QPR, seemingly revitalised by the arrival of Ian Holloway, travel to Ipswich Town on Saturday to face a side looking for a similar lift of their own.
Mercantile Credit Trophy >>> Saturday November 26, 2016 >>> Kick Off 15.00 >>> Weather — Bright but cold >>> Portman Road, Ipswich, Suffolk
Adding to my growing suspicion that I understand next to nothing of modern football, or the modern football fan, I found the total overreaction to Tottenham dipping out of the Champions League during the week a total overreaction.
Small squad this, naïve manager that, tactically clueless here, going backwards there... "Pochettino is learning on the job" apparently, and none of the signings they've made recently have been up to it. They've lost focus since the battle of Stamford Bridge last season, and have done almost nothing positive since then, offered one usually fairly sane contributor.
I mean, sure, Tottenham have bollocksed up their Champions League Group, but frankly they're not there very often and Man City have surely taught us that it's a competition that takes a few years to get the hang of — and their struggles came after spending far, far more money than Tottenham have and without selling their home advantage to profit. Meanwhile, Spurs are still unbeaten in the Premier League and only four points off the top of the table, having come reasonably close to winning the thing last season with an exicting young team and a coveted manager.
When, exactly, did that become not good enough for Tottenham? A team that has only ever won the league twice, the last success back in 1961.
Similar thoughts come to mind when I look at the Championship, where just 17 matches into a 46 game season already seven clubs have seen fit to fire their manager.
Now, that seems excessive when looking at the league table which has just about every club exactly where everybody thought they would be at the start of the season. People expected Newcastle to run away with the division, and they are doing. People expected Brighton, Norwich and Sheffield Wednesday to stage promotion pushes and they’re all doing so. The newly promoted teams and Rotherham were expected to struggle, and sure enough there are Burton, Wigan and Rotherham as three of the bottom five. Dangerously incompetent, entirely unsuitable, megalomaniac nutcases running the shows at Aston Villa, Wolves, Cardiff, Forest and Blackburn were expected to inhibit their performance, and yes there they all are from sixteenth downwards.
Really, other than Huddersfield who look like they’re coming back our way, and Derby who are belatedly upwardly mobile, is anybody in this division really that far away from where they’re meant to be?
It seems the bloodlust has become so insatiable that we no longer sack the shit managers doing a shit job much quicker than we ever used to, but we now sack the middling and good ones for doing middling and good jobs as well.
Rotherham are bottom because they’re meant to be there. Along with Burton they have the lowest home gate, the lowest transfer budget and the lowest wage bill. They’re incredibly lucky a manager of Kenny Jackett’s experience and ability agreed to go there but Alan Stubbs was never the problem, and sure enough they haven't won since the change was made. Short of new manager bouncing their way to safety — as they did last year — it’s hard to see exactly what they were hoping for. Maybe they’ll sack Jackett and try for the bounce again.
This is all particularly relevant as we head into Saturday’s encounter between thirteenth placed Queens Park Rangers and seventeenth Ipswich.
A year ago Rangers hired Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink, and while the club are always a bit woolly about exactly what they want and expect these days — except when Uncle Tony goes on the Instagram — the remit seemed to be: be competitive and consolidate in the Championship; further reduce the wage bill; sell whatever sellable assets could be sold; promote youth teamers into the first team; work with cheaper (but not cheap) signings from abroad and lower divisions. Hasselbaink did all of this, and was sacked with Rangers six points from the play offs and six points from the relegation zone. Given the size of the ground, the club’s infrastructure, the club’s income, the attendances this season, historical performance going back however long you like, the need to get rid of high earners and sell the best players etc etc etc is exactly where they should be, exactly where Hasselbaink was told (publicly at least) was the requirement to be. And yet he got the sack.
Ipswich Town have had two play-off tilts of late, and only just missed out last season. Although they have a larger, better ground; higher attendances; far better infrastructure and youth facilities; and bigger income than QPR that still struck me as overachieving slightly. Big money was spent here by owner Marcus Evans, but he spent it with the wrong managers. Odd how Roy Keane’s caustic comments about his former Man Utd team mates and acidic remarks about current managers and players never quite get round to the ginormous pile of money he burned through at, primarily, Sunderland and later Ipswich while achieving the square root of fuck all.
Mick McCarthy has been working on a budget at Ipswich since he got there. Four signings this summer for £1.5m while losing one of his two main strikers to Newcastle on the eve of the deadline for £3m. That, and David McGoldrick’s injury, leaves Ipswich light up front, and they’ve scored the joint fewest goals in the league this season, but if somebody offers you £3m for your 33-year-old Championship journeyman striker in the present climate you snap their hands off and try to muddle through until January — which is what Ipswich did and are doing. Seventeenth is probably below par, but there are extenuating circumstances.
And there’s the key thing: ‘the present climate’. By that I mean the era of "Financial Fair Play”. A well-meaning and yet appalling executed, draconian, restrictive, legally unenforceable load of absolute bollocks which serves only to make sure the big successful clubs get bigger and more successful and everybody else has even less chance of getting anywhere near to them. Under the current rules as written what chance do even clubs like QPR and Ipswich have of getting near Norwich — and how can it possibly be right that three clubs of such similar size and recent history are now such worlds apart. Norwich paid £8m for Alex Pritchard and don’t pick him. Mick McCarthy hasn’t spent £8m at Ipswich in total since he got there. Financial Fair Play will be referred to on this site from here on in as the Know Your Place legislation.
Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink was sacked, and Mick McCarthy likely eventually will be, because people were bored.
Supporters accept all the book balancing, tight ship stuff. They know that it’s important and we will continue to write about it near constantly on here. Get the basic accounting wrong and you’re fucked — Stockport, Grimsby and Tranmere all mainstays at this level until they broke the golden rule of spending money they didn’t have, lashing out the ITV Digital money before it had arrived and then embarking on ten year descents into non-league when it didn’t. Bradford City, similarly, after their mad Geoffrey Richmond period. It leaves you open to foreign chancers coming and wrecking your club — Cardiff, Leeds, Forest, Portsmouth. It is important, but you don’t pay to get in and look at the balance sheet.
QPR and Ipswich are two of the Championship’s most expensive clubs to watch. It’s £33 for Rangers tomorrow and Town will be charged at least that at Loftus Road for the return fixture. It’s hard enough to justify shelling that out — particularly if you’re a mum and dad with two teenage lads (£100+ a match, just to get in, at walk up prices) — as the Know Your Place legislation starts to basically let you know you won’t be winning the league even before it starts. But to go into the Championship knowing you can’t win it, and then playing boring, attritional, functional football into the bargain doesn’t exactly make it a hot ticket does it?
I’m still haunted by that comment on one of our match reports earlier this year saying "football is meant to be attritional”. Is it fuck. It can be, if you’re Jose Mourinho. It can be, if you’re Scunthorpe United away at Manchester City and the best you can hope for is to hang in there and scrape a goal off a set piece. That old saying "attacks win games, defences win titles” is probably true, as Kevin Keegan’s Newcastle proved. But if, like QPR and Ipswich this season, you’re almost certainly destined for the middle of the Championship, why would you try and grind your way there?
I personally think Ipswich would be foolish to sack McCarthy, and may find the grass decidedly patchier on the other side. But equally, I wouldn’t pay Ipswich prices to watch his football. Hasselbaink fulfilled his remit at QPR, but I wasn’t in any rush to leave the pub and get to the ground to watch his team play. Ian Holloway isn’t just a comedian, as discussed last week, but in appointing him QPR have essentially just said "this is quite dull isn’t it? Fuck it let’s have fun”.
If we’re going to forcibly sort our teams by granular items like their income and average attendances, handing colossal advantages to the teams taking parachute payments from the latest TV deal (Norwich get £40m this season), there’s a lot to be said for that.
Links >>> Frustration growing with Town — Interview >>> Steiner double — History >>> Happy Ollie Days — Podcast >>> Friends reunited — referee >>> Ollie returns — Bosh Times >>> Extensive TWTD QPR profile
A brace from Jamie Mackie and a penalty from Heidar Helguson (though it should have been a pearler from Akos Buzsaky) sealed a 3-0 win for QPR on this ground during the 2010/11 Neil Warnock promotion season. Nice kit too.
Team News: More bad news for Jack Robinson, who impressed in Ian Holloway's first game before limping out before half time with yet another injury — hamstring this time. Good news though, Jake Bidwell is fit after the shoulder knack picked up at Burton in September so he can slot straight back in if Ollie wants to continue with the wing backs set up he utilised against Norwich. Steven Caulker remains a doubt but prepare the bunting and iced buns for Karl Henry's return from a one game suspension. Jamie Mackie is a long term absentee.
Town have centre back Adam Webster available after he got lost in the woods, but Leon Best's gout is playing up again so he's a doubt.
Elsewhere: So Moses and Aaron went to Pharaoh and said to him, the Lord says: ‘Let my people go, so that they may worship me. If you refuse to let them go, I will bring Championship football into your country tomorrow. So many matches they will cover the face of the ground so that it cannot be seen. They will devour what little money and spirit you have left after last week's round of games. They will fill your televisions and those of all your officials and all the Egyptians–something neither your parents nor your ancestors have ever seen from the day they settled in this land till now. And it will start with Barnsley v Nottingham Trees on Friday night.’”
Vengeful God says a further ten matches will take place on Saturday, all leading up to the cataclysmic Monday Night Football between Wigan Warriors and Borussia Huddersfield which is sure to bring the country to a standstill and place huge strain on the national grid.
Relegated Rotherham v Champions of Europe feels a little one sided for television selection on Saturday evening, but the ground will be full and they'll both be pointing at each other and yelling "Yorkshire" aggressively which counts as entertainment of sorts I suppose.
Some actual, genuine intrigue at the Derby Sheep where the Shecond coming of Shteve is gathering pace just in time for the visit of Norwich, where a chaotic AGM on Thursday did little to dispel the impression that things are falling apart quite dramatically at Carrow Road after a fine start to the season
No such luck for the faithful few at Preston v Nigel Clough's Burton Albion which barely counts as a football match at all.
The Mad Indian Chicken Farmers look like they're on a(nother) hiding to nothing this week with a trip to Champions Newcastle who are hunting a ninth straight win after their Robert Green-assisted win at Elland Road a week ago. If you haven't seen it yet, do stick through mad stary Jack Colback at the start of the video below to enjoy and reminisce — apparently Greeno was worried about carrying the ball over the line. Other options are available. Melt.
Tarquin and Rupert will need the chauffeur driven Bentley to be in fine working order for the trip down to Brighton if Southern Fail repeat their trick of forgetting to send any trains along to pick the fans up after the match as they did following the recent draw with Leddersford Town.
Bosh. Have that. Useless, money grabbing tossers. @SouthernRailUK https://t.co/9ruV0QqTmg– LoftforWords (@LoftforWords) November 22, 2016
Leddersford are back at home this week as the Seventh Annual Neil Warnock Farewell Tour rolls into Birmingham for its Villa Park date.
Betty, who used to live down the road from Bristol City manager Lee Johnson before he moved away, has had a touch of the stomach flu this week and a doctor was called out on Thursday. Three minutes of applause will be held from the eighty second minute of City's game at Reading this weekend.
Brentford v Brum is this week's match between two teams beginning with the letter B. Wolves v Sheffield Owls is also taking place this weekend.
Starting to quite envy the Egyptians actually.
Referee: If thirteenth v seventeenth in the middle of another Championship season sounds about as appealing as giving John Prescott a rim job after he's had a hard afternoon in the garden, then fear not. Andy Woolmer enlivened a similarly uninspiring encounter between Preston and QPR last season to the point where you thought people might actually be killed. Details of that, and his previous QPR encounters, ahead of his reappearance on Saturday are available here.
Ipswich: Not great. Last weekend's 2-0 home defeat by lowly Nottingham Trees, with the first goal coming in just 17 seconds after Ipswich had actually kicked off, was the second Ipswich loss at Portman Road in four games following an earlier set back against Huddersfield (0-1), and they needed a last minute equaliser to take a point from everybody's banker at home to Relegated Rotherham (2-2) as well. So far they've beaten Burton (2-0), Preston (1-0) and Barnsley (4-2) on home soil this season and drawn with Norwich (1-1), Villa and Brighton (both 0-0) as well as Rotherham. Two wins in the last ten matches going into this one, and goals are proving to be an issue. Town have failed to score in seven of those, including a dire five in a row following a 1-0 win at Derby at the end of September. The 14 goals scored in 17 matches so far is the joint worst total in the league along with second-bottom Wigan.
QPR: Also not great, although only two defeats in the last nine matches and four points from the last two going into this one. Away from home QPR have been poor for years — just four away wins in the league in the whole of last season and six in the last two seasons combined — but they've already got three wins (Cardiff 2-0, Wigan 1-0, Fulham 2-1) under their belts this year as well as draws at Burton and Forest (both 1-1). Defeats so far on the road have come at Sheff Wed (1-0), Huddersfield (2-1) and Barnsley (3-2) so we're looking for a heartbreaking 4-3 reverse somewhere to complete the set. Rangers only scored twice against Norwich last week despite playing against ten men for 90 minutes, and haven't scored more than twice in a game since the opening day of the season against Leeds (3-0). They have won two of their last three visits to Portman Road, scoring three on both occasions, however.
Prediction: Reigning Prediction league champion Dylan Pressman returns to say…
"The Ollie bounce continues with a trip to the heart of tractor country. Seb Polter to get the first for QPR as we scratch out three valuable away points and get into gear as we enter the crucial holiday period."
Dylan's Prediction; Ipswich Town 1-2 QPR. Scorer — Seb Polter
LFW's Prediction: Ipswich Town 0-2 QPR. Scorer — Conor Washington
The Twitter @loftforwords
Pictures — Action Images