QPR have never lost a Premiership fixture at home to Aston Villa despite a few hairy moments during the 1990s and they will hope for more of the same when the sides meet in W12 this Sunday.
Villa 0 QPR 1, Wednesday September 24, 2008
Three years ago almost to the day QPR sprung a surprise in the League Cup at Villa Park. Having seen off Swindon and Carlisle in earlier rounds with Iain Dowie in charge, no mean feat for a club with our recent cup record, QPR travelled to the West Midlands backed by a sizeable away following. The crucial goal came from the head of Damion Stewart who was magnificent that night, marking John Carew superbly. Gareth Barry went through on the goal late in the game but chose to try and execute and ambitious chip which he made a mess of. Rangers went on to play at Old Trafford in the next round, losing 1-0 to a late penalty, but by that point Dowie had been given his marching orders by Flavio Briatore.
Aston Villa: Guzan 6, Gardner 6, Cuellar 6, Knight 5, Shorey 6, Osbourne 5 (Routledge 67, 5), Petrov 5, Barry 5, Ashley Young 7, Harewood 4 (Agbonlahor 67, 6), Carew 7
Subs Not Used: Friedel, Delfouneso, Davies, Salifou, Reo-Coker
Booked: Cuellar (foul) Gardner (foul)
QPR: Cerny 7, Connolly 7, Hall 8, Stewart 9, Delaney 5, Mahon 7, Rowlands 8, Parejo 8, Ledesma 8 (Balanta 90, -), Buzsaky 7 (Leigertwood 81, -), Agyemang 6 (Di Carmine 66, 6)
Subs Not Used: Camp, Blackstock, Gorkss, Ephraim
Booked: Delaney (foul)
Goals: Stewart 58 (assisted Parejo)
QPR 1 Villa 0, Saturday December 23, 1995
Struggling QPR received a welcome early Christmas present the last time these sides met at Loftus Road with a vital 1-0 win. Kevin Gallen scored a second half headed goal at the Loft End, although the replays showed it had never come close to crossing the line, but the match would be remembered for the goalkeeping of Jurgeon Sommer more than anything else. For the final half an hour Villa launched a relentless assault on the QPR goal that was repelled time and again by the big American keeper. He was quite simply awesome, and the frustration of it all was too much for a young Lee Hendrie who was sent off on his debut late on for a wild challenge after earlier replacing Mark Draper in midfield.
QPR: Sommer, Bardsley, McDonald, Yates, Brevett, Impey, Barker, Wilkins (Allen, 87), Sinclair, Hateley (Ready 89), Gallen (Brazier 87).
Goals: Gallen
Bookings: McDonald, Allen
Aston Villa: Bosnich, Charles, Southgate, Ehiogu, Wright, Middleton, Taylor, Draper (Hendrie, 33), Townsend, Milosevic, Johnson.
Sent Off: Hendrie 90
Booings: Bosnich, Wright
2008/09 Villa 0 QPR 1* (Stewart)
2004/05 Villa 3 QPR 1* (McLeod)
1995/96 Villa 4 QPR 2 (Dichio, Gallen)
1995/96 QPR 1 Villa 0 (Gallen)
1995/96 Villa 1 QPR 0*
1994/95 Villa 2 QPR 1 (Yates)
1994/95 QPR 2 Villa 0 (Dichio, Penrice)
1993/94 QPR 2 Villa 2 (McGrath og, Penrice)
1993/94 Villa 4 QPR 1 (Ferdinand)
1992/93 QPR 2 Villa 1 (Ferdinand, Allen)
1992/93 Villa 2 QPR 0
1991/92 Villa 0 QPR 1 (Ferdinand)
1991/92 QPR 0 Villa 1
1990/91 QPR 2 Villa 1 (B Allen, Tilson)
1990/91 Villa 2 QPR 2 (Wegerle pen, Sinton)
1989/90 QPR 1 Villa 1 (Clarke)
1989/90 Villa 1 QPR 3 (T Francis 3)
1988/89 QPR 1 Villa 0 (Sinton)
1988/89 Villa 2 QPR 1 (T Francis)
1986/87 Villa 0 QPR 1 (Keown og)
1986/87 QPR 1 Villa 0 (Bannister)
1985/86 QPR 0 Villa 1
1985/86 Villa 1 QPR 2 (Bannister 2
1984/85 Villa 5 QPR 2 (Bannister 2)
1984/85 QPR 2 Villa 0 (Bannister, Gregory)
1984/85 QPR 1 Villa 0* (Gregory)
1983/84 Villa 2 QPR 1 (Charles)
1983/84 QPR 2 Villa 1 (Stainrod, Withe og)
1978/79 Villa 3 QPR 1 (C Allen)
1978/79 QPR 1 Villa 0 (Harkouk)
1977/78 Villa 1 QPR 1 (Smith og)
1977/78 Villa 1 QPR 0*
1977/78 QPR 1 Villa 2 (Eastoe)
1976/77 Villa 1 QPR 1 (Abbott)
1976/77 Villa 3 QPR 0
1976/77 Villa 2 QPR 2 (G Francis, Eastoe)
1976/77 QPR 0 Villa 0
1976/77 QPR 2 Villa 1 (Masson, Clement)
1975/76 Villa 0 QPR 2 (G Francis, Hollins)
1975/76 QPR 1 Villa 1 (G Francis)
1972/73 QPR 1 Villa 0 (G Francis)
1972/73 Villa 0 QPR 1 (Leach)
1969/70 QPR 4 Villa 2 (Bridges 2, Marsh 2)
1969/70 Villa 1 QPR 1 (Marsh)
1968/69 Villa 2 QPR 1** (I Morgan)
1967/68 Villa 1 QPR 2 (Leach, Bradley)
1967/68 QPR 3 Villa 0 (Sanderson 2, Lazarus)
1919/20 Villa 2 QPR 1** (Birch)
* - League Cup
** - FA Cup
John Gregory >>> Aston Villa 1977-1979 >>> QPR 1981-1985 >>> Aston Villa (manager) 1998-2002 >>> QPR (manager) 2006-2007
John Gregory is unique among the connections between these clubs as he has both played and managed both of them. In both roles, with both clubs, he did a very fine job indeed and yet he's not particularly fondly remembered by either which probably more down to his personality and public persona than his ability either as a coach or a midfield player.
As a young man Gregory, born in Scunthorpe, came through the ranks with Third Division Northampton Town and developed a reputation in the game as a promising up and coming player. That persuaded Aston Villa, then in the First Division and soon to be European Champions, to take a chance on him and during two seasons there he set a club record for playing in every outfield position at one time or another. He scored ten goals in 65 appearances before moving on to newly promoted Brighton and then, after two years on the south coast, back into the Second Division with QPR.
Gregory was a big hit at Loftus Road, defying a heavy smoking habit to score 36 goals as Rangers reached the FA Cup final as a Second Division side and took Spurs to a replay, then won promotion a season later, and then qualified for the UEFA Cup after a fifth placed finish back in the First Division. Gregory formed a central midfield partnership with Gary Waddock and both won international caps – Waddock for the Republic of Ireland and Gregory for England who selected him six times between 1983 and 1984.
Gregory fell away with the rest of the team after manager Terry Venables left for Barcelona and ended up dropping down two divisions to sign for Derby County who he would also go on to manage later in his career. He won two promotions with Derby between 1985 and 1988 as they moved from the Third to the First Division and then retired after one season back in the top flight. Although he later played a handful of games as a player manager at Plymouth , and then at Bolton following his sacking at Home Park , that was his lot as a player.
As a manager Gregory's career started badly with nightmare spells at Plymouth and Portsmouth that lasted only a few months. He took a step back and cut his teeth as a coach with Brian Little at Leicester and then at Aston Villa before moving back into the hot seat at Wycombe in 1996 where he immediately saved them from what looked like a certain relegation from the Second Division. Gregory did enough at Adams Park for Doug Ellis to entrust him with the Villa hot seat in 1998 and that faith looked well placed as Gregory initially put together a hugely successful and entertaining side at Villa Park.
With players like Paul Merson, Stan Collymore and Gareth Southgate to the fore Villa were actually the Premiership league leaders midway through the 1998/99 season – winning eight and drawing four of their first 12 league games. However legend has it that the players went on a mini lap of honour after a devastating 4-1 win over Southampton at The Dell and immediately went into a slump. They lost their next match 4-2 to Liverpool and won two of their next seven games, eventually finishing sixth in the table. In 2000 he took them to the FA Cup final at Wembley but they were beaten 2-0 by Chelsea . These are still not inconsiderable achievements when you consider what has gone on since at Villa Park i.e. not a lot. Nevertheless by 2002 the 'Gregory out' banners were starting to be unfurled at home games and Gregory was involved in angry confrontations with supporters. He resigned on the back of two victories, blaming the pressures of the job, despite saying he would never walk away from the club just days before although it's highly probably that it had more to do with a sudden vacancy at another of Gregory's former clubs Derby which he seized within days of leaving Villa.
Derby were in dire straits at the time but Gregory was unable to keep them up – enduring a very public falling out with his captain Craig Burley. The financial goings on at Derby at the time have since led to court cases and prison sentences for the board members involved and having sacked Gregory for misconduct in 2003 they were forced to pay out £1m in compensation to him for false dismissal.
That legal case dragged on for several months during which time Gregory could not work, so when QPR came calling in September 2006 it represented a chance for him to rebuild his reputation. Working with his friend Gianni Paladini as chairman he succeeded in keeping a QPR squad that was, by some distance, the worst in the Championship in the league after taking over from rookie boss and former team mate Gary Waddock. Gregory worked the loan market well, adding Jimmy Smith and Michael Mancienne from Chelsea initially and later Inigo Idiakez from Derby. He also got the best out of players like Marc Nygaard and was helped by the excellent form of Lee Cook, Martin Rowlands, Gareth Ainsworth and Dexter Blackstock. He rebuilt the spine of his team in the January transfer window – bringing back fans' favourite Lee Camp, adding Danny Cullip to the centre of the defence and bringing in Adam Bolder from his former club Derby.
It was a QPR team low on ability but high on pride, spirit and fight and it stayed up with something to spare at the expense of Leeds after a fine late run of results that included memorable away wins at Leicester (3-1) and Coventry (1-0). Sadly that summer, with the club heading towards administration, his transfer activity wasn't so impressive with none of Daniel Nardiello, John Curtis or Ben Sahar proving to be any good whatsoever and midfielder Simon Walton breaking his leg in a pre-season game. The club was then rocked by the death of Ray Jones and although a 2-2 draw at Bristol City on day one bode well the team failed to win any of its first ten matches and Gregory was sacked after a 5-1 defeat at West Brom by new owner Flavio Briatore.
Gregory is not particularly fondly remembered by many QPR fans. The West Brom game that sealed his fate was live on Sky and the cameras repeatedly caught shots of him laughing at how awful his team was. Behind the scenes images at training in the lead up to that game showed the players repeatedly engaging in some weird rugby league style game rather than conventional football training and there were murmerings of discontent about his conduct in the sale of Dean Parrett to Spurs - although given the financial position the club was in it's easy to see why he was keen for the boy to move. I've never really understood the frostiness towards him and my suspicion is it was because he was friends with Gianni Paladini which immediately marks you out as an evil-doer in the eyes of some in our support base regardless of anything else.
As a player he was excellent in a great QPR team and as a manager he took a team that should have finished bottom of the table by miles and saved it – providing some fine memories of wins against Cardiff , Southampton and Luton along the way. I thought he did a terrific job at Rangers in almost impossible circumstances.
Since 2008 he has been managing some of the less fashionable clubs in the Israeli league with limited success – Maccabi Ahi Nazareth and FC Ashdod - and most recently in Kazakhstan with FC Kairat.
OthersLuke Young, Villa 2008-2011, QPR 2011-present >>> Kyle Walker, QPR (loan) 2010, Villa (loan) 2011 >>> Wayne Routledge, Villa 2008-2009, QPR 2009-2010, 2011 (loan) >>> Stefan Moore, QPR 2005-2008, Villa 2001-2005 >>> Peter Crouch, QPR 2000-2001, Villa 2002-2004 >>> Gary Penrice, Villa 1991, QPR 1991-1995 >>> Steve Hodge, Villa 1985-1986, QPR 1994-1995 >>> Simon Stainrod, QPR 1980-1985, Villa 1985-1987 >>> John Burridge (again), Villa 1975-1978, QPR 1980-1982
QPR 2 Aston Villa 0, Saturday October 29, 1994
When Aston Villa visited Loftus Road in 1994 Queens Park Rangers were in trouble. The club was gripped by a campaign to oust the chairman Richard Thompson, manager Gerry Francis was on the verge of walking out and the team was in dreadful form and beset by injuries. Things were about to come to a head.
Richard Thompson’s idea for running QPR was, on the face of it, a sensible one. Players like Andy Sinton could be picked up from clubs like Brentford for fees like £150,000 and then sold on to the Premiership’s bigger clubs like Sheffield Wednesday for fees like £2.5m and replaced by people like Trevor Sinclair from clubs like Blackpool for fees like £600,000. That was the idea, buy low, sell high, reinvest a bit of it in a replacement and use the rest to keep the club financially stable.
There were however several problems with this. For every Andy Sinton that was bought from a lower league club, Andy Impey who came from a non-league outfit or Bradley Allen who came out of our youth set up there was a Karl Ready, Steve Yates or Tony Witter type who simply wasn’t good enough. It’s not an exact science and while the Sinton out and Sinclair in example was the plan working to perfection, there were far more Darren Peacock out and Karl Ready in scenarios for it to sustain a Premiership club for long. With the serious TV money just around the corner and QPR really only a goalkeeper and maybe a couple of outfield players away from having a side that could even have challenged for the title the thriftiness seemed misplaced.
By the start of the 1994/95 season it seemed to be catching up with Rangers. Kevin Gallen’s first goal for the club had won the opening home game of the season against Sheffield Wednesday 3-2 but Rangers had then gone nine league games without a win – a run which included dire home defeats to Ipswich, Wimbledon and Manchester City when Manchester City were poor and crap. By the time Villa came to town Les Ferdinand and Andy Impey were out injured and the team had conceded eight goals in its previous two games against City in the cup and Norwich away in the league. To make matters worse reports were surfacing that Thompson now wanted to bring in Rodney Marsh as a chief executive to take responsibilities for transfers away from manager Gerry Francs. Marsh now says he had no idea how furious Gerry was with this idea, or really the full extent of Thompson’s plans, but furious he was. With a young and naïve forward line of Gallen and Danny Dichio up front and former England man Steve Hodge making a debut in the middle of midfield things definitely did not look good.
But it was Dichio who gave QPR a welcome lead against a Villa side that had lost five of its previous six and would go on to finish one place above the relegation zone. Paul McGrath either heard a call from goalkeeper Mark Bosnich or was still drunk from the night before and he let a harmless looking through ball drop in behind him in his own area where Dichio was waiting to round the keeper and roll into the empty net.
The game between these two at Loftus Road the following season is remembered as one of the finest goalkeeping displays ever seen in W12 as Jurgeon Sommer produced one world class save after another to preserve a 1-0 lead, but this one was just as tense and the whole crowd was on tenterhooks as QPR manfully wrestled their advantage through to stoppage time.
It was then, in the gloom of a cold October night, that Gary Penrice scored one of the Loft End’s most memorable ever goals. Villa were actually initially on the attack but David Bardsley put boot to ball deep inside his own penalty area to break up a heart stopping scramble and suddenly not only had Rangers survived but they had half a chance of a second goal. Penrice picked up the clearance just inside his own half, wide on the right flank, and had no Villa defenders between him and the goal. The unfolding situation was too much for Bosnich who was already well outside his area when the clearance was made and subsequently came charging right out towards the halfway line to tackle Penrice. Looking at the video again, Bosnich clearly bottled the challenge, flying over the ball and allowing Penrice to nudge it under him and into the open grass beyond. From then on it was a foot race between the pot-bellied QPR striker and the backtracking Villa defenders to the open goal. This is quite possible one of the slowest races ever run and hearts were in mouths throughout the eight or nine minutes it took Penrice to waddle down half the length of the field and slam the ball into the empty net. The ground erupted; cars on the Uxbridge Road were sounding their horns afterwards. It seemed like a turning point, but in true QPR style the horror was only just about to begin.
Two days later Liverpool came to town for a live Sky game and, with Ferdinand back in the team and in scintillating form, were beaten 2-1 in a fabulous QPR team performance. Two days later Gerry Francis resigned. It’s only now, 16 years later, that QPR seem to be recovering from the decisions that were made at that time.
QPR: Dykstra, Bardsley, McDonald, Yates, Wilson, Barker, Hodge, Holloway (Penrice), Sinclair, Dichio, Gallen (Maddix).
Links >>> Villa 0 QPR 1 Match Report Tweet @loftforwords