QPR, with one win in eight to start the season, could really do with a good result away at Derby to buy them time on their mission to create the Championship’s latest trendy analytics success story.
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As away grounds go, QPR have relatively happy memories at Pride Park.
It took the R’s seven visits to lose a game on this ground. They were famously close to breaking that record in August 2010. Kris Commons and James Bailey put the hosts 2-0 to the good with time up. Patrick Agyemang scored two minutes past that, and Jamie Mackie smashed in an unlikely equaliser two minutes further still. It was a goal that not only publicly premiered the most ridiculous dragon tattoo ever conceived, but also gave those in the away end hint that something might finally be stirring again in old Shepherd’s Bush.
That takes some topping I’ll admit (even as somebody that may have been back in The Waterfall as Mackie drew his boot back) but QPR had staged some exhilarating hat grabs from under falling boulders in a part of the world Stan Bowles once ran amok before that. Kevin Gallen, looking absolutely glorious in evocative red and white hoops, curled a game-sealing second goal our way here on a day when Paul Furlong had been sent off just 30 minutes in. Around the time Nigel Clough and Robbie Savage were pretending Robbie Savage was God’s gift to the second tier, Rangers fell two goals down again. This time well before half time in a live Saturday evening match on the BBC. A strange day, in that I’ve never watched QPR go 2-0 down away from home before or since and dared to say out loud "we’ll still win this”. Reading out from the back QPR’s team that day was Mahon, Faurlin, Routledge, Buszaky, Taarabt, Simpson. Fuck me dead. No wonder we won. They all scored.
Success has many parents; failure is an orphan. ‘Twas ever thus, in life, sport, and particularly football.
When Ian Holloway was last in charge at QPR much compliment and praise went the way of the Luke Freeman signing. A bit-part player in a middling Bristol City team, QPR spent £400k on Luke in January 2017, turned him into a Championship star and a £4m+ sale. Exactly what we should be doing. Gary Penrice, leading the scouting on Olly’s behalf, took the credit. Knew the boy, knew the club, (cough, knew the agent)… "do it now Ol, spend the money, you won’t get him if it goes to a free in the summer”. It was a great pick up, and I love all three of the people involved. Genuinely, I do. I basically spend my life now lying in wait for the feeling the team Ian Holloway played in, or the first team he managed, gave me about QPR to come back. Olly and Penny also brought in Bright Osayi Samuel, who was… FUN.
We signed another midfielder that January window though, for the same price. Sean Goss was 21 years old, playing for Man Utd reserves, with zero minutes of senior first team football anywhere, ever, in his life, and seemingly thrilled to death about it. QPR spent another £500k, with entirely predictable results. He played 31 minutes here in March 2017 as a 1-0 defeat started a run of six straight defeats for the second time that season which Rangers were incredibly lucky didn’t result in relegation.
Bring that one up in interviews and the credit was shoved the way of Ian Butterworth, an ex-Norwich midfielder also on the scouting staff around that time who’d left the club long before it became clear Goss wouldn’t get in your Monday night sevens side. Ian Butterworth thought he’d be able to "play us out on the diagonal”, apparently. Stupid Ian Butterworth. Nothing to do with me guv.
Sean Goss played his youth football in the southwest, around Exeter, which you might have thought prime territory for the Olly/Penny scouting and recruitment operation. You’d be wrong though, idiot. They did, however, spot another ball player they liked, playing for… Exeter. David Wheeler had scored 21 in 46 apps for the Grecians in 2016/17 from wide midfield and there was a school of thought he could be a relatively cheap way to pick up somebody with a nose for goal and convert him into a striker.
I’ve never been convinced Wheeler (a player I liked) got a fair crack at QPR (five starts, one sub app, one goal). I remember sitting through a long Tuesday night 2-0 loss here at Derby with him toiling away hopelessly as a lone striker in a Holloway system only to be immediately ditched and never seen again. Nobody quite so keen to accept responsibility for that signing, nor the blame for why we didn’t sign Exeter’s actual centre forward that season if that’s what we were looking for… Ollie Watkins, 21-years-old, 16 goals scored including a brace in a play-off semi-final.
Of course, because of course, it was Brentford who picked Watkins up instead, turned a £27m profit on their way to Premier League promotion, and he now scores for England in international tournaments. The deep dive analytics Matthew Benham brought to a nearby lower league club we used to play in pre-season friendlies saw them buy low and sell high repeatedly through Scott Hogan, Chris Mepham, Ezri Konsa, Neal Maupay, Watkins, Ivan Toney, Said Benrahma, Andre Gray, Ryan Woods… Brighton, running a similar model under an owner in the same line of work as Benham, have brought in £500m (give or take) in transfer fees received since 2018/19, and gone from playing Mansfield in the middle of a converted athletics track to beating Ajax in their own purpose-built mega stadium.
It has, to a certain extent, driven the rest of the Championship crazy. They all want a piece of that action/credit/glory, without access to the tech which drives the day jobs at Benham and Bloom HQ. Gary Weaver drops into his hyperbolic commentary that Brentford "crunched the numbers and worked out they had a better than 50% chance of promotion this year so pushed the boat out and signed Pontus Jansson” and everybody nods and goes ‘fuck me they’re so clever’ without asking… sorry? What? Super computer says 'yeh, half a chance, buy that wanker from Leeds'? There’s a Brentford fan on our message board likes to pop up and down with what Matthew Benham is thinking at any given time (maybe it’s him) and recently wisely informed us the supercomputer had deemed cup competitions a distraction and so they don’t bother with them. Is this like a pregnancy test? Two lines in the window, distraction. One line, pick a strong team for your awkward FA Cup third round at Oldham? Brentford reached the semi-finals of the League Cup the year they won promotion and the quarter finals a year later as they consolidated in the Premier League.
Numbers and data and analytics are where sport eats, sleeps and drinks now. It’s been soul destroying writing this column for the last decade while multiple clubs (Luton bastard Town for goodness sake) have gone past us using that approach, while we’ve been blowing smoke up Gary Penrice for knowing the right agents, Steve McClaren for loaning in a "team of men”, and Mark Warburton who worked with Dom Ball’s dad at the Watford academy and spent a good chunk of our Eze money on Moses Odubajo, Lee Wallace, Andre Gray types.
You do have to know what you’re doing with those numbers though. And know that everybody else is basically doing the same thing. Christian Nourry has said, now several times, that all ten of our summer intake this year were in the "top 50% of our squad physically”. Well, what does that mean? Two of the players we’ve brought in are four feet tall. "One thing we’ve tried to do is build projections of the potential suitability of a player to this league based on data from the league in which they’ve come from,” Nourry said at the recent forum. That’s a pretty broad brushstroke. So, are they top 50% distance covered? Tackles won? Headers won? You can’t just turn around to people and say the computer says 50% chance this year is the one to go for it, 50% cup games are a distraction, 50% these guys are the most physical. You’ve got to… quantify that a bit. Otherwise you’re just that ‘computer says no’ David Walliams character, and nobody wants to be any David Walliams character.
QPR undoubtedly think they’re a numbers club now. Hang around after the fans forum and hear Nourry dropping in that Koki Saito has the most expected assists in the league (actual assists, one). They want to think of themselves this way, and despite one win from eight and a bottom three place in the fledgling league table those numbers are still ticking in the right direction. QPR are in the top three teams for penalty box entries, and shots on goal. They had 21 shots and seven on target in defeat at home to Hull on Tuesday (more shots than anybody in the league midweek, a higher xG 2.41 than any other team bar Preston v Watford), 30 shots and ten on target in a 1-1 at home to Plymouth previously. Marti Cifuentes, in a very welcome slightly more expansive and expressive pre-match interview, reiterates that the modern football approach he’s adopting here tells us that if you keep "creating 20 chances game after game after game” you may lose once, or twice, but over a long period of time you’ll come good.
We can only hope so. We’ve heard chat similar to Nourry’s before. We’ve also seen teams similar to Cifuentes’ begin the season with positive ideals and intentions but, without early results, decay away. There was so, so much wrong with Mark Hughes’ QPR that we don’t need to rehash it. A broken club with a toxic dressing room. But I have always wondered how a summer of signings and optimism may have been harnessed and ridden had Rangers not gone on such a biblical winless run to begin the campaign – 16 games to December 15 in the end. In September we drew 0-0 with Chelsea at Loftus Road, and Bobby Zamora went round the goalkeeper and missed ten from time. A week later we absolutely battered Spurs for 88 minutes at White Hart Lane, took the lead, conceded twice in the two minutes our grip on the game slipped, and we lost. Sliding doors, but imagine putting six points on the board there in those two games and where we might have gone.
Confidence, momentum and vibes. You’ll do well to quantify them, but they’re valuable in the uber short term against your medium and long term projections. Marti Cifuentes, rightly, says if we keep posting the numbers we did against Plymouth and Hull you won’t always be playing a goalkeeper like Ivor Pandur. He’s right. It’s simply maths. But the team looked lightweight and downbeat when the Hull game was running against them. These grand plans can soon start to unravel if you don’t put a steady stream of non-descript wins on the board just to keep the meter ticking over because the players lose faith in themselves and their system. There'll be increased focus on the balance of that summer intake, and whether an Isaac Hayden type might not have been useful amongst it, if things continue to slide.
A grimy one of those at Derby tomorrow could be incredibly important, as we come to a fork in the road we’ve faced many times before.
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Team News: One of the key problems Marti Cifuentes has with integrating an eclectic cast of new signings from all over Europe, is he’s missing key, senior and established players right down the spine of the team. Having made those ten signings in the summer, if you’d been asked to order the squad members you’d miss most through injury then Jake Clarke-Salter, Jack Colback and Ilias Chair would be right up near the top of that list. This will increasingly become known as the Isaac Hayden conundrum – would this have been different if they’d just kmade the concession to bring him in alongside all the fancy analytics signings?
Sadly, it doesn’t seem like JCS or Colback will be back for this one and that presents the added difficulty of trying to execute this style of football without a left-sided, ball-playing centre half. After Tuesday night I’d be very surprised if Morgan Fox isn’t put back in there and Jimmy Dunne moved to right back. Second option, Dunne stays where he is and Harrison Ashby gets his first full league start on the right. It would be a brave manager who repeats the same back four set up from Tuesday because, well, Derby will have seen tape. Jonathan Varane serves game two of three on the naughty step so don’t expect the midfield to be too different with Colback also missing. Whether Ilias Chair is fit for a start after just a dozen minutes or so against Hull is highly doubtful. Michy Frey’s half time withdrawal was, apparently, tactical rather than fitness but we’ll wait and see if that’s true.
Derby’s on loan Liverpool centre back Nat Phillips should be fit to start here despite being removed in the second half of the midweek 2-0 loss at Sunderland with cramp. Callum Elder (fell down a well), David Ozoh (went blind staring at the sun), Liam Thompson (prolonged border dispute with a neighbour), Tom Barkhuizen (eyes that seem to look right through you) and Jake Rooney (five more minutes on the Countdown conundrum and he’ll get it) are all unavailable. Corey Blackett-Taylor is pushing for a first league start of the season.
Elsewhere: The game of the Championship weekend is undoubtedly tonight as surprise (shut up Gab) early league leaders Sunderland host the team everybody else tipped (shut up Gab) Leeds.
There’s then an intriguing collection of 12.30 games tomorrow.
Burnley rolled out the fireworks early on with a 4-1 at Luton and 5-0 home win against Cardiff. Since their frantic late window fire sale it’s regressed into exactly what they should have known they were getting when they appointed Scott Parker as their manager. A 1-1 against Blackburn, a 1-0 against Leeds, 2-1 against Pompey, 0-0 at Oxford, 1-0 at home to Plymouth. Points, getting the job done, but borderline unwatchable, and mostly against teams that (resources wise) they should be able to bury 28 feet underground. You want to watch them play Preston Knob End at home tomorrow lunchtime? Thought not.
Norwich and Hull might be a better bet. Tim Water has shrugged off early criticism of his "heart attack football” with three wins and ten goals scored while Norwich have won three and drawn one of the last five. Portsmouth and Oxford, meanwhile, is a battle between two newly promoted sides, one of whom got their summer recruitment right, and one who didn’t. Sheff Utd v Luton is a mirror image battle between two relegated sides, one of whom…
Six games in the traditional kick off slot other than our own. Coventry v Sheff Wed is a contest between two highly fancied dark horses who’ve both let their backers down with their respective starts. Swansea v Stoke is this week’s exciting fixture between two teams beginning with S, Watford host Middlesbrough, and Millwall stage their latest Marxist hunt in West Bromwich.
Blackburn are out of all control (that’ll happen when LFW tips you for the drop) but fear not because Argyle have brought in 33-year-old Andre Gray (doubt two years in Greece and Saudi will have done much for the size of that arse) as a free agent today on a deal until January*.
(*Pending Little Mix holiday plans for December.)
Bristol City v managerless Cardiff is the Sunday game.
Referee: Durham’s David Webb. Neither a surprise, given this will be the fourth time the ever imaginative PGMOL have given him this fixture, nor particularly welcome, given the opening day defeat to West Brom made it one QPR win from 14 games with this guy. Details.
Derby: After winning three out of four, the Rams come into this game on a three-game losing streak.
Given two of those were away, and the home match against Norwich was refereed by Oliver Langford having some sort of outer-body experience, that’s perhaps not a surprise. The difference between Derby at home and Derby on the road this year has been stark. At Pride Park in the league prior to the chaotic 3-2 against Norwich they’d won three without a conceding a goal against Boro, Cardiff (both 1-0) and Bristol City (3-0). Chuck in the 2-1 win against Chesterfield in the cup, and the tail end of last season, and that loss to the Canaries brought to an end a sequence of ten consecutive wins, and seven straight clean sheets in the league (their best home record since 1975). Defeat here will be the first time they’ve lost consecutive home games in 14 months.
Away games have been a different story. Tuesday night’s 2-0 loss at Sunderland made it four balls and no strikes on the road for Paul Warne’s pitchers so far, losing at Blackburn (4-2), Watford (2-1), Sheff Utd (1-0) and Sunderland (2-0). To some extent you’d expect that, not only as a newly promoted team but also because their away fixtures have been against the teams currently 1st, 3rd, 6th and 8th in the fledgling league table while at home they’ve played the sides 7th, 10th, 13th and 24th (and now 22nd of course). But it does also bleed back into last season where, despite winning promotion automatically, the Rams won only two of their last six away games. Before we get letters, their total of 13 away wins overall was joint best in League One.
Derby’s average possession (39%) is the league’s lowest. No surprise to anybody who watched Paul Warne’s Rotherham at this level. But the Millers did relatively brilliantly against QPR during his time there. Their infamous 2018/19 campaign, where they won only one of their 23 away games, featured a 2-1 victory at Loftus Road. The Millers played QPR nine times in his time there and Rotherham won four of those with another three ending in draws. A 3-2 at Loftus Road under Mark Warburton, and a 5-1 a couple of years prior under Ian Holloway were the only victories.
If you’re one of those compulsive types who just has to bet, then consider Ryan Nyambe for your viewing pleasure tomorrow. Available at 45/1 for the first and 18/1 anytime, he is yet to score in any of his 267 senior appearances (per Soccerbase) for Blackburn, Wigan or Derby.
In the last 20 meetings between QPR and Derby neither side has scored more than twice
The last time either of the sides scored more than 2 in this fixture was QPR back in 2009 in a 4-2 victory
Half of the last 16 meetings have ended 1-0— Hoops & Dreams (@HoopsDreams_QPR) October 3, 2024
Since the start of the 2022-23 season, no current @EFL side has lost more home league games than #QPR (24 – level with Port Vale and Shrewsbury).— Jack Supple (@JTSupple) October 2, 2024
QPR: After losing to West Brom on the opening day of the season QPR then went six games unbeaten in all comps and five without loss in the Championship. They’d scored in 12 consecutive games, and away from home were on a run of two defeats in 13 with six wins among them. Rangers haven’t lost consecutive away games since December. The issue was too many draws – five of the first nine games finished level – and not only does that move you nowhere in the table it also creates a situation where a couple of defeats can turn a quite positive looking situation into a very negative one. Lo, QPR have now won only one of their first eight league games, are once again six home games deep into a season without a win at Loftus Road (it took nine attempts last season), haven’t kept a clean sheet in any of their 11 league and cup games (only three Championship sides are yet to keep one), and are once again in the bottom three at this early stage with seven points from eight games. That’s now fewer points, and wins, than we had at this time last year, where Gareth Ainsworth was being roundly ridiculed online for how the team was playing.
In theory games against two newly promoted teams either side of two weeks on the training ground should help. Derby are still in a rebuild phase after all the birds Mel Morris had set in motion came home to roost – they’ve lost three in a row. Portsmouth haven’t won a game yet, and the atmosphere for the long awaited first Saturday 3pm at Loftus Road since April 6 will surely be pumping. Problem is, QPR’s recent record against teams coming up from League One is hideous. Last season they took one points from two games against Ipswich (0-1 H, 0-0 A), lost twice to Sheff Wed (1-2 A, 0-2 H), and drew twice with Plymouth (0-0 H, 1-1 A). The year before they took three points from Wigan (2-1 H, 0-1 A), one from Rotherham (1-1 H, 1-3 A) and one point from Sunderland (2-2 A, 0-3 H). Four points from Hull (3-0 A, 1-1 H) and Blackpool (1-1 A, 2-1 H) improves the total for 21/22 a bit but there were an infamous three losses to Peterborough (1-2 A league, 0-2 A cup, 1-3 H league) and the year before we won three of six against Coventry, Rotherham and Wycombe. I make that eight points from the last 18 available versus the newly promoted teams.
QPR won both games against Wayne Rooney’s Derby County when last we shared a division. Andre Gray’s speculator winner in the last meeting at Pride Park was followed by Luke Amos’ stoppage time settler at Loftus Road. Rangers have scored last minute winners in three of the last four meetings (Macauley Bonne in a 2020 lockdown fixture) and since Bobby Zamora’s 90th minute winner at Wembley have equalised in the 87th minute of the 2018 home game through Massimo Luongo and added a second to a 2-0 win at home in 2016 through Gabrielle Angela in the 86th minute. Rangers’ 2010/11 promotion push under Neil Warnock really got going in earnest when Patrick Agyemang and Jamie Mackie both scored in stoppage time to snatch a 2-2 draw from a 2-0 deficit at a time when Nigel Clough and co were pretending Robbie Savage was some sort of second coming.
Rangers like a late goal against the Rams. They also like coming here – two wins and a draw from the last three visits, and no defeats in the first six (W3 D3) after it opened, although there was a sequence of five defeats without scoring a goal in between those two. Win here and it’ll be the first time the R’s have ever won three on the bounce in Derby.
Prediction: There’s still time to enter our Prediction League for 2024/25, where we’ll once again be handing out prizes for being top at Christmas and overall winner from The Art of Football - sample the merch from our sponsor’s newly extended QPR collection here. For the first time last year we had joint winners so this season you’ll be hearing from one or both WestonsuperR and SimplyNico in the match previews.
Nico’s Prediction: "We appear to be going from bad to worse at the moment. Our inability to score more than one goal per game cost us dearly on Tuesday when we made a great start at home to Hull but then fell to pieces. We have got Derby away, managed by Paul Warne, playing Paul Warne style football which, when he managed Rotherham, no matter how bad they otherwise were, generally seemed to be too good for us. We have gaps all over the pitch, we are not scoring and we are on a bad run. I see a Derby win.”
Weston’s Call "I felt it was a better performance on Tuesday night and at times arguably the best football we have played this season, tough assignment at Derby though who have looked very solid at home and picked up all three of their wins so far this season at Pride Park. Expecting a battling performance but a narrow defeat.”
Nico’s Prediction: Derby 2-0 QPR. No scorer.
WestonSuperR’s Prediction: Derby 1-0 QPR. No scorer.
LFW’s Prediction: Derby 1-1 QPR. Scorer – Jimmy Dunne
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