QPR go hunting their first away win on Boxing Day since 1967 (!!) when they visit Swansea this afternoon.

Swansea (7-6-9 WDDWLL 11th) v QPR (5-10-7 WDWWDW 14th)

Sky’s Super Saturday Brunch Spectacular >>> Thursday December 26, 2024 >>> Kick Off 15.00 >>> Weather – Grey, dry >>> Swansea.com Stadium, Swansea, Isn’t It

Away for Christmas. Missing games. “Personal growth”, apparently. People casually tossing around phrases like “more to life” and “see, isn’t this wonderful?”. A lot of singing. Drinks specifically designed to be served chilled simmering away on the hob. And me, staring up at a television screen, where Ilias Chair is crossing first time rather than taking that extra needless touch, and Jimmy Dunne is stretching his long frame as far as it will go to head into the top corner of the Loft End net in the last minute. Through the gloomy lux value of the Loftus Road lights, all of you, going absolutely mental.

I watched the Preston game in the company of the QPR NYC supporters group, which is really easy to do. You just get the subway into Midtown Manhattan early Saturday morning - though obviously not that subway line, or that one, because they’re not running early on Saturday morning, or they are running but to a completely different place entirely of their own volition. Then you grab a bagel, or other generic New York breakfast snack, and eat that in Penn Station – standing up, because why would a mainline rail terminus require seats? Good news, from there it really is a piece of cake. Just a couple of couple of blocks east through the snow, and the -8 temperatures, and the clueless tourists, and the angry motorists until you get to LEGENDS, which is next to the Empire State Building and - to all intents and purposes at this time in the morning- closed.

Ignore its closedness. Just walk right in (walk, walk right in) and, before the upstairs bar staff/cleaners accost you, hang an immediate left down a flight of stairs. When you get to the bottom of those stairs, hang another immediate left down another, smaller, flight of stairs. There you will find the world’s most enormous Leeds United flag staring you in the face. Push past that, and on the other side is a table surrounded by QPR and, weirdly, Sutton United paraphernalia. An amiable Irish man called Jack will be there waiting. He will ask you three questions. Yes, you’re here for the QPR game. Yes, you’d like to start a tab. No, you don’t want a Guinness. He’ll be disappointed, but you don’t, really. It’s 9.30 in the morning. “I know, but I haven’t slept in days” etc etc.

There you’ll sit, alone, for some considerable period of time. People will arrive, sure. Each one in turn though will tell Jack they’re here for “t’Leeds gaaaaame”. Is this some kind of set up? Jon Champion is talking loudly about Brentford and whoever it is that Brentford are playing. There are early morning murmurings of “Marching on together, Leeds Leeds Leeds, Yorkshire Yorkshire Yorkshire” and all that usual guff. Kick off draws close and all I have is a $9 bottle of Heineken (shut up), a screen displaying the Paramount logo with a vague promise that a “live event” will be “starting soon”, and an ever increasing amount of “Leeds supporters” crowding in to watch them play… who are they playing again… oh… Oxford at home. Fuck my life. Seriously. This is personal growth?

An hour or so later some things have improved, and some things have got considerably worse.

On the plus side, fellow QPR sufferers have arrived. I’m not watching the game by myself, despite Jack’s jolly assertion that “everybody” has gone back to the UK for Christmas. There’s an expat Andrew, a local Tom and David. A group of lads from Florida, randomly. A terrific group. As the first half chugs along it becomes like the Shawshank Redemption – “what you in for?” “didn’t do it, lawyer stiffed me”. Nobody here chose QPR, and nobody here seems very happy about it. “Dad got me into it”. “Used to live in Shepherd’s Bush, miss home”. No, “thought QPR were good”, “felt like this was a club with prospects”. Just… had the jab, now there’s no escape. One inmate seems to have particularly cruelly done over. His dad got him into this, and then immediately abandoned the idea. Now he drinks here alone.

On the negative side, QPR are losing 1-0 at home to Preston. Just about the worst team in the Championship you can be losing 1-0 to. We all know how this is going to go. Each of the Preston players in turn is going to be struck down by a mystery ailment – each ailment more life threatening than the last. Who’s that? Robbie Brady. What’s up with him? Diphtheria. Oh, no, wait. He’s okay. Who’s that? Jordan Storey. What’s up with him? E-coli. Oh, no, wait. He’s okay as well. Lather, rinse, repeat. Lather in the Ebola virus, rinse the referee out of another stoppage, repeat the miraculous recovery. Kill me. Just kill me. I wish I did have the Ebola virus. Give it to me, have my inner organs explode out of my flesh, I’d enjoy it. I’d enjoy it more than this.

It is – and I know I’ve said this before, and I know it doesn’t help my largely expat audience (hello to both) – soooo much worse watching QPR on TV/streams.

I’ve given this a great deal of thought over the years. I think I feel more involved at the games, and therefore emasculated and helpless when shouting at a screen. When I’m at the game I can choose what and who I look at, which bit of the game I see, whereas on a screen I am restricted to what the match director and cameraman thinks I should be seeing – mostly replays, as it turns out. At the game I form, and shout, my own opinions, affected only by the shouts of the fellow sufferers I choose to travel the country with. Here I’m subjected to, and influenced by, the piped in thoughts of EFL international feeds bot 3.6 and whoever this non-union Mexican equivalent of Don Goodman is – Snr Hinchcliffio – from which there is no escape.

On the other side of the bar, Leeds are winning. Because of course Leeds are winning, they’re playing Oxford, at home. Each goal in turn met with that smug, self satisfied roar of the expat fan of the parachute payment club stomping on the skull of a team that was recently non-league and plays in a ground that has three stands and a bowling alley. “YEEEEEEEEEEEESSSSSSSSS”. Cunts. I’m tempted to start banging my head on the table, but I just met these guys and that might be considered a bit much.

I’ll be honest, I knew Rayan Kolli’s goal had happened before it happened. Not just because Paul Heckingbottom’s half time masterstroke of bringing on Robbie Brady to try and hold back the unified Ireland duo of Dunne and Smyth down the right was akin to solving a chip pan fire with long, tall glass of cold water, but also because the stream was behind. My phone had been going apeshit in my pocket so I’d looked at it to chastise whoever it was invading the worst 60 seconds of my life with their irrelevant chirruping about who’s got who what for Christmas and been greeted instead with “THANK GOD” and “KOLLLLIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII”. I resisted the urge to say “Kolli’s free” during the subsequent move and appear as some sort of soothsayer to the locals. This was not a goal for gloating. Or celebration. This was a goal for relief. And boy were we all relieved.

I spent quite a good deal of the remaining half an hour looking the other way. It doesn’t really happen to me at the games, but when I’m watching on screens I suffer this weird affliction of viewing every single opposition attack as potentially lethal, and every QPR reposte a pointless exercise. Preston cross the halfway line – we’re doomed, they’ll score here, you see if they don’t. QPR plant a dangerous through ball into an unmanned penalty area with the goalkeeper stranded – no chance, we’ll fuck this up, you see if we don’t. The opposition are destined to score every time they go forward, QPR may never score a goal again. To be fair, Kenneth Paal’s first half open goal and Sam Field’s slide past the post in a one-on-one situation didn’t do a great deal to cure what ails me. Whenever we played it around at the back, whenever Preston got a set piece, whenever Varane knocked one of those extravagant passes back to Nardi, I turned my head, buried my face, and asked whichever one of QPR NYC was taking turns on babysitting me at that point to say when it was safe to look again. Sometimes the pauses were disconcertingly long. "It’s….. …… …… ….. …… it’s okay now, yeh it’s okay now you can look." "Are you like this every week?"

I’d turned my phone off before Jimmy stretched almost all the way out of his little black pants and won the game. A beautiful goal for so many reasons. For the performance, which was genuinely pretty good. After the almost fluke results produced by at times shambolic displays against Oxford and Bristol City, this was much more like it and in fact a further improvement on Sunderland, Watford and Norwich. Preston were very limited opposition, and their manager hobbled them further with bizarre half time changes (maybe think about that before spending your post-match coating off the referee), but QPR were good on Saturday and deserved their win. It’s always more satisfying when the opposition has been trying to shithouse their way to a draw – Freddie Woodman’s obviously faked injury post Liam Lindsay red card was pathetic, something referees shouldn’t allow themselves to go along with anyway, and definitely something that needs clamping down on for the first two and a half weeks of next season. And the scorer… Jimmy Dunne. You let players like this go at your peril. He has his ups and downs, in form and moments, but he is the heartbeat of this team. It means more when people like that score the goal that wins the game. As we close out 2024 he has had arguably the best two moments of it – here and against Birmingham. Our beautiful, big, Irish boy. Never mind “bring” this January, how about “keep”.

The scenes on 33rd Street were raucous. People who’d only just met grabbing hold of each other and swinging them around. It was a pleasure to spend a morning with those guys. Suddenly the whole bar was looking at us. Take that Leeds. Anybody can beat Oxford, it takes an elite to turn over Preston. Who wants to win 4-0 when you can win 2-1 in the last minute through Jimmy Dunne?

Six weeks ago I didn’t see any way back. Six weeks ago I didn’t see us winning again, anywhere. Bottom, five points adrift, injury list like a Christmas Eastenders special. I spent two weeks poring over a Cifuentes exit article. Focus very firmly on the club that placed its entire on- and off-field operations in the hands of a 27-year-old who’d never done either job before in his life. Now QPR are unbeaten in seven, winning four. They’re five points clear of the drop zone, and only three other teams are in better form in the league. Key players are coming back from injury and the absentees they do have aren’t being as keenly felt as the manager once again works successfully, pragmatically with what he has available to him. New signings are settling in and getting up to speed. The mood now is high. People are making half jokes about a play off push. I floated off into the cold New York air like we’d won the league – that is, once I’d failed to persuade the last of the group to stay and drink with me.

The first thing I’ve taken away from the experience, and the first half of QPR’s season, is things are rarely as bad or as good as they seem. Preston didn’t score every time they went forward (and were in fact lucky to get the one they did), and QPR found a way to get two of their own (and should have had at least two more).

Our team doesn’t help – 11 games without a win, seven games without a loss, rarely any in between – but we collectively, perhaps, have to get better at taking the rough with the smooth. The success bar for this season was a midtable finish, half the summer signings turn out to be good players for us, one of the summer signings turns into a big sale. At the moment we’re fourteenth. Nardi, Varane, Morrison, Saito and Morgan look like decent prospects. Celar, Madsen, Dembele, Ashby and Bennie are either poor, injured or too soon to tell. Just about parring the course. A month ago it felt disastrous.

Our record away from home on Boxing Day is horrendous. Norwich seem to be wholly blaming us for their collective headloss at Loftus Road a couple of weeks back and are out for revenge. Steve Cook is an enormous loss. We could easily lose these two, sink back into it, and Chicken Little will be talking about a sky falling again. Win both, or take four points, and the jokes about keeping May clear will increase at the same rate as ChatGP Nourry statements about where he got all his great ideas from. The truth, more than likely, lies between the two.

The second thing is I really need to be there. I’ve loved my travels. I’ve loved the people I’ve met. The hospitality in New York was superb. If you’re over there for a QPR game, get in touch with Dunstan and the crew and go experience it for yourself. They’re good people. But if this was designed to wean me off the pure regular smack at least as far as occasional methadone, it hasn’t been a conspicuous success.

Maybe the traditional QPR Boxing Day disaster (no away wins since 1967) might help.

Links >>> Robbie James – History >>> Williams demands response - Oppo Profile >>> Toner in charge – Referee >>> Official Website >>> Planet Swans — Blog and Forum >>> Swansea Independent - Forum >>> Wales Online — Local Paper >>> The Jack Army — Forum >>> SOS - Fanzine

Below the fold

Team News: Steve Cook’s injury against Preston looked potentially disastrous at the time, for him and the team. Going a goal down to just about the most irritating Championship team to be in that situation against, and losing the talismanic captain of the side into the bargain… less than ideal. Rangers rallied without Cook though, with oft-maligned Morgan Fox doing us a solid, and a fine second half performance securing a 2-1 win – only the second time Rangers have won this season having trailed (Luton A) and the first time they’ve done it at Loftus Road since another last-minute Jimmy Dunne goal knocked Birmingham City over by the same score. The situation with Cook seems to be a little brighter than the Achilles blow out we feared at the time, which at 33 would have threatened his whole career Angel Rangel-style. The club have said the problem is a Plantar Fascia problem which regular runners will tell you is a stress injury caused by overuse/over training (no shit) and can really only be solved by rest. Jake Clarke-Salter only did stoppage time in that Preston game so you’d think it might be Fox from the start again here, although this was the fixture last year Cifuentes utilised Fox at left back as part of a four centre back set up.

Everything else is as was: Ilias Chair and Michy Frey making their way back from medium term absences with substitute appearances against PNE, Jack Colback slightly further back, Zan Celar and Karamoko Dembele long term.

Welsh international Ben Cabango, who has already made 206 Swansea appearances by the age of 24, has committed his future to the club this Christmas by signing an extension to the contract due to expire this summer.

Elsewhere: A full Championship programme this Boxing Day, and a fair few eyes will be on West Brom’s early evening TV game across the Midlands at Derby. We had the Baggies kicking around 12th in our season preview, and then subtracted six from that because of the quality of manager Carlos Corberan. Sure enough, they’re currently seventh and level with Boro on 35 points in the last play-off spot. Corberan, however, appears to be on hi way to Valencia after the Spanish La Liga side triggered the €3m release fee. Who would want to go to The Hawthorns, where the club remain under an EFL spending plan, and how on earth they could keep up with the work Corberan was doing there, will be the next questions.

Elsewhere in managerial news, Gary Rowett’s decision to do his first Oxford game on a “watching brief” provided shrewd as they took a 4-0 gob bumming at Red Bull Leeds. Now with Cardiff and Plymouth to come at home, it’s time for the U’s to get moving. Cardiff’s list of nine injuries/don’t fancy its for the Christmas won’t help – Chris Willock counted among their number. I know, can’t believe it either.

Millwall are still looking for their new gaffer as they head to Norwich. Hull’s Ruben Selles got his first win against Swansea, and the Tigers now head to Preston Knob End.

We’re also getting towards the time of year where Stoke start thinking about a second change, and with no wins in eight and four defeats in five Narcis Pelach could do without Leeds now heading his way.

It’s Frank Lampard’s Coventry v Wayne Rooney’s Plymouth in the battle of the media darlings. Both those appointments are going about as well as anybody outside Sky Sports could have told you they might. Frank has been on the apology circuit this week for failing to “acknowledge the fans” after City’s 4-1 loss at Portsmouth. Pompey will try and follow that up at Watford.

The games of the day are all at the top end. Sheffield Red Stripe, fresh from a takeover, are ready for their 0-0 at home to free-flowing Burnley. The two surprise packages in the top six, Blackburn and Sunderland, meet at Ewood Park. Boro, meanwhile, host Sheff Wed.

Bristol City v Luton goes ahead purely to get people out of the house and away from the in-laws.

Referee: Ben Toner, last in charge for the 0-0 draw at home to Sunderland, is the man in the middle for this one, which at least gives us the chance to tell that Oyston story again. Details.

Form

Swansea: Like Preston last week, it’s another distinctly midtable record we face in the Swans. They have won seven, drawn nine and lost six so far, scoring 24 and conceding the same. Luke Williams’ side climbed into the top half of the table with a good November of four wins, two draws and two defeats from eight games. That was some going since they’d scored a league-worst 11 goals in the first 15 games, including a run of five consecutive matches without scoring through October. Even more so when their first three-goal haul since August and only second in the league all season resulted only in a 4-3 home defeat to Leeds. They’ve now scored 13 goals in seven games, but come into this on a run of two consecutive defeats – 3-2 at home to Sunderland having led 2-0, and then 2-1 at basement dwellers Hull last time out. The Welsh side have won only one of their last seven at home (D3 L3).

If you’re one of those compulsive types who just has to bet then 1-0 might not be a bad call. Nine of Swansea’s 24 league and cup games have finished that scoreline one way or the other. The Swans have scored one goal in six of their games and failed to score in a further nine. Each of Swansea’s last six wins has been by a single goal, and they’ve only won by a margin of greater than one once all season – a 3-0 win against Preston back in August. Swansea have the worst attack in the top half of the table with 24 scored, and apart from our own total of 22 you have to look as low as Preston in eighteenth for a worse total. Nine teams below them in the league have scored more at home than the Swans’ 14 – the same total as second bottom Oxford, and five fewer than last placed Plymouth. Liam Cullen is the top scorer here with seven (six league).

Not only that, but this fixture has finished 1-0 on each of the last four occasions. QPR have won three of those matches, including the last meeting on Easter Monday when Steve Cook scored the only goal. Andre Gray scored the only goal on the last day of the 2021/22 season, Lyndon Dykes in the last minute of the 20/21 game played in lockdown. That broke an appalling QPR run in this part of the world – Rangers hadn’t won at the new stadium in eight attempts prior to that, failing to score in six of those, and hadn’t beaten Swansea in Wales since January 1981. Swansea City have lost five of their last six league games on Boxing Day, but the other game was a 2-0 win over QPR in 2020.

QPR: It’s been some kind of turn around for QPR who are now unbeaten in seven with four victories among them, and just two defeats from the last 12. This after winning just one of the first 15 games and none from 12 through the autumn. At home a club record worst start to the season of nine without a win in the league and 11 in all comps has now been turned into three consecutive victories against Norwich, Oxford and Preston. The R’s didn’t keep a clean sheet in any of their first 14 games in all comps, but have now secured shut outs in six of the last 11 and conceded only three goals in the last seven games. All of this has turned the league position around from bottom and five points adrift of safety, to fourteenth and seven north of Cardiff in the last relegation spot.

There’s been much talk of how that turnaround has been achieved, with the slightly counter-intuitive lack of possession and focus on a more effective block leading to better results. The victory against Preston, however, was much closer to a complete performance. QPR had 58% of the ball, the first time this season they’ve won while holding more possession than their opponent, and only the fourth time in 15 wins under Marti Cifuentes that’s happened (Stoke H, Rotherham H, Birmingham H, Preston H). By contrast, Swansea’s 2-1 loss to Hull at the weekend is the eighth time this season they’ve lost a game while dominating possession (also 58%). Swansea have averaged 60% possession in Championship this season – only Leeds (62%) higher.

One of QPR’s most treasured recent memories is a 4-0 victory against Swansea at Loftus Road, with Adel Taarabt stealing Joe Allen’s soul. QPR do not, however, have a good record at all the day after Christmas. Last year’s dire 2-0 defeat at Millwall was a season low point and continued a run of Rangers not even scoring on Boxing Day since 2018 (four matches, five if you include the 21/22 1-0 loss to Bournemouth which was moved to the 27th by Sky). That run includes a 2-0 loss against Swansea under Mark Warburton shortly before the lockdown season took off. The last victory on this day was a 3-0 against relegated Ipswich under Steve McClaren in 2018. That’s the only victory on this day since that Taarabt game, 14 years ago. Worse still, the R’s haven’t won a Boxing Day away game in 22 attempts since 1967 when Alec Stock’s side won at Plymouth. On the bright side, if we do win this one, that Home Park success sparked a January run of six straight victories.

Prediction: Marky67 slipped into the lead in our Prediction League with a good call in the Preston game which means he takes home prizes from The Art of Football - sample the merch from our sponsor’s newly extended QPR collection here - for leading the league at Christmas. Last year’s joint winners SimplyNico and WestonsuperR say...

Nico’s Prediction: “Boxing Day in Swansea, up to 14th in the table and third in the form league. What a way to go into Christmas, and with the recollection of Adel’s Christmas cracker. Can we extend the run? Swansea have lost two on the spin, we are finding ways to get out of holes. But we have no Steve Cook. My view is that the unbeaten run continues.”

Weston’s Call “Much better performance against Preston and in huge contrast to Bristol away. This leaves us in fine form heading into the festive period but with tricky matches to come. I’ve always believed in taking a point away as long as you can back that up with good home form, we have that now with three home wins in a row so will back us to take something over in Wales.”

Nico’s Prediction: Swansea 1-1 QPR. Scorer – Rayan Kolli

WestonSuperR’s Prediction: Swansea 1-1 QPR. Scorer – Rayan Kolli

LFW’s Prediction: Swansea 0-0 QPR. No scorer.

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PeterHucker added 10:17 - Dec 26 Nice one Clive. I was in New York back in August & met Dunstan & the others in Legends for the match against W.R's P.A. What a lovely bunch of people. Come on you Rs!
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TacticalR added 13:50 - Dec 26 Thanks for your preview. Agree that it's often more difficult to watch on a stream as it can be more difficult to read the pattern of the game (although I do prefer the side view you get on TV rather than watching from the home or away end). Yes, I feared for us earlier in the season, my only hope being that we would rally when injured players like Colback and Clarke-Salter returned. The fact that we have picked up steam without them is impressive. Btw, aren't the wild mood swings part of the condition of being a football fan? That Boxing Day record is an absolute shocker when you think that in that time we have had Jago, Sexton, and Venables as managers. Maybe it's the curse of Alec Stock?

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