QPR lost to the last kick (head) of the game in Coventry on Tuesday night, having spent the whole of stoppage time running a disasterclass in corner delivery only to end up conceding to one at the other end.

I’ve felt frustration before. I’ve seen some properly QPR things before. Rarely have the two combined so intensely as they did a little before 10pm yesterday.

Away at improving Coventry and tied at nil nil in a game that had amiably bounced back and forth with chances for both sides, Rangers were heading into five minutes of stoppage time in reasonably good shape.

A tale of two goalkeepers, we would say in the report.

Oliver Dovin atoning for his odd decision to dive out of the way of Kieran Morgan’s first professional goal in the first fixture at Loftus Road by saving well at full stretch from Paul Smyth after he’d cut in onto his left foot in the first half. Later fantastically down at the feet of Michi Frey when Kenneth Paal’s rocks and diamonds performance peaked with a perfect cross in behind a retreating defence which the Swiss striker really had to be finishing off.

Paul Nardi was perhaps a little guilty of palming the ball back into traffic from Matt Grimes’ first half sighter as Rangers struggled to clear their lines from a corner, but the follow up double stop from Ellis Simms was spectacular and the French keeper also denied Lewis Binks off a heavy deflection after half time. Cov sub Ephron Mason-Clark must have thought he’d won the game late on when played clean through between centre backs Edwards and Cook, but Nardi sprang from his line and sprawled effectively to repel the danger.

A draw probably not a bad result against a side that, prior to a couple of blow outs against Leeds and Ipswich, had been unbeaten in eight on this ground and climbed from fourth bottom to four points off the play offs. Imagine though, imagine if it was more. Imagine if we scored in injury time and went back home down the M1 with three points rather than one. Then it would be us talking up a play-off push.

Referee Will Finnie advertised five minutes of added time and QPR spent almost the entirety of that in the Coventry penalty box attacking corners. Three in succession, all inswinging deliveries from Kenneth Paal’s left foot, for a team which I believe is third in the Championship for goals from set pieces. Just one Jimmy Dunne header away from a raucous night on the away terrace. Get your head on this one son, make my day.

Problem is, while Rangers have been weirdly good from dead balls by their traditional standards, that has rather fallen off a cliff of late. It’s now 43 corners in the last four games without a goal, and there’s not likely to be a goal while we’re pisballing about with the same two failed routines. Either a short pass and return between Paal and Chair (which, more often than not, sees us lose the ball wide on the field without ever getting it into the box) or a low inswinger to the near post. I suspect of those 43 deliveries, somewhere in the region of 35 of them have been headed away by the nearest defender to the kick. The one time on Tuesday we did try something different – a long, raking delivery out to the edge of the box for Jack Colback to have a swing at on a rare start – was as close as we came to a goal all night with the shot flashing just wide and the keeper beaten.

In injury time, with the game on the line, Paal produced the same dismal delivery on three occasions, all far too low to exactly the same spot at the near post, and the same Coventry defender as a result. Never varying, to the back post perhaps. Never changing the taker. Just the same lump of rock thrown into the same pond by way of fishing. Like a tactic from Zapp Brannigan’s Big Book of War. To compound this, when the third one was returned to him, instead of controlling the ball, getting it out of his feet, and getting a proper cross over, he tried to let it roll out for yet another corner, misjudged it, and ended up with a throw in off the corner flag from which Rangers gave the ball straight away (as they tend to do from their throw ins) and suddenly Cov were away to the other end to win a corner of their own with still 60 seconds left to play. Fuck me dead.

Referee Finnie had been, frankly, a pain in the arse dealing with corner situations all night. Interminable hours on end wasted with him warning, pre-warning, warning again, yellow carding and generally pissing about in the crowd scene before every sodding free kick and corner. Coventry hit the post with a firm first half header but had already been penalised. The wrestling, pushing and shoving was out of control all night, eventually resulting in a scuffle between Jimmy Dunne and Ephron Mason-Clark and bookings all round. Rangers wanted fouls on both Paul Nardi and Steve Cook from Rudoni's final delivery of the evening but, for me, neither of them were. Both far too busy trying to make out they’d been fouled rather than defending their line, and the goal scored by Bobby Thomas at the back post with basically the very final kick of the game was legitimate. Cook looks a bit ropey to me post injury. It was a fine time for Finnie to come over all lenient and passive but, even if there was a foul there, if you piss away four corners of your own in stoppage time you can’t be bitching and moaning if the opposition then get one, take it properly, and score. Rangers had done it to themselves, no excuses.

It rather felt like Marti Cifuentes’ team beat themselves all night to me.

I guess, given the saves Nardi had to make, you could easily argue Cov were good value for their 1-0 win – and Frank Lampard duly did exactly that in his post-match interviews as you’d expect. But I thought QPR played well here for an hour. Theirs was an ebullient first movement, purposeful and threatening, like a Vaughan Williams symphony. Saito on the charge, early corners won (and wasted), Jimmy Dunne whirling his arms at the away end. They really should have taken the lead with the Frey chance on 51 and looked likely for a point at least throughout. I’d actually have been disappointed with 0-0 if you’d offered me that around the 60-minute mark.

I’d worried at the team sheet that the midfield would lack mobility with Colback and Field paired together and Chair in at ten again. As discussed in the preview, Morgan’s introduction and goal in the first meeting was the start of this season’s recovery which has been based on legs and mid-block press from a midfield three as opposed to high press and wide open through the middle as it was before. Against Blackburn, and again here, Cifuentes is slowly trying to work his way back to 4-2-3-1 with three ‘tens’ behind a lone striker. The midfield two looked potentially stodgy to me but, I thought, if we can keep it calm and tight for an hour then add the legs of Morgan and Varane in there later against a tired home side which had played on Saturday while we were resting then we could be good to go.

If Kenneth Paal could kick a dead ball higher than three feet off the deck then maybe that would have come to pass. As ever, daft to reach sweeping conclusions, critical or otherwise, on a game that could just have easily have finished 1-0 the other way or nil nil. Still, it felt like things happened the opposite way around to what I expected. Colback was pretty decent in midfield, following up on his winning goal last time out against Blackburn. Koki Saito was impressive on the left wing, giving van Ewijk a torrid time. I remember my dad loudly proclaiming Steve Guppy only had one trick - you only need one if it's a bloody good 'un, Rangers were 4-0 down by half time that day and Saito was unplayable at times here even though it seems obvious what he's going to do with the ball. Paul Smyth continues to make a mockery of his Twitter critics. With those three withdrawn, and Alfie Lloyd proving no kind of replacement for Frey bar a half-hearted late penalty appeal, Rangers rather died a death. We’ve had a lot of bench impact of late, here we got worse for every sub.

The midfield, in particular, was a problem. Field and Varane together sit too deep. We expect that of Sam, but it’s a particularly frustration with Varane who has the physique and the ability but just cannot and/or will not move his arse 15-20 yards further up the pitch. We’ve seen what he can do, with his spectacular goal at Leicester, and that’s what I wanted here. Not him sitting on the edge of his own box trying to protect a nil nil draw. Getting him further up the field, driving through teams and adding goals to his undoubted ability, skill and passing, will be the difference between him growing into a genuine, sellable asset for this club, or just becoming this decade’s Mikele Leigertwood.

The game quickly descended into Rangers trying to hold what they had which, Iet’s be honest, wasn’t much. Its mid-February, this was 12th vs 13th, two teams likely going neither up nor down, what’s a 0-0? What’s a point? What’s the point? Paul Nardi, eight minutes from time, engaged in that shameful modern tactic - in which all teams, managers and referees are complicit in encouraging - of the goalkeeper sitting down pretending to be injured to waste time, take the sting out of the game and get some tactical instructions on. He knows he’s not injured, the physio knows, the referee knows, everybody in the ground knows, and yet we all collude in this daft illusion and go along with it. Man child sport. Why, exactly, are we doing this for a 0-0 away at Coventry City?

Warning that punishment would come had already been metered out. Coventry were sure they’d won the game five from time when Sakamoto bundled in from close range after a scramble dropped his way. Linesman Hristo Karaivanov, who to this point had looked wholly bored and disinterested in proceedings and frequently seemed to be thinking about other things, was suddenly sharp with an offside flag to rescue Rangers. That should have put an amber light on the QPR dashboard though. If it did, they settled for covering it with tape rather than dealing with the problem.

Certainly no shame in losing an even contested game by a single goal away to a side that is fast ascending into the sort of top six contender everybody expected of them back in the summer. A game that could have gone either way, like so many in this division, like almost all of our recent fixtures, and this time fell just the wrong way.

Win two and lose one, lose two and win one, I suspect that’s going to be QPR from now until May. For all the tongue-in-cheek talk of a play-off push after nine wins in 15 games, there’s a general understanding and acceptance of where we are as a club, squad and team right now, and it’s exactly the sort of 13th-16th spot we all anticipated (and largely looked forward to) back in June and July. There will be some regression to mean, and an incredibly difficult March fixture list is just around the corner.

The manner of this defeat, though… To lose a game like that… My God, I haven’t had a ball ache quite as colossal as that since the last time I did literally get kicked in the balls. Lock it away in the Eoin Jess memorial file of horrors and let us never speak of it again.

Links >>> Ratings and Reports >>> Message Board Match Thread

Coventry: Dovin 7; Thomas 6, Binks 6, Kitching 6 (Eccles 64, 6); van Ewijk 5, Torp 6 (Mason-Clark 74, 7), Grimes 6, Dasilva 6; Sakamoto 7, Simms 5 (Thomas Asante 64, 6), Rudoni 7

Subs not used: Allen, Bassette, Bidwell, Rodrigues, Collins, Latibeaudiere

Goals: Thomas 90+4 (assisted Rudoni)

Yellow Cards: Kitching 11 (foul), Grimes 62 (foul), Mason-Clark 90+2 (fighting)

QPR: Nardi 7; Dunne 6, Cook 5, Edwards 6, Paal 5; Colback 6 (Varane 60, 5), Field 5; Smyth 6 (Yang 71, 6), Chair 5, Saito 7 (Morgan 81, -); Frey 6 (Lloyd 60, 5)

Subs not used: Ashby, Fox, Madsen, Morrison, Walsh

Yellow Cards: Paal 25 (foul), Dunne 90+2 (fighting)

QPR Star Man – Koki Saito 7 It was Paul Nardi at 0-0 after a double save in the first half and one v one effort in the second looked to have got Rangers a point, but I’m not sure about him for the goal and so we turn to the best outfielder who was, for me, particularly first half, Koki Saito. That first 45 was a great advert for Japanese football, with Saito on one side and Sakamoto on the other the best players on the pitch.

Referee – Will Finnie (Luton) 5 A total lack of grip and control on what was going on in the box under every set piece for both sides. I’ve heard a lot of QPR fans saying variations of Cook and Nardi were fouled for the Cov goal. For me they weren’t. You’ve got to be stronger, particularly your big, experienced centre back, and the goal was right to stand. But having spent all night to that point being a pedantic arsehole, every corner and free kick into the box turned into some long drawn out affair with pre-warnings, warnings, cards and free kicks, to suddenly come over all lenient at that point was, to say the least, inconvenient.

Attendance 24,600 (1,200 QPR) Cold, dark, February midweek, 12th v 13th, I guess it’s to be expected, but this place has been the best in the Championship for atmosphere and support from home fans for the last couple of years and here, despite a good run of form that has now carried them to within a point of the play offs, it felt more subdued than it has for ages.

If you enjoy LoftforWords, please consider supporting the site through a subscription to our Patreon or tip us via our PayPal account loftforwords@yahoo.co.uk.

Pictures - Reuters Connect

062259 added 00:05 - Feb 13 Suckered
0

extratimeR added 00:48 - Feb 13 Exactly as I saw it Clive, yes Cook has been a bit creaky coming back, but Plants Faciitus is a particularly nasty injury and all credit to him for getting back on the pitch so quickly. I'm sure it's obvious to all oppo Managers that Nardi doesn't catch set pieces and boy are they going to crowd our six yard box from now. Coventry's extreme exercise of bludgeoning Dunne in their box and Nardi in ours is going to happen every week from now because no Referee is going to award a Penalty for 18 Yard Sumo wrestling, ( even if you are holding Jimmy Dunne down with both hands around his neck). Completely agree with game summary Clive, the Paal/Chair away corner is not funny any more. Some type of game Management please lads for away games last 5 minutes, as mentioned by Steve Cook. Excellent report, cheers Clive!

0

Blogs 31 bloggers

Queens Park Rangers Polls