QPR bounced back from their standard Boxing Day collapse at Swansea, with a much better performance and result at Norwich – the hosts equalising in the last minute of normal time to deny Marti Cifuentes’ side a win.
Queens Park Rangers ended November five points adrift at the bottom of the Championship and on a run of 12 matches without a win. Considering the response to that had been a seven-match unbeaten streak which lifted the injury hit squad to five points north of the drop zone, and the best performance in that run was in the last game against Preston, the collapse in mood among the faithful since it all came to an abrupt end at Boxing Day on Swansea could be considered a little extreme.
Partly that’s because we’re an extreme bunch, lurching constantly between checking train times and pubs for potential awaydays at Crewe Alexandra next season and urging everybody to get the 200/1 on Rangers to make the play-offs while it’s still available. Last season, after two wins from the first 17 games, QPR won three in a row through December and so many people backed them to make the top six the BetFair exchange listed Rangers at a shorter price to make the end of season knockout than Sunderland, who at that point were sixth. The R’s then lost at Sheff Wed and, abysmally on Boxing Day again, at Millwall, sparking another run of eight without a win and the sky was falling once more. It is very much feast or famine at Loftus Road; Christmas round Nigella’s or death from above. This a team in its tenth Championship season having finished 18th, 20th, 11th, 9th, 13th, 19th, 16th, 18th and 12th - not a decade that really screams immediate peril or sunlit uplands.
There were, however, genuine reasons for the long faces across the breakfast servings in Norwich’s Coach and Horses on Sunday morning – over and above another travesty of a kick off time inflicted on the travelling fans by our Sky Overlords and a train service not going to where it's supposed to go and looking a lot like a bus.
The manner of the defeat at Swansea on Boxing Day was - even by QPR’s standards of both chucking in the odd horror show every now and again and always playing like a bunch of festering tarts the day after Christmas - appalling. The R’s were three nil down by half time, could have been six, and the possession was weighted 83-17% in favour of the hosts. At one point it had been an unheard of 90-10.
While Rangers had indeed been unbeaten in seven, and played very well against Knob End, there was a lingering worry Marti Cifuentes’ team had rather gotten away with it on a few occasions. The first half performances against Bristol City and Oxford had been every bit as poor as the one in South Wales – City far too profligate to take advantage, Oxford far too shite. Keep tossing out first halves like that and somebody was always going to accept the gift sooner or later.
There has been an element of statistical randomness to it all. We’re not even talking underlying numbers here. Rangers got positive results at Burnley and Cardiff with sub-30% possession. They’d drawn 1-1 at Ashton Gate with one shot on target, from the halfway line. The full backs, midfielders and forwards who played in Bristol averaged 50% pass completion between them – giving the ball away every other time they had it. Preston was the first time since Birmingham at home last April Rangers had won a game while holding more of the ball than the opponent. It felt, to a certain extent, like we’d been getting away with it. And then along came Swansea to hammer home that point.
No coincidence that they did so with Steve Cook and Liam Morrison missing from the centre of the defence. Rangers have lost nine of their ten games without Cook since he signed here, Morrison is unbeaten in nine starts for the club, and both have been the bedrock of the recovery over the last six weeks. The reason Rangers have been able to pick up points without the ball/having any shots is because they’re able to lean on their centre backs for great long periods of time and have the opposition punch themselves out. A week ago, when assessing priorities for the January transfer window, you’d have said the team was weak and in need of work everywhere except in goal and in the middle of the defence. Losing those two, medium term, at the same time, is catastrophic. Centre back has potentially leapt from item 151 on the team’s glitch list to one. Morgan Fox’s performance as Morrison’s replacement was horrifying.
Not many among the travelling brethren holding out much hope at Carrow Road then, a ground in which six-foot 18-year-olds have scored as many times in the bogs at half time as the team has on the pitch in its last six visits.
This despite the recent upturn including a three nil humping of Norwich City in W12. Norwich copped two FA charges in the wake of that game – Kenny McLean returned here after a four-match ban for whacking Kieran Morgan, walkabout goalkeeper Angus Gunn awaits his fate for following up his histrionics at the end of the first half with some choice words in the tunnel. None of this QPR’s fault, of course. Unless little Kieran’s "aggggghhh my face” after being hit in the face constitutes some form of "grassing”. Norwich suffered a collective headloss that day. Borja Sainz, such a nice boy, is now facing a charge of his own for spitting at a Sunderland player in a subsequent game. Perhaps that’s our fault as well? Still, REVENGE, apparently.
Eight paragraphs there and they add up to one thing… this looked set to be a very tiresome afternoon indeed. "Have a little scrimmage”. Look at our giant rotating TV. Urgh, kill me now.
Instead, QPR were absolutely fine. Borderline competent.
The non-existent press from Boxing Day was far more effective – Rayan Kolli good energy and hard yards, Lucas Andersen blocking passing lanes intelligently, Ilias Chair and Paul Smyth disciplined either side of that, and then a midfield marshalled superbly by Sam Field. Better shape. Better everything really. It could scarcely have been worse, but still, it came as something of a relief.
With the ball, too, vast improvements. Kieran Morgan, who’d been excellent against Preston and then drowned in Swansea Bay, was superb here. Always showing as an option, taking the ball on the turn, progressing it well. Not the performance of an 18-year-old in just his eighth senior start. I’m really liking the look of this kid.
A slick move down the left after six minutes got Kenneth Paal away and his low cross seemed to fall plum for Andersen, right where your creative ‘ten’ is meant to want the ball dead centre of goal 15 yards out, but he scuffed the shot so horrendously it barely made it out for a goal kick. The Dane helped us out of possession here a lot, but with the ball he continues to crater alarmingly from last season’s highs. One ‘burst’ forward later on in the first half where he was required to open his legs and sprint was, let’s be honest, fairly shambolic. I’ve moved furniture faster. Slow as rust, him and us as a team (bar the ever-industrious Smyth).
There were scares, sure. Paul Nardi took a whack claiming a low cross early doors. Sainz drilled a shot through the goalmouth and out the other side. Schwartau shot over and Morgan Fox redeemed his Christmas sins somewhat with a firm block to end a flowing counter attack as the hosts had a hot streak around 25-26 minutes. Nardi made a nice save from Slimane and, more importantly, held the ball cleanly with several attackers awaiting a rebound.
Rangers, though, were vastly improved, and went into half time leading. Kenneth Paal’s inswinging corner, Jimmy Dunne’s climb, Crnac’s unfortunate slip, and another bit of quality on the line in the finest tradition of Scottish goalkeepers by Gunn who should maybe start thinking a bit less about getting pissy with everybody around him and a bit more about… goalkeeping. The statistical anomalies were back again: Rangers leading 1-0 with zero shots on target; three away games over Christmas, two draws achieved, still the only shot on target we've had is Paul Smyth's 50 yard equaliser in Bristol; own goals ascending back to the team’s top league scorer this season with three (Michi Frey does have four in all comps to be fair - "is that my good cup goal up there? Get that down. Get that down right now.).
The second half was a ridiculous, at times farcical watch. Rant number one incoming…
Two not-very-good Championship teams, one of them holding a narrow lead away from home and desperate to cling on to it, the other trailing to a limited side on their own ground and with time ticking away. Both deciding the best way to go about this challenge was to spend huge great swathes of time playing ever more suicidal passes around their own penalty area to "invite the press”.
I’m sorry, if it makes me a luddite or a troglodyte or a Tony Pulis acolyte or whatever, I don’t care. Take half a step back, remove the emotion from the situation, look at it logically… this is nuts. It is nuts.
When QPR took their time over free kicks, throws and goal kicks (which of course they did, A LOT) the home fans bitched and moaned and screamed for action from referee Sam Barrott. Fine. I would have been the same. Yet the Canaries were quite happy themselves to burn off vast stretches of the second half pisballing about at the wrong end of the field with the ball at Gunn’s feet. ‘Ooooh, can’t pass it yet lads, they haven’t triggered the press’. And so the keeper holds it… holds it… HOLDS IT. In his own penalty box, for hours and hours at a time, losing one nil at home to QPR, with the clock ticking down. GET ON WITH IT. YOU’RE LOSING THE GAME. Fucking hell. Absolutely barmy. Is it just me? Apparently so.
There’s a great stat tucked away among Norwich’s numbers for this one – right back Kellen Fisher had a highly unusual almost never-seen 100% pass completion from 29 attempts. He didn’t give the ball away once in 90 minutes. From those 29 attempts - zero crosses, zero through balls. Only four of the passes went forwards into the QPR final third. What on earth are we doing here? What is this?
Rangers, meanwhile, twice almost surrendered their lead by passing the ball to Norwich players in their own penalty area. Great plan, Bart. Paul Nardi made two more tremendous saves in the second half, with his legs when faced with Sainz one on one, and spectacularly up in the top corner with one hand to claw away a header from Duffy which looked a certain goal. The Frenchman, not for the first time, was probably our man of the match here. Sainz had, however, already nearly read him twice playing a bobbly left footed pass to the right side. Ilias Chair had even come running back to tell him to pack it in and go a bit longer and more pragmatic. The advice went unheeded. Third time's the charm, the Spaniard did indeed take the ball off Nardi and waltzed round his desperate recovery attempt. Ay ay ay, CATASTROPHE. Somehow Sainz missed the open goal with two team mates waiting for a tap in.
Soon a period of triangle passes on the edge of our own box, ‘ole’d’ by a ridiculously over confident away end, ended with Kenneth Paal passing Hernandez in lethal territory but, more by luck than judgement, not for an equaliser. Read the room, Rangers.
Who has decided and decreed that football is supposed to be played like this? Why is this the vogue? It’s fucking nuts. I’d lock Guardiola up, me. The bloke’s a terrorist. We'll look back on this as one of football's most tedious periods.
There was, as we’d anticipated, a good deal of needle in the game. Probably a good thing we’ve got both the matches between these two out of the way for a while and won’t see each other for at least another eight/nine months pending any accidental FA Cup progress (it has a fourth round now, you know).
I was, to half time, reasonably impressed with new Premier League referee Sam Barrott. A former Halifax Town player whose own career was curtailed by injury, he was exactly the sort of smart, pragmatic referee we should be looking to promote quickly through the ranks (Barrott has ascended to Premier League within three seasons of making his EFL debut) with a good feel for the game having played it himself. QPR will fume with the antics of the likes of Sainz, and latterly Marcondes whose sole contribution to every match he plays in seems to be chasing the referee around flapping his arms around like some demented goose. Norwich, meanwhile, will point to Rayan Kolli’s fairly embarrassing diving about, and the repeated collapses and pleas to stop play from the likes of Lucas Andersen. If we’re all really honest with each other, there was a lot to dislike here in both sets of player behaviours. Diving, moaning, niggling. Cheating. Just get on with the game lads for fuck’s sake. And that, for 45 minutes at least, seemed to be Barrott’s attitude – waving play on through a series of nonsenses and palavers. Good on you mate.
After half time, things went awry. Rant number two incoming. The consistency between what was a free kick and wasn’t dissolved completely, with minor infractions punished one minute and major ones waved away the next. What was and wasn’t a yellow card also became a murky business. The performance summed up by a 30 second period in which QPR won the ball well on a high press, with Norwich largely committed upfield and Ilias Chair on good ball in a great position 40 yards out from goal. Marcelino Nunez recognised the danger, chopped Chair down at the shin, and stopped the play. A pretty standard tactical foul, which Barrott awarded, and yellow card, which he did not. Fine, if that’s the standard, but no more than 30 seconds later (another classic QPR free kick from the training ground) Norwich were breaking at the other end, Harrison Ashby recognised the danger, tripped Ben Chrisene, and stopped play. A pretty standard tactical foul, which Barrott awarded, and yellow card, which he also awarded. That sort of stark, blatant, one-rule-for-one inconsistency is not right. It’s not fair. And it’s not good enough from a Premier League referee.
For the final ten minutes Norwich brought on Ashley Barnes, a man now in his 25th year of going bald. Looking like he’d finally succeeded in a lifetime ambition of getting locked inside Cadbury World for Christmas, he slobbed about for ten minutes contributing the square root of fuck all until stoppage time when he interrupted a promising Norwich attack by belting a QPR player off the ball at the far post. Barrott saw the incident, and penalised him. Kudos to the official. But, again, no booking. Michi Frey, meanwhile, saw yellow for nudging a free kick back a few feet. Into the sea with that sort of refereeing. Into the sea and then some. What's the greater crime here? That technicality or that haircut?
A yellow card was to start to the chain of events that ultimately led to Rangers’ demise. Sam Field, wrong side of his man, pulled him back, and saw yellow at the end of the first half. I know why he did it but, that far up the pitch. was it worth it? It made Field a liability to the team, particularly when he started the second half with two more fouls, and so Cifuentes hooked him as he is prone to doing with players on bookings.
QPR were never the same team again. The strength of the first hour had been the midfield, with Field a pretty clear man of the match. The weakness for the final 30 and stoppage time was the midfield. Morgan tired after a significant personal effort – we just want to know you’re safe, sweetheart. Varane dropped too deep, too soon – too much whining, not enough doing. Nicolas Madsen contributed absolutely nothing of any worth whatsoever. Again. Beavis must be starting to wonder where he's got to. At one point one Norwich central midfielder miscontrolled the ball on the halfway line, fell over his own feet, and was still able to get up and recover possession unchallenged – IN THE FUCKING CENTRE CIRCE.
All we needed Varane to do was replicate Field’s role for half an hour. All we needed Madsen to do was copy the fairly mediocre contribution of Andersen – basically stand in that passing lane so they can’t use it. Neither could do even that. The team became too deep. We were unable to progress possession, or hold it at the top end of the pitch where Rayan Kolli’s energetic press was replaced by Michi Frey who looked… stiff.
You don’t win many games losing midfield, for an hour that was Norwich, and for the final half hour the roles reversed.
We were weaker for every substitution we made. As we often will be. That is what we’ve got on our bench, what we’ve got by way of depth. This is the squad we’ve put together. Beyond even those waifs and strays on our bench there is… there is nothing. We’ll maybe talk about Cifuentes’ game management here in the Watford preview (they don’t write themselves) because I’m not sure we did have to hook Field as soon as we did, I’m not sure removing Kolli’s yards for a bloke who can’t run was the right idea, it felt like we switched from two holding midfielders to one which didn’t work at all. For me, though, he is working with what he’s got. Two of your big money summer signings come on against a midtable team, one of them has to stand in a passing lane and the other has to tackle people and neither of them can do it. Clown school.
You come expecting nothing. Worse than nothing, less than nothing. You come expecting a hiding. You take it in turns in the pub to make the most doom-laden prediction. Sometimes the away end even sings "we’re fucking shit”. We laugh about it, for dark gallows humour, but also as a coping mechanism. Seeing if your willingness to accept the very worst might in itself induce fate to soften the blow. You don’t want to feel like you feel when QPR lose three nil, so you start preparing yourself for that outcome. Get yourself ready, get through it, get some alcohol in you, get to bed. Choose a job. Choose a career. Choose a family. Choose a fucking big television. Only 22 games to go.
Then Rangers start off alright. They get on the ball and pass it. Sam Field kicks a few people and stands over them, because today we’re not having it. We were having it on Boxing Day, but today we’re not, alright? Kieran Morgan looks the part. Rayan Kolli’s hair parachutes out behind him as he tears around on the high press. You take the lead. You lead at half time. An anticipated onslaught doesn’t occur at the start of the second half. Norwich happy, it seems, to leave the ball with their accident prone goalkeeper, who combines his penchant for conceding questionable QPR goals with a taste for big sweeping passes into the main stand, knocking Delia’s table wine all over the gaff. Time ticks on through the 50s and and you start to believe. Sainz, sulky and selfish all day, has got a face on, arguing with everybody down to and including the ball boys. Marcondes screaming and shouting about the world’s ills. Here’s Ashley Barnes, absolute state of it. And the home fans are getting aggy. With their team, with their manager. There’s something here for us. Time ticks through the 70s and 80s. It’s getting hairy, Nardi is keeping us in it, we’re getting worse, we’re getting deeper. Time, though, is on our side. You just start to think… maybe. I wonder what my life would be like if I robbed Kwik-E-Mart?
The knot in your stomach is back. Exactly what you didn’t want. We’d given this one up, remember? All that stuff about fate? Now you’re nervous. Idiot. And the clock grinds through 82, 83 and 84. It grinds through 85, 86 and 87. Kenneth Paal’s passed the ball to their striker on the penalty spot. Oh good, the curtains are on fire. Shane Duffy’s the most offside man in the world, but the linesman’s shaking his head, and he heads wide. Bloody good job as well, if that had been allowed I’d have gone down there myself. Later he’s through on goal, but doesn’t realise he’s through on goal (big Christmas was it Shane? Hope you got a taxi home this time…) and blasts over. Barnes, free at the back post, heads wide. 87. 88. 89. 89. 89. 89 and a throw in. 89 and a chance to whack the ball away down the line. 89 and they’re pissing about – first Varane, then Ashby, then Bennie. 89 and we’re asleep. 89 and it’s been coming. 89 and it’s in the net. A beautiful strike from Marcelino, arrowing into the far corner from 20 yards. The eruption. The noise. The 90’s dance music. The rotating television.
You couldn’t say it wasn’t deserved. You couldn’t say it was unexpected. You couldn’t say it wasn’t a fair result. But, still. Pissflaps.
A whole lot better than we expected, and yet also somehow worse. Never change, QPR.
Links >>> Ratings and Reports >>> Message Board Match Thread
Norwich: Gunn 5; Fisher 6 (Stacey 63, 6), Duffy 6, Doyle 7, Chrisene 5 (Cordoba 74, 6); Slimane 6 (Marcondes 63, 5), McLean 6, Nunez 7; Schwartau 5 (Barnes 81, 4), Crnac 5 (Hernandez 74, 7), Sainz 5
Subs not used: Forson, Handley, Long, Myles
Goals: Nunez 89 (assisted Hernandez)
Yellow Cards: Chrisene 38 (foul)
QPR: Nardi 8; Ashby 6, Dunne 7, Fox 6, Paal 6; Field 8 (Varane 58, 4), Morgan 7; Smyth 6 (Saito 70, 5), Andersen 5 (Madsen 58, 4), Chair 6 (Bennie 88, -); Kolli 6 (Frey 58, 5)
Subs not used: Clarke-Salter, Dixon-Bonner, Walsh, Lloyd
Goals: Crnac og 45+4 (assisted Paal)
Yellow Cards: Field 41 (foul), Ashby 62 (foul), Morgan 68 (foul), Frey 79 (kicking ball away)
QPR Star Man – Paul Nardi 8 It was Sam Field, by a street, and we were never the same once he’d gone off. Ultimately two good saves in the first half, and two outstanding ones in the second, mean it’s probably got to be Nardi with honourable nods in the direction of the ever reliable Dunne, the excellent but eventually tired Morgan and, yes, even Morgan Fox. Could have done without all the fucking about in our own area though.
Referee – Sam Barrott (West Riding) 5 Inconsistent.
Attendance 26,563 (1,710 QPR) I cannot speak highly enough of the people who are following this team around despite everything they’re being served up, despite the havoc being wrought with the fixture list by the host broadcaster, despite the weather, despite the cost, despite the state of the trains. And the support they’re giving these players. It’s amazing. Truly.
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