QPR and Portsmouth were the bottom two in the Championship with a single win between them when they fought out a calamity-riddled 2-1 at Loftus Road in October – they meet again motoring off into midtable with sets of results unmatched outside the top four.

Portsmouth (9-9-15 LLDLWW 18th) v QPR (11-11-11 WLLWLW 13th)

Sky’s Super Saturday Brunch Spectacular >>> Saturday February 22, 2025 >>> Kick Off 15.00 >>> Weather – bright and breezy >>> Fratton Park, Portsmouth, PO4

A tale from last week’s notes…

7 – Doing the slow, steady build up from the back thing that didn’t work at the start of the season against this opposition and won’t work now. Twice Cook sweeps in with a recovery tackle.

11 – Yang wants a free kick. Varane kicks the ball straight out. This is how we lost these games at the start of the season.

Yes, I am a pure joy to sit with thankyou very much. And, yes, I was a little bit apprehensive for the first quarter of an hour against Derby until Ilias Chair swivelled and put forward his entry for this season’s Alfie Lloyd At Sheff Wed Goal Of The Season competition. We’ve tried to open our midfield up more as confidence has grown, out of the two and one or one and two formation of three and into a system where Chair is ‘ten’ and has two wide attackers either side of him. Against Norwich, Blackburn and now Derby that’s brought great results, but whenever we opened that midfield up at the start of the season we got done, and it still makes me nervous when we do it now.

The quality of Chair’s strike made it look like one moment of brilliance deciding the direction of travel for a game that could, until that point, have headed off any way it liked. For me it was more the press of Chair and Michi Frey on Ebou Adams, who’d controlled the midfield in the first game at Pride Park, that signalled a switch from a tepid start to a performance Derby simply couldn’t live with. This QPR team are poor when they stand off without the ball, and when they trundle out with possession at a walking pace allowing the opposition to get set in front of them. When that narrow press from a three-man midfield is working without the ball, and possession is supplied to our front players quickly (often off a Frey knockdown or element of chaos) we’re a much better side and the turn around in the season has been based on that.

That start to the game was enough to convince some that we hadn’t played well, and had only won the game handsomely because Derby were pure knob rot. The Rams certainly provided plenty of supporting evidence for that argument. John Eustace has got all on keeping that side in the Championship on that evidence and this week’s free transfer capture of Kemar Roofe (a 32-year-old who hasn’t played for six months since scoring twice in six appearances for Rangers last season) looks about as desperate as it comes.

Rangers undoubtedly scored at really good times – killing any momentum the visitors built in their start, immediately making it two, nipping any potential fightback from a half time team talk in the bud, and then getting the game done and dusted on the hour. Perhaps this will turn out to be like the 4-0 home victory against another relegation candidate, Reading, which capped off a brilliant winter for Mark Warburton’s side in 2021/22 but after which they barely won a match again amidst oh so many defeats to Peterborough. Those naysayers from last week will be able to contrarily say the decay began with that Derby performance.

I thought we looked really good in that middle segment of the game, with Koki Saito, Ilias Chair and Yang Min-Hyeok a real joy together behind the unorthodox but effective Frey.

In any case, how well we played isn’t really that relevant for two reasons.

The first is simple, old fashioned joy. Something we used to experience at the football a lot when it was a sport but find more difficult now it’s been turned into a media. When I watched QPR beat Coventry 5-1 at Loftus Road and get Bobby Gould the sack I was just elated. The nearest you got to any analysis on the actual performance was weeks later in A Kick Up The R’s. There weren’t hours and hours of podcast, social media, message board, fan site debates. We’d do well to cling to that as best we can. QPR have won 4-0, at home, under the lights, on a Friday night, whole weekend stretching out ahead of you, bloody Derby they’ve beaten as well hilariously – it’s okay to enjoy it, it’s okay to be happy, it’s meant to be fun this. "I've had better blow jobs". Into the sea with you.

This is another one of the many things I like about Marti Cifuentes. In his excellent deep-thinking piece with Miguel Delaney in today’s Independent he talks about that unique feeling Loftus Road generates of an entire crowd being purely invested in what’s going on before them. When goals go in, the celebrations are raucous and conducted together, not everybody standing around filming on a mobile phone as is increasingly the case at the mini DisneyLands the top end of the Premier League play in these days.

Cifuentes also recognises that this group of players and fans had been losing for a long, long time. Basically two solid years of it from the moment that Reading game ended to the day he arrived some four managers later. He tells the fans to dream, because they are fans and dream they must otherwise what’s the point? He tells the players to enjoy the victories, because that feeling is what got them hooked on this game as children and why shouldn’t they? After each win the club take a picture of the team together in the dressing room afterwards toasting the success, blow it up, and hang it on the corridor walls round the training ground. We’re getting quite a collection this season. The celebration police would be all over that as muggy behaviour for a team sitting 13th in the Championship but I love it. The losing had gone on for too long, we must enjoy the winning.

The second is that knocking over Championship teams 4-0 when you’re apparently not playing at your best is a good sign, not a bad one. Of course if you’re a pessimist you say that level of performance will see you come unstuck against a less shit opponent, but on the flip side of that if you’re winning 4-0 with a mediocre show imagine what you’ll do when you play well.

The whole thing, for me, shows progress, which is what this season was meant to be all about. I saw this line in analysis of Norwich City’s campaign so far which I liked for us too – when we’re good this season we’re better than we were last season, and when we’re bad we’re not as awful as we were. Probably no surprise to find these two sides next to each other in the table both on 44 points.

QPR’s season is still somewhat skewed and hamstrung by that dire 13-game winless run when we all though the bell had finally tolled for thee, but since then we’ve produced consistently good performances. Both games against Watford, both games against Luton, Preston, Norwich and Blackburn at home, Plymouth and Hull away. These were good performances, and if we had somebody like Josh Sargeant rampaging about up front would have yielded more comfortable victories – certainly in the three aways, and Blackburn at home. That’s not to diss Michi Frey, who I think is doing a good budget Helguson team job up front and we miss his effectiveness when he goes off. We haven’t yet topped last year’s hilarious 4-0 gob bumming of Leeds, but our performances in victory have been better for me than last year’s wins which, for the most part, felt like trying to give birth to a full-size snooker table.

Bar Swansea away, the losses haven’t been as cataclysmic either. It always feels like the end of the world when we’re beaten, and will again tomorrow if that happens, but only on Boxing Day and at home to Middlesbrough have we really disgraced ourselves. Last year we lost 4-0 at Watford when we were 4-0 down by half time and they would have had eight if they’d kept going, we were beaten 4-0 at home by Blackburn which for me is up there with the worst I’ve ever seen from a QPR team, Coventry and Sunderland both ran in three comfortably at Loftus Road. Millwall on Boxing Day.

From a position as low as we got ourselves into, that’s how you progress. Games you were getting annihilated in you simply lose. Narrow defeats become draws. Draws become narrow wins. Wins you struggled to get over the line become more comfortable. The number of nights you’re in danger of having a nice time, like last Friday against Derby, start to increase. The really good teams in this division are able to knock off 2-0, 3-0 wins while not at their best. Neil Warnock’s QPR did that as a matter of routine in 2010/11 – Barnsley should have had a penalty at Loftus Road, Paddy Kenny clean dropped a cross presenting them with an open goal, in the end QPR won 4-0. Do you even remember beating Doncaster 3-0 at Loftus Road that year? Ipswich and Portsmouth 2-0? It not only shows you’re a better team than who you’re playing, but it allows you to make substitutions, rest and protect players and put the engines on idle for the last half hour of games – as Rangers were able to do last week. Even Nicolas Madsen came on (!!). You can’t do that if even the victories you do get are always some sort of sordid ordeal. Picking off 4-0 wins in third or fourth gear is to be celebrated, for the obvious reasons, and the obtuse.

The other way you progress in this league, and the real stark difference between the division’s haves and have nots, is an ability to get results away from home. As the financial disparity between one half of this league and the other really starts to press itself home, this difference is most keenly felt in away results.

Rotherham are infamously the most extreme example of this. They were relegated last season with zero away wins, the season before they managed two. In 2020/21 they were relegated despite winning six but in 2018/19 they won one (at QPR of course) and in 2016/17 they went an entire season winning none again. So that’s five seasons and 115 away games in which they’ve won nine times on the road, six of them in one season, and effectively three years when they didn’t win one at all. Plymouth are now threatening to do similar. It took them 17 games last year to get one (at Swansea) and they finished with two (the other at Rotherham) and a dodgy offside decision at Luton in the week means they’re now 0-5-12 this season, scoring six and conceding 40. Sheffield United meanwhile this week toasted a tenth away win of the season already. Burnley have nine. That top three have lost seven times on the road this year from a total of 50 games.

Portsmouth, as a newly promoted team on a limited budget, are predictably struggling in this area. We’ve made our usual charitable donation – Morgan Fox’s generosity back in September was Pompey’s first win anywhere this season at a point these two were the bottom two sides in the league. Their only other road win was last week at fellow League One promotes Oxford – even Andre Dozzell scored. Derby, the other promoted side, have one away win to their name.

Pompey will probably be okay regardless this season because, as we predicted in our season preview, teams are frightened by Fratton Park. By contrast to their away form it’s seven wins, two draws and one defeat in ten games on this ground – Millwall the only victors in that time. That’s not great news for QPR tomorrow because, for all their obvious improvements through the winter, the away form has remained depressingly static. Four wins overall, which you’d think we’ll get up towards six or seven by May, is okaaaaay, but until that quick flash at Plymouth and Hull it was one win in 11 and since then they’ve been beaten at Millwall and Coventry. Three wins in 14 aways has to improve if this team is to continue its forward momentum.

Derby was a huge step in the right direction last week, whatever you and your foul-mouthed mother might think. Going to Portsmouth and getting a result tomorrow would certainly be another.

Links >>> Fortress Fratton – Oppo Profile >>> Gallen’s knee blow out – History >>> Bramall in charge – Referee >>> Portsmouth official website >>> Fratton Park Ground Guide >>> True Blue Army – Forum >>> P04Cast – Podcast >>> Pompey Chimes – Forum >>> The News – Local Press

Below the fold

Team News: It’s pretty much as you were for QPR despite an eight-day break between games in which the players were given a three-day break to rest and recuperate ready for the home stretch. Dembele and Andersen are back in full training so should make the bench soon. Rayan Kolli is out for a month and Jake Clarke-Salter and Zan Celar remain out long term.

Daniel Bennie remains away with the Australia U20 side at their Asia cup. He scored again off the bench in a 3-1 win against Qatar in the second match and then captained the side against China in the final pool game. If they beat Iraq tomorrow they qualify for the U20 World Cup in Chile between late September and mid-October this year.

Callum Lang was Portsmouth’s best player when they won 2-1 at Loftus Road in the first meeting, and has since gone on to be the first Pompey player since Yakubu to score four goals in a game when they beat Coventry 4-1 here before Christmas. But the club’s player of the year elect will now miss the rest of the season with a hamstring injury picked up in the win at Oxford last weekend.

Elsewhere: A choice of games from our Sky Overlords for you this evening with Middlesbrough apparently sticking with Michael Carrick despite four defeats in a row on their way to Bristol City (kind pick for the fans that one), or if you prefer it’s Burnley 0-0 Sheff Wed on the other side.

Focus very much on the bottom end of the table in the early televised games this weekend. John Eustace really is going to have to get Derby motoring, and quickly, now on a run of two points from ten games and without a victory since Boxing Day as Millwall come Marxist hunting in the East Midlands. Plymouth have taken eight points from five games under new management to put themselves back in the hunt, and were only that dodgy offside away from a first away win of the season during the week. One of the teams they desperately need to drag into this fight is Cardiff and those two meet at Home Park. Hull, who are first in line to be shot at sitting fourth bottom, face a tough trip up to promotion chasing Sunderland.

There seems to be a general assumption Luton will get their act together eventually, but it’s now no wins from 12 games going back to December 20 and if you can’t beat Plymouth at home who are you going to beat? Their January, focused entirely on adding strikers and not at all on signing the sort of desperately needed centre backs Argyle added to their squad, looked odd to me. Their fixtures for the next six weeks are either the teams directly around them, or the top four who nobody can touch. They start though, on Sunday lunchtime, with their big derby at Watford, who would absolutely love ditching the Hatters further into the mire. I thought they were dreadful on Wednesday night and am starting to wonder whether a second successive relegation might not be so far fetched after all.

Two of the sides I think will be under threat if the likes of Plymouth, Luton and/or Derby do start getting a spurt on are in action among a depressingly small number of 3pm kick offs. I’m still not having Stoke, and will be very interested to see what they do at Norwich. I’m not convinced ditching Luke Williams is the magic bullet for Swansea either, but we’ll see how they do at home to Blackburn who have won two from two since the Eustace defection.

West Brom are playing Oxford and Coventry are at home to Preston Knob End which I’m contractually obligated to acknowledge here.

The Monday Night Football this week is Sheffield Red Stripe at home to Red Bull Leeds. Top versus second. Yorkshire derby. Lights, camera, action. My Christ, if they let Gary Weaver anywhere near that commentary there’ll be no humanity left on this damn island once the hyperbolic tidal wave of cum has washed it all into the sea. To be honest I’d take drowning in a spunk tsunami over listening to him do that game. Citadels will be stormed. Castles will be conquered. Lives will be changed. The Championship will twist and turn as only the Championship twists and turns. This city, or that city, will be making a statement, will be standing its ground, will be planting a flag, will be shouting out loud, will be saying it proud That. They. Will. Not. Be. Moved. Well, they might when I vomit over their feet. But apart from that.

Spare me.

Referee: Young Premier League referee Thomas Bramall for this one. QPR are 2-0-4 from six appointments while Portsmouth have the opposite 4-0-2 record. Details.

Form

Pompey: John Mousinho’s team have won back-to-back league games for only second time this season. They’ve not won three successive games in this division since six straightin February to March 2011. They had picked up just one point from four League games before winning last two. Predictably it’s been very much a home and away thing for Pompey on their first return to this level of football since 2011/12. At Fratton Park they are 7-5-4 which is the best record in the bottom half of the table and the same number of wins as West Brom have at The Hawthorns while sitting sixth. Those seven wins have all come in the last ten games, in which they’ve also drawn two and lost only one, so they are in red hot home form ahead of tomorrow’s meeting. They’ve taken 23 of 30 points available on the South Coast, only Leeds (28/30) have a better home record over the same period.

By contrast, on the road, they’re 2-4-11. Only the bottom two have lost more away games. The second of those victories did come last week at Oxford though, in which Andre Dozzell scored his first goal for the club, so they come into this game on a two win sequence. The first, naturally, was at Loftus Road in the corresponding fixture. That win at Loftus Road Pompey’s first in the Championship this season at the tenth attempt. Having won only one of their first 14 league games, they’ve won eight of the next 19. Only Plymouth (67) have a worse defensive record than Pompey who have conceded 55 goals.

Callum Lang, who netted a penalty to win the first meeting 2-1, is the top scorer here with ten. A total substantially boosted by scoring four in the same game at home to Coventry – the first Pompey player to accomplish that since Yakubu bagged four in a 5-1 victory at home to Middlesbrough on the last day of the 2003/04 season. Sadly (for them, not us) it’s not a total that will be extended this season after Lang blew out his hamstring at Oxford a week ago. Colby Bishop, himself out with open heart surgery (alright mate, calm down) until November 9, is second top scorer with five goals in 18 starts and one sub outing. No Championship player has delivered more accurate crosses than Josh Murphy’s 34.

QPR: It’s one thing or the other for Rangers at the moment – the R’s haven’t had a draw in ten games (W6 L4) since the Christmas 1-1 at Norwich. They’ve won six of their nine league games since the turn of the year – only Sheff Utd have done better with seven. Ronnie Edwards became the club’s 21st different scorer this year if we count ‘own goals’ as one (there have been three of those). It’s the most since 20 different scorers in 2017/18 and the last time we had 21 was in 2013/14 which was the most since the R’s entered the league in 1920. Come on Steve Cook, just one for you needed now. Ilias Chair, supposedly in terrible form, has been directly involved in six goals in his last nine Championship appearances (two goals, four assists) although he’s yet to score an away goal this season. His two against Derby snaped a scoreless run of 21 games, the longest of his career.

The defeat to Portsmouth at Loftus Road was a fourth loss in a row at the time and dumped Rangers on the bottom of the table. That winless run would eventually blow out to 13 games. Since then though it’s ten wins and three draws in 17 Championship games. The 33 points accrued in that time is bettered only by Leeds and Sheff Utd. At Loftus Road they’ve gone from setting a club record for winless starts (nine in the league and 11 overall without victory, including the first game with Pompey) to winning eight of the last nine culminating in last week’s 4-0 victory against Derby. That hammering of the Rams was the biggest win of the season, the first time Rangers have scored four in a game since beating Leeds in April, and only the third time this season they’ve scored more than two in a game (Norwich H 3-0, Watford H 3-1).

Portsmouth hadn’t beaten QPR in a league game home or away in eight attempts prior to this season going back to August 1998 when John Aloisi, Alan McLoughlin and Martin Phillips bagged a 3-0 win for the hosts at Fratton Park in Division One. If they win here it’s a first double over the R’s since 1961/62. The first game added to a record of two wins in 13 against newly promoted League One opposition, but Rangers are now two for two having beaten Oxford and Derby at home. This is the first league meeting on this ground since a Gavin Ward-dominated night in 2010 when QPR maintained an unbeaten start to the season of 19 matches only thanks to Tommy Smith’s injury time penalty after Paddy Kenny had earlier been beaten by a twice-taken spot kick. Rangers were last here in FA Cup action in 2019 when Nahki Wells forced a replay after Joel Lynch had given the hosts the lead with an own goal – oaf.

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: “The QPR road show rolls down to Portsmouth after last week’s thrashing of Derby, the worst team we will play this season. Portsmouth are not managed by John Eustace. Instead, they have John Mousinho, who has made a poor squad difficult to beat at home. In spite of the result last weekend, the Hoops will have their work cut out to get a result this weekend. I am going for a narrow loss.”

Weston’s Call “Potential here for a great match. I’d like to think that we will have a real go on the back of the hammering of Derby last week, a sold out away end (again) and now no serious relegation concerns. Portsmouth always have a vociferous home support and a good away win themselves last time out so I expect a full-blooded Championship match with a plenty of goals.”

Nico’s Prediction: Pompey 2-1 QPR. Scorer – Ilias Chair

WestonSuperR’s Prediction: Pompey 2-2 QPR. Scorer – Michi Frey

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

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Pictures - Ian Randall Photography

062259 added 21:13 - Feb 21 draw
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Myke added 22:22 - Feb 21 Cheers Clive, a lot of sense in what you have said here. Despite beating Oxford 2-0, I was genuinely alarmed by our first half performance, which was the worst I had ever seen. By all accounts our first half at Bristol City was just as bad a few days later, but I was fortunate enough to miss it. We took four out of six, as we began our slow road to recovery and I can honestly say their performance v Oxford hasn't crossed my mind since. (be interesting to see them play each other now - I expect it would be a far higher quality game). We are were I hoped we be before the season began, indeed our results over the last 5 games are how I expected our entire season to be: Lose a couple, win one, lose one, nice big win. I think this will pretty much be how it plays out for the season and that's fine by me, as the kids and the Championship novices gain vital experience for next season. Hell, I might even enjoy it!

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WorcesterR added 09:13 - Feb 22 Fantastic preview as always - thank you. I rarely comment, but ‘well they might when I vomit over their feet’ had me in stitches.
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extratimeR added 12:59 - Feb 22 Very funny Clive! ( Good omen for today) Didn't know Marty had done interview with Miguel, ( one of the best football journalist's) embarrassing as I subscribe to the bloody newspaper! Cheers Clive, usually say a draw but you never know....
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