Coventry away, for so long a fixture that loomed almost as large as the spectre of Eoin Jess over Queens Park Rangers, turned into an eighth away win of the campaign and survival party for a manager and support base who both really stepped up when it mattered in 23/24.
As Haji Wright stood up the increasingly leggy Reggie Cannon, took him to the byline, and chipped a beautiful cross, over the stranded Joe Walsh, and down onto the head of Jamie Allen for the Coventry substitute to score, with virtually his first touch after coming on, you couldn’t help but afford yourself a wry smile.
Imagine, just imagine, the horror of that final seven minutes and stoppage time in the parallel footballing universe where Queens Park Rangers needed a result on Saturday. Birmingham winning, Plymouth winning, Sheff Wed winning, Blackburn winning at Leicester City for goodness’ sake. And now here were QPR, with little left in the tank, left to cling to a single goal lead of their own for a dozen excruciating minutes.
Time standing still, phone signal desperately sought, rumour and counter rumour of other goals in other far off places, Marti Cifuentes frantically scrambling for bench options, Steve Cook heaving himself in front of shot after terrifying shot. Could you have stood it? Would you have been able to look at it? The inevitable Coventry equaliser just one kick, one mistake, one second away. Gary Weaver’s hyperbolic horseshit about storming of citadels and planting of flags ready to roll down from the gantry. This club, this city, these people, they have roared back, they will not be moved, they have broken Rangers hearts, and they remain king of this castle. Awaydays at Stockport and Shrewsbury now just a favour elsewhere away. Pizza trophy southern section home games with Chelsea’s puppy farm. I’m sorry, a little bit of sick just came in my mouth.
Instead, nothing. No equaliser, and nobody really giving two tosses in any case. Marti masks and party bags, beach balls and banana costumes, a sex doll wearing a fez, and virginal berk in a pink sweatshirt climbing down from his executive box to front the away end for bantz, losing the plot, and having to be rescued from Mr Plod the Policeman by his girlfriend (who goes to another school). Lee Hoos and Christian Nourry, suited and booted, mingling in the away end, all smiles and handshakes. And the sun shines now.
QPR won the game. An amiable sort of a contest, bouncing along at half pace in belated spring sunshine, like the final friendly of your pre-season – although, of course, not at all like the final friendly of Gareth Ainsworth’s pre-season, which saw this team beaten 5-0 at Oxford United.
This was a match lit up by a special goal from Ilias Chair midway through the first half. Coventry, like Leeds before them, skipping QPR module 1:1 in their textbook, letting the Moroccan pick up a ball in space on the cusp of the final third and maraud infield unchallenged and unchecked. Invited to shoot, he set a right-footer Roberto Carlos-levels of distance outside the post, and then drew it back into the bottom corner just in time like he had the thing on a piece of string. Brad Collins in the home goal could only stand, watch and admire. QPR living and winning, living and winning in these towns.
Not that it would have beaten Jimmy Dunne’s narrative driving winner against Birmingham, but it’s not the first goal (Richard Langley away at Portsmouth) to make you think they probably shouldn’t hold the goal of the season vote until all the goals in the season have been scored and counted. All a bit Laura Kuenssberg just deciding and announcing your favourite has won before the contest is actually finished.
Whether Rangers would have won had the doomsday scenario been played out, under the pressure of the situation and with an away end gripped in febrile tension rather than playing fancy dress and tossing sex toys around, is neither here nor there. The sort of pointless debate you only really need if you’re stuck on a London North Western Railway service with 20 minutes of "dwell time” at Northampton for no reason at all, or faced with coming up with an angle for match report 48 of 48 in a season that’s been about as pleasurable as spending nine months living with one of the contestants from Married At First Sight Australia. Funnily enough…
Cifuentes almost certainly wouldn’t have picked the team he did were there anything riding on the game but, as it turned out, three of the players who were drafted in and rewarded with some minutes/given a chance to pitch for roles next season were key to the victory.
Elijah Dixon-Bonner always quietly impresses me – technically excellent, always looking and thinking forwards, able to take the ball on the half turn – and would seem a very sound fit for the sort of Cruyffian football QPR’s Spanish manager would ideally like to play here. I’m therefore surprised he’s been used as seldom as he has in the second half of the season. He was nice and tidy here, claiming an assist for the Chair goal by picking the ball up in a tricky, advanced area, inviting team mates to come towards him so he could be positive with the play rather than phoning in a backwards pass, and triggering a move that gave Rangers the lead. He will be offered a contract at Loftus Road this summer. At 23, and desperate for regular first team football, whether he signs it or not is another matter. Our loss risks being somebody else’s gain there.
Morgan Fox, who I somewhat rolled my eyes at when QPR signed him from a distinctly stodgy and unimpressive spells at perennially stodgy and unimpressive Stoke, came into the defence instead of Jake Clarke-Salter – not risked any further after a career best 29 starts and 4 sub appearances, but still never to start 30 league games in a season. Fox has never been my favourite player, but I’ve been impressed with his attitude and impact in the run in – particularly when he stepped in from the start of the cross-a-thon at Swansea and contributed to a clean sheet. Here he scored the second goal of the game and first for the club, from barely a yard out, after Chris Willock was chopped by Bobby Thomas (yellow card) and Lucas Andersen wrought havoc in the home ranks with a wide free kick. QPR have gone from worst to best in the division in attacking and defensive set pieces over the final dozen games - this their eighth goal from their last 13 to be scored from a dead ball. We’ve got some manager here guys, on whom more shortly.
And goalkeeper Joe Walsh, finally given a league debut for the club nearly three years after he first arrived here as a prospect from Gillingham. He produced a string of saves in ascending order of quality: a big recue job on a short back pass after two minutes; a low dive to the right to keep out Callum O’Hare after Ben Sheaf’s clever turn in midfield after 11; a charge from his line and big brave block on giant Ellis Simms after 13; a powerful parry when Rangers afforded van Ewijk a free header from Jake Bidwell’s centre just after the half hour; a two-handed claw out of the top corner as Simms tried his luck on an angle after half time; and then a super brave punch out from under the crossbar while knowing full well Simms was about to deposit ball and goalkeeper into the back of the net.
This is almost certain to be the ever-clever O’Hare’s last game for Cov, who have persistently turned down transfer bids from Burnley and the like and will now likely lose him for free. He must have thought he’d signed off with a goal when he worked a run-around with Wright on the hour and then sought of the far corner with a crisp curler masked by a defensive wall. Walsh not only read it but got down and across to produce the save of the day. I was gutted for him when Allen scored, a clean sheet would have been richly deserved reward. Terrific stuff.
QPR’s goalkeeping situation, along with its options up front, is close to the top of this summer’s to-do pile. Asmir Begovic made big saves, and kept clean sheets, in the crucial games against Preston and, particularly, Leeds that saw Rangers home. That has softened attitudes and quietened criticism of the veteran Bosnian which had reached something of a crescendo after his horrible mistake cost the R’s two points at Plymouth and kept Argyle alive in the relegation battle. Nevertheless, his social media post talking about "going again” next season, with blue and white emojis into the bargain, is terrifying. Beware recency bias. He’s been ageing years in weeks, he cannot be allowed to continue as the first choice here next season. The club’s new policy of not revealing contract details creates this fear in situations like this that they are, in fact, considering going around again with a keeper who is physically shot.
The difference even a novice like Walsh made here was there for all to see. Quick, prompt, proactive and assertive off his line, always ready, willing and anticipating chances to be in the far corners of his penalty box to collect and defuse potential situations before they’re allowed to develop into problems. Ellis Simms had good reason to think he’d scored five minutes after half time when O’Hare found him in space, but Steve Cook got in a trademark block. Those sort of desperate recovery jobs by Cook and Clarke-Salter (or, in this case, Fox), which have become trademarks of this run in, were otherwise absent. That was, at least in part, because we had a mobile goalkeeper willing to play on the front foot. Walsh is also out of contract this summer. Those in the know at the tell you they rate Matteo Salamon as the one with the big chance ahead of him. If this was a pitch for a deal and involvement next season then it was a hell of an audition. Clear eyes full hearts.
We wait, also, to see what the future holds for Ilias Chair.
His opener ruins the symmetry of 14 goal involvements three seasons running. He was denied a similarly spectacular second goal only by the post as the latest date and venue in the Albert Adomah farewell tour almost garnered a crowd-pleasing assist. QPR, both club and fanbase, have seemingly been happy to park the potential legal ramifications of his ill-fated kayaking holiday because, put simply and cynically, we were in the shit and he’s our best player. Daft argument over a bus queue that got out of hand, mistaken identity, chancer looking for money, or a genuine attempt to do serious harm to a working-class bloke from a big don’t-you-know-who-I-am footballer clutching a lump of rock? We have all collectively chosen to either ignore it, or push the former narrative, because, frankly, we needed him.
Here, as against Leeds, Chair was the best outfield player on the pitch by some distance. His aggressive shushing of the home fans after his goal, allied with an early departure from the post-match with Steve Cook, apparently overcome with emotion and patting his badge as he left, are a reminder of what problems may shortly lie ahead. There is, as far as we’re being allowed to know, the potential still for jail time. Who knows what subsequent effect that would have on his immigration status. Having deliberately pushed the whole thing aside, player, club and fans now have to watch, wait and hope for a reasonably positive outcome for not only one of the biggest stalwarts in these recent troubled times on the pitch, but also someone for whom this incident was so weirdly out of character per absolutely everything we’ve come to know about him over his seven years with us.
That’s a headache for the summer ahead. Those are, thankfully, fewer and further between than they were 12 months ago. QPR now have a much better team, in better form, playing better football. A year ago they had a manager so out of his depth, at both the club and the level, he could have dipped his toe in the earth’s core. They have since enacted a miraculous turnaround under the tutelage of a boss who looks to be one of the division’s outstanding managerial talents. Reports back from the kit sponsor’s event at the training ground in the week spoke about how professional it was versus what the die-hards had become accustomed to swallowing for their sizeable spend in previous years, and just how on it, over it, and in control of everything Cifuentes was. Music to the ears of a tired blogger who’s committed thousands of words and column inches to the finer details QPR miss time and time and time again. These things do matter.
With safety secured, Cifuentes has noticeably and pointedly changed his public rhetoric. Previously, understandably, it was to downplay all apparent crises and chaos. Appeal and enforce calm on a hyperactive club that loves nothing better than to gorge itself on blue Smarties. His reaction to a potentially hugely damaging 3-0 loss at Hull, on an afternoon where only a 100th minute Nahki Wells penalty prevented an absolute worst scenario of results elsewhere, was particularly impressive. Rangers have won all three games since then conceding only once – that in an end to the season we’d long since feared as being too difficult for this team and with the potential to overwhelm it.
Now he’s more willing to proffer his opinions on the mistakes the club made prior to his arrival that got it into this mess in the first place, and from what he’s said it’s word for word and page for page our match preview for this game.
Cifuentes is also talking about what the future might look like, and that’s a positive in itself given the inevitable interest that is going to come in acquiring his services from elsewhere. If I was a Championship team, with greater resource than QPR looking for my man to lead an assault on 2024/25, I’d be testing the waters here and at Sheff Wed almost immediately.
As both regular readers are aware, I like everything about this guy at the moment.
I like the way he wants football to be played, and how he talks about it. I like how he’s not so tightly wedded to his philosophy that he can’t make a pragmatic call – four centre backs away at Swansea – to cope with a specific situation, or deficiency with his squad.
I like how he seems embarrassed by the supporter adulation of him, constantly pointing and asking them to sing about the players instead when they come over at full time, rather than striding out in front of his squad like several other modern managers and giving it his own personal variation on a triple fist salute. He uses the words "humble” and "grounded” a lot when he talks about what he wants from his team, and he walks that walk himself.
I like how ruthless he was after the debacle at Millwall on Boxing Day – a real low point, not only in this season, but also the last few years. Several players had their throats cut after that shambles: Andre Dozzell not even making the team at Birmingham as they descend to League One with a number of our former problem children in tow. Only Ipswich have won more Championship points since QPR bombed that waif out and signed some proper footballers instead: Isaac Hayden may yet be a deal to do if he negotiates a settlement from his ginormous contract at Newcastle (they’ll need to remember who he is and start speaking to him again first); Lucas Andersen unlucky not to add a second goal to his tally in the first half here with a swerving shot beaten aside by Collins.
I like how he’s solutions, not problems, orientated. Cifuentes was alarmed and appalled at what he found here after taking over – much worse than the situation he’d been sold or anticipated. So many QPR managers of the past would have tossed their hands in the air at this and demanded a whole load of new signings be made while also quietly casting around for other jobs. Instead, he came up with batshit nonsense like Jimmy Dunne at right back. And it worked. See, it doesn’t always have to be ‘more blood’. Work with what you’ve got. Here is a man who can produce things of great beauty out of pathetically meagre raw materials. That’s a vital skill and tool to have as a manager at our end of the league of haves and have nots. That’s a good coach. QPR look a well-coached team again/at last.
Most of all, though, I like him quietly seeding constant talk of a "winning mentality” he’d like to develop here.
QPR has, let’s be honest, been a bit of a standing joke, for a long time. Perhaps we’re guilty of perpetuating and glamourising this, with all out "typical bloody Rangers” articles about John Jensen, Lloyd Doyley and Swindon bloody Town (1993/94 Olly, come on mate). Even this latest survival has been done in the most ‘QPR way’ possible. For the second successive season we’ve survived, in some considerable part, by winning 2-1 away at the champions when rated at somewhere north of 10/1 to do so by the bookies. Of the top seven teams, only Southampton have beaten Rangers twice. We won at Leicester; would have won at Ipswich but for better finishing and refereeing; trounced Leeds; battered West Brom at home; fought out a spirited 2-2 with Norwich; and comfortably won 2-0 against a Hull side who, in the second meeting at least, showed how good they can be. Conversely, all six teams that have finished lower in the table have been treated to at least a point – Rotherham one, Huddersfield four, Birmingham one, Plymouth two, Sheff Wed six, Blackburn three.
There’s an almost cartoonish element to this part of our identity as a football club, and as us as loyal followers of it. When Rotherham come to Loftus Road, without an away win in two years, with former R Jordan Hugill goalless in 24 matches up front, we try and outdo each other in our ‘hilarious’, doom-laden prophecies. We exaggerate and exaggerate again what would be the ‘Most QPR Thing’ we could do – and, hey, when your Arsenal-orientated boss bombs out Alan McDonald after 19 years of service with the club so he can pick Steve Morrow instead, and Macca then returns to keep goal for Swindon Town and keeps a clean sheet for an hour with ten men to win 1-0 at Loftus Road, who can blame us? We’ve sat through some extraordinarily concentrated servings of dog shit sandwich here.
We will, however, never get anywhere like this. Not anywhere good. Nobody ever achieved anything in sport from a starting position of "hahaha, we’re complete crap”.
There are a lot of problems and disadvantages here - logistically, financially, infrastructure, sad facts of modern life and sport – that will always serve as something of a millstone weighing us down and holding us back. Modern football has, to a large extent, left clubs like QPR behind. We’ve had several opportunities to counter that, and missed the boat each time.
There’s also a huge amount going for us. There’s a lot that makes QPR unique, and attractive, and special. Loftus Road has buzzed and hummed like the old days in recent weeks. Turns out we can fill the ground, attract young supporters, build an atmosphere, despite having a team that has now won more away games than home for the second year running having only done that once before in its history. The club must harness that for next season, weaponize one of our biggest weapons, be super careful with its season ticket pricing, and build on this feel-good factor and sell-out crowds. The team has played like old school QPR teams used to, and we must take this opportunity to cultivate that further after asking our supporters to sit through so much Hasselbaink, McClaren and Ainsworth-driven slop. And we have to stop laughing at things like those two defeats to Sheffield Wednesday.
Winning 2-1, in a final day dead rubber, away to a Coventry side that has played more games than anybody else in the division, suffered the sort of scandalous Wembley heartbreak that would have sworn me off football for life, and was clearly all done and checked out in the Mykonos departure hall, was completely unimportant and irrelevant. It will be almost instantly forgotten. A quiz question for Crown & Sceptre lunchtimes to come – asked to name the scores and scorers in our five wins at whatever the fuck they call this monstrous vandalism of British football stadia traditions and values these days, this will be the one you don’t get.
I’m certainly not going to sit here and pretend it’s in the pantheon of Jimmy Dunne’s last-minute volley into the top corner against Birmingham, or our latest pants-down humiliation of Massive Massive Leeds, or Sinclair Armstrong charging on from the bench and into the away end at Leicester via a big bastard boy volley into the bottom corner of the net. But almost every QPR team I know would have come here and lost this game 3-0. Away end drunkenly ignoring the cakewalk under so much "Three nil down, who gives a fuck? We’re QPR and we’re staying up” gallows humour. That we didn’t – that we were committed, organised, professional and set up well enough to do the opposite, that our mentality was such… – is enormously positive. This stuff does matter, however much we may pretend it doesn't.
Whitewash defeats to Coventry, of which we've suffered three in quick succession, are not, and should never be, good enough for Queens Park Rangers, whether the game matters or not. This manager gets that. Something might be happening here.
Links >>> Ratings and Reports >>> Message Board Match Thread
Coventry: Collins 5; Ewijk 6, Thomas 5, Binks 6, Bidwell 6 (Dasilva 66, 5); Eccles 6 (Allen 81, -), Kelly 6 (Palmer 66, 5), Sheaf 7, Wright 7; O’Hare 6 (Torp 76, 5); Simms 6 (Godden 76, 5)
Subs not used: Wilson, Linda Lusardi, Keith Andrews, Dausch
Goals: Allen 83 (assisted Wright)
Yellow Cards: Thomas 40 (foul), Eccles 73 (foul)
QPR: Walsh 8; Cannon 5, Cook 7, Fox 7, Paal 6 (Smyth 89, -); Hayden 6 (Field 62, 6), Dixon-Bonner 7 (Armstrong 81, -); Willock 7 (Colback 62, 6), Andersen 7 (Adomah 62, 6), Chair 8; Dykes 6
Subs not used: Dunne, Salamon, Clarke-Salter, Larkeche
Goals: Chair 33 (assisted Dixon-Bonner), Fox 40 (assisted Andersen)
Yellow Cards: Paal 70 (foul), Adomah 74 (foul)
Referee – Josh Smith (Lincolnshire) 8 Surprised he didn’t get a bigger game on the final day, would expect to see him involved in the play-offs. Summer stroll in the sunshine for a very good referee who’ll be a Premier League regular fairly shortly. QPR now one defeat in nine with him – he can come again.
QPR Star Man – Joe Walsh 8 I’m always reluctant to give a goalkeeper the star man because it makes it look like we got battered and were lucky, which wasn’t the case here. It’s also completely true that Ilias Chair was, by some distance, obviously the best player on the pitch, winning the game with an outstanding goal and hitting the post with another similar effort. But I thought Walsh was outstanding, his speed and alertness off his line made a huge difference to the way we were able to defend higher up the pitch, and the save from O’Hare in particular was excellent. Plus, it’s his full league debut for the club, it’s a nice thing to do to give it to him. Over the last few weeks we’ve found that we can have nice things after all.
Attendance 29,102 (2,539 QPR) A privilege and honour to travel among you this season. A support base that could very justifiably have turned on its club, or walked away from it entirely, instead decided to grab a shovel and help out. The club must seize and galvanise this moment with its season ticket pricing, not kill it in an attempt to make a quick quid. Reward the people who stood by you, when by all rights there should have been pitch forks and flaming torches, smashing the place up and tearing doors off hinges. All’s well that ends well, but medium and long term do not ever put us in that position again, and reward us in the short term for not holding against you too aggressively. Enjoy your summer guys.
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