QPR continued their remarkable upward trajectory with a fourth straight victory to move them within four points and places of the play-offs, Hull City the victims this time.
Hull City beat Queens Park Rangers 3-1 at Loftus Road at the start of October and few from either side that night would have predicted their subsequent trajectories since.
The Tigers were on a three-game winning run as maverick/arrogant German gunslinger/tosspot Tim Walter looked to breathe fire over the Championship wheatfields with his "heart attack football”. QPR, on the other hand, were dead on arrival. Unbeknownst at the time they were three games into what would turn into a 13-match winless run which would leave them with just one win from their first 16 games across four months and five points adrift at the bottom of the Championship table. Angry questions were asked of those responsible for what, at that point, looked a disastrous summer of recruitment.
Hull have only won three of 21 games since. Walter’s ludicrous tactics had him on thin ice with the frosty locals anyway, even before he started coating them off for lack of noise and atmosphere at home games – great plan, Bart. He’s since been replaced with Reading’s chief firefighter Ruben Selles but it’s only moved the needle to the tune of three single-goal wins, and only one of those has been on Humberside. This, easily, the division’s worst home record - one win in 11 and just two all season long. There’s a strong possibility a team spending one of the top six budgets in the Championship this season may be playing in League One next. You’d be a brave man to bet against that happening watching them play here.
Rangers, implausibly, have caught fire. Now one defeat in 13, with eight wins among those, only pacesetters Leeds and Burnley can hold a candle to their record of 28 points from a possible 39 since November’s international break. Marti Cifuentes is once again picking up admiring glances for his work in W12 from the division’s podcasters and influencers. Rangers insist his job was never on the line despite the wretched downturn in form but, as well as wondering whether the club would have held their nerve without the steadfast support of the crowd, it’s also worth peeping through the sliding doors moment that was Stoke’s controversially disallowed last-minute winner at Loftus Road in November. That draw now the start of a remarkable run that is gathering pace rather than slowing down.
We spent the preview (they don’t write themselves) examining the tangible reasons why all this might have come to pass. At Hull, a significant summer talent drain that saw 63 of their 68 goals from last season leave the club; an arrogant folly in dismissing Liam Rosenior for making steady rather than spectacular progress and playing too cautiously at home; a hubristic appointment of a German mentalist solely on the basis that he plays all out attack at the expense of all else and other; and a scattergun recruitment policy that has seen them work through 62 transfers in three seasons under this ownership. Another £2.5m was splashed on Blackpool’s Kyle Joseph in the build up to this game because he’s scored eight goals in 29 League One games. Four players including pricey full back Ryan Giles were left out of the team here because they’re on the cusp of securing moves elsewhere. From ownership that initially promised so much in the wake of the despised Allams, Hull is a chaos club once more.
At QPR it’s been a sea change in tactics and mentality. A spectacular end to last season which saw survival secured with a flourish, and a gob bumming of Leeds, perhaps convinced Rangers the worst was over. More FFP headroom to spend, fewer cowboy boots hanging around the technical area, and surely not another two wins from 17 start to hamstring the entire season. Go forth and play Cruyffian football young disciples, with a high press and assortment of midget gems at ‘ten’. A respectful recognition of the dog league we’re captured in, a pragmatic switch to a tighter and narrower midblock, a prioritisation of legs and running and tackling and heading the ball (competing, basically) over flicks and tricks, and bravery to turn to unheralded young Kieran Morgan types over and above splashy summer recruits have all helped turn the tide.
What we didn’t talk about so much was the beautiful, mysterious intangibles that make our sport so infuriatingly compelling. Things you can’t buy. Things like confidence, momentum and belief. QPR were still not playing well when they started to win games. In fact, on the road at Cardiff and Bristol City, and for a good chunk of a home game with Oxford, they were pretty woeful. As results have built, the team has moved up the table, pressure has been released, confidence has been restored. On shaky foundations and from tiny acorns, performances have grown – against Preston and Luton at home and Watford in both meetings. Rangers were decent on Saturday at Plymouth, and then got better again in the second half here on another long away slog. Nothing succeeds like winning, and it can become a self-perpetuating thing. Hull, meanwhile, look absolutely bereft. Can’t stand up for falling down, just like Rangers a couple of months back.
I bring this all up because the reports don’t write themselves either, but also because this 90+ minutes rather mirrored the last six months of respective fortunes for these sides. Handy that.
To begin, QPR all cock of the walk. Paul Smyth toasting left back McLoughlin early (as we’d been promised he would) after Paul Nardi sprung the high press resulted in a shot to the near post well saved. From that corner a free header cleared from the line. Later, at another set piece, a ball all the way through the goalmouth, off the post on the far side, and out again. Hull fannying around at the back almost inadvertently slipping Rayan Kolli through on an open goal with keeper Rushworth stranded – Sideshow Bob rewarded for his weekend winner with a start in Rangers’ only change, but too frequently caught offside.
Without a goal to show for it, though, Rangers started to wane. Hull creeping slowly but surely back into the contest. Lively Irish youngster and Hull’s best player Harry Vaughan slipped inside and around Jonathan Varane and Jimmy Dunne in one dribbly move before drawing a save from Nardi at the near post. Nardi then laid a pass to Dunne short allowing a swift counter and shot wide by Steven Alzate. A glancing header from a corner required Sam Field on sentry duty to prevent a back post tap in. Paul Smyth was lucky not to be booked for pulling an opponent back on the corner of the box and, although that set piece was wasted, the Tigers were soon bombarding the box once more and somehow Joao Pedro failed to connect with a ball as it dropped two yards off the line for what would have been a certain goal.
Confidence, momentum, belief. Hull started the second half reasonably, invited on by first Nardi and Field’s sloppy play out from the back that required intervention from Ronnie Edwards, and then more pedestrian play in the wrong part of the pitch which Kieran Morgan had to rescue at the expense of a yellow card. Nardi flapped at a corner, Gelhardt headed over an unguarded net. Hmmm.
Time, once more, for QPR to change tack. Cifuentes had seen enough and summoned two substitutes, sacrificing conventional skill and ability for an increase in speed and enthusiasm. Off went largely ineffective Kolli and Chair - it was not their sort of game. Chair in particular wants to play in front of a defence, which Hull seemed pretty okay with. On came Koki Saito and Alfie Lloyd - it was absolutely made for them. Both want to run beyond and behind, something it turns out Hull are terrified of. The Londoners set off to the races immediately.
A Hull defence that had looked susceptible to anybody of any moderate pace whatsoever running at them throughout the first half suddenly had two or three QPR players doing that at every opportunity. Saito, a grin with a boy attached, and Lloyd, who charges about like one of those costume horses with two people inside, were not what this brittle backline wanted to see. It was 2-0 in no time at all.
Koki is in Hull
Look, he has the ball at feet
Oh, he’s gone again.
The best attack of the night so far saw Saito free Paal for a low cut back into space which Lloyd walked onto and drew Rushworth’s first serious save. Rangers immediately repeated the same move down the opposite side. This time Lloyd provided the cut back for Paal to walk onto and, although the first effort was spectacularly blocked by retreating defender Jones on the line, Paal was alert enough to convert at the second attempt as the latest bundle in this season of scrambly scrambles fell his way.
Cut in from left wing.
Shoots with great skill into goal.
I fell down the stairs.
McLoughlin at left back and Drameh on the right looked particularly vulnerable. Isolated one on one and lacking any ability whatsoever to deal with what was coming their way. Smelling blood in the water, Saito took Drameh to the byline, sent him to Toontown with a comedic step, floated along the whitewash unchallenged, then whipped an improbable finish over Rushworth and into the far corner of the net kissing post and bar as it went. Saito twice hit the outside of the post in the corresponding fixture at points when a goal for the Hoops could have changed the momentum of the match and the autumn as a whole. They both went wide, Rangers lost the game. Here it went in, and at 2-0 a fairly unassailable lead was in place. Like I say, sometimes these things become self-fulfilling.
Saito scores first goal.
Reveals much more than polite.
Pick that out you cunt.
Confidence, momentum, belief. The visitors now wholly in control and playing fairly superbly. Lloyd a man possessed. A hold up and lay game hitherto unseen from him. Ball sticking, holding, and being distributed. Composure and calmness from the squad’s busiest head. More incremental improvement being extracted by this coaching team. A three or four goal blow out now on the cards, and a home crowd suppressed into stony silence. Maybe flick the lights on and off a few times again?
So here we are, two thirds of the way through the season, two thirds of the way through this game, recovering from earlier pain and suffering, gliding into sunlit uplands of spring, starting to eye that holiday booked for the second May Bank Holiday weekend with deep suspicion. Rangers, implausibly, are now four places and points from the play-offs, no time at all since they were well adrift in dead last. This is an Oakland A’s level of recovery. How can you not be romantic about baseball.
There was, to come, a cautionary tale, and it didn’t need another Moneyball re-run and reminder of how that all ended. Having turned the game in his team’s favour with two positive, proactive subs, Cifuentes then threatened to flip it entirely the opposite way with two poor ones. Nicolas Madsen and Harrison Ashby, two of the summer intake who haven’t taken, were summoned for minutes in legs and perhaps a little rub of that self-belief from the rest of the team. Smyth and Morgan took with them legs and energy which their replacements could not, or would not, replicate.
Soon the excitable and all action Lloyd was angrily screaming at Madsen for not joining him on a high press. Ashby, meanwhile, picked up the personal horror story from the Leicester cup tie and ran with it aggressively. There he was responsible for three of the six goals conceded, here he attempted 12 passes and gave six of them straight to Hull players. It was extraordinary/terrifying to watch and a game that was well won against a home team completely done quickly came back into the balance as QPR died a death all over again. From looking for goals number three and four, Rangers were soon picking the ball out of their own net when Ashby gave the ball away, gave the ball away again, and Joe Gelhardt opportunistically flea flicked a rainbow looper over Nardi and into the net from 20 yards, taking a lick of paint from the bar as it went. Six minutes plus stoppage time to go, 2-1, how’s your arsehole now?
Confidence, momentum, belief now flooding in the opposite direction, Ashby was promptly hooked for the sensible, experienced Jack Colback option Cifuentes should have gone for in the first place. Subbing the substitute. A personal humiliation for any footballer, and Ashby looked a difficult combination of infuriated and disconsolate on the far side of the bench. Some have painted him as injured. It certainly wasn’t picked up in the second free kick he won – a blatant dive with the nearest contact on the south bank. A horrible 15 minutes. And so we get into that dire modern spiral of people copying him into abuse on social media, him deactivating his Instagram (a big deal in Harrison Ashby world you get the impression), none of which is going to improve matters, all of which is only going to make him feel worse. Whatever you think of him and his performances, that will have been a long, lonely bus journey back down the M1 in the middle of the night for a 23-year-old lad.
QPR won the game. That should be the focus. The result was seen out and just. We’ve barely mentioned Dunne, Edwards and Paal in a defensive capacity, and haven’t spoken at all of Morgan Fox at all who’s going to become significantly more important to this team with Jake Clarke-Salter now injured and absent yet again. All four were superb here. Dunne is just in the form of his life, unplayable and unbeatable. Edwards, who had an unhappy time of his own at Leicester where he looked fit only for Love Island, looked a class apart here as Saturday. Fox has rebounded well from personal shockers against Portsmouth and Swansea and strung together a steady run of form peaking with his best performance here. Paal arguably also his best game of the season in both directions. The strength of the team in tough moments on Tuesday lay there, and the dependable Morgan-Field-Varane triumvirate in front - of whom Varane was probably the pick but Field had the key defensive moments and Morgan never stopped running.
The second batch of substitutions, ultimately, weren’t costly, but do provide a valuable lesson everybody involved would do well to heed. QPR were too casual at 2-0 once they’d been made. The R’s stopped doing what had got them into the lead – running, basics – and started getting cocky and complicated with the ball. Too much confidence and belief can be a dangerous thing as well – Ashby, in particular, is frequently writing cheques his ability can’t cash. This sequence of results will be maintained with the mid-blocks, hard yards and stretched legs that built it in the first place, not rainbow flicks and sleeve tattoos. If the game was indeed a microcosm of the season then there’s a chastening drop off to come with an ultimately satisfying, rather than spectacular, end.
To focus on that negative, though, and the continued struggles of a couple of young players, would be a perverse end. QPR have done the thick end of 600 miles in four days. I’m sitting here exhausted and I haven’t even played. Though I suspect there’s been discrepancies between my diet and the team’s while out on the road it does say something that the players have basically spent five days confined in a motorway bus and been able to produce two pretty accomplished performances and take maximum points. They’ve stared into the eyes of all the ‘typical QPR’ lore – change the team for the cup tie and kill momentum in the league, play the bottom of the league team that hasn’t won in 12 and come baring gifts, go to the worst home record in the league and come over all charitable – and come out unscathed. They’ve played, and are playing, increasingly well. All that chat from the start of the run about winning without possession and could we keep it up and would you even want to watch this every week if we do… melting away into proper, proficient performances.
Proper, proficient performances, and now four wins in a row. QPR have been the better team in both games this week and return to Loftus Road from a logistically gruelling road trip in the dreaded three-game week with six points out of six. I’m so, so happy. You?
Confidence. Momentum. Belief.
Links >>> Ratings and Reports >>> Message Board Match Thread
Hull: Rushworth 6; Drameh 3, Burns 4 (Jacob 82, -), Jones 5, McLoughlin 3; Slater 5, Alzate 5; Gelhardt 6, Puerta 5 (Crooks 68, 5), Vaughan 6 (Burstow 68, 5); Pedro 5
Subs not used: Amrabat, Coyle, Myers, Pandur, Simons, Smith
Goals: Gelhardt 84 (Unassisted)
Yellow Cards: Slater 43 (foul), Pedro 73 (foul), Jones 90+6 (foul)
QPR: Nardi 6; Dunne 7, Edwards 7, Fox 7, Paal 7; Field 6, Varane 7, Morgan 6 (Madsen 75, 4); Smyth 6 (Ashby 75, 3 (Colback 90+2, -)), Chair 5 (Saito 57, 8), Kolli 5 (Lloyd 56, 8)
Subs not used: Dixon-Bonner, Frey, Bennie, Walsh
Goals: Paal 64 (unassisted), Saito 70 (unassisted)
Yellow Cards: Morgan 52 (foul)
QPR Star Man – Alfie Lloyd 8 Hull’s back four was obviously vulnerable to anybody running at them, but QPR largely left them alone through the first hour bar a couple of Smyth probes. When Lloyd and Saito came on the game swung dramatically in our favour. The hosts couldn’t handle either of them. Lloyd’s progression continues, this was his best performance for the club so far.
Referee – Ben Speedie (Merseyside) 7 Championship debut. Basically, gave nothing all night. I was kind of here for it.
Attendance – 19,180 (438 QPR) Imagine being the guys who dress up in matching black jackets and buy their tickets as close to the away end as they can possibly get in order to give it the biggun then posting a 2-6-7 home record – the worst in the division. One win in 11 here now. Laugh snort.
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