Baby steps – QPR didn’t lose on Saturday, away at promotion favourites Burnley, and there were vintage performances from Steve Cook and Jake Clarke-Salter at centre back to build on moving forwards.
Timing, it seems, is not a strong suit of the Queens Park Rangers class of 2024.
We’ve spoken, ad infinitum, about the unhappy combination of trying to bed in ten analytics-based signings from Europe at the same time you lose three of your most experienced Championship players right down the spine of the team. This was always going to take a long time to work, if indeed it ever does work at all. Jake Clarke-Salter, Jack Colback and Ilias Chair have been big misses in this scenario.
Clarke-Salter showed at Burnley on Saturday exactly what the team has been missing through his absence with an accomplished centre back display which helped hold promotion favourites at arm’s length for the duration. Jimmy Dunne, who has struggled in that left centre back role as his replacement, looked much happier back on the right too. Bar the opening day loss to West Brom, Rangers are unbeaten in Clarke-Salter’s eight other appearances this season. His absenteeism is the only reason he’s at this club, and this team’s prospects depend on how much we can chip away at that.
Pinning your hopes on the return of injured players, however, can be fraught with difficulty.
Ilias Chair has his critics, Jack Colback has firmly divided opinion since he arrived at the club, and Clarke-Salter’s attendance record doesn’t immediately suggest he’ll be fine for a 40-game season once he gets over this latest calf issue – his 29 starts and four sub appearances last term was a career high. QPR weren’t particularly good when all three of them were available, and while we await their returns it’s inevitable further injuries and suspensions will occur.
Rangers had the best fitness record in the entire Championship in 23/24 leading to much praise on the impact of "head of performance” Ben Williams – something the club were only too happy to lap up with fans forum appearances and podcast interviews. Marti Cifuentes has, unfortunately, not been blessed with such a healthy squad this season.
There is always a degree of luck to these things. Remember how we were all too happy to talk sport science and higher standards when Mark Warburton’s QPR finished 2020/21 in red hot form with a clean bill of health, despite finding value in the market by signing players with known injury problems? The subsequent season’s promotion push collapsed amidst oh so many Chris Willock hamstring explosions and a goalkeeper body count worthy of a Netflix true crime miniseries. Same players, same manager, same staff, different results.
Having injuries suddenly mount when Williams has been announced as head of performance at NBA’s Brooklyn Nets and is, as per Christian Nourry after the recent fans forum, now working for QPR alongside that and other roles, while often based in Dubai for personal reasons, will raise questions as long as things aren’t going well. This week's loss of Kenneth Paal and Morgan Fox pressganged Harrison Ashby into a brave, out of position, troubled effort at marking Burnley’s exciting Luca Koleosho, while resident handsome bastard Connor Roberts overlapped. Karamoko Dembele was also absent from the attack, despite travelling to Burnley on Friday with Fox. Unfortunate timing. Again. Perhaps.
The late withdrawals of Fox and Dembele saw 24-year-old Wycombe kit man Nathan Shepperd promoted from bibs, balls and cones to the actual bench. Given Joe Walsh is already there, the presence of a second goalkeeper felt positively Redknappian. You won’t let Cifuentes do interviews, you won’t let him appear at fans forums, fine, he’ll speak in other ways. When you spent that fans forum explaining how young Rayan Kolli has gone from featuring heavily in pre-season and starting the opening match to not even making the bench, or being included in the squad photo, for no other reason than we’ve just got loads and loads of better options ahead of him, having the manager pick two goalkeepers on his bench is unhelpful. When seven unused sub appearances at Wycombe is a career highlight for one of them it smells like something is up. Perhaps there’s little more to it than they took a travelling squad of players up north on Friday, they lost two of them when it was too late to bring a replacement, so they stuck Shepperd there because they may as well. But if you knew Fox and Demebele were struggling, you’d surely take Kolli just in case, no? And we’ve named short benches before. Shepperd’s not going to play, is he, let’s be honest, under any circumstance.
If QPR were winning occasionally, if there wasn’t so much concern about the way the club is now communicating with its fan base in half-truths and staged announcements, it would barely register. But they’re not, and there is, and so two goalkeepers on the bench becomes the latest Marge Simspon grumbly noise moment.
Again, timing.
This also felt like a less than ideal moment to be visiting Burnley. If all the confidence and belief has drained out of your team then it doesn’t matter how many injured players you get back, you’ll just be chucking them atop the same funeral pyre. If two keepers on the bench felt like the "you’ll have to ask the chairman” height/depth of Harry Redknapp’s tenure, then failing to just pick up even a couple of accidental wins to keep the show on the road and then entering a results doom spiral is a page from the Mark Hughes chapter in QPR’s recent history. QPR’s last six games, of which they’ve won none, have been against the teams currently 24th, 22nd, 15th, 13th, 12th and 6th. Their next six, starting here at Turf Moor, are against the sides sitting 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 8th, 16th and 20th. I guess having only taken one point from a double home header against Portsmouth and Coventry you can’t very well ask the footballing Gods for another swing at a divisional whipping boy. But, still, Burnley, then Sunderland, then Boro, then Leeds, THEN THE LARGE WOMEN AGAIN… don't shine that torch in my face mate, I've lost a pint of blood.
Or, have I?
QPR’s only win so far came away at Luton Town, one of the clubs most recently relegated from the Premier League and in receipt of parachute payments. That one of only two occasions they’ve managed to score more than one goal in a game – the other being a 2-2 draw, from 2-0 down, away at Sheffield United, who also came down from the top flight with Luton. Burnley are the third relegated side and – spoiler alert – the draw achieved here on Saturday means QPR have taken five points, and stayed unbeaten, in three away games against the three teams most recently playing in the Best League In The World™. Meanwhile, Rangers have lost two from two against teams promoted from League One with a fixture against Oxford at home to come in December - and fuck only knows what we'll do with that.
There is some history to this as well. Gareth Ainsworth’s QPR were winless in seven when we last visited this corner of Lancashire. Well beaten at fellow strugglers Blackpool and Wigan, home games against Birmingham, Preston and Coventry comprehensively torched. When a midweek last stand in W12 against Norwich only produced a draw the club felt Pizza Trophy bound. At least one, probably two, victories required from the final three games - two of those away, and the first one at Vincent Kompany’s runaway league champions Burnley, who hadn’t lost a Championship game at home since 2015. That record sustains today. The last time the Clarets were beaten at home in the second tier of English football was by Preston Knob End in December 2015, nearly 50 games ago. Bar one. For, of course, Rangers flipped over in the air, landed on two wheels, pulled over at the side of the track, banked their 2-1 win and said ‘what you worried about?’.
That victory was driven in large part by a centre back performance for the ages from Rob Dickie, who just a few weeks before at Bloomfield Road had looked like somebody who should never be allowed near a football pitch again, recipient of an unheard of LFW mark of 0/10, but employed with spectacular success at Burnley as, ironically, a de facto second goalkeeper.
This time around, Steve Cook filled that role. After a dire run of results and performances, and an unwelcome return to the bottom three in a season we’d all dared to hope for better, QPR needed some senior players to step up and start throwing some punches. Cook heeded the call. He was magnificent. Deflecting a Flemming shot wide of the post to begin with, then putting in a brilliant challenge at the near post to prevent a certain goal after Koleosho had roasted Ashby and put the chance on a plate. Connor Roberts, classy from right back all day, thought he was in for the opener after neat interchanges around the edge of the box on 28 minutes – Cook’s monstrous challenge, clearing man and ball into the first row of the stand, was so good even Roberts got up smiling with words of congratulations and a handshake. Proper, old school, defending. Get out of my pub.
There were other such last-ditch efforts to maintain the deadlock as well. Jimmy Dunne left most of his arse hanging out after he slid in on Jaidon Anthony with great success when he’d been played clean through after just five minutes. Nardi blocked well with his legs from Cullen just before half time, then more routinely from Laurent at a corner late in the day. Jonathan Varane, without the need to trouble his medical aversion to turning around and playing forwards, thrived in a backs-to-the-wall effort, with stout blocks in the box from Cullen, Koleosho and others on 11, 40 and 75. These lads do care, and are committed.
Cook, though, was obviously the top man in a first clean sheet of the season. That combination of Nardi, Dunne, Cook and Clarke-Salter does at least feel like something to build on if nothing else. I was despondent when my alarm went off on Saturday morning, and the experience of trying to wrestle through this country’s disgustingly mismanaged rail network all the way to Burnley and back in a day was every bit as dire as I expected. To see a bloke put it on the line and give a toss about what he was doing as much as Cook did here made the whole ball ache it worthwhile. That’s what we want. That’s all we want.
This is, clearly, not Vincent Kompany’s Burnley. A summer quest by the Clarets’ starfucker owners to find somebody they’d heard of to replace the big headed (in every sense of the term) Pep acolyte led them to... Scott Parker. A manager who has won promotion from this division twice previously, and bored the living shit out of everybody while doing so.
Afterwards Parker described the game as "a boxing match that was always probably going to end in the 10th or 11th round and it didn't materialise for us”. He added: "We jabbed and jabbed away and we beat them up and they've come out the ring with scars and bruises along the way and they've managed to hold on in there.”
In his mind he’s probably conjuring images of Frank Bruno, some idiot Londoner, hopelessly stumbling around the MGM Grand against prime Tyson, just hoping to get it as far as a points decision. QPR, embarrassingly, were wasting time from very early on in this game.
Burnley reminded me more though of post-Olympics Audley Harrison. Apparently with all the tools – Burnley signed 16 players this summer, including Millwall’s best player Zian Flemming who played up front here, Bournemouth’s impressive Championship winner Jaidon Anthony, Man Utd’s antagoniser-in-chief Hannibal Mejbri for £5m, Maxime Esteve who played centre back here for £10m, winger Mike Tresor for £16m – and no real idea what to do with them. They danced and pranced and strutted around the ring for a full 12 rounds, struggling to lay a glove on the sort of under resourced cannon fodder promoters send in to boost their record. I struggled to mark Paul Nardi here, because I like him, and I’m delighted he’s got that long overdue first clean sheet, but… how many saves did that guy have to make? Humphreys should certainly have increased that total, or scored, with a free header from a first half corner.
Of all the trends and styles in the modern game, I find Scott Parker’s Belgian motorway football one of the most irritating and tedious. After starting the season with some fireworks against Luton and Cardiff, Burnley have quickly settled to the grinding, uninspiring, outright boring route to finishing second in the Championship Parker's taken every time before. This was their third 0-0 in six games, one at newly promoted Oxford, the other in the last home game here against mighty Preston. The Turf Moor regulars have seen one goal in the last 270 minutes of football. It’s all just so, so slow. Just so slow. Backwards and forwards and sideways and sideways. Connor Roberts standing out like a black guy in a Richard Curtis film, simply by wanting to go forwards with pace and purpose – he started the second half by clipping the bar from range.
I find it insufferable. I’d rather have type two diabetes than watch this every week. I’ve no skin in this game - I don’t care, really - but this is the third team Parker's managed in this league and the third time it's looked like this. In every case he’s had riches and resources beyond the wildest dreams of idiot scum like us, and he’s used those to try and win promotion through the medium of 30 instantly forgettable, turgid 1-0 wins. Brownhill, Cullen, Flemming, Anthony, Koleosho... would not only get in the QPR team but be the best players in it. How many of our players would get in their team?
Just as at Mitrovic-led Fulham, or Solanke-led Bournemouth, Parker is a guy in possession of a nuclear weapon, trying to win a war with a toothpick just to prove he can do it. For goodness sake, get on with it. Have some fun. It’s meant to be fun this. With this squad Burnley should be winning games, routinely, by three and four goals. Stop waving it around and start fucking.
We all know how this is going to go. QPR had lost their previous five fixtures against Scott Parker sides prior to this one. Burnley are going to be promoted. They’re going to be promoted in second, when they should be first. They’re going to be promoted with 20-something single goal wins, and zero memories. They’ll top that up with a dozen draws, of which half will be nil nil. When they have a little wobble in January Parker will demand, and be given, another half a dozen signings. Watch out for a Morgan Whittaker-type turning up here on deadline day on loan with a view to a £15m permanent in the summer, starting five times in the second half of the season and scoring once. Once promoted, back to a league they know they can’t compete in and don’t really enjoy being part of, they’ll lose eight of their first nine games churning out this footballing purgatory, and Parker will be sacked. He will later take over newly relegated Wolves, where he’ll spend £50m+ on 20-something signings he’ll use to get a positive early 0-0 draw on the road away to newly promoted Mansfield Town. Wolves are going to be promoted. They’re going to be promoted in second, when they should be first. They’re going to be promoted with 20-something single goal wins, and zero memories. And so it continues.
The locals looked and sounded bored to me. As they should be. There’s got to be more to footballing life than this. In the second half Parker sent on number 37, Andreas Hountondji, and number 48, Enock Agyei, to no great effect whatsoever. Do the people of Burnley really know who these guys are? Do they care? There was warm applause for Jay Rodriguez, because at least they’ve heard of that guy. Don’t hate the player (Parker), hate the game (parachute payment football) I guess. But still, fuck me dead. I’d be absolutely livid with this performance and result if I was a season ticket holder there. Outright, needless, tedium. It doesn't need to be like this. It really doesn't.
All of which rather tempers how happy I am about QPR leaving with a point.
Vincent Kompany’s Burnley were streets ahead of this stodgy version, while Gareth Ainsworth’s QPR were figures of ridicule from impartial observers and committed lunatics alike, but even that shambolic version of ourselves managed two goals and a win against that opponent. Here, Rangers struggled to cross the halfway line. Paul Smyth’s early purposeful run at the end of a smooth counterattack from a Burnley corner brought a fine shot past James Trafford and off the top of the bar. As far as goal threat, excitement, ball at the other end of the pitch went … that was it. A point is a good result in the circumstances, the centre backs were exceptional, the team and supporters clearly remain with the manager, but with the ball this was fairly woeful. Only Koki Saito really seemed to know what to do with it at all, and once Burnley realised the referee was fine with them booting him halfway to Accrington and back that was the end of his positive effect as well.
Much of the criticism and focus will inevitably fall on lone striker Zan Celar, who was abysmal again – either because he’s not a lone striker and we’re using him wrong, or because he’s not a footballer at all. Jury remains out. At Lugano he played in the central striking role in a 4-3-3, which we’re told (by Marti Cifuentes) is Marti Cifuentes’ preferred system as well. And yet here we are, slogging away essentially with ten men, while he contributes the square root of fuck all as the one in a 4-2-3-1. Subbed after an hour, Cifuentes offered zero acknowledgement of the Slovenian as he walked past him to the bench, and he was replaced by 18-year-old Crocodile Bennie from the Australian A-League, which again felt like a manager making a public point.
I do feel sorry for Celar as a human being , coming into a new country, city and league to play for a struggling team that has singularly failed to produce, sign, identify, develop, improve or help any striker in the last decade or more. Charlie Austin was the last success story in that position in hoops, and he was a relatively proven prospect when Rangers signed him from Burnley. I feel for him on a football level as well, because he’s either not up to this standard, or whatever strengths he has which could help us we are completely ignoring and not playing to. But, then, it is only the Championship, and I do think it’s possible to be effective in this league without necessarily being very good. All Bennie did when he came on was charge about, close people down, put people under pressure, make challenges, get up for headers and rush the goalkeeper whenever he pisballed about for too long. It made a big difference. Do you have to be good to do that? Do we have to play to your strengths for you to do that? You can contribute more than this.
This stepped up another level still when Alfie Lloyd made a cameo late in the game. Suddenly QPR had a striker willing to do not only those Bennie basics, but also get on the ball and run at defenders, or turn into the channels to provide an out-ball for Rangers' embattled backline. Again, I’m not sure Lloyd is very good, or going to make it, but that drive, physicality and effort made a substantial difference. Burnley, suddenly, looked worried. To go back to our last visit here, a big part of the win was the hard time Sinclair Armstrong gave them running channels. And that's Sinclair Armstrong. It’s amazing the results you can get in this division from the bare minimums, such as... running.
One of Lloyd’s late forays might have yielded a dangerous free kick Rangers could have put into the box, and got an opponent on a yellow card. Troubling exposed centre backs on a counter attack, he was very obviously pulled pack – you could see the stretched shirt in the defender’s hand and everything. Referee Andrew Kitchen played on. Not even a free kick.
Burnley fans will no doubt raise Jimmy Dunne’s apparently clumsy handling of a dodgy first touch in his own area in the second half, but that would have been an extremely harsh penalty. Rather than appeal, the hosts might have been better served making more of the gilt-edged chance Flemming had seconds later but headed straight at Nardi. Meanwhile, what was a QPR free kick versus what was a Burnley free kick seemed to be a confusing, unbalanced nonsense all day.
Koki Saito, tripped by his full back in front of the away end, asked to get to his feet, allowing Burnley to break through Koleosho, tripped by his full back in front of the home end, and immediately awarded a free kick. Paul Smyth bumped off the ball for one you could debate, got up, retook possession, was then obviously fouled… play on. One rare QPR attack was interrupted to go back and check on whether Jaidon Anthony was injured in back play. He wasn’t, as anybody with half a brain in their head could have told you. Not only not a head injury, but not an injury at all – he laid down deliberately to get the play stopped and Kitchen bought it. Even the Burnley physios reluctant to come on because they knew Anthony would have to go off for treatment he palpably didn’t need – the medics had to be forced onto the field by the referee who must have known at that point that’d royally fucked up. A young official, on his first visit to a Premier League ground, 700 visiting fans tucked away in a corner… all a bit much for him, and a long afternoon at his hands for those of a hooped persuasion.
And, in the end, scoreless.
Links >>> Ratings and Reports >>> Message Board Match Thread
Burnley: Trafford 6; Roberts 7, Egan-Riley 6, Esteve 6, Humphreys 6 (Pires 73, 6); Cullen 6 (Rodriguez 73, 6) , Brownhill 6; Koleosho 7, Laurent 6 (Hountondji 87, -), Anthony 7 (Agyei 81, -); Flemming 5
Subs not used: Dodgson, Hladky, Massengo, Mejbri
QPR: Nardi 7; Dunne 7, Cook 8, Clarke-Salter 7, Ashby 5; Varane 6, Field 6; Smyth 6 (Morgan 81, -), Chair 6 (Andersen 81, -), Saito 6 (Lloyd 87, -); Celar 4 (Bennie 61, 6)
Subs not used: Santos, Dixon-Bonner, Madsen, Shepperd, Walsh
Yellow Cards: Bennie 81 (foul)
QPR Star Man – Steve Cook 8 Captain’s knock.
Referee – Andrew Kitchen (Durham) 4 Distinctly home oriented.
Attendance 19,187 (710 QPR) A travelling hardcore still well with its manager judging by the songs and full time reaction here, and warmly appreciative of a better effort from the team. I loved watching Steve Cook compete for our badge on Saturday. Writing the preview on Friday, getting up at sparrow’s fart the following morning for a slog up the East Coast, then the Northern Rail experience of hourly three coach rattlers trying to deal with Doncaster fans at Bradford, York fans at Halifax, and QPR fans at Burnley… it just all felt so bleak. Why am I bothering? Having a guy stand up like that and put it on the line for the club was what I wanted to see. So, thank you to him. Effort like that is noticed and appreciated on days like this.
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