Let’s rock and roll? Preview Friday, 24th Feb 2023 17:16 by Clive Whittingham and Alan Simpson The Gareth Ainsworth era begins at Loftus Road on Saturday as QPR, looking for a first win in 12, host Blackburn Rovers. QPR (10-9-14 DLDLLL 18th) v Blackburn (16-4-13 DDDDWW 4th)Lancashire and District Senior League >>> Saturday February 25, 2023 >>> Kick Off 15.00 >>> Weather — Damp and windy >>> Loftus Road, London, W12 As you’d expect of a man who once fronted a band called Dog Chewed The Handle, Gareth Ainsworth’s pre-match interview hit every note.
There was nostalgia, but not so much as to beat people over the head — a club that has recently brought back Jamie Mackie, Ian Holloway and Charlie Austin just as the rising tides of discontent required quelling, with only very limited success in each case, would do well to focus more on Ainsworth’s Wycombe record and less on his Rushden goals. There were words of encouragement and gee up for the supporters, and a reminder of the difference they can make. Loftus Road has been a morgue for week, up to and including the Sunderland game when attempts to get behind the players in the second half melted away into another pathetic 3-0 defeat at which point those who’d bothered to see it through to the end erupted into fury. But he didn’t overplay that, and given his reputation (rightly or wrongly, fairly or unfairly) at Wycombe was of a manager favouring a ‘kick and rush’ style he’d probably be wise to keep all the talk of “pashun” to a minimum — you need more than that to win games at this level, and if you could still get results out of rich twenty somethings by yelling at them then Peter Reid would still be in work. There were hints, throughout, that he understood the main concerns and criticisms people have watching QPR. He mentioned “energy”, “leadership”, “drive” and not wanting to “be this team that people think it’ll be easy to come and take points off” — all of which could have been copied and pasted from our message board over the last 12 months. QPR are easy to play against, and have been for some time; Ainsworth’s Wycombe are fucking horrible, nobody enjoys facing them — bringing a bit of spine to this team would be a very welcome start indeed. And there was some carrot and stick for the players. The immediate reaction to his high energy, optimistic, positive media round was to compare it to Neil Critchley’s increasingly downbeat, reserved appearances of a beaten man. While I’ve undoubtedly come away from watching and listening to Ainsworth this week more energised, positive and excited than I was about going to watch Critchley’s side phone in another certain defeat this Saturday, I’m not going to engage in this bashing of the predecessor too much. Ainsworth is a unique character, Critchley is entirely different, and I know that Dave Mc and others say you need the big character, the bullshit, the mouth to succeed at QPR and perhaps that’s right, but Critchley struck me as an honest and decent man who was chucked under the bus by players he inherited. The fact he didn’t beat his chest much in interviews, and considered his answers carefully, may have made him slightly boring and uninspiring to watch and listen to, but it doesn’t make him a bad manager, person, or deserving of what happened to him. In fact, it actually appeared to me that him coming out as bold and angry as he did post Fleetwood and Hull, calling into question the mentality of the players and saying the rest of the division watched them last year and “formed an opinion of them”, led to the precious little loves giving up on him so quickly. Last week after Middlesbrough he strongly hinted that a lot of the injured players could play if they wanted to by saying publicly some of them would have to “put their hands up”. So, yeh, all a little bit Dave from the Royle Family at times, but often quite provocative with what he said, often saying exactly what a lot of us think of this playing group, and possibly paying for his job with that. In the modern game the players hold all the power — one manager is expendable, 30 players are not, and they all know that if they sack it off for a month and lose five or six games then it’ll be the boss and not them getting the push. Ainsworth littered his pre-match with talk of what good players there are here, how he wants to inspire them, how it’s all about them and how: “we’re going to give this everything, on the pitch, off the pitch, our values, come with me. Win lose or draw we’ll give it everything and I want that to be the mantra to the end of the year.” But, he added: “Everybody has got to do it, they’ve all got to buy in, I can’t have anybody thinking ‘what’s he doing?’, you’ve all got to be in this together, if people do want to be like that we’ll suss them out but I’m hoping everybody will want to be part of it.” Such is the contempt a lot of these players are now held in by the supporters, I think watching Gareth Ainsworth suss one or two of them out would be very pleasurable indeed. In an ideal world there are several who would never play for QPR again, but unfortunately we need them to put enough points on the board to keep the team in the league. If they do suddenly start performing and do that, then it’ll come with the considerable eye-roll that they could do it all along and chose not to (as we suspected), but we’ll have to swallow that for now in the interests of not playing league games with Orient next season. Ainsworth is right to extend an olive branch, but conditionally. Now we sit back and wait. Is this, like Ian Holloway second time around, a desperate nostalgia play by an under-fire board? Win tomorrow on a wave of goodwill, as Olly did in his first game against Norwich (and Critchley at Preston lest we forget) and then set off on another long losing run? Have we once again flip flopped from a manager of one personality, to his entire complete opposite — what sort of joined up thinking, or algorithm study, says Neil Critchley is your man 12 games ago but now it’s Gareth Ainsworth? Whatever anybody says about Wycombe’s style of play and whether Gareth intends to adapt that for a step up, he is undoubtedly a departure from the plan the club was trying to follow through with Warburton, Beale and Critchley. Have we torn up the whole plan, made an appointment no other Championship club would make at this moment, an appointment we could have made at any point when we hired our previous half dozen managers instead but chose not to because he didn’t fit with what we were supposed to be doing, purely to try and new manager bounce our way out of trouble and take the heat off from the supporters with some feel-good factor? Or is the abandoning/deviation from ‘the plan’ more strategic, and indeed necessary, after a perfectly good development coach in Critchley crashed and burned so badly here? There’s a post from Simmo in this thread on the message board so good I was genuinely angry at him not emailing me it to top this preview with and pass off as my own. QPR, undoubtedly, need to develop players to sell for profit. Other than a promotion to the Premier League or operating on a wage bill that would very quickly end us up in League One I don’t see any other way for us to go about it in our situation in an FFP era — and promotion to the Premier League would be aided considerably by clearing enough FFP headroom to make improvements to the team, which again involves selling players first. But we haven’t had a sale of any sort since Eze, and when Lyndon Dykes was struck down with pneumonia there wasn’t a single boy anywhere in the building capable of coming in and doing his job for a dozen games so we had to take on Chris Martin who’d been released by Bristol City precisely because they’ve had four or five players come through their academy who can play at this level, two of whom are going to fetch them mega money. Is this the right plan, being executed in the wrong way, or just plain badly? Bristol City suggests so. Or is it in fact a plan for a pre-Covid era, before the market for Championship players dried up? Either way, have we become so wedded to it that we’ve lost our way on the basics of building a team that can compete in a tough, physical league? As I’ve had more than enough of my say this week, and I couldn’t write it better than this myself, I’m just going to reproduce Simmo’s post here and commence praying for better tomorrow… “Trying to take some time to reflect on this appointment, as it's so easy to get carried away with something that hits all the nostalgia buttons, but the more I summarise the more I think we've changed course and by getting Gaz in as manager, have almost completely gone away from the plan we have (loosely) stuck to for the last three or four years... and that's actually a good thing, because it's not working and not really possible anyway. “Initially the plan was a good one, on paper. We get rough diamonds, polish them up, and when the team is all sparkly, sell the brightest pieces to the rich twats with more money than sense. The problem though is the Championship is a flat roof Wetherspoons with stained glass windows. A third of the pub has money to sit in the nice, restricted garden area, which leaves you overdressed in the saloon bar getting beaten up by the locals. Those 'diamonds' aren't worth much to anyone stuck to the carpet and covered in Tuborg. “The reason I think it's a good thing - to change direction in this way - comes down to two things… “Firstly, this league is rough as fuck, and we've gone so far down the idealist route that we lack the characteristics that a team at our level, with our personnel, really needs in the Championship. I can't be the only one sitting at games recently - and for the last few years - wishing we weren't so easy to play against. We're a mentally fragile club, have been for a long time. You fancy teams come to QPR these days telling each other that we 'won't want it', and frequently, they're right. How long now have we complained that we're 'too quiet', 'too nice', 'don't get around the referee'. So many times recently and especially in this run, Clive has commented that the opposition is 'everything we're not' - and often it's nothing to do with talent, it's about application, and it feels like we've got so much talent in the building that we have forgotten the fundamentals. To be clear, I don't want to be Preston and I absolutely don't want to fall into the trap of shithousing our way to narrow wins without using football as our main weapon, but when things stop going our way we absolutely melt, often for 6 / 7 / 18 games at a time - and that can't run. “Secondly, post-Covid, the Brentford way - which was extremely needle-threading anyway - is pretty much impossible. The pinnacle of smart buys, good business decisions and operating almost faultlessly to get out of this league has been done by Brentford and Brighton, but it's very unlikely to be repeated. We'd absolutely love to do the Brentford thing, and there were signs - with us building up sales from Chery to Freeman to Eze, and then aspirations of Chair and Willock going the same way - that we might be able to do it... But we can't. We haven't got the owners or management to fully commit to it. In this market and post-Covid I'm not sure anyone has to be honest.... “The way to do it now, for a club of our size and with all the limitations and issues we have, is to be a Millwall or Luton. It might be tough for some to swallow but that's the reality. Be competitive, at the least, understand the core requirements of this league, and install those as the foundation, then look to add the luxuries and game deciders from there. We've built a castle on sand here and it's showing, meanwhile we've been overtaken by those that just do the basics well, and at less expense. We need to re-dress the balance. “Ainsworth is a manager that on paper at least, does exactly that. He's built teams that are ultra competitive at the least, with a little velvet glove here and there (Eze, Mehmeti), to be a separator. It's going to be a tricky few months and we need to hope the players we have react to him in the right way, but if we get to pre-season we can start to focus more on those fundamentals, and we all know in this league all you need is a well-timed run with belief and a collective purpose, and you have half a chance. Plus I'd much rather walk into a shit pub with nine Jimmy Dunnes and two Ilias Chairs, than the other way around.” Amen. Links >>> Return of Wild Thing — Column >>> Numbers game — Interview >>> Title challengers beaten — History >>> Doughty in charge — Referee >>> Rovers official website >>> Official website >>> Lancashire Telegraph — Local Paper >>> BRFCS message board and podcast >>> Rovers Chat — Blog Below the foldTeam News: Gareth Ainsworth’s early success or failure in this job will depend largely on how badly the following are injured, or indeed if some of them ever really were injured at all, and how quickly they’ll be back: Chris Willock (multiple hamstring issues), Lyndon Dykes (pneumonia), Ethan Laird (“tightness”), Tyler Roberts (?), Luke Amos (missing child), Leon Balogun (misses dad), Jake Clarke-Salter (?), Taylor Richards (one start all season, played like a tart in it, still felt able to take to social media last week from the comfort of home while we were all in Middlesbrough and object to Neil Critchley going so far as to say he “can’t get himself going”), Stefan Johansen (old). Blackburn have the same epidemic of piano-wire hamstrings as we do. Thomas Kaminski, one of the division’s outstanding goalkeepers, hasn’t played since January 28, but his replacement Aynsley Pears has four clean sheets in six games and has conceded only twice in those half dozen fixtures since deputising for him. Bradley Dack’s ongoing injury nightmares continue and he’s joined on the sideline by Wharton brother S and now Daniel Ayala who will miss the next two months. Harry Pickering and Wharton brother A are all doubts potentially leaving them very short at the back while top scorer Ben Brereton-Diaz has a touch of the do I really want to jeopardise my summer move to Villareal’s. Having left a move for Nottingham Forest’s Lewis O’Brien until the eleventh hour of the transfer window and missed the deadline, a month-long appeal for leniency has come to nought and left the play in limbo. Sympathy to JDT, but not to O’Brien, or anybody else who moves to Nottingham Forest naively/arrogantly expecting to play some football only to be inevitably cast aside almost as soon as they walk through the door (Josh Bowler). Elsewhere: Interesting little clash to kick start a Saturday of 11 fixtures in the Lancashire and District Senior League with Coventry hosting Sunderland in the lunchtime game. The Sky Blues had won one of eight, having hit such good form through the autumn, but have picked up by winning their last two games. Sunderland, meanwhile, ascended to the play-offs with the demolition of our sorry lot at Loftus Road last week, but have since taken just one point from eminently winnable games at home to Bristol City and away to Rotherham. If you’re looking over your shoulder and sweating on QPR’s four place and eight point gap to the relegation zone then there is at least some good news this weekend. Five of the six clubs below us are playing away from home, and the one that’s hosting, Birmingham City, have a tough fixture with Lutown and another EFL investigation and charge hanging over their head for apparent rule breaches around undeclared ownership and control of the club. For all Huddersfield’s improvements last weekend on the opening date of the Fifteenth Annual Neil Warnock Farewell Tour, you surely wouldn’t fancy them for much at Champions Burnley — famous last words — nor Cardiff at Norwich, though the Canaries haven’t been particularly trustworthy this year. Blackpool, Rotherham and Wigan all have much more winnable fixtures, though if you want to adopt a much more Gareth Ainsworth-approach of hope and optimism then the three sides they’re playing are all immediately above us and are exactly who we should be looking to reel in and climb above if we’re to get moving in the right direction. Wigan have a derby game at Preston, who after repeatedly threatening to get their arse in gear all season really are flatlining now with no wins in five and two in ten. Blackpool are at Reading, whose repeated attempts to shithouse their way to 0-0 away draws only to concede in the last minute, leading to oh so many testy post match interviews with Paul Ince Is A Wanker, is a treat for everybody except their fans. Rotherham, meanwhile, fresh from that big win against Sunderland, are the Monday Night Football away to Swanselona who have now won four of 20 games (three of those against sides reduced to ten men) and were roundly booed and abused by their own fans as they passed their way around at the back all the way to defensively shambolic 3-1 midweek loss to Stoke. Russell Martin soon to be boring the tits off some poor bastard in the dole queue with talk of his “process” it seems. On the off chance we were to win in Gareth’s first game, the R’s can potentially climb three places, past Reading, Bristol City if they don’t get a favourable result against Hull, and Stoke if they lose the Marxist hunt against Wawwll. Six hat tricks in the Championship this season, and three of them have been scored by Millwall players following Tom Bradshaw’s treble last weekend. At the top end, things are starting to look dicey again at West Brom. Their financial situation, declining parachute payments, disinterested and impoverished owner, and astronomical wage bill means it really is shit or bust on promotion this season. A run of results under Carlos Corberan carried them from bottom three to top six initially, and the Bielsa bud got a new contract out of it when Leeds threatened to come calling for him, but it’s now one win in six following the midweek loss at Watford and a tough task this weekend with red hot Middlesbrough in town. The Baggies sit tenth, five points shy of the play-offs. Boro, on a run of five successive wins, are again as long as 2/1 with the bookies for that game (like buying money some of their pricing at the moment) despite hacking away at the gap between them and Sheffield Red Stripe to just four points now. Paul Heckingbottom’s men wobbled again at Millwall last week and don’t have it easy this weekend with promotion rivals Udinese Reserves in town. Watch out for a couple of midweek games in hand — Cov are at Preston Knob End on Tuesday, while Lutown host Millwall in The Friendly Derby at Kenilworth Road. Referee: Blackpool referee Leigh Doughty is back at Loftus Road for this one. Neither team has ever won a game with this EFL newbie, and Blackburn have lost all three matches at his hands this season. His last QPR game was last Easter’s 2-2 at Huddersfield. Details. FormQPR: Neil Critchley departs QPR with a record of one win in 12 games, the shortest reign of any QPR manager since Paul Hart’s disastrous five-game stint and at 8.33% the lowest win rate of any manager in the club’s history. Rangers have had just two shots on target in each of their last five games, and eight of Critchley's 12 in charge - the exceptions were four managed against Swansea and Reading, just the one at Cardiff and six from 17 attempts on his opening night at Preston. That means they have averaged just 2.27 shots on target for the last 11 games and two months. It continues a trend of QPR bosses enjoying little by way of so-called ‘new manager bounce’ having taken over: Mick Beale won one of his first six; Mark Warburton two of seven; McClaren lost his first four games conceding 13 goals; Holloway won one then lost six in a row; JFH didn’t win at all until his ninth game; Chris Ramsey two from 12; Redknapp one from seven; Hughes two from ten. Gareth Ainsworth is the third QPR manager to make his debut this season, and two of them have done so against Blackburn. Critchley’s win came in his first game at Preston meaning QPR come into this match on a run of 11 games without a win, part of a sequence of one win from 18. They have lost their last three games in a row, and four of the last five, conceding three goals in three of those five matches. They have conceded three goals in a game on six of their last 21 outings — the losses at home to Burnley, Luton and Sunderland is the first time in the history of the club we have been beaten by three goals at home three times in a season. It’s 11 games since Rangers kept a clean sheet and the R’s have only registered seven shut outs all season in 35 games. The last home win at Loftus Road was against Wigan on October 22, at which point Rangers were top of the Championship. They’re now eighteenth in the league and are without a win in eight home games and have taken just two points from 24 available in W12, and six points from 51 overall. This team has only scored three goals in its last five games, has only scored twice in a game once in the last 18 fixtures, and has drawn a blank in nine of those fixtures. Rangers have fired blanks in 13 of their 33 league games, including the 1-0 defeat at Blackburn on the opening day. The last four fixtures between these sides have all finished 1-0 to the home team, and QPR have won the last three meetings at Loftus Road, but those are our only victories against Blackburn in the last 22 games.
Blackburn: Rovers’ numbers this season are like nothing I’ve ever seen before in this level, perhaps best summed up by them beating Rotherham 3-0 at home, losing to Rotherham 4-0 away, and having the same number of league defeats (13) as the fifth-bottom Millers despite sitting fourth in the league. For a long time this was merely proof of Flavio Briatore’s point that the minimal difference between a draw and a defeat makes draws pretty worthless — Tomasson’s team didn’t register a single one until their twenty-eighth league game though, in keeping with a thoroughly bizarre season, they promptly then drew six in a row in league and cup which means they come into this unbeaten in eight having won the last two games 1-0 against struggling Swansea and Blackpool. Blackburn have only scored 35 times this season, you have to look down as far as Preston in fourteenth to find a team that have scored fewer (28) — Middlesbrough, one place and five points above them in the table, have bagged 56. They have scored one goal or fewer in each of the last six games, and on 26 different occasions in their 40 league and cup games. They have only won four of the last 14 games, all of them 1-0 and eight of their 19 victories this year have been by that score including their victory in the corresponding fixture at Ewood Park on day one. The first goal in Blackburn games this season has usually decided them: they have won 16 of the 20 games they have scored the first goal and didn’t lose any of the first 13 games they scored first in this season up to Sunderland away which they lost 2-1 having led on Boxing Day; they have lost 11 of the 12 games they’ve conceded first, all the way up to West Brom A three matches ago which they drew 1-1 late having trailed. That draw at The Hawthorns is the first and only point Rovers have recovered from a losing position in the league this season, although they did come from behind to get positive results against Bradford, West Ham and Birmingham in the cup competitions. They have only lost eight points from winning positions. Only Rotherham, 0.93, have a lower xG than Blackburn’s 0.94 in the league this season — level with Huddersfield. Ben Brereton-Diaz is the top scorer with ten, but only has one in his last 15 games. Prediction: We’re once again indebted to The Art of Football for agreeing to sponsor our Prediction League and provide prizes. You can get involved by lodging your prediction here or sample the merch from our sponsor’s QPR collection here. Last year’s champion Cheesy has called both the Huddersfield and Millwall games correctly, let’s brace for the impact of what he thinks tomorrow… “Another new era about to start, hopefully longer that the last two lasted. I've muted more people on twitter this last week than I have done for the whole of the last five years and I'm glad its over. It’s going to be really interesting to see how Gareth pans out and to see what the football is like. It gives him a few months to see what the status is before planning for next season. Sell what we can as in my view we need a complete overhaul. Surely the players will want to impress on Saturday (not that they wanted to under NC with no fear of being dropped) and for the first time for many a week, I'm going for a win.” Cheesy’s Prediction: QPR 3-2 Blackburn. Scorer — Chris Martin LFW’s Prediction: QPR 1-1 Blackburn. Scorer — Ilias Chair 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 — Ian Randall Photography The Twitter @loftforwords Action Images Please report offensive, libellous or inappropriate posts by using the links provided.
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