Gather round children, it’s QPR in the Third Round of the FA Cup time again and, while we all know the numbers behind that, Marti Cifuentes says he’s keen to write a new chapter.
Simod Cup >>> Saturday January 11, 2025 >>> Kick Off 14.00 >>> Weather – Bitterly cold >>> Crisp Bowl, Leicester, Leicestershire
For the second season in a row Marti Cifuentes and his players have staged a successful firefight, hauling themselves out of the Championship’s arsehole and nuzzling themselves safely into its midriff. From one win in 16 it’s now one defeat in 11 and six wins among those games. Rangers tracking 11 points better off than this time last year.
Cifuentes is now talking longer term and culture change. The Spaniard seemed irked by the pessimism around his side’s chances of beating Luton on Monday. QPR went into the game with four home wins in a row, Luton on a run of eight successive away losses in which they’d conceded 25 goals, so naturally many expected a defeat. "I read that will be typical QPR, typical Rangers,” said Cifuentes this week. Ah, shit, that might have been us. In our defence, anybody with any length of service with this club expects the same from those situations.
"These are the small things, hopefully, over time we can [change]… Respect how we are, what is the culture of our club?,” Cifuentes continued. Absolutely love it. Music to every ear in the greater Shepherd’s Bush area I’m sure. It may look like we’re enjoying ourselves, sitting round the back room of the Coach and Horses talking about how many we think we’re going to lose to Norwich, trying to outdo ourselves with prophecies of doom for a homer against Luton, swapping the club’s mad FA Cup statistics back and forth on the train to the latest Third Round disaster at Fleetwood, but we’d all give anything for it to change.
It’s self-defence, trying to prepare ourselves mentally in advance so hopefully the disappointment doesn’t bite quite so hard when the failure does hit. Weary cynicism born out of experience. QPR have let us down. They’ve let us down time and time and time again. We’ve been conditioned to expect it. Like Pavlov’s dog, if Pavlov had booted it in the bollocks every time a plastic ball with ‘32’ written on it was drawn out of a little velvet bag.
I desperately want that one, that Cifuentes talks about. It doesn’t have to be like this, let’s change it. It is, however, particularly easy to be cynical about tomorrow’s trip to Leicester City.
From football’s fairytale the Foxes are flirting with a pub quiz question about which former Premier League champion fell furthest and fastest. Having financially mismanaged their club and fought the dual fronts of Championship promotion and courtroom battles last season, Leicester are one relegation away from EFL FFP vengeance in 2025/26. With just three wins in the first half of the season that looks more likely than not. The sacking of "The Man They Call Coops" (© The Athletic) and left field appointment of Ruud van Nistelrooy has moved the needle only as far as five successive defeats. It’s not going to take too many more cuts to turn this into the same death suffered by so many Stokes before them – financially fucked, losing money hand over fist, tied up by FFP, playing in the same half empty stadium as everybody else, stuck in the middle of the Championship (or worse) forever more.
Personally, I’d be okay with that. Over the last decade Leicester have won two promotions, won the Premier League itself, won an FA Cup, played in the Champions League and the Europa League twice. I’d give my left bollock for QPR to have one Europa Conference League group campaign. There are people reasonably close to me I would gladly sacrifice to see Rangers win the FA Cup at Wembley. A proper sacrifice, in a wicker man. If you said I could have all of that over the next ten years, and a Premier League title, and Andrea Bocelli turn up and sing, but then we’d go back to being shit again forever more, you wouldn’t have an arm left. I’d rip it out of your shoulder socket with my bare hands and then beat you to death with the soggy end of it to stop you escaping. It’s bringing love, don’t let it get away.
Leicester are simply regressing back to the mean of what they’ve always been. Sadly, with achievement comes expectation and, to a degree, entitlement. I was on a Foxes podcast this week where the host said he’d "never felt as low about his football club”. This a team promoted as champions with 97 points just six months ago and now two points off safety, a team in League One as recently as 2009, a club of two separate group sex/rape scandals behind them, a club that paid £5m for Ade Akinbiyi. A club with short memories?
Still, it perhaps says something of the purgatory the Premier League is creating for clubs whose sole purpose in life is to cobble together ten wins, finish 17th, and get out of Dodge every year. Nottingham Forest weren’t having that, invested in their team accordingly, now sit second in the division, and have had lawyers chasing them every step of the way. Leicester don’t even seem to be enjoying the Premier League that much anymore, they just know they have to stay there for financial and legal reasons. Grim. With Palace to come here in the league on Wednesday it’s difficult to imagine a club with less of a toss to give about an FA Cup Third Round tie at home to QPR. There will likely be as many Rangers fans there tomorrow as there are home – 4,550 tickets sold; East Midlands Rail sure to be ever the pleasure.
Unstoppable force meet immovable object. QPR bring the country’s worst FA Cup record into the tie. No team has lost more Third Round games than Rangers’ 52. The R’s have been to the fifth round twice in 29 years and never further, have won just eight ties in that time, haven’t won an away game in this competition since 2013, have lost at the first possible moment in four of the last five years and 19 of the last 24. Vauxhall Motors etc etc etc. The enormous following heading out to the frozen East Midlands tomorrow only brings back painful memories of similar mass pilgrimages to Old Trafford, Selhurst Park and Port Vale – always, ultimately, to be disappointed. Lump on an extra time period nobody wants.
Marti Cifuentes has picked reasonably strong teams for cup games so far in his time here. He'll make his own pre-match words sound very hollow indeed if he doesn't tomorrow. It would arguably burn off more credit than even the 12-match winless run did through the autumn. The team is bang in the middle of the Championship, now as close to the play offs as the relegation zone. It’s playing well, in good form, against a weakened team that is neither of those. No midweek games either side of this tie... Only two games to play in 18 days... If not now, then when?
If you do want to change culture, if you do want people to have faith, if you do want people to think differently of you, what a great place and opportunity to start in front of more than 4,000 travelling fans.
Give it a good go, Rangers. We’ll all be there behind you.
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Team News: Injury wise it seems to be pretty much as we were last week with Karamoko Dembele and Zan Celar long term, Steve Cook and Liam Morrison medium term, Jack Colback and Jake Clarke-Salter feeling their way back with sub minutes in the last game. One would think Joe Walsh might be given a go here in goal instead of Paul Nardi. Other than that it’ll be interesting to see how many changes are made, with Southampton loanee Ronnie Edwards potentially pushing for a start. Jimmy Dunne has played 26 of QPR’s 29 games this season, Sam Field 25. Ilias Chair made his 250th appearance for the club last week, the first player since Matthew Rose and Kevin Gallen to reach that milestone. He marked it with a third assist in three consecutive home games, the first time in his QPR career he’s done that.
QPR didn’t have a midweek game leading into this, and don’t have one on the other side either. From New Year’s Day this is one of only two games in 18 days for the R’s – that after playing on the 21st, 26th, 29th and 1st over Christmas. A nutty, needless situation. Leicester don’t have that luxury. Crystal Palace, four places and seven points above them in the league, are here on Wednesday and with all manner of EFL FFP vengeance waiting for them back in the Championship if they’re relegated that will be the clear priority. Jamie Vardy sitting out to be replaced by Patson Daka may just be the start of it. Jannik Vestergaard was taken off injured at Aston Villa and will likely be replaced by Wout Faes. U21s full back Jayden Justin has been training with the first team and may debut. Fatawu (ah ha) is a long-term absentee.
A reminder that there are no replays this season because we have to clear the calendar for a few of the sport’s biggest cunts to fuck off to the Far East and USA more often. Extra time and then penalties should it be a draw on 90. In happier news, no VAR until the Fifth Round so we’re still years away from having to suffer that nonsense.
Elsewhere: Cynicism also isn’t helped by the outright vandalism of this competition by the people who profess to love it the most.
The FA Cup’s schedule, particularly for the Third Round, continues to completely obliterated by its various broadcast deals. The 32 fixtures are this weekend spread across six days and 17 different kick off times. Three games were played last night including Sheff Utd 0-1 Cardiff which kicked off at 19.00 and took place in front of in excess of 26,000 empty seats at Bramall Lane. Peterborough’s first, last, only ever trip to Goodison Park moved to a Thursday night in the depths of winter. There are two ties tonight, seven on Sunday, one on Monday and one can only imagine the anticipation building and tickets flying out of the door for Mansfield v Wigan and Preston v Charlton which are being played next Tuesday. How’s that fair on the Charlton fans?
The vast majority of these will not be televised in the UK. It’s all done under a sort of vague catch-all excuse of "foreign broadcast commitments”. I’m sure the people of French Polynesia cannot fucking wait for Hull v Doncaster at midday on Sunday, and that wait between connections at Dubai International will simply fly past with Middlesbrough v Blackburn to watch at 12.00 on Saturday. Incidentally we’ve got Blackburn on Fourth Round (I know, I was surprised too) day so watch out for their result along with ours.
Said broadcasters like to make an enormous, hammed up deal about the supposed "magic” of this competition. If I’d been paid a quid for every time Alex Scott and Troy Deeney said "that’s why we love the FA Cup” during the BBC’s coverage of Kettering v Doncaster I’d have been able to buy both clubs. That a tie that Kettering deserved the replay that would previously have come with the draw they got, except now we have to do extra time and penalties because "Pep” can’t possibly cope with the odd replay with his billion quid squad, what with all the post-season tours of the UAE.
The FA Cup does magic like Disney’s Magic Kingdom does magic - £92 each at the gate and 75-minute queues for all the rides. Expect wall-to-wall footage of Sutton knocking out Coventry, Hereford trampling over Newcastle, Dan Walker giving the full Alan Partridge treatment to somebody who combines washing the Tamworth (at home to Spurs) kit with occasionally pulling a pint in the supporters club, and Mark Clemmit rummaging through the wash basket of some nervous boy who combines a sports management degree at Roehampton Tech with scoring occasionally for Bromley (away at Newcastle).
Generic, predictable, patronising, cartoonish, cliched bilge — all of it, all of it, completely undermined by the games they do pick for live broadcast, which have all the magic of getting caught short and having to go for a shit at Winter Wonderland. Sit down tonight, for instance, and enjoy that most romantic and magical of FA Cup ties tonight, Aston Villa Reserves v West Ham Reserves — a twelfth meeting since 2019.
Man Utd (away to Arsenal) meanwhile, have announced a £10m-spinning "post season tour” of Malaysia.
Killing our sport, and this competition in particular.
Referee: Championship mainstay David Webb for this one. QPR have won just one of 15 appointments with this referee, whose decision to send Asmir Begovic off at Leeds last season was overturned on appeal. Details.
Leicester: It has been a miserable return to the Premier League so far for Leicester City. Second bottom with 14 points, they have won two of their ten home games and one of their ten aways. What was noticeable tapping up their results yesterday is just how little time they’ve spent leading games this year – 69 minutes of a 2-2 draw at Palace, 74 minutes of a 1-0 win against Bournemouth, stoppage time of a 3-2 win at Southampton, four minutes of a game they eventually lost 4-1 at Brentford, all of a home win against West Ham and most of the first half at Liverpool before losing 3-1. That’s about 280 minutes out of the 1,800 they’ve played in the league so far, about 15%. In the League Cup they beat Tranmere 4-0, required penalties to beat League Two Walsall, and then lost 5-2 at Man Utd. Jamie Vardy is, as usual, the top scorer here with six in 18 starts. He turns 38 tomorrow and is in his 13th season with the club.
Having recently swapped Steve Cooper for Ruud van Nistelrooy, Leicester arrive into this game on a run of five straight defeats and one win in the last 12 games. They’ve lost their last five by an aggregate score of 2-14 although, to be fair, fixtures at Newcastle, Liverpool and Villa along with a homer against Man City were included in that run.
The Foxes won the FA Cup in 2021, beating Chelsea 1-0 at Wembley. Wilfred Ndidi and Vardy are the only two players remaining at the club from that starting 11. It was the first time the club had lifted the trophy having been to Wembley in four previous finals and lost (41, 61, 63 and 69). They had won the League Cup three times prior to that though – 65, 97 and 00. They have only been eliminated from the FA Cup at the Third Round stage once in the last eight seasons – though that was a big upset, losing 2-1 at League Two Newport.
QPR: Rangers’ 2023/24 round three exit at the hands of Bournemouth was the 52nd time Rangers have been beaten at this stage of the FA Cup, more than any other club. That total has been topped up substantially in recent years — the R’s have been eliminated at the Third Round stage in 15 of the last 20 seasons. That despite a round four game at Peterborough in 21/22, another against Sheff Wed in 2019/20, and the dizzying heights of a round five loss to Watford in 2018/19. Those victories against Leeds and Portsmouth after a replay under Steve McClaren were QPR’s best FA Cup performance since 1996/97 when Trevor Sinclair’s bicycle kick secured a round five trip to Wimbledon. We haven’t been further than round five since a 1994/95 quarter final at Man Utd, the club’s best performance in this competition since they got to the same stage in 1989/90. Rangers haven't won away in the FA Cup since 2013 - a 1-0 Third Round replay win at West Brom (their only away win in the competition this century). All of this means we have been beyond round four of the FA Cup only four times in the last 31 years. This is the first FA Cup meeting between these sides since 1987 when Jim Smith’s QPR won 5-2 in a Third Round tie at Loftus Road – Fenwick (two), Lee, James and Byrne with those goals.
Marti Cifuentes side have now only lost one of 11 matches, having started the season with one win in 16. The R’s have also spectacularly turned round their home form, from a club record worst start to a league season (nine without win, 11 in all comps) to winning five in a row in W12 for the first time since 2013. They are now 11 points ahead of where they were at this point last season. Michi Frey moved clear as QPR top scorer with a sixth of the season against Luton, the second time he’s scored against that opponent already in his brief QPR career. Jimmy Dunne really should have been chasing him with a fourth goal in eight games but for a first half sitter. The Irish defender now tops the Championship for clearances with 150, level with Swansea’s Ben Cabango.
These two sides traded 2-1 away wins last season as Leicester swept to the Championship title and QPR avoided relegation. Andre Dozzell scored then got himself sent off at Loftus Road allowing Harry Winks to score a late winner, while Ilias Chair and Sinclair Armstrong secured a shock win for the R’s at the Crisp Bowl in early March. Rangers last trip here prior to that was their last game in the Premier League when Charlie Austin scored in a 5-1 defeat to a Leicester side that had put on a late spurt of results to carry it to safety after being promoted with Rangers the summer before – within a year they’d have won the Premier League outright. Despite that it’s another one of those new stadiums that hasn’t been too bad a place to visit for the Hoops since its construction. We’ve won four and drawn one of nine visits since this fixture was rekindled in 2003/04.
Prediction: "I read that will be typical QPR, typical Rangers,” Cifuentes said. "These are the small things, hopefully, over time we can respect how we are, what is the culture of our club? Let’s see if we can start to challenge ourselves… Let’s see if we can have a good game against what is a Premier League side and will therefore be a tough challenge, but the commitment will be 100% there.” Wonderful. Couldn’t have put it better myself. Now go do it.
LFW’s Prediction: Leicester 0-2 QPR. Scorer – Jimmy Dunne.
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