some of the club’s up and coming players.
Arsenal obviously have plenty still to play for but go into the match without Olivier Giroud – the French striker serves game two of a three match ban for his straight red card in a recent win at Fulham. Lukas Podolski has won a recall in his absence so far. Goalkeeper Lukasz Fabianski won a surprise recent recall only to be sidelined by a rib injury and he is still out, as is permanently injured Abou Diaby.
Elsewhere: This is the least competitive Premier League season in many a long year – not helped by Man Utd’s dominance at one end and the incompetence of QPR and Reading at the other. With each passing week games are becoming less important and only a handful of the remaining fixtures actually matter to anybody. Fulham v Reading, Swansea v Man City and Liverpool v Everton are the dead rubbers this week.
Arsenal fans will have an eye on Tottenham’s game against another team with nothing to play for Southampton and Chelsea’s trip to Man Utd, who are also done for the season, on Sunday. At the bottom it’s now – in all likelihood – one from four for the final relegation spot. Wigan are favourites, five points adrift with a game in hand, and need a win at West Brom who have had the cue on the rack for weeks. They then need to hope that one of Newcastle, Sunderland or Villa has a bad run over the remaining fixtures. The two north east teams both shipped six last weekend and Newcastle now travel to West Ham while Sunderland welcome Stoke in what’s sure to be a thrilling Monday Night Football extravaganza. Villa go to Norwich – the Canaries not technically safe, but all but assured of Premier League football next season.
Look out for two crucial midweek games in hand. Wigan welcome Roberto Martinez’s former club Swansea while Tottenham go to Chelsea in a match that will go a long way towards deciding who claims the final Champions League spot.
Referee: Jon Moss is the listed official for this weekend’s game, although given he was also meant to take QPR’s recent derby at Fulham only to be replaced at late notice by Lee Probert who knows if he’ll actually turn up? Moss’ recent record with QPR should encourage – he awarded a penalty (missed) to the R’s on his last visit against Norwich, and sent off Everton’s Steven Pienaar the time before that. When he refereed Rangers’ home game with Wigan last season he awarded the R’s two spot kicks – one converted, the other missed by Heidar Helguson. For his full QPR case file please click here.
QPR: Sigh. Rangers have won just twice at home this season and scored just 12 goals – the next lowest total is Sunderland’s 18. They have failed to score for the last three matches, scored more than one goal in a game on only six occasions in the league, and scored more than twice just once. They have won just one of the last 11 games at Loftus Road in all competitions. They have held Arsenal to four draws and beaten them twice in the last six league meetings on this ground, but did lose a cup game 6-0 in that period. Last season the R’s won this fixture 2-1 with goals from Adel Taarabt and Samba Diakite.
Arsenal: The Gunners have clicked into gear at just the right time – late in the campaign and right when Tottenham are starting to stutter. A defeat at White Hart Lane at the beginning of March seemed to have sealed a Champions League place for Arsenal’s bitter rivals at their expense but five wins and two draws from seven league games since have propelled Arsene Wenger’s team back into the driving seat. A fine display and 2-0 win at Liverpool earlier in the season brought praise for Steve Bould’s influence on the leaky Arsenal defence – praise that looked foolish when they subsequently started doing silly things like conceding five to Reading in the League Cup and three to Swansea in the Premier League. Blackburn and Bradford subsequently knocked them out of both cups. But their record of just 14 conceded on the road this season is the best in the division and doesn’t bode well for shot-shy QPR. They’ve won six of the last seven away games in all comps (the defeat coming at Spurs) conceding just three goals in the process and keeping four clean sheets – that includes a 2-0 win at Bayern Munich of course. Only Arsenal and Man Utd are yet to lose from a winning position this season and in total they have given up just six points having taken the lead. Only Norwich from the bottom half of the league have beaten Arsenal so far this season.
Prediction: Reigning Prediction League champion Nathan McAllister tells us…
“Despite their supposed defensive frailties, Arsenal actually have by some distance the best away defensive record in the Premier League, having conceded just 14 goals in 17 matches away from the Emirates. No other side in the division has managed to concede less than one goal per away game on average, including both Manchester clubs. Arsenal will certainly fancy their chances of securing another clean sheet here against a Rangers team that has failed to score in almost half (eight out of 17) of their home matches so far this season – and those of course were games that actually had something riding on the outcome. Rangers’ goal scoring woes have very much returned in recent weeks, with three blanks in a row since Loic Remy’s wonder goal against Wigan. Remy’s own form has also dipped, although he may find a bit extra this weekend against his prospective suitors (if certain newspaper reports are to be believed).
“Rangers miserable run of results has actually put them into the bottom three in the Redknapp-era Premier League table - you might remember they were ‘top half’ after the victory over Sunderland. Their record of just four wins in a Premier league season (should it remain) will be the worst of any team in the Premier League era bar the Derby side of 2007/8 (one win) and the Sunderland team of 2005/6 (three wins). To say that it would be difficult to see Rangers adding to this total against Arsenal would be an understatement, especially with the Gunners’ recent league form (30 points from their last 13 matches) and the ‘fact’ that Rangers apparently gave up on the season weeks before their fate was mathematically confirmed. Would anyone predict anything other than a comfortable win for the visitors? Certainly not me.”
Prediction: QPR 0 Arsenal 2
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