QPR belatedly came on strong having fallen behind at home to Hull City, but eventually surrendered more points from a winnable home game on an increasingly difficult run-in.
It was better. Though, for those who’d slogged the hard yards through the wind and the rain to Barnsley and Millwall, it could scarcely have got worse. Queens Park Rangers didn’t lose, as they had in three of the last four. They scored a goal, more than they’d managed against Peterborough, Barnsley or Millwall. They’re now even further ahead of Athletic deep-dive favourites Nottingham Forest than they were at the beginning of this slip. But a slip it undoubtedly is, and a 1-1 home draw against an obviously limited Hull City team isn’t much of a finger grip on the cliff face. Mark Warburton’s team have spent a game in hand, and several winnable fixtures, and face an increasingly daunting run in.
Warbs had railed against journalist Ian McCullough’s veiled suggestion that wholesale changes might be in the offing post Millwall surrender on Tuesday, and then made wholesale changes anyway. Seny Dieng was back in goal, as he absolutely should have been — David Marshall has exceeded expectations in the short term job he was brought in to do, and was a far better option than accident-prone Jordan Archer who landed a drink driving court case into a classic QPR week on Thursday, but Seny is the better keeper, the longer term option, and the player you need to develop to sell. This was a bullet well bitten. Rob Dickie, suspended, replaced by Dion Sanderson, hair worthy of a six-part Netflix mini-series. Lee Wallace injured again, Chris Willock asked to go and do a number at left wing back rather than have us revert to a back four. Luke Amos, harshly left out after a good display at Reading, started in midfield with Jeff Hendrick - Stefan Johansen dropped after a lifeless display at The Den. Charlie Austin put the lone into lone striker, Lyndon Dykes absent entirely. I know us hacks aren’t popular, I get why, and I understand were sometimes a convenient punching bag, but I’m sure Ian had a wry smile as the team sheets rolled in.
And initially, no difference at all. No difference at all. The same clunky, disjointed, unhappy, ineffective slop we spent the thick end of £500, 400 miles and some 48 hours following around this sodden, rain-lashed isle last week. The best chance mustered, saved by former R Matt Ingram off to his left from an Ilias Chair shot, came from a Hull attack with a huge overload to the left which Sanderson did well to suss out and spring the opposite way. That was 12 minutes in, and it was the first thing that had happened. Hendrick’s wonderful ball sprang Willock on the quarter hour to win a corner, and later Austin nodded down for Chair steaming in but the ball was taken off him for another.
But that was it, and you could smell the nerves coming off the place. Sanderson’s mistimed header on halfway on 26 after he’d ordered Amos to leave it to him started a chain of events which included him then backheading the ball out for a sloppy corner from which McLoughlin’s nod-down was volleyed in off the underside of the bar by Brentford loanee Marcus Forss. Because of course. Goalline technology awarding that one, and just as well really because referee Tim Robinson and his team’s performance for the rest of the game suggested they wouldn’t have spotted that crashing down over the line as long as I’ve got a hole in my arse.
Now Hull had something to hold, and QPR something to chase. I knew who I was backing at this stage. Hendrick’s long ranger was well struck, but even Ingram isn’t beaten from there. It took Willock, in his unusual position, 45 minutes to get a combination going with Chair, and when they finally did connect Albert Adomah nearly scored at the far stick. Another stuttering attack was interrupted by the referee around the same time because the ball had popped. Irritating enough, if Charlie Austin hadn’t just tried and failed to bring the thing under his spell a few seconds prior — he can’t even trap a flat ball these days. Maybe we could try one with a bell in it?
Rangers should have been thrown a bone in three minutes of first half stoppage time. Marcus Forss - clearly the best striker on the pitch, already with a goal to his name - boiled over needlessly and belted Jimmy Dunne over by the dug outs. They’re really easy these decisions, because it’s mandatory stuff — it’s either nothing at all, or it’s a red card. He’s either, in your view, belted him, or he hasn’t. You can’t, in the modern interpretation of the laws of the game, belt somebody a little bit. It’s violent conduct, or it’s just conduct. Tim Robinson made the fatal mistake of involving fourth official Trevor Kettle, who was officiating in this league 20 years ago and was the worst referee in it then by a country mile. He hasn’t been allowed to referee Championship games since 2017/18, when he sent off four players in four games. Are you more adept, competent, fit, decisive and observant than you were 20 years ago? Always a deliberately contrary lunatic, Kettle looked at this from a distance of barely five yards and advised it was a yellow card, and no free kick. Answers on a fucking postcard please. Indefensible, indecipherable, incompetent, horse-fucking-shit.
This is where you find out about your team. Who’s up for this challenge? Who’s wilting away? Every team that has every achieved anything at this level has had a wobble of some sorts: Warnock’s QPR also lost 2-0 at Millwall as well as 4-1 at Scunthorpe; Newcastle’s £100m squad had Rafa bloody Benitez managing them to the title here in 2017 and that included a defeat at Scunthorpe; Reading’s 106-point title winners lost at home on the opening day to Plymouth. We’re having a wobble, we’re 1-0 down at home to Hull, who wants it?
Initially, big teeth suck. Amos, Hendrick, Field. Too many catering staff in the midfield, ruining the product — I doubt their commitment to cake. When Jeff Hendrick got on the ball he showed what was possible by passing the ball quickly and accurately, but most of the others were taking too many unnecessary touches. You can go from Dion Sanderson to Chris Willock directly, or you can go there through Jimmy Dunne and Yoann Barbet — in the latter case Hull are crabbing and closing in on your space the whole time. Take one fewer touch, and involve one fewer man. Hendrick was the only one who seemed to get this.
Dieng was hesitant over a low cross, then improvised a Sunday league save from a long range speculator. Hull were basic, but QPR would have killed for the dynamism and purpose of Lewis-Potter, Honeyman and Longman at this point. All eyes on Jamie Paterson in January, but Hull picking Longman up on a permanent from Brighton for the money they spent was the lesser spotted deal of the day.
Slowly, though, it started to come. Chair’s first decent cross to the far stick saw Adomah and Ingram clash and the keeper go down in a heap. Thirteen minutes later, he was carted from the field and we wish him the best. You can debate whether actually Ingram had taken Adomah out (you’re never getting that) but what wasn’t in doubt was Harvey Cartwright, a pre-pubescent teenager with zero first team appearances to his name, was now in goal. You have to hang that restarting corner right in on top of him with LA Interstate 405 rush hour levels of traffic piling in over the top of that little scrote. Yoann Barbet took the corner, and hit the first defender at the near post. He'd had a quarter of an hour to plan it too. I just… Sometimes there aren’t words right?
You’ve got to love them. What else do we have left? Amos, anonymous, went off. Moses Odubajo came on. And who’d be a football manager? Because last week Amos’ lack of action post-Reading had ascended him to level of saviour (or "LFW darling” as I saw him rather unfairly described online - have a day off will you?) while Moses Odubajo was in the passenger seat of Bob Malcolm’s Land Rover as he slept in the middle lane of the M1. So, you make space, and pick one, and he does nothing. You drop the other, and bring him on out of necessity, and he morphs into the bastard love child of Clive Wilson and David Bardsley. His cross for the equaliser was whipped, accurate, impossible to defend, and converted by Ilias Chair. It was a thing of beauty. It left from the spot under my seat at the front of F Block and I’d have scored it myself. There was another to come, in stoppage time, not converted. At Barnsley he looked like a lost cause incapable of producing such quality if you gave him a hundred unchallenged attempts, and now here he was whipping magic like that out of a hat. Warbs would diplomatically tell you "they’re human”. I’d rather my job than his.
The first hour was trying to start an old engine on a cold day. It takes a while. Now it was purring. QPR were, finally, for the first time in five games, doing that thing they do when they’re at their best. Ice hockey power play. Two or three men in the box, four or five men surrounding it, ball being moved between them, possession switched side to side, opposition dragged left and right and tired, Chair and Willock always two of the three in the triangles. Here it was. Here it was again. Here it was at last. The Ingram injury meant an extended period of stoppage time which would have been enough for an Albert Adomah winner off a deflected Willock cross but for a very, very, very borderline offside flag from a linesman who’d previously spent time mega bantzing within the crowd on that side of the ground. I can forgive a borderline decision, I’ll live with them rather than accept the tumour of VAR, but when Keane Lewis Potter went through at the other end and missed from the most blatantly obvious offside position you’ll ever see as long as you watch the game, you have to put a hand up and object a little bit. Between them, these four officials, as a team, were shambolic. George Honeyman, who I like, and was excellent, at one stage conceded a free kick 35 yards out from Loft End goal, and wellied the ball down into the School End without a card. This is basic stuff. This is basic stuff. Come on now, we’ve all had a drink.
It felt like a winner would come. I really wish it had, not just because I’m overly invested in this, but because I thought the team deserved it. I thought they showed a lot of character, to come through an abysmal week, phone in a nothing first half, but then keep at it. Keep at it through adversity, injustice, poor form, lagging confidence. That last 20 minutes or so, with us camped round the box, moving the ball quickly, probing and trying, threatening. Chris Willock’s spin and hit an inch over. Wasted at left wing back? Probably. But you didn’t like Odubajo. Wallace is injured. Barbet cannot play there as he’s seemingly going out of his way to prove. I thought there was enough there to go on, and it felt like the Loft End of the ground (if not an increasingly toxic social media) agreed with me. Atmosphere the polar opposite to the Middlesbrough morgue. Come on you R’s. Come on you R’s.
Steve Black died this weekend. He was brought in as a motivational guru and coach for the disparate, fractious and fragmented 2013/14 promotion squad, and ended up as part of the backroom staff at one of QPR’s only two Wembley wins. That June, he spent two hours of a 30 minute interview with me in his garden trying to explain to me "what exactly is it you do?” He was immensely kind and accommodating in a way interviewees rarely are. Amongst it all (I asked somewhere between three and four questions in those 180 minutes), he said this. "What I noticed about the QPR supporters is they understand when you’re committed, they understand when the team has an emotion to it, they understand when the team has an intensity to it, they understand when the team has a desire to it, and they respond to that."
I think yesterday the team was committed, it did have an emotion to it, it did eventually have an intensity to it, and the crowd responded in kind. I just wish we started games like we finish them.
Blackpool is three days away.
Links >>> Ratings and Reports >>> Message Board Match Thread
QPR: Dieng 6; Adomah 6, Sanderson 5, Dunne 6, Barbet 5, Willock 6; Hendrick 7, Amos 5 (Odubajo 69, 7) Field 6; Austin 4 (Gray 90+5, -), Chair 6
Subs not used: Johansen, Ball, Thomas, Dozzell, Marshall
Goals: Chair 75 (assisted Odubajo)
Bookings: Chair 34 (foul), Austin 90 (foul)
Hull: Ingram 6 (Cartwright 67, 6); Bernard 8, McLoughlin 6, Greaves 6, Elder 6; Smallwood 6, Jones 6; Longman 7 (Docherty 82, -), Honeyman 7 (Slater 90+8, -), Lewis-Potter 7; Forss 6 (Smith 81, -)
Subs not used: Moncur, Fleming, Walsh
Goals: Forss 26 (assisted McLoughlin)
Bookings: Forss 45+3 (booting somebody off the ball, this is a booking now apparently)
Star Man — Jeff Hendrick 7 I mean… moved the ball quicker and with more accuracy than a lot of others, and that basically wins it for you on a day like today. Nothing to be wildly proud of.
Referee — Tim Robinson (West Sussex) 4 As an officiating team of four working together, as poor as you’ll see. Every big decision in the game called incorrectly. The disallowed Adomah goal is borderline and debatable, the linesman gets one look at that and can’t slow it down and use the still frames you’ve seen on social media today, so you have to accept that and move on if, like me, you’d prefer that to the VAR nonsense we see in the division above. But so much other really obvious and basic stuff was wrong all afternoon it became profoundly depressing. Marcus Forss gets frustrated and belts Jimmy Dunne off the ball, five yards away from the fourth official, in first half stoppage time — yellow card and no free kick. It’s either nothing, or it’s a free kick and a red card, it can’t be no free kick and a yellow. He’s either belted him or he hasn’t; it’s either violent conduct or it’s not. The Keane Lewis Potter chance, which should really have been the winner, flagged onside, is so widely offside that linesman should be taken away by men in white coats. Yards and yards and yards offside. Not a difficult one to get right. The lino who flagged Adomah off, and spent the second half flagging a number of very questionable offsides, started the half engaged in mega bantz with the crowd at the start of the half — that sort of shit may go down well on Soccer AM, but it sets you up for a fall, and won’t have gone down well with the assessor. Nor should it. If I wanted a fucking comedian, I’d go to the Comedy Store. The inevitable time wasting that came late in the day from the visitors was, predictably, punished only with a series of vague, ineffective hand gestures.
When we first arrived back in this league in 2015, Tim Robinson was clearly rated as the best referee in it. He got all the big games, all the TV games, obviously he was being looked at for a promotion. Since then, several referees have gone past him into the Prem, including some very poor ones — Tony Harrington, Michael Salisbury who’d only been on the Championship list for a year when he was promoted — and he’s been left behind. You could see why here. Not to be too cruel, lockdown wasn’t kind to many of us, but his physical conditioning compared to where it was, compared to what it should be, is miles off. At the very least, he could do with a bigger shirt. Now left plodding the Jon Moss square around the centre circle, guessing at decisions he’s not close enough to get right, and on this occasion hamstrung by two assistants and a fourth official every bit as rank. If you wanted an example of how low refereeing standards have sunk in this league, this was it. I genuinely think I could have done a better job of this myself.
Attendance - 14,945 (600 Hull approx.)
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