Neil Critchley, like Steve McClaren before him, starts his personal assault on a tough managerial job at Queens Park Rangers with an away trip to bogey side Preston North End.
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One would think/hope/assume, Neil Critchley is coming into the job at Queens Park Rangers with his eyes wide open.
Mick Beale’s comments to supporters in August that the financial situation at Loftus Road "isn’t tight, it’s non-existent” felt like an exercise in expectation management, and perhaps some early blame shifting — inviting us to believe he hadn’t been fully aware of the score here until he’d bought the car and had a rummage around under the bonnet.
Critchley and Beale have worked together before, they sat down over the summer and compared QPR and Aston Villa notes after taking their new jobs, and while the manner of Beale’s departure here makes it wise for Critchley to pointedly avoid mentioning his name at all in any of his new gig media rounds this week, one would think there’s been a conversation. There surely can’t be any skeletons he’s not aware of here.
That’s a really good sign for us. Critchley is not a guy who’s going to be short of offers — he did a fantastic job at Blackpool on very limited resources, and that along with his Liverpool academy background and contacts made him a sought after coach in the summer when he was on the long lists at QPR, Watford and others. Given the reported size of the offer that Aston Villa desperately put to him to fill the Beale-shaped hole in Steven Gerrard’s arsenal, and the pay off that will have come his way after the early termination of that position, one suspects he’s not hard-up enough to jump at any old job that comes along either. He would have figured high in the consideration for just about any other job that came up in this league — he would have been a perfect fit for Luton, for example, and as I said in his arrival piece I believe if Nathan Jones’ and Mick Beale’s departure dates were the opposite way around then the Luton game we have coming up over Christmas could very well have been played with Rob Edwards and Critchley in the opposite dug outs — so could have bided his time. That he’s taken the job on anyway is very positive. This is not a hopeless, lost cause.
So what is that job? In immediate future he’s got to get a team that has cratered to the bottom of the league’s form table, with one goal and one point from six games - and even the last victory they did manage coming rather against the run of play against relegation haunted Wigan - playing, scoring and winning again. At Blackpool he tended to thrive and come out swinging best when his back was against the wall and circumstances were at their toughest. That would be a very useful trait to bring with him, and call on almost immediately.
To do this he’s got to tackle three problems that all of his immediate predecessors faced, but only solved in fits and starts, and often required loan signings to do so.
1 - Getting product from a poor collection of strikers for one. This is the guy who made Gary Madine look like a Championship centre forward, so perhaps there’s hope for us yet there.
2 - Plugging a leaky defence, particularly from set plays. The general mood seems to be swaying towards where we were two Christmases ago when Warbs Warburton solved his own nightmare run of results by switching to a back three, which suits our centre backs and wing backs a lot better than a four, and adds an extra aerial presence back there. Again, at Blackpool, his reputation was one of a coach not wedded to a particular style or formation, but adaptive to what he has at his disposal. He began at Bloomfield Road with the trendy 4-3-3 with all the trimmings we’ve seen from Beale who coached in the same Liverpool set up, but with one win in his first seven games and pressure mounting at the bottom of League One he flipped entirely to a 4-4-2 with a big lad up top.
3 — The over reliance on Stefan Johansen being fit and firing. You don’t win many games of football by losing the midfield, and QPR really only win that area of the pitch when Johansen not only starts but is also fully fit to do so — about one game in six at the moment. I know Burnley are good, but watching them waltz through that threesome last week was deeply painful, because we’ve seen it so many times before. Right back to Ian Holloway sticking Grant Hall in there to try and stem the bleeding, we have lacked presence and bite in the middle of the park, easily beaten and penned back, while also struggling to score from that part of the pitch. As part of the switch to 4-4-2 at Blackpool, he went very Steve Palmer-Matthew Rose dogmatic in the middle of the park, leaving the skill and flair of Josh Bowler and others (paging Chair/Willock) exclusively to the wide areas to make them harder to beat and start keeping clean sheets. QPR fans have a very tricksy relationship with defensive central midfielders (Palmer and Rose both copped it, Karl Henry and others have been on the end of it since) so that's a tightrope walk waiting to happen.
There’s all sorts of other bits and pieces. The reaction of the players since it looked like Beale was leaving us to Wolves has been abysmal on the surface. Who’s in what frame of mind? What’s going on with Chris Willock’s form, fitness, contract, mindset after his recent showings? Where are the loan players at? Do they still want to be here? Ethan Laird, in particular, has dropped off the side of a cliff — I had him down as a new Kyle Walker a month ago, and perhaps that shows what I know but still. Those three fundamental problems have existed with the team for a long time, and several managers though.
There’s a temptation to point at the group of players and say they were playing well and top of the league a month ago, and are still well in touch with the play-off places now. Hit form at the right time of the season, as Beale says was the way he’d structured the whole thing, and you only have to look at the sides to make the play-offs last season to know there’s still a great opportunity here. But this team has been playing poorly for a long time. If you scratch beneath the surface of the starting 11 you drop from Seny Dieng to Jordan Archer, or as we saw last week Ilias Chair to George Thomas. Injuries scratch beneath that surface a hell of a lot, several key players we rely on here are dreadfully injury prone. Prior to Beale’s run of eight wins from 11 this team had won five of 25 games. Mark Warburton had them on a terrific run throughout 2021, but before that six wins from 33 games. Warburton — with Bright Osayi-Samuel, Ebere Eze, Ilias Chair, Nahki Wells and Jordan Hugill up front — also had a run of six wins in 22 games that season. In the campaign before Steve McClaren, also with Eze at his disposal, won five of 26 games through the second half of the season. It’s a team with issues.
Off the field he’ll also know players have to be sold to keep up with the league’s FFP regulations, particularly two sets of accounts from now when under the rolling three year nature of these restrictions things like the Covid allowances and sale of Eze start to drop off our calculation. I wonder if this need might coincide nicely with his flexibility on formations and the need to try and stem the bleeding in defence. Chris Willock’s value decreases with each hamstring strain and month of his contract sliding by. Rangers might get some money for Ilias Chair, but the market has rather fallen away for Championship players. Likewise Seny Dieng, though as we know with Alex Smithies keepers tend to be woefully under valued. The other sellable assets in this squad now are Jimmy Dunne, Rob Dickie, Jake Clarke-Salter and Kenneth Paal. We need to get them on the pitch as often as we can, play to their strengths, and make them look as good as possible. A switch to a back three ticks all boxes for all of that. However good Leon Balogun was when he first arrived, however brilliant he may go on to be, allowing a manager to bring in a 34-year-old he knew to play in a back four ahead of at least two of those basically requires him to get you promoted for it to be worthwhile. Dunne and Dickie have gone backwards, Clarke Salter is regressing from a positive (if injury hit) start. Certainly a couple of clean sheets against Millwall ain’t gonna do it. It was a poor misstep from Rangers, he should be retained as cover only.
Again, this is less than ideal, and time is ticking, but at Blackpool Critchley only spent money on five players across his time there, and that only amounted to £2m which means with the sale of Josh Bowler he operated at a profit there during his time, utilising his academy contacts for an eye catching array of free transfers and loans. That’s another reason he’s perfect for the job, and another good sign that he's taken it on while knowing all this.
It's a job that usually suits a big character like Holloway or Neil Warnock. Critchley’s careful, considered, professional approach to public speaking is a breath of fresh air now, after five months of Beale gobbing off, but will that grate on supporters who want a bit of fire and anger if the players continue to phone in slop like last Sunday? We quite liked Beale coming out after Charlton and saying it wasn't good enough, that was a 'breath of fresh air' too at that point, until it turned out nothing he said was true.
A tough gig, then, as we keep saying. Not impossible, and one Critchley’s CV is well-suited to, but not easy. And certainly not about to get easier on the long, snowy trip to Preston tomorrow. Be safe if you’re one of the 450-odd (very odd) braving the journey, I’ll see you all there.
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Team News: Despite Morocco’s heartbreaking exit at the semi-final stage of the World Cup to France during the week, Ilias Chair remains away for the biggest nonsense in international football — the third place play-off. On this occasion, however, it might at least afford Ilias some minutes on the pitch after being an unused sub in all of the games in the African side’s fantastic tournament to date, which would be a wonderful moment for him and the club, and also a useful warm up ahead of his return to Championship action against Luton and Sheff Utd on the other side of the turkey. Stefan Johansen, Luke Amos, Leon Balogun and Tyler Roberts all sat out the return to action last week — Amos the most likely of them to return this. Chris Willock was hooked at half time though caretaker boss Paul Hall insisted that was tactical.
Preston’s fantastic performance and result at Blackburn last week came despite missing Robbie Brady (foreign accent syndrome), Andrew Hughes (fabry disease), Sean Maguire (bit of a gobshite), joint top scorer Emil Riis (methemoglobinemia), Alan Browne (trichotillomania), Ali McCann (tree man’s disease) and Troy Parrott (Morgellons) all being sidelined. They brought two 18-year-olds and two 17-year-olds off their bench in that game. Ryan Lowe has specified which players, but says he’ll have a couple back for this weekend adding: "We will hopefully have a couple back for the weekend, yeah. As I said, some were a precaution and not too bad. A couple will train with us today and we'll know a little bit more after training, whether they come through. It's mad - there's probably then going to be two the next week and two the following week, so it's not as bad as we first thought - which is a big bonus. Ultimately, it is what it is. We had a tough week the week before the Blackburn game and you have to get over these obstacles when they happen, don't you? We had been great with injuries - something like a 96 per cent player availability so far. If we can get that back within the next two weeks, I'll be happy."
If you fancy a little bit of LFW match preview Christmas nostalgia for your Friday — Joel Lynch has just been ruled out for eight weeks at Crawley Town.
Elsewhere: Sky Sports are beaming Birmingham v Reading into your tellybox this evening - like going round to somebody’s gaff on Come Dine With Me and finding them finishing the steaks off in the microwave. Good luck everybody.
Lutown had been appealing for volunteers to get down to Kenilworth Road and help clear the pitch of snow to get their festival of 1980s nostalgia against Millwall on after the big freeze this week but the EFL have put paid to that with a pitch inspection and Friday afternoon postponement. It’s unlikely to be the last, looking at the forecast, and as I’m due to arrive in Preston about 12.30 tomorrow I’m expecting ours to go the same way at about 12.37.
Among the Saturday fixtures that currently still exist, table topping Burnley’s home tie with Middlesbrough looks the pick. The Saturday evening game sees fourth placed Norwich host third placed Blackburn, but Rovers lost heavily either side of the international break and felt artificially high in the table anyway courtesy of a lack of drawn games. Their performances at Burnley and home to Preston hint at a regression to mean and six players have been told they can leave the club, including last January’s big signing from Spurs Dilan Markanday, who I was really jealous of at the time and would have loved down at Rangers — again, shows what I know.
West Brom are, rather inevitably, heading in the opposite direction. Daryl Dike is finally upright and scoring, after just four appearances in a year since he signed, finishing an impressive comeback in Sunderland midweek. Carlos Corberan will be confident of capitalising on that boost with a home win against sliding Rotherham, while a Tony Mowbray team giving up a winning position to lose (can’t believe it) face a trickier follow up away at Hull.
Among the flotsam and jetsam lurks Birstol City v Stoke, Coventry v Swanselona, Cardiff v Blackpool and Huddersfield v Watford, none of which even qualifies as "at least it gets you out of the house” in this weather.
The weekend is rounded out with a Monday night trip to Wigan for Sheffield Red Stripe — the first of a collection of horrendous Christmas Sky picks for Paul Heckingbottom’s men which also includes a 20.15 kick off on a Thursday night at Blackpool, and of course a second Monday night trip all the way down to W12 to play us on January 2. More Football Without Fans Is Nothing news as we receive it.
Watch out for one of Coventry’s many games in hand, at home to West Brom on Wednesday night, as well.
Referee: Oliver Langford in charge of this one, a fourth Preston game of the season for him already. Usually a referee I like, but made a pig’s ear of our loss at Swansea in September. Details.
Preston: There was just one goal scored in Preston first six league games this season — five 0-0 draws and a 1-0 win at Luton. There were only seven goals scored in the next six matches too, which included another nil nil at Sunderland. That means that their last two matches — a 4-2 loss at home to Millwall and 4-1 away win at Blackburn — contained more Preston and opposition goals than their first 12 matches combined. Inevitably, with those sort of stats, very even results across the board through to mid-October — two league wins, two league defeats and seven draws. A quick burst of three wins and three defeats included an impressive 3-2 victory at Norwich but ended with a 4-2 loss in the derby at Blackpool. That had the first question marks over Ryan Lowe’s tenure starting to surface, a year since he moved into the job from Plymouth, but has proved something of a catalyst for the team. They come into this fixture having won four of their last five matches, culminating in a hugely impressive display and 4-1 victory in another all-Lancashire clash with Blackburn last weekend. At home their record is a far-from-formidable 3-4-4 with Sheff Utd, Stoke, and Birmingham all winning her to nil while Millwall triumphed 4-2 in the final Deepdale game before the World Cup shut down. They failed to win any of their first six home matches this season but have beaten West Brom, Middlesbrough and Swansea in the last five games here. I guess it’s inevitable given that weird start but only three teams have conceded fewer than Preston’s total of 21 (Sheff Utd in second with 19 and, oddly, lower half dwellers Birmingham and Coventry on 20 and 19 respectively) while their scored total of 22 is the fourth worst in the division and easily the lowest of anybody this side of fourteenth-placed Cov. Ched Evans’ goal at Ewood Park lifts him to five so far, joint top scorer with Emil Riis.
QPR: Rangers now have just one point and one goal from six matches, the worst record in the league over that period. They have lost their last four games, conceding eight goals, and scoring just once. After four away wins from five matches through the autumn they have now failed to win any of their last four road trips, losing three and scoring one goal. The Ebere Eze-inspired win at Deepdale the week before the Covid lockdowns started in 2020 is our only success on this ground in 17 visits going back to 1980 (D7 L9). We have won just three of the last 15 meetings between the sides, including both games in that 19/20 campaign. The 3-2 home win against Middlesbrough in August was the only victory in Mick Beale’s first six games as QPR boss. He isn’t unusual in struggling to find any so-called ‘new manager bounce’ having taken the reins in W12. Mark Warburton won his first match at Stoke but that was his only win in his first five; Schteve McClaren started his Rangers career with a 1-0 loss at Deepdale and had just a League Cup win at home to Peterborough to improve a beginning of four league defeats from four and 13 goals conceded; Ian Holloway won his first game at home to Norwich but then lost six in a row (incidentally that run is the last time we scored one goal in six games); Jimmy Floyd-Hasselbaink drew four of his first five and won none of his first eight; Chris Ramsey lost six of his first seven, winning game two at Sunderland; Harry Redknapp won one of his first seven; Mark Hughes two of his first ten (and one of those against lower league MK Dons in a cup replay). You have to go back to 2009/10 and Neil Warnock taking a team that had lost eight of its previous 11 and won just once, and turned it into a team that got five wins and five draws from its final 14 games to stay in the Championship — a run that included recovering a two goal deficit to salvage a 2-2 draw against Preston at Deepdale — to find any discernible immediate impact made by a new boss at Loftus Road.
Prediction: We’re once again indebted to The Art of Football for agreeing to sponsor our Prediction League and provide prizes. You can get involved by lodging your prediction here or sample the merch from our sponsor’s QPR collection here. It’s the last chance to register points on the Prediction League before we hand out our ‘Top At Christmas’ prize and it looks like it’s going to take a correct score and scorer call to overhaul Aston at the top of the table. Here’s what last season’s champion Cheesy says…
"During the time of our last two managers, the difference between a good performance and a bad one has been huge, and you never knew when one or the other was coming. Hopefully, Critchley will find us a consistent place somewhere in the middle of these two. His first job must be to stop the rot. My guess would be a back three for this one. Not sure if it will help much.”
Cheesy’s Prediction: Preston 2-0 QPR. No scorer.
LFW’s Prediction: Preston 1-0 QPR. No scorer.
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