Upwardly mobile QPR face another long distance away trip tonight as they attempt to back up the weekend win at Plymouth by slaying another of the division’s strugglers Hull City.

Hull (6-8-13 LWLDDW 21st) v QPR (8-11-8 LDWWLW 12th)

Sky’s Super Saturday Brunch Spectacular >>> Tuesday January 21, 2025 >>> Kick Off 19.45 >>> Weather – Cold, damp, dark, grey >>> Boothferry Park, Hull, East Yorkshire

It says something of the scale of mid-season change at QPR that six of the starters from the first meeting with Hull are unlikely to play tonight.

Injuries to Steve Cook and Karamoko Dembele play a part in that of course, but for more than half the team to be completely different from the start of October to the middle of January is still quite something.

Lucas Andersen, a key figure in the battle against relegation last season, and Nicolas Madsen, currently the biggest flop of the summer intake, both started in the 3-1 defeat to the Tigers at Loftus Road. Their respective falls from first team glory are arguably the most significant.

After staying up in some style with an impressive run through the spring there was a feeling that QPR would be off to the races this season. With more FFP headroom to spend and without the millstone of two wins from the first 17 games hanging round their neck, Rangers fans looked forward to the glories of midtable and Marti Cifuentes’ more attractive, Cruyffian style taking hold.

The team played a more open style, with different combinations of Dembele, Saito, Chair and Andersen all on the pitch at the same time. It tried to press opponents super high up the field. It didn’t exactly get torn apart, but it was easy to get in on and score against. In games where it did play reasonably well, at least to start with, such as Plymouth, Portsmouth and indeed Hull at home, opponents were able to just pick the R’s off on the counterattack. Hull were only in the game at all thanks to the early heroics of goalkeeper Ivor Pandur but, like Plymouth and their stopper Conor Hazard, that was enough for points as they bided their time and made sure they were clinical with their own attacks. Too much space between defence and attack. For Plymouth it remains one of only three points achieved on the road, Hull went 13 games after that win at Loftus Road without another victory.

Cifuentes, as he did in 2023/24, has gone more pragmatic in an effort to drag the team out of another dire start – one win in the first 16 games this time. The super high press has been abandoned for a tighter, narrower block in midfield. Players with legs and energy, who run and tackle and compete, have come into the team at the expense of the more luxury squad members – Paul Smyth and Kieran Morgan are now key figures.

Rangers have gone from the worst team in the league in the first 15 games to now one defeat in 13 games. At the start of that run the team rather flew by the seat of its pants – at Cardiff where it won with a quarter of the possession, and Bristol City where it had one shot on target in the entire game, from the halfway line, and drew 1-1. More recently though performances have matched the results. Rangers were good in both games against Watford, at home to Preston and Luton, and then finally on the road at Plymouth at the weekend.

For Hull, change has not been so kind.

QPR were absolutely torn to ribbons in this game last year, flattered by a 3-0 defeat. Playing against a midfield of Jean Seri (58 Ivory Coast caps) and Ozan Tufan (65 Turkish caps) flanked by Fabio Carvalho and Jaden Philogene that perhaps shouldn’t have come as a surprise. Nor that Hull would struggle once that team was broken up in the summer - Hull scored 68 goals in the Championship last season and by August 63 of those were no longer there. You could perhaps understand the disappointment with Liam Rosenior that a squad so lavishly furnished didn’t even make the play-offs last year but Hull had been League One, 19th and 15th in the prior three seasons and were making steady progress. To dismiss a positive young coach ostensibly because his football was a bit boring in home games was a needless, self-inflicted wound at a time of great upheaval on the playing side. Replacing him with Tim Walter’s “heart attack football” was folly.

We placed the Tigers high in our season preview regardless. The year prior we’d been stung in our lower midtable prediction when they went on a mad trolley dash at the end of the window and we anticipated something similar under owner Acun Ilicali – the club has signed 61 players in the three years since his takeover from the despised Allams. Newcomers certainly came in quantity, but they lacked the quality of the two prior years. There’s been a deal of bad luck with star buys Liam Millar and Mohamed Belloumi both rupturing ACLs. Now under the new management of Reading firefighter Ruben Selles they’re trying to do mid-season surgery on a club that already did 16 ins and 20 outs (not including loan returns) last summer. Ryan Giles, Ryan Longman, Chris Bedia (who scored at Loftus Road) and Anthony Racioppi are all set to be omitted tonight as they look to complete moves away from the club in the coming week. There have been four January arrivals, including veterans Nordin Amrabat and Matt Crooks, and a chunky £2.5m on Blackpool forward Kyle Joseph.

City have just one home win in the last ten, were knocked out of the FA Cup here by League Two Doncaster, and have the division’s worst home record. Whether that’s enough for QPR to make it six from six on the road this week we’ll soon find out. It’ll be a tough ask to come all the way back from the South West on Saturday and trek all the way up to Hull for the latest in a series of logistically cruel double headers dealt out by this year’s fixture list, but the Hoops travel in growing confidence.

Links >>> Endangered Tigers – Oppo Profile >>> Road to Wembley – History >>> Debutant – Referee >>> Hull Official Website >>> Hull Daily Mail — Local Paper >>> The Amber View — Blog >>> Tigerlink — Blog >>> Amber Nectar — Blog and Forum >>> Not606 — Forum >>> Ground Guide >>> Hull City Live — Blog

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Team News: Marti Cifuentes is likely to select from much the same squad he had to choose from on Saturday with Zan Celar, Karamoko Dembele, Steve Cook and Liam Morrison all still some way off a return. Jake Clarke-Salter and Jack Colback are working their way back and were both on the bench at the weekend so may provide steady, experienced options for an awkward away game should the Spaniard decide to rotate his team at all. Rayan Kolli will also push for a start after scoring his fifth goal of the season to beat Argyle.

Sam Field is now on nine yellow cards for the season, but as one of those was in the cup he’s still two short of a two-match ban for ten. Jonathan Varane is one behind him on eight in all comps and seven in the league after his first minute booking at Home Park. The cut off point for a suspension for ten yellows is 37 games, still ten matches away.

Hull have a new recruit ahead of this game. Having already added veterans Nordin Amrabat and Matt Crooks this window, along with loaning Leeds striker Joe Gelhardt, they’ve now completed the signing of Blackpool striker Kyle Joseph for an undisclosed fee. The 23-year-old has joined the club on a three-and-half-year deal. Joseph scored eight goals in 29 Blackpool appearances through the first half of the season in the division below and has cost £2.5m.

Reinforcements were necessary despite a mammoth summer of 16 ins and 20 outs (not including last season’s loans) because of a first half of the season in which they’ve lost key players to bad injuries. Liam Millar was the best player on the pitch in both QPR’s home game with Preston last season and Hull this, but the Canadian has blown his ACL. Muhamed Belloumi has done the same while Colombian Oscar Zambrano hasn’t done much to dispel stereotypes by copping a 16-month doping ban. Centre back Lewie Coyle will miss Tuesday night with a badly cut ankle sustained in the weekend win at Millwall.

Elsewhere: The dramatic upturns in form at QPR and Oxford, and some signs of life at Cardiff who comprehensively won the South Wales derby 3-0 against Swanselona at the weekend, is roping some underperforming midtable sides into trouble.

Chief among those are Luton Town whose appointment of Matt Bloomfield only moved the needle as far as a 1-1 home draw against Preston Knob End at the weekend. The Hatters, remarkably, now sit second bottom with parachute payments and travel to Oxford who are unbeaten in six league games winning four.

Not far behind them on the highway to shitsville are derby County who’ve lost four in a row, five out of six and eight of their last 11 with pressure mounting on Paul Warne. The news today that key centre back Curtis Nelson is now out for the season is not what they need ahead of the visit of penalty specialists Sunderland tomorrow night.

Perhaps also keep an eye on Millwall, particularly if they don’t get a positive home result against Cardiff tomorrow. The Alex Neil appointment there looked a good fit to me but has gone down like a bucket of cold sick so far with one win from 12 and four home defeats in the last five games at The Den – all of them 1-0 against Hull, Oxford, Sheff Utd and Coventry.

Other highlights from the eight games scheduled for Tuesday include Blackburn at home to Frank Lampard’s Coventry, Tony Mowbray making an emotional return to Boro as the new West Brom manager, Luke Williams fighting for his job as Swansea host Sheffield Red Stripe for whom Ben Brereton-Diaz is the latest costly addition to an already lavish squad, and Watford host PNE.

Four games on Wednesday are made up of league leaders Leeds at home to Norwich, third bottom Portsmouth trying to bring Stoke City back towards them, Derek Chansiri’s comedy roadshow at home to Bristol City, and basement dwellers Plymouth hosting Burnley where Scott Parker’s traditional January trolley dash isn’t missing a beat with JohnJo Shelvey the latest arrival. Anybody got Jesse Lingard’s number?

Referee: After four years on the EFL list, Merseyside school teacher Benjamin Speedie makes his Championship debut in this fixture. Details.

Form

Hull: Hull won the first meeting between these teams this season 3-1 at Loftus Road at the start of October. That brought to an end a run of four consecutive, comprehensive home wins in fixtures between these sides. QPR beat the Tigers 2-0 at home in one of Marti Cifuentes’ first games last season but were well beaten 3-0 in the corresponding fixture in April. The year before it was 3-0 to Hull on Humberside under Neil Critchley, 3-1 to QPR at Loftus Road in September under Mick Beale. Prior to those four games the home team hadn’t won a QPR Hull match in six attempts across three seasons. The last three meetings on this ground have finished 3-0 one way or the other, with Mark Warburton’s side winning by that scoreline at the start of the 2021/22 season.

That 3-1 win in West London was at that point Hull’s third consecutive victory as Tim Walter threatened to kick start his reign in East Yorkshire. They didn’t win again in 13 attempts , with Walter sacked midway through that run and replaced by Reading boss Ruben Selles. In fact, they’ve only won three of 19 games in the Championship since. They come into this game with three wins in six league games, but two of those have been away – 1-0 at Blackburn and last time out at Millwall. The 2-1 victory against Swansea here on December 21 is their only home win in 11 attempts in all comps going back to September. Hull have picked up 11 points from their eight league games under manager Rubén Sellés (W3 D2 L3), as many as they’d taken from the previous 16. The win at Millwall at the weekend was just a second clean sheet in 24 games.

No surprise, therefore, that Hull have the worst home record in the whole league. No team has won as few games on their own patch (just two victories, against Swansea and Cardiff) or taken as few points from their home games (12). Fourteen goals is the league’s joint worst home attack and only Sheff Wed, QPR and Plymouth have conceded more than Hull’s 18 home goals. Fortunately for the Tigers their victory in the first meeting is one of four away wins – more than anyone south of tenth, the same as West Brom and Blackburn in the top six, and only one fewer than pacesetters Leeds. Veteran Joao Pedro is top scorer here with five.

QPR: The victory at Plymouth was the first time this season QPR have won three Championship games in a row. Last season that happened on three separate occasions, the first of which concluded with a 2-0 home victory against Hull. Rangers haven’t won four league games in a row since December 21/January 22 when they beat Bristol City, Birmingham, West Brom and Coventry (three of those away from home) under Mark Warburton.

The win at Home Park also improves Rangers’ ropey away record. They’d won only one of ten away from Loftus Road prior to Saturday. That victory was at Cardiff, a 2-0 win which started the current run of form which now stretches to one defeat in 12 league games with seven wins among those. Only Leeds (27) and Burnley (26) have taken more points than QPR’s 25 out of a possible 36 since the November international break. Rangers’ total of eight defeats is the sixth lowest in the division – though that does inevitably mean they’ve drawn too many, 11 is the third highest total in the league.

The R’s haven’t had a striker make double figures since Andre Gray in that 2021/22 season. Michael Frey and Rayan Kolli now both have a great chance to break that – Frey is on six and Kolli five in all comps. Jack Supple tells us Kolli has been directly involved in eight goals this season, scoring five and assisting three others in just seven starts and six sub outings – the most by a teenager in a single season for the club since Ray Jones in 2006-07 (six goals, two assists). Kolli is producing a goal involvement every 74 minutes currently.

Prediction: In our Prediction League for 2024/25 we’ll once again be handing out prizes for being top at Christmas and overall winner from The Art of Football - sample the merch from our sponsor’s newly extended QPR collection here. For the first time last year we had joint winners so this season you’ll be hearing from one or both WestonsuperR and SimplyNico in the match previews.

Nico’s Prediction: “After the 1-0 battering of Plymouth, we move on to Hull, seemingly without us suffering further injuries. Like Plymouth, Hull are another club to have parted company with a losing manager in December and in consequence they have achieved something of an uptick in results. That said, they have a number of injuries across the squad, including the impressive Paul Calf lookalike, Liam Miller. Aside from the recent Yorkshire derby with Leeds, the stats suggest that Hull aren’t scoring many and that this is not going to be a high scoring game. My view is that there is likely to be one goal in it and I am going for the Hoops to continue their run.”

Weston’s Call “I’m a little confused as to why Hull are so low in the table, more than reasonable squad and always seem a decent side when I see them play. I expect them to pull away from relegation and finish midtable. I fear the exertions at Plymouth and long trip to Hull will prove a bit too much for us this time and predict a competitive match but a narrow loss to a side that desperately need a win.”

Nico’s Prediction: Hull 0-1 QPR. Scorer – Michi Frey

WestonSuperR’s Prediction: Hull 1-0 QPR. No scorer

LFW’s Prediction: Hull 1-1 QPR. Scorer – Jimmy Dunne

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Pictures - Reuters Connect

qprninja added 11:47 - Jan 21 We won at Yeovil on Saturday as well? ;)
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Northernr added 12:38 - Jan 21 It's been a long couple of days.
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