The now customary second half collapse cost QPR the points they deserved at Sheffield United on Saturday.
If Bryan Robson is going to keep his job at Sheffield United, and despite this win you’ll struggle to find a Blades fan who actually wants him there, then he’ll have to find out what made his team turn in their best performance of the season in the last half an hour of this game and replicate it in future matches. United have been absolutely dire for the past six weeks, and were so again for nearly an hour here, before turning it on and showing Premiership class to score two goals and going close to adding countless more besides. If Luigi De Canio is to stay with Queens Park Rangers for any length of time, and despite this defeat you’ll struggle to find a QPR fan who doesn’t want a bit of stability and long term planning rather than another sacking, then he’ll have to address the soft centre running through a side that has imploded in the second half of too many matches this year. Rangers have lead five matches without going on to win this year, and they’ve lost four of those. This latest disaster was the most spectacular. Rarely has a game turned around so spectacularly. From dominating possession, the tempo of the game and the direction of play Rangers suddenly, for no apparent reason, found themselves swamped in midfield and being given the run around by United’s attack. The turning point was the Blades’ equaliser against the run of play – a farcical own goal from a corner that any one of five QPR players could have dealt with before it ended up in the back their net. The second goal wasn’t without defensive assistance either but having got back into the game United were the only team in it. That was, until stoppage time when controversy erupted over a goal line clearance from Matthew Kilgallon that denied the R’s an equaliser. Hand or head? The replays are inconclusive. Rangers returned Rowan Vine to their line up after he signed permanently from Birmingham. He started wide on the left with Kieran Lee making a full Rangers debut wide right. Mahon and Rowlands played in the middle of midfield with Buzsaky backing up Agyemang in attack. Connolly, Hall, Stewart and Barker made up the back four ahead of Camp. Sheff Utd offered a rare start to their £2.5m summer signing Billy Sharp in attack alongside Rob Hulse. Gary Speed made his home debut as captain in the middle of midfield but there was no place for on loan Phil Bardsley who was cup tied for their FA Cup win at Bolton last week. The first shot in anger came from Buzsaky a quarter of an hour in. As has happened so often in recent weeks the Hungarian’s position between the midfield and attack allowed him to collect the ball deep and run towards goal unchecked. On the first occasion he was tackled on the edge of the area by Bromby who did well to make up the ground. The next time he reached the edge of the penalty box he could only produce a tame low shot that Kenny got down and gathered comfortably. There was nothing tame about his third effort though. In the 20th minute a foul on Lee on the edge of the penalty area presented QPR with a tempting free kick. Buzsaky went for power, taking the wall out of the equation altogether with a rasping drive that Kenny did magnificently to claw out for a corner from underneath the cross bar. The power in the shot would have carried it past a less accomplished goalkeeper with ease. Lee Camp pushed a shot from the impressive David Carney wide a short time later and then a mishit cross from Rob Hulse caused him a few problems up in the top corner – again he was able to get the ball out for a corner kick with two hands. The linesman and referee then infuriated the QPR fans by first allowing Hulse to race towards goal from a blatantly offside position and then awarding him a free kick after a fifty fifty tangle with Hall on the edge of the area. Lee Hendrie curled the set piece over the bar. The game came alive just before half time with three quick fire chances – Sheff Utd spurned both of theirs, QPR didn’t. First Billy Sharp broke in behind the QPR defence and slipped a nice finish under Camp and into the back of the net, luckily for QPR the terminally useless linesman had removed the flag from his arse long enough to hoist it and rule the goal out, although replays suggest he was wrong to do so. Within a minute QPR had a legitimate shot in the back of the Sheff Utd net. Rob Hulse lay injured in the centre circle after a clash with Mahon but his team mates elected to play on around him. That proved to be a foolish move as Rangers regained possession and worked the ball out from their left back spot, through Mahon in midfield to the right wing and Connolly up from full back who sent in a low cross that wasn’t dealt with by Bromby and Patrick ‘Dave’ Agyemang hammered the loose ball into the roof of the net – his first goal for the club. It’s a good job there was a net on the back of the posts, Agyemang caught the ball with such power it may well have killed somebody if it had flown into the Kop instead of the net. Robson’s complaints about the referee not stopping play seem ridiculous to me – five Sheff Utd players had possession of the ball and could have put it out before we even got hold of it. Agyemang looked a real handful at times and very leggy at others. Sometimes his touch let him down, sometimes it was excellent – at one point in the second half he brought a high ball down tight to the touchline, turned and tricked the full back into conceding a corner. Still it’s hard playing up front by yourself and he did the job reasonably well, with a goal to his name to boot. Seeing things through until half time seemed a relatively simple task, there was barely 90 seconds left in the half and Rangers had been well on top to this point, but they almost contrived to throw it away when Sharp was played through on goal and beat Lee Camp with a cute finish. Fitz Hall ran back and rescued the R’ with a goal line clearance but as he tried to hack it away it flew straight to Rob Hulse who knew very little about his header which flew wide of the open net. Hall wouldn’t be quite so lucky with a wild clearance in the second half, but for now Rangers were deservedly in front and the large travelling support behind the goal was in high spirits. I always thing it’s important when leading at half time away from home to survive the first ten or 15 minutes of the second half. The home side are bound to have a rocket put up them at half time, the supporters will be back on their side and they’re likely to throw everything at you in the opening stages. If you can last that amount of time then ideas tend to run out, substitutions have to made, the crowd get on their back and the job is all but done. Rangers hadn’t managed it at Plymouth on Boxing Day where they conceded a penalty within five minutes, or at Watford where the Hornets had a goal back within seven, but they did make it through here. Sure enough the biggest crowd of the season at Bramall Lane started to get restless and United started to run out of ideas. QPR looked comfortable, perhaps a little too comfortable. Having got through the 15 minutes I thought there could only be one winner and my mate Bryan Robson was eyeing up the exit door. Then QPR collapsed. Another aimless ball into the channel by United took a nick of Gavin Mahon as it took off but there seemed to be little danger with Chris Barker in acres of space with all the time he needed to bring the ball down and play it away. But he tried to take the easy, lazy way out and shepherd the ball out for what he thought was going to be a goal kick which of course it wasn’t. So a soft corner conceded and when the ball was delivered chaos ensued. Michael Tonge hammered a shot towards goal from the edge of the box which was parried down into the six yard box by Camp and after an almighty cock up between Stewart and Rowlands the ball ended up trickling into the corner of the net via the big Jamaican. A gift wrapped equaliser just as United appeared to have run out of ideas. That proved to be the turning point in the game with Sheffield United dominating for the majority of the half thereafter. They were in front for the first time within five minutes of drawing level. A cross from the right flank was looking for Lee Hendrie rushing in at the near post but Matt Connolly slid in and reached the ball first. Nine times out of ten he’d have poked it out for a corner but this time he was unlucky and the ball stuck under his body. With Hendrie sniffing around and the home fans appealing for handball as Connolly rolled over it Lee Camp decided to rush out and try to dive on it but arrived too late and Hendrie was able to nick it round the other side of the stricken full back and power the ball into the roof of the net for his first league goal for the club. De Canio tried to rectify the situation by bringing on Dexter Blackstock for Chris Barker who, infuriatingly after two or three good performances, was bloody awful again. However this move killed Rangers as an attacking force because it saw Buzsaky move out to the left wing where he barely got a touch of the ball leaving Blackstock and Agyemang lacking support in attack. Sheff Utd were right in our faces all half, after standing off and letting us play in the first, and the Rangers midfield just couldn’t get hold of the ball and get it to Vine and Buzsaky often enough. Rangers went back to giving the ball away too often and United looked like they could have scored more. Hulse beat Camp to a dropping ball in the six yard box but headed against the bar, later he fired wide from four yards with the goal at his mercy. Both Hendrie and Carney were hugely impressive in the home side’s midfield that had been badly overrun in the first half but dominated the second. The frustration was all too much for Dexter Blackstock who launched into a poor tackle on Bromby as he cleared, a very similar tackle to one he received a red card at Stoke, but the defender jumped straight back up and did Blackstock a favour. Miller decided a yellow card was adequate. Rangers didn’t come back into the game until the final five minutes when Damion Stewart headed goalwards from a Buzsaky corner, Paddy Kenny got down to brilliantly save right in the very bottom left hand corner of his net – it looked a goal all the way from where I was sitting. The biggest drama of the match was saved for the very final minute. Rangers played a short corner and Kieran Lee lofted a ball into the near post. Blackstock attacked the ball but missed it and the ball was knocked up in the air by Bromby under pressure from Agyemand. Sheff Utd cleared only as far as the edge of the area where Buzsaky chested the ball down and hit a searing volley towards the top left hand corner of Kenny’s net. With the keeper beaten all ends up it was left to Matthew Kilgallon to fling himself across the goal and head/punch the ball out for a corner. The Rangers players surrounded the referee for a good minute or two protesting that the United man had handled the ball, from my position it looked like his head but I’d like to see it again. You don’t very often see players protest in that manner and judging by the look on Kilgallon’s face, and the look on the referee’s face, you sense it probably was a penalty. The referee did look across to the linesman but he’d been absolutely bloody useless all game and just stood there with a gormless grin on his face which was no real surprise – that guy wasn’t fit for purpose. By the referee’s expression I got the impression he thought it was a penalty but hadn’t seen it himself and was desperate for the representative from the National Association for the Blind to stick his flag up and get him out of a hole. To make matters worse the linesman then decided that the resulting corner from Buzsaky had bent out of play and was a goal kick. A generous four minutes of stoppage time passed without further threat from QPR and Martin Rowlands led a delegation of visiting players requesting an explanation from the match officials at the final whistle. Not for the first time, Joe Dunbar “performance manager” took the post match questions. I’d be interested to hear an actual definition of his job because as far as I was aware his background was mostly in boxing and fitness training not football – how many training sessions we’re turning over to him I don’t know, but we don’t hear from or see very much of the other Italians that arrived at the same time as De Canio. As I keep saying after every defeat there were positives to take from this. The first half performance was excellent, Rowlands and Mahon ran the game from midfield but Sheff Utd showed in the second half how clueless we are if you take Rowlands out of the game. That only leaves Buzsaky and Vine as creative players in the side and we took Buzsaky out of the game ourselves by moving him wide to the left and Vine had a poor game all round. Buzsaky was the star man again until he was switched to the wing where he was anonymous. Agyemang showed with his persistence, work rate, goal and occasional flashes of skill that he could turn out to be a shrewd signing for us rather than the cart horse everybody seems to be expecting. Lee looked tidy, as did Connolly although when the pressure was on in the second half he looked nervous and gave possession away far too easily. Still with the defenders we have out there now we should not be conceding two goals in the manner we did. Hopefully the back four will grow together as a unit over the coming weeks. De Canio showed with the Malcolm, Rehman, Stewart and Barker set up that he only needs a few weeks to turn a rag tag bunch into a solid defensive unit and we do now have four decent players back there for him to work with – with any luck we’ll have smuggled Sheff Wed’s Tommy Spurr back on the bus with us to play left back. We lost this game ourselves, both goals were defensive mistakes and we were well on top up to that point. As I said in the preview you can’t just sling players together and hope for it to work right away, it will take time for the team to gel and we’re going to have to put up with these collapses under pressure until they’re confident enough in each other’s ability and playing together as a unit. If we’re still seeing defensive chaos like we did in the second half here in two or three months time then questions need to be asked. It’s also worth saying that Sheffield United played very, very well in the second half. Another week on the training ground will do them no harm, and Barnsley are nothing to write home about away from home so that’s a big chance for us next Saturday before a ten day break. For all the talk of only being nine points away from the play offs, or however far off we are this morning, it’s points to keep our distance from the bottom three that are the most pressing concern. Sheff Utd: Kenny 8, Bromby 6, Kilgallon 7, Armstrong 6, Geary 6 (Gillespie 84, -), Carney 8, Hendrie 8 (Stead 69, 6), Speed 6, Tonge 6, Hulse 6, Sharp 6 (Shelton 90, -) QPR: Camp 5, Connolly 5, Hall 6, Stewart 5, Barker 4 (Blackstock 73, 5) Lee 6, Mahon 7, Buzsaky 7, Rowlands 7, Vine 5, Agyemang 7 QPR Star Man – Gavin Mahon - 7 - At half time Martin Rowlands was odds on to take yet another star man award after controlling the game from the middle of midfield. However after half time he was closed down quicker, often tried to do too much and was caught in possession too often. Therefore that leaves his partner Mahon who did a steady, consistent job throughout the game. In a midfield that was well on top in the first half he showed a good eye for a pass, in an overrun midfield in the second he did his best to stem the tide. Hard to award it to anybody in fairness after such a Jekyll and Hyde first and second half. Referee: Nigel Miller (Durham) 5 - Very hard mark to give here because looking at the replays I don’t think it’s possible to decide definitively if Kilgallon handled the ball on the line or not. I’ve spoken to QPR fans who swear blind he did, and others who say he didn’t. The players seemed certain he did, although one thing I did notice on the highlights was the immediate reaction of the QPR fans directly behind the goal wasn’t to appeal for handball. Over the course of the game he seemed to get a number of decisions wrong, and the bald linesman going towards the away end was absolutely useless. Absolutely bloody useless. He looked at the referee before giving even the most simple of throw in decisions – you have a mind of your own you stupid little man use it. Wrongly disallowed Sharp’s goal in the first half but kept the flag down and allowed Hulse to race through on goal when he was clearly offside. Poor referee, terrible linesman, lethal combination. Attendance: 28,894 (1500 QPR fans approx) Good travelling numbers from Rangers but very little consistent noise and singing from the away end, the chant of “if you don’t know the words write them down” from some of the regular travellers directed at some of the newbies made me chuckle. Sheff Utd fans created a great atmosphere for the most part, they were just starting to quieten down and get on their team’s back when they scored which is a shame from our point of view.
Subs Not Used: Montgomery, Lucketti
Booked: Hendrie (dissent)
Goals: Stewart 64 og (unassisted), Hendrie 69 (assisted Sharp)
Subs Not Used: Bolder, Ainsworth, Walton, Ephraim
Booked: Blackstock (late tackle)
Goals: Agyemang 45 (assisted Connolly)