A typically farcical QPR pre-season risks hamstringing Chris Ramsey and his team before they’ve even begun. When they finally did get onto the field, LFW was there to see them take on Dundee United, at Barnet’s ground, in Edgware.
Known by QPR fans for one particularly soggy early-round League Cup tie in 1993, and one randomly violent one 20 years prior, the place and the club it housed were loathed by other non-league clubs, particularly local rivals Enfield, for the way Stan Flashman and a young Barry Fry went about buying and intimidating their way to success Crawley style in the late 1980s. To everybody else it was known for its slope.
Barnet played at Underhill for 106 years. When they arrived they didn’t have the technology, wherewithal or inclination to level the playing surface. The goal at the north end of the ground towards High Barnet was some 11 feet higher than the one at the other as the hill sloped down into the Greenway that leads all the way down to Finchley through the Dollis Valley. They’d have to seek special permission from the Football League to play on it each season.
Games there could become a farce. I remember one afternoon against Burton Albion where Lawrie Sanchez’s side were so poor for 45 minutes you’d have forgiven what little home support was still bothering for packing up and heading home at half time. Gary Borrowdale played at the back for the Bees that day, but sadly so did Clovis Kamdjo, a one-time Reading trainee who gave the impression he’d either never played the sport before or had a sizeable bet on Burton to win, or both. Having never been in the game in the first half they emerged for the second to strains of Sweet Child of Mine and the tannoy announcer reminded everybody that it was "doooooooooooooownhill second half” — the score was quickly levelled up at 2-2 and still close at 4-3 before it randomly went to shit in the last ten minutes and finished 6-3 to the visitors. That sort of match, that sort of place. Burton had earlier been beaten 10-0 there, although eight of the Barnet goals were scored up the slope.
We’d used our free international weekend to attend that day because it was to be Barnet’s last season at Underhill. They had, repeatedly over 15 years, tried to redevelop the stadium only to be refused permission every time by a Conservative council inflicted on the Barnet and Whetstone side of the Northern Line by the Totteridge set high on the hill - where Mike Ashley lives with his helicopter. They had tried to move south towards Finchley, to the Copthall Athletics stadium and, again, been told no. In the end the Tories told them they’d have to pay an extortionate six figure sum every year to continue using the access road to the decrepit ground they did have. Barnet said enough was enough and set about moving to their top class training facility at The Hive, some four miles away in Edgware. The Conservatives, meanwhile, bent over backwards (and charged a peppercorn rent) to accommodate Saracens and their kick and clap brigade at Copthall which is now, risibly, called "Allianz Park”. Former council leader Brian Coleman said he’d "ring out the church bells in Barnet” to celebrate Barnet’s relegation from the Football League if he could.
The cricket pavilion adjacent to Underhill now stands boarded up, awaiting the arrival of the tame local arsonist. The cricket square and high standard football pitches in front of it, previously available to local young sports teams, has grass of knee length with rusting posts peeping out the top and a stern, steel fence around the perimeter. On the other side of the ground The Old Red Lion, robbed of its football patronage for 23 league games a year, is also closed and boarded, with a sign warning the squatters, druggies and chancers that security occupy the site 24 hours a day.
All typically forward thinking of a borough that misses its targets (by miles) on building new social and affordable housing every single year. A borough where Theresa Villiers is the MP, representing her constituents by backing a relaxation of the laws that prevent privileged country folk many hundreds of miles away getting their entertainment by watching one of their dogs tear another animal apart while they drink champagne and blow their horns.
Plans have now been approved to finally bulldoze Underhill and build a Free School (i.e. we’re not going to build you any new schools but you can pay for one and staff it yourself if you like) in its place.
From the club that brought you the "death threats” over a planned friendly with MK Dons; the pre-season tour of Sorrento which had no opposition, no training facilities and no stadiums to play in; the Copa Del Ibiza which was celebrated like a Champions League win and soon descended into a pitched battle with Coventry City fans; the Ji Sung Park glory tour of Asia preceding a 5-0 shellacking by Swansea City on day one of the regular season and many other summer disasters besides comes QPR v Dundee United at Barnet’s ground which is in Edgware.
Chris Ramsey needs this pre-season to go right, lest he become another Steve Wigley, Terry Connor, Les Reed or Martin Hinshelwood — promoted to manager after decades of apprenticeship as a coach, sacked early after a poor start and never given that opportunity again. Those four have all gone onto forge very decent careers — Reed runs the much coveted set up at Southampton these days despite a disastrous spell as Charlton boss — but if it’s the number one job you aspire and you weren’t a big name player don’t expect to be given many/any other chances if you don’t succeed first time.
Initially all looked well. Shakhtar Donetsk, Monaco, Chievo, Al Ittihad and Dundee United; an eclectic bunch, but far better quality than there has been since Mark Devlin was here organising things as CEO. Of course — and this is the fear with Tjaronn Chery as well — when things look too good to be true at QPR they often are. Shakhtar didn’t turn up, and judging by their official website never intended to, and were replaced by the Verona Stars. When the goalkeeper has to get a defender to take his goal kicks you start to wonder how bad the Verona Also Rans must be. Al Ittihad were also no shows, leaving QPR to make up two teams and play themselves — a promising victory tempered only by a disappointing defeat. The venues swapped and changed because the pitches were of such rancid quality. The only thing more QPR-like than playing Dundee Utd at Barnet’s ground in Edgware is playing yourself on a bobbly pitch on the Italian-Swiss border in front of several hundred fans who travelled expecting to see you play Shakhtar Donetsk.
About that Chievo game too. Yeh, they’re not coming either. Pesky tour operator again. Sorry about that. We’re playing FC Ingolstadt instead, newly promoted to the German Bundesliga. Or, so the tickets people posted on their social media pages yesterday morning said anyway. By the evening the fixture had changed again to another Italian side, Atalanta. Shoot me down in a hail of Guardian-style apology demands if you must but one would think after suffering Gianni Paladini, and Flavio Briatore, and the Sorrento tour, and now this summer, that QPR would be wary of involving Italians in any of their arrangements whatsoever.
All of which made the Dundee Utd game on Wednesday rather more important than it needed to be, and as a result rather worse as a spectacle in the second half as Ramsey tried to force feed 90 minutes to a squad he now says are a week behind where they need to be at this stage of the summer.
The Arabs, now managed by Jackie McNamara, have become about the most forward-thinking, progressive club in Scotland in recent years. Ian Cathro, an amateur footballer at Brechin City, recognising he was never going to make it as a professional started running his own weekend coaching classes on the city’s park fields focused on the assets the continentals value — touch, possession of the ball. He was head of Dundee United’s academy by 22 and the club focused on his system and promoting the players from it. Ryan Gauld and Stuart Armstrong have graduated and moved on to Sporting Lisbon and Celtic respectively, Andrew Robertson has just finished a successful (personally) first season in the Premier League with Hull and QPR’s ongoing hunt for a new, young defender could do worse than end with a bid for Jon Souttar who’s being watched by all and sundry. Cathro is now coaching at Newcastle after a stint with Valencia.
They arrived in North London from a tour of the Netherlands spent mostly suffering heavy defeats — 11-1 on aggregate to Vitesse Arnhem, AZ Alkmaar and FC Utrecht. Given that they’d apparently roped a goalkeeper in from the street at the last minute while simultaneously hosting their own miss of the pre-season competition at the other end it wasn’t hard to see why. But you could also see the progressive nature of the club and the team.
Their shape was fluid, with full backs advancing and holding midfielders dropping deep to receive the ball when in possession. They looked exactly what they are… like a team that has been operating a continental system for a while, but is currently trying to bed a slew of new players — our own Coll Donaldson for one — into the style. In the land of the bald the man with three hairs is king and you suspect they’ll be right up there in the SPL this season. In orange shorts and with a tuneful bunch of raucous supporters behind the goal, they could have been mistaken for the home team. The actual home team that is.
Had QPR done what I’m sure Chris Ramsey would have liked and started to rotate players after an hour, maintaining their freshness and the tempo of the game, this could have been about as good as these meaningless games come. Instead, it died with QPR’s legs.
Charlie Austin, thanks to his honeymoon and international duty, arrived back for training later than his team mates and it showed. The only positive other than minutes in the bank is that there might have been a scout watching from one of the myriad of clubs currently conducting their interest in him through newspapers and Sky Sports News. If they weren’t willing to cough to £15m before they certainly won’t after this.
There were others too. Dundee Utd should have equalised in a late counter attack that was weighted numerically in their favour already before they streamed past Michael Doughty — the young Rangers midfielder unable to do little more than turn and lollop along at little more than a walking pace by that stage. QPR were blowing with 30 minutes still to play, but with only Newport County on Sunday definitely confirmed as opposition prior to the big kick off against Charlton, Ramsey had little choice but to flog them to near-death in the early evening sunshine.
Massimo Luongo looks like a player good enough to build a Championship side around. He played to the right of Doughty in a three man midfield, with his former Swindon team mate Ben Gladwin to the left. He finished with a goal to his name, although I could exhume my dead grandmother and reasonably expect her to make a better fist at saving it than German keeper Luis Zwick, but it was everything else about him that impressed. On three occasions he knocked perfect, incisive through balls that most in the ground hadn’t even realised were on. His passes were weighted beautifully, he’s one of those midfielders who always looked like he had time on the ball. He tackled ferociously too, and looked fitter than any team mate apart from Jamie Mackie who tore about the place in typical style — any fears over his engine capacity declining with age put to bed right here it seems.
Gladwin too looked decent before tiring — a muscular presence with a decent touch and long stride to carry him away from opponents. If Matt Phillips, who rounded Zwick for the first goal, stays to play the other side of a central striker to Mackie then QPR certainly have the legs they lacked for so much of last season.
There was a structure and pattern to some of it too, that simply did not exist during the "lump it up to Bobby and see if he can pin the centre halves” days of last season. QPR would work their way up the touchlines in triangles, getting a long pass under control and working it between three players to set up the next 15 or 20 yarder down the field. Embryonic stuff, but encouraging.
Sadly the team looked rather like its new home shirt — reasonable up front, shambolic at the back. Darnell Furlong looked nervous in a way he never had before, even when being run by Yannick Bolasie and Alexis Sanchez in the Premier League. He kept losing his footing and giving the ball away. He’d do well to dig out his dad’s old boots — the "misty blues” — with their proper studs. On the other side Clint Hill cannot be considered the first choice left back, particularly given the dearth at centre half.
That shortage has led QPR to German centre half Christopher Schorch who played here on trial. A former German youth international up to under 20 level, a former Real Madrid B player, now 26, one would think his pedigree makes him decent enough for a club in QPR’s position. Not on this evidence. Nedum Onuoha and Clint Hill gave him the rounds of the kitchen for playing Mario Bilate onside for the Dundee United equaliser and that offside trap creaked like a rusty gate all night as he dropped deep as others stepped up or vice versa. Five minutes from time he was skinned by the corner flag while trying to execute a thigh-high, two footed lunge that even Samba Diakite and Mark Dennis would probably deem slightly excessive. Ramsey finally made a substitution at that point and removed him, though it was more of a mercy killing. Two full backs and at least one centre half still required and if he’s to be one of them then we’ll need the good gin for some of the away matches this season.
I’m not sure we’ll be turning to the heavy stuff in general this season though. As usual, you’d be a fool to read too much into pre-season friendlies - mere methadone for the football addict. And one would think that unless we’re 3-0 up after 60 minutes, the last half hour of the first few games is going to be a torturous experience until everybody gets up to speed. But there was plenty to be encouraged by here. The semblance of something.
We can only hope that Chris Ramsey’s QPR reign hasn’t been wounded, as Gary Waddock’s was before him, partly through the persistent failure to organise a proper pre-season. How hard can it be?
The Twitter @loftforwords
Pictures — Justin Brown