The game of the weekend in the Championship is at Loftus Road on Sunday as top of the table QPR tackle in form Nottingham Forest who are second.
I noted a week or two back that Premiership referee Peter Walton had either upset somebody or failed to impress with his performances. Prior to cocking up Man City v Everton in the top flight Mr Walton was seconded to League One for a game between Notts County and Rochdale – the sort of punishment that is handed down to our underperforming elite list officials these days.
Well either he hasn’t improved much or the grudge still stands because this weekend he has been appointed as the unfortunate fourth official charged with the task of patrolling the notoriously tight touchline area at Loftus Road with Neil Warnock on one side and Billy Davies on the other.
Nobody really likes Warnock or Davies very much and on the face of it it’s not hard to see why. There’s always an excuse for failure, usually revolving around the referee in Warnock’s case or some perceived lack of support from within his own club in Davies’, and it’s very rarely their own fault. Davies will march out onto the field and do that silly slow one handed salute to celebrate perceived excellent 0-0 draws away from home, Warnock will bounce around on the touchline going way over the top and getting irate about tiny, insignificant incidents. They’re both prone to a bit of technical area fisticuffs as well.
Opposition fans would describe them as arrogant, loathsome individuals and will spend time singing at them and dolling out abuse in their direction. But their records speak for themselves, and it’s telling that the fans of the clubs they actually manage cannot speak highly enough of them. This isn’t a popularity contest after all – a QPR side with Neil Warnock and Keith Curle on the touchline, Shaun Derry and Adel Taarabt in the team, Flavio Briatore and Bernie Ecclestone in the boardroom wouldn’t stand much chance of winning that if it was.
Sunday is a battle between the league’s form team and the league’s most consistent team, two founder members of the Premiership desperate to return, two of the best three footballing sides in the division and the best two teams in the league so far this season. Expect it to be billed by the television company screening it live (ten weeks and counting since we last played at home at 3pm on a Saturday) as a classic old fashioned former champion of Europe against “money bags” Queen’s Park Rangers. Forest spent £4m to bring the likes of McGoldrick, Gunter and Blackstock into their team 18 months ago so don’t believe a word of it.
Steve Claridge said this week that QPR are a one man side, fortunate to be sneaking 1-0 victories as they did at Reading, last week while Forest are a team of players wholly committed to the cause which you can apparently tell by the way they grind out 1-0 victories as they did against Watford in their last game. Again, don’t believe a word of it.
This is an incredibly evenly matched game. Two superb managers who will send their teams out fired up and ready to play attractive, attacking football. For Adel Taarabt there is Radowslaw Majewski, for Lewis McGugan there is Wayne Routledge, Paul McKenna meets Shaun Derry, Paddy Kenny faces Lee Camp whose return to Loftus Road adds extra spice. If you’re betting on anything other than a draw in this game you’re a fool – you couldn’t get a cigarette paper between these teams at the moment and a refereeing decision or injury could swing it one way or the other. I often say that when a draw suits both teams, a draw it often is, and both gaffers would take a point here if asked.
Ultimately it’s first against second, and from our point of view having already beaten Cardiff and Swansea here in similar circumstances that’s a good omen.
A mouth watering prospect in store.
Teams that lose play offs often suffer a hangover. Neil Warnock knows this only too well after his Palace side blew a terrific chance to beat Bristol City in 2008 and then got nowhere near the top six a season later, a decline that eventually led to administration and Warnock’s departure to QPR. Billy Davies spent the second half of last season stating that his Forest side was neither good enough, nor ready to win promotion and tackle the Premiership. This seemed like half a dig at his board for a perceived lack of support in the January transfer window, and of course the usual barbed message aimed at the club’s “player acquisition panel”, and half a fear that he may end up repeating his Derby disaster where he got them promoted almost by accident one year into a three year plan and then had to take a grossly under prepared side into the top flight where they won only once all season.
Despite these assertions Forest did indeed make it to the play offs where they were caught out at the semi final stage by Ian Holloway’s free flowing, free wheeling Blackpool side. They lost 2-1 at Bloomfield Road but could easily have won and were the favourites going into the second leg where they were subsequently wiped out 4-3. This did two things; it gave Forest a substantial confidence knock, and also ate into their summer by a fortnight, reducing the amount of rest the players got and the amount of time for squad strengthening with Davies unsure what division he would be buying players for until nearly the end of May when some other Championship clubs, such as QPR, had been preparing since February or earlier.
Davies had been allowed to spent more than £4m on players at the start of the season having kept Forest safe in 2008/09 but they were inactive in the January transfer window, and hardly strengthened at all this summer either. Davies expressed his frustration at the club’s “player acquisition panel” which oversees and discusses transfer targets and potential player sales in an effort to avoid one manager bankrupting the club and leaving it facing a decade long clearing up operation as happened when David Platt was appointed here in the 1990s. Platt was an inexperienced manager, Davies is not and he would argue I’m sure that his track record before and since taking over negates the need for such a panel. Rarely a week goes by when he doesn’t make some sort of comment about the system – but then he did know it existed when he took the job and it doesn’t seem to have done them much harm under his reign so far.
With few new faces, Dexter Blackstock ruled out for the season early on, and Davies shooting his mouth off to such an extent in the autumn that he appeared at one stage to be deliberately trying to talk his board into sacking him Forest appeared to pose little threat when we played there in October. Rangers were unlucky not to win at the City Ground for the first time that day, and Forest were eleventh at the close of play.
Things have changed dramatically since then. This is now a game between the top two owing largely to seven consecutive victories that Forest have strung together coming into this game. Nervous QPR fans looking for positives ahead of the weekend game have pointed out that the more recent victories, against Coventry, Watford and Bristol City, have been narrow ones involving fortunate escapes from penalty appeals and gilt edged chances in their penalty area. But seven straight wins speaks for itself and the only way Forest could be more confident coming into this game is if Davies somehow worked out a way to bottle self assurance in liquid form and inject it straight into his players’ testicles. His panel even let him add Marcus Tudgay and Paul Konchesky to his squad in January, although Arsenal loanee Aaron Ramsey, whose acquisition seemed to really spark this recent run, has since decamped to Cardiff.
Forest have two games in hand, one of which is at Scunthorpe on Wednesday who would struggle to win a one ticket raffle at the moment, and should they win at Loftus Road and then take maximum points from their extra games they would go top. But after Sunday it might actually suit QPR if they do keep winning. They’ve won eight and drawn one of their last nine league games but the only team they’ve beaten from the top half of the table in that run is Watford. That’s not to belittle their achievements, it’s merely to point out that it means in the next few weeks they still have to play Cardiff, Swansea, Leeds, Reading, Burnley, Norwich and improving Leicester and Hull. While they’re doing that QPR are playing Scunthorpe, Barnsley and Preston away, Derby, Sheff Utd and Palace at home.
If Forest are to win promotion this season, and it looks increasingly likely, they’ll do it the hard way and they may actually do QPR a few favours while they’re at it.
Manager: A strange character. Undoubtedly a good manager, but a difficult man to deal with and although Forest are flying high at the moment there’s an omnipresent under current whenever Davies is managing a team that always makes me feel like there’s a big row just around the corner.
His big bugbear at Nottingham Forest, despite their league position and hefty spending in the transfer market 18 months ago, is the club’s player acquisition panel. Davies, one would presume, would very much like to be in sole charge of the transfers at the City Ground and could justifiably say he has earned that right with his performance so far – turning Forest from relegation candidates into a genuine contender for promotion inside two years. But the panel remains, and so do Davies’ snide swipes about it.
As a player he started at Rangers but played the majority of his football at Dunfermline and Motherwell and it was at Fir Park where he started his managerial career in 1998. He had the Mothers on the verge of European football at one stage during his three years in charge but was sacked after a poor start to the 2001/02 season and subsequently turned up at Preston as assistant to former Scotland manager Craig Brown.
Preston have enjoyed decent success with Scottish managers, most notably David Moyes, in the past but Brown never really found his feet at Deepdale and it needed Davies to take over for the club to reignite its play off charges which had become a feature of the Moyes era. They lost in the Cardiff final against West Ham in 2005 and then a year later found themselves knocked out in the semi finals by Leeds despite drawing at Elland Road in the first leg. Leeds felt Preston, and Davies in particular, had celebrated avoiding defeat in the first game rather too enthusiastically and used it as motivation for the second leg – just one of a number of incidents where Davies has stirred up bad feeling during his career.
I always had the feeling at the time, proven by their performances since his departure, that Davies had Preston punching above their weight. Derby on the other hand was a bigger, more ambitious club geared up for the Premiership so it was no surprise when Davies decamped there in the summer of 2006 – a year after he had first been linked with the post. Derby had endured a couple of up and down years – reaching the play offs one year under George Burley, and then only narrowly avoiding relegation 12 months later under Phil Brown. Davies set in motion a three year plan, but was so effective he achieved promotion in one.
Derby were never ready for the top flight but Davies’ summer transfer spending, which included players like Rob Earnshaw, Kenny Miller and Claude Davies who never have really cut it in the top flight, only made their plight worse. He could be seen as a victim of his own success, sacked and replaced by Paul Jewell a third of the way through the season, but in many ways he seemed keen to engineer his departure from the club, perhaps knowing they’d never stay in the league. He used the post match interviews after their 1-0 win against West Brom in the play off final to criticise the board for not sorting out a deal to bring David Kelly in as his assistant, and then criticised them again for lack of investment once the Premiership campaign got underway.
His time at Nottingham Forest has followed a similar pattern. Just as he did at Derby he inherited a bleak situation, quickly turned it round and achieved success earlier than anticipated. Perhaps fearing a repeat of the Pride Park experience he spent most of last season saying his team wasn’t ready for promotion but having failed to make a single signing in the last two transfer windows has frequently pointed an accusing finger at his board and the way they buy and sell players. With Davies, you never can tell whether he’s looking for an argument, the sack or something else.
Three to watch: Billy Davies may not appreciate the interference in his transfer activities, but he directly profited from similar unwanted intrusions at QPR when he picked up Lee Camp and Dexter Blackstock very cheaply 18 months ago.
Camp is a former England Under 21 goalkeeper, who is currently awaiting clearance to restart his international career with Northern Ireland. He became a favourite with QPR fans during two loan spells – one in 2004 when he played the final 12 games of the season and excelled as Rangers were promoted, and another in 2007 where he again arrived towards the end of the season and played 11 times as John Gregory’s side pulled off an unlikely survival bid in the Championship. QPR then scrabbled together what little money they had and bought Camp permanently from Derby, their manager at the time was Billy Davies and he couldn’t guarantee Camp first team football.
As a permanent Ranger Camp was named runner up to Martin Rowlands in the Player of the Season votes for 2007/08 but during that time QPR were taken over by the current board and Flavio Briatore, for whatever reason and there have been a few outlandish ones batted around, took a dislike to Camp. At the end of the season QPR signed Radek Cerny from Tottenham and although Iain Dowie had intended to start the season with Camp as his first choice he was quickly overruled by Briatore who told him that he had to pick Cerny instead. This situation grew so ridiculous that even when, in January 2009, Cerny pulled his hamstring prior to an away game at Blackpool the Czech was forced to travel with the team and train with them at Oldham the day before the game to see if he could make it through with somebody else taking his goalkicks – such was Briatore’s desire to see Camp kept out of the team. Briatore has since stated that he believed Cerny to be the best goalkeeper in the league and admitted that he had told Iain Dowie he had to pick him.
A subsequent poor display by Camp at Nottingham Forest, where he had been on loan, and reaction to the home fans angered some in the away end that day and soured what had otherwise been a very good relationship between supporters and goalkeeper. The short sightedness and stupidness of ostracising one of the country’s brightest young goalkeepers in favour of an ageing Czech was shown up last season when Camp was named in the Championship Team of the Year while Cerny’s form deteriorated so badly that QPR were forced to bring in Wolves’ fourth choice Carl Ikeme to play instead.
In both the case of both Camp and Blackstock it’s only now with Neil Warnock in charge and being allowed to get on with it away from the grubby hand of Flavio Briatore that we have adequately replaced the pair of them and if Forest were to sell either of them, they’d go for a lot more than the peanuts we offloaded them for after making their respective positions untenable.
While Forest will no doubt be making plans to deal with Adel Taarabt and Wayne Routledge, QPR would do well to do the same for Forest’s deep lying attacking thread from Lewis McGugan and Radowslaw Majewski. The star man at Forest this season has undoubtedly been midfielder McGughan who has been an impressive member of their squad for the last four seasons now but has developed a wonderful knack of scoring spectacular goals this season. He has 11 from midfield so far, including on that Keiren Westwood made rather a mess of in their last away game at Coventry, and the thunderbolt strikes against Ipswich and Cardiff have particularly stuck in the memory.
Radowslaw Majewski was a rare good tip from LFW last season when we said he was the Championship player to watch for the year. The Pole shot to attention in this country after an impressive performance for his national under 21 side against England at Molineux and Forest did well to land him on loan last season and then permanently in the summer. He hasn’t quite hit the heights he did last season, but QPR must beware. Far from a curse, the last time Billy Davies lifted the Manager of the Month crown as he did this week his team then went on to beat one of the promotion favourites West Brom 3-1 away from home live on Sky. Majewski was outstanding that night, and scored a fabulous goal, and Rangers will want to avoid a repeat.
Links >>> Official Website >>> Message Board >>> Weekend tube closures
Nottm Forest Camp 8, Gunter 6, Morgan 6, Chambers 6, Bertrand 6, Anderson 6, McGugan 7 (Tyson 79, 6), McKenna 6, Majewski 6 (Earnshaw 61, 7),Cohen 6, Blackstock 5 (Adebola 61, 6)
Subs Not Used: Smith, McCleary, Moussi, Lynch
Booked: Blackstock (foul), McKenna (foul)
QPR: Kenny 7, Mackie 7, Hill 7, Gorkss 7, Walker 7, Derry 7, Faurlin 6, Ephraim 5 (Clarke 79, 5), Taarabt 8 (Rowlands 89, -), Hulse 5 (Agyemang 67, 6).
Subs Not Used: Cerny, Hall, Borrowdale, Andrade
Booked: Hulse (foul), Derry (foul)
Both sides made sluggish starts to last season and shared a point apiece from a dull 1-1 draw at Loftus Road in August although in truth Forest were unfortunate not to have won. Mikele Leigertwood curled a trademark long range shot past Lee Camp to give QPR the lead before half time but Rangers were terrible in the second half, conceding a soft equaliser to David McGoldrick and going close to losing the game on several occasions.
QPR: Cerny 7, Ramage 6, Hall 5 (Gorkss 46, 6), Stewart 6, Borrowdale 6,Routledge 7, Leigertwood 7, Faurlin 7, Pellicori 5 (Vine 61, 5), Helguson 5,Taarabt 6 (Buzsaky 66, 6)
Subs Not Used: Heaton, Mahon, Agyemang, Connolly
Goals: Leigertwood 25 (assisted Routledge)
Nottm Forest: Camp 7, Gunter 6, Morgan 6, Lynch 6 (McCleary 46, 6), Cohen 7, Chambers 6, Majewski 8, McKenna 7, Garner 6, Adebola 7 (Blackstock 71, 7),McGoldrick 7 (Tyson 75, 6)
Subs Not Used: Smith, Anderson, Earnshaw, Davies
Goals: McGoldrick 57 (assisted Adebola)
Head to head >>> Forest wins 14 >>> Draws 18 >>> QPR wins 25
Past Results:
2010/11 Forest 0 QPR 0
2009/10 Forest 5 QPR 0
2009/10 QPR 1 Forest 1 (Leigertwood)
2008/09 Forest 2 QPR 2 (Alberti 2)
2008/09 QPR 2 Forest 1 (Balanta, Buzsaky)
2004/05 QPR 2 Forest 1 (Bircham, Curtis OG)
2004/05 QPR 0 Forest 3 **
2004/05 Forest 2 QPR 1 (Santos)
2000/01 Forest 1 QPR 1 (Wardley)
2000/01 QPR 1 Forest 0 (Crouch)
1999/00 Forest 1 QPR 1 (Ready)
1999/00 QPR 1 Forest 1 (Kiwomya)
1997/98 QPR 0 Forest 1
1997/98 Forest 4 QPR 0
1995/96 Forest 3 QPR 0
1995/96 QPR 1 Forest 1 (Sinclair)
1994/95 QPR 1 Forest 1 (Barker)
1994/95 Forest 3 QPR 2 (Allen, Ferdinand)
1992/93 QPR 4 Forest 3 (Ferdinand 3, Wilson)
1992/93 Forest 1 QPR 0
1991/92 Forest 1 QPR 1 (Sinton)
1991/92 QPR 0 Forest
1990/91 QPR 1 Forest 2 (Wegerle)
1990/91 Forest 1 QPR 1 (Wegerle)
1989/90 QPR 2 Forest 0 (Sinton, Barker)
1989/90 Forest 2 QPR 2 (Sinton, Wright)
1988/89 Forest 0 QPR 0
1988/89 QPR 1 Forest 2 (Stein)
1988/89 Forest 5 QPR 2* (Stein, Kerslake)
1987/88 QPR 2 Forest 1 (Coney, Fereday)
1987/88 Forest 4 QPR 0
1986/87 QPR 3 Forest 1 (Bannister, Fereday, McDonald)
1986/87 Forest 1 QPR 0
1985/86 Forest 4 QPR 0
1985/86 QPR 2 Forest 1 (Bannister, Fenwick pen)
1984/85 Forest 2 QPR 0
1984/85 QPR 3 Forest 0 (Fereday 2, Bannister)
1983/84 QPR 0 Forest 1
1983/84 Forest 3 QPR 2 (Dawes, Stainrod)
* League Cup, ** FA Cup
Played for both clubs – Gino Padula
QPR 2002-2005 >>> Forest 2005-2006
The little left-back from Buenos Aires was one of the most popular players at Loftus Road during Ian Holloway’s reign at the club and became a true cult hero.
He started his career at River Plate, one of Argentina ’s biggest clubs, but only managed three appearances for them in his debut season as a professional and soon moved on for more first team football at Second Division side Huracan. It was here he established himself as a consistent and solid left-back, but wanted more of a challenge and after just one season decided to move to Europe to try his luck in a new league. It was with Spanish side Xerez Gino first tasted European football but he struggled to get into the side and a year later he clocked up yet more air miles and signed for English west-country side Bristol Rovers. Yet again Gino failed to make an impact and soon left and joined Walsall where he finally started to make a name for himself and played 25 times for the Saddlers winning their Player of the Year award during their 1999/00 First Division campaign that sadly ended in relegation.
His form at the Bescott Stadium was enough to attract ambitious Wigan Athletic and he got his first goal in English football while he was at the JJB but a year later his contract wasn’t renewed and he left the club. It was QPR who snapped the left-back up in 2003 and it was at Loftus Road he went on to enjoy the most successful period of his career. Making his debut as a second half sub in a 1-0 defeat to Barnsley it took Padula half a season to win his place but after a man of the match showing in the return fixture against the Tykes at Lofus Road he never looked back. The crowd took to him instantly and he was a pivotal figure in a turn around in form that took QPR from losing 3-0 to Notts County, 4-0 to Cardiff and on penalties against Vauxhall Motors in the FA Cup before Christmas through to the play off final in May. Gino’s tandem dancing with Ollie on the pitch after the Oldham semi-final game is well remembered, unfortunately the final wasn’t as the Super Hoops lost to Cardiff City.
The following year Gino once again was one of Rangers star performers with his tricky left foot chipping in with a number of assist and quality free-kicks. The end of that campaign saw the R’s promoted and once again a happy dancing Gino on the Hillsborough pitch on the last day of the season. In all Padula played just under 100 games for QPR in his three seasons and was arguably the best left-back see at Loftus Road since Clive Wilson. He was surprisingly released by Rangers after the first season back in the Championship and the fall out from his departure continued for many months afterwards.
Padula claimed that he had been offered a contract extension by then QPR chairman Gianni Paladini only to then be told several months later that he wasn’t being retained by manager Ian Holloway. Paladini stated that Padula had approached him looking for something he could use as a guarantee for a mortgage application and the document produced was merely a guide as to what he could earn were his contract to be extended, although it later transpired that Padula had been a potentially key Spanish speaking figure in the squad had the attempts by the board to appoint Ramon Diaz as manager instead of Holloway been a success. Padula sued QPR, and accepted a six figure settlement.
He then joined Nottingham Forest but was never given a run in the Forest team and after a season joined Montpellier in France. He has since been playing for Columbus Crew who won the American Major League in 2008 but is without a club this season after being released in the summer of 2010.
Links >>> Forest 0 QPR 0 Match Report >>> Forest 5 QPR 0 Match Report >>> QPR 1 Forest 1 Match Report >>> Connections and Memories
Forest are of course without our former charge Dexter Blackstock who continues the long comeback from ruptured knee ligaments – an injury that is expected to keep him out until the end of this calendar year. Manager Billy Davies has described the torn thigh muscle that is likely to keep midfield enforcer Guy Moussi out of action for the rest of the season as a “disaster” but he has a ready made replacement in former Preston midfielder Paul McKenna who always plays well against QPR.
Elsewhere: Rangers went first against Reading last weekend, this week they go last. The rest of the Championship action is on Saturday with a tea time kick off for hapless Derby against in form Leicester the television offering. Elsewhere at the top Norwich v Reading looks like the game of the day, and Cardiff would appear to have a banker home win against lowly Scunthorpe, but the other chasers have difficult away trips – Swansea go to Middlesbrough, Leeds to Bristol City ad Millwall to Sheffield United. Watch out for Phil Brown returning to Hull City for the first time this weekend with rock bottom Preston who have been tipped for a bout of administration this week – a ten point deduction would condemn them completely, if indeed they’re not already. Five teams play rearranged games during the week including Cardiff who host Burnley and Forest who go to Scunthorpe who have only won once at home in the league this season and are seemingly doomed.
Referee: Sunday is shaping up to be a potentially pivotal day at Loftus Road, and our referee for the occasion knows all about those. The two greatest moments in QPR history since we left the Premiership in 1996 are, and I would suggest the majority would agree, the 1-0 home victory against Oldham Athletic on the 2003 play off semi final at a packed Loftus Road, and the 3-1 win at Hillsborough a year later in front of 8,000 travelling fans that sealed our promotion. Mark Clattenburg was the referee for both games, and he’s back at Loftus Road this Sunday taking charge of one of our games for the first time since 2005 when we won 2-1 at Coventry in the Championship. For more click here.
Forest: The Reds’ form has been so good of late that the Football League Show feature on them last week, with everybody’s favourite thoroughly irritating prat Mark Clemmit bounding around the place like an eccentric and inappropriate uncle who continues to elude the butterfly net of his would be captors from the secure unit, was backed by a track called ‘Invincibles.’ They have been of late – an unfortunate FA Cup defeat at West Ham the only blot on an 11 game run that otherwise includes nine wins and a draw. They have won their last seven in the league and kept clean sheets in three of their last four. Only one of the teams they’ve played in that run, Watford, is in the top half of the table though so don’t go burning your match tickets just yet. Away from home this season they have won five of their last six at Cardiff, Ipswich, Preston, Derby and Coventry.
Prediction: A draw keeps QPR nicely positioned clear in first, and Forest would see four points from away games at Loftus Road and Glanford Park this week as a success. A draw would keep them in touch with QPR and enable them to cement their place in the top two by winning their games in hand. When a draw suits both teams in a tightly matched encounter on paper then a draw is the safest bet to make. I cannot choose between these sides when I look at their starting elevens, they are spookily equal in so many departments. I can’t see anything other than a stalemate.
Draw best price 12/5 with Victor Chandler