Manchester official Matt Donohue is in the middle for QPR's crunch Saturday clash at home to Rotherham.
Referee >>> Matt Donohue (Manchester)
Assistants >>> Paul Hodskinson (Lancashire) and Steve Durnall (Wolverhampton)
Fourth Official >>> David Webb (Durham), sent off Asmir Begovic at Leeds, missed a blatant handball at the end of Ipswich away.
Birmingham 0 QPR 0, Friday September 22, 2023, Championship
Brum: Ruddy 8; Drameh 6, Sanderson 5, Long 6, Buchanan 6; Bacuna 6, Bielik 7; Miyoshi 7 (Dembele 71, 6), Stansfield 7, Anderson 6 (Burke 43, 7); Hogan 5 (Jutkiewicz 71, 6)
Subs not used: Etheridge, James, Gardner, Longelo, Sunjic, Aiwu
Bookings: Bacuna 54 (foul), Sanderson 67 (foul), Stansfield 90 (foul)
QPR: Begovic 8; Kakay 6, Cook 8, Fox 5; Smyth 6 (Adomah 65, 6), Dozzell 7, Field 8, Paal 6; Chair 7, Dykes 6, Armstrong 6 (Willock 75, 6)
Subs not used: Clarke-Salter, Dixon-Bonner, Larkeche, Kelman, Duke-McKenna, Walsh, Kolli
Bookings: Field 45 (foul), Smyth 61 (foul)
Referee – Matt Donohue (Manchester) 7 Some frustration that, having been comprehensively schooled and nutmegged by Ilias Chair tight to the touchline ten before half time, Scott Hogan was just allowed to deliberately pull the Moroccan back to stop the counter attack and was not shown a yellow card – that stuff is usually mandatory – and then when Field did the same thing in first half stoppage time he was booked. That’s the sort of maddening inconsistency that’s difficult for the refereeing fraternity to justify and defend. A pretty small moment in the overall context of the game though, which was well refereed. Two minutes added to the first and three to the second suggests that either the predicted climbdown from the summer clampdown is either well underway, or Donohue was on the 11pm train with the rest of us.
West Brom 2 QPR 2, Monday April 10, 2023, Championship
A ball down the Baggies’ left channel might have been intercepted by right winger Albert Adomah, had he been facing the right way or looking at the ball as it was played, but as he was neither we move on to Rob Dickie striding across to commit the dumbest of dumb unnecessary fouls on Conor Townsend right on the corner of the penalty box. John Swift has been the scourge of far better Rangers outfits than this one, and his whipped inswinging free kick tempted Seny Dieng from his line for an attempted double-fisted punch clearance which he missed entirely — perhaps we can borrow that ball with a bell in it we had to buy in for Rob Green in the end? That left Brandon Thomas-Asante the task of putting the ball into the empty net from a yard out, which he did using his arm. Goal allowed. In defence of referee Matt Donohue I only notice this handball on the TV replay, at the time (which is what he gets to see) it looked absolutely fair enough.
Nathaniel Chalobah copped it big time when he was removed early from a personally retched midfield display — if you’re getting bossed about by Sam Field and Luke Amos you’re lucky it’s only a substitution coming your way, that’s a paddlin. Jed Wallace and John Swift, who’ve made careers out of making QPR look stupid, disappeared from the fray entirely after that nightmarish opening quarter hour for the visitors. One monumental scramble from the latest amateurishly defended corner, which referee Donahue did a quick risk assessment on and decided to bail out with a free kick to the defending team, was all they had to show despite Karlan Grant and Daryl Dike stepping into the fray from the bench. There was even an intelligent, cynical, tactical foul from Rob Dickie to stop the American bursting away from us late on. Little Suzy’s all grown up.
West Brom: Griffiths 4; Furlong 6, Ajayi 5, Pieters 4, Townsend 5; Chalobah 4 (Molumby 76, 5), Gardner-Hickman 4 (Rogic 61, 5); Wallace 5, Albrighton 5 (Grant 62, 5), Swift 5; Thomas-Asante 7 (Dike 76, 6)
Subs not used: Palmer, Ingram, Andrews
Goals: Thomas-Asante 10 (assisted Swift), Ajayi 13 (unassisted)
QPR: Dieng 4; Dunne 5, Dickie 5, Balogun 5, Paal 5; Adomah 5 (Lowe 71, 6), Amos 6 (Dozzell 82, -), Field 7, Chair 6 (Richards 83, -); Dykes 7, Martin 6
Subs not used: Johansen, Willock, Archer, Laird
Goals: Dykes 22 (assisted Chair), Martin 49 (unassisted)
Bookings: Lowe 81 (foul)
Referee — Matt Donohue (Manchester) 6 Very odd one this. I came away from the game thinking he’d done very well, and I prefer games to be refereed like this. Very lenient at times — how Dickie wasn’t booked for deliberately pulling Dike down and preventing a counter attack at the end I don’t know — but better than a ‘look-at-me’ intrusive performance the likes of which we get from some others at this level. I’ll also give him a bit of the benefit of the doubt for the first goal because from where we were, very close, I never once thought it was handball but, on the replay (which they don’t get) that is pretty blatant and you’d hope/expect one of the two officials looking at it to see it.
QPR 0 Stoke 0, Saturday September 17, 2022, Championship
I’d had referee Donohue on a seven to this point. One or two niggles and moments of strangeness — Stoke rightly stewing that when play was stopped for an injury with the ball bobbling round our penalty box it was restarted with an uncontested drop ball in our favour — but overall very good control of the game and few cards. There then commenced something of a bed shitting, that began with the adding of just three minutes to the end of the game. This for a half with several injuries, five subs made in three batches, a goalkeeper booked for time wasting (itself the biggest waste of time in football when it comes as late in the game as it did), and a minute’s pause and applause for the queen. That could, should, have been enough for Stoke to win the game with impressive substitute Tyrese Campbell banging a shot through a crowd, past Dieng, and agonisingly past the far bottom corner by an inch or two. There was still time after it for Paal, tired and wrong side, to come crashing through the back Wilmot in the penalty area for one of the more obvious spot kicks you’ll ever see not given. Donohue had waved it away even before Wilmot reached the turf, and was really rather giving the impression of somebody who was in the mood to get out of there promptly for his train back to Manchester — which given the shambles Avanti West Coast are currently operating he probably was.
QPR: Dieng 6; Laird 7, Balogun 7, Dunne 6, Paal 6; Dozzell 5 (Dykes 46, 6), Field 6, Johansen 7 (Iroegbunam 78, 6); Willock 6, Roberts 5 (Adomah 78, 6), Chair 7
Subs not used: Kakay, Archer, Bonne, Masterson,
Bookings; Balogun 90 (foul)
Stoke: Bursik 8; Taylor 6, Flint 7, Fox 6; Wilmot 6, Baker 7, Thompson 6 (Laurent 75, 6), Smallbone 7, Fosu-Henry 6; Delap 5 (Powell 67, 6), Gayle 6 (Campbell 67, 7)
Subs not used: Wright-Phillips, Fielding, Sparrow
Bookings: Taylor 87 (foul), Bursik 90+1 (time wasting)
Referee — Matt Donohue (Manchester) 5 Very difficult mark to give because I thought he was very decent for 88 minutes, and then got a whole clutch of stuff wrong in the remaining time — pathetic amount of added time, a yellow card to the keeper for time wasting when it makes no difference at all, and the Stoke penalty appeal which is the big decision in the game and is wrong. I suspect if I was writing as a Stoke fan I’d probably have given him half that.
Birmingham 1 QPR 2, Sunday January 2, 2022, Championship
Was Sunday in ‘the second city’, at times, immensely frustrating? Of course. Birmingham, who have suffered from the loss of Man Utd starlet Tahith Chong to injury and have now lost his makeshift replacement Riley McGree to an ill-timed end of his loan deal, were just about as bad as you’ll ever see a Championship team be. Obviously low on confidence with one win from seven and a 4-0 loss at Blackburn last time out, I can rarely recall a team kicking the ball straight out of play while trying to complete a pass quite as often as this. They had two 17-year-olds in the team, Jordan James and George Hall, with the latter making a full debut, and three teenagers on the bench without a league appearance between them, including Jude Bellingham’s 16-year-old brother Jobe. Other letters are available. You couldn’t help but feel bad for 21-year-old left wing back Juan Castillo, the obligatory Chelsea loanee who looked like he’d won his first league start in a competition in the local paper and whose half time substitution was more mercy killing than tactical, but he was far from alone. Experienced players who those kids needed to help them out were mostly woeful: Ivan Sunjic taking brief time out from constantly giving the ball away to launch into a horrible late tackle designed to injure Yoann Barbet which was the thickest of thick yellow cards from stand in referee Matt Donohue; Troy Deeney about as mobile as The Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St Andrew’s, and almost as wide; Gary Gardner with his boots on the wrong way round. Goalkeeper Martija Sarkic, attempting to throw the ball out to get a final attack going in injury time, inadvertently amputated his own arm, which rather summed the whole thing up. Springfield Isotopes, I'll go and warm up the car. Lee Bowyer’s promise of improving the standard of football here feels a distant memory — QPR’s critics take note, improving your football, and your league position, while reducing your wage bill, is very bloody difficult to do.
Birmingham: Sarkic 6; Colin 5, Sanderson 7, Friend 6, Pedersen 5, Castillo 2 (Woods 46, 6); Gardner 4 (Aneke 67, 6), Sunjic 4, James 5; Deeney 3, Hall 5 (Hogan 85, -)
Subs not used: Etheridge, Bellingham, Walker, Campbell
Goals: Aneke 75 (assisted Colin)
Yellow cards: Sunjic 87 (foul)
QPR: Dieng 6; Adomah 7, Dickie 7, Dunne 8, Barbet 7, Wallace 6; Field 6, Amos 6, Willock 8; Dykes 5 (Austin 85, -), Gray 5 (Johansen 63, 6)
Subs not used: Kakay, Ball, Archer, Thomas
Goals: Adomah 14 (assisted Wallace), Willock 71 (unassisted)
Yellow Cards: Dickie 59 (foul), Amos 74 (foul), Field 87 (dissent)
Referee — Matt Donohue (Manchester) 7 Not tooooooooooo bad overall. Veered from letting lots of stuff go, to clamping down harshly, and back again. Birmingham seemed to get some generous stuff to me in the second half, mostly (coincidentally I’m sure) in the minutes after Lee Bowyer had gone through the mother and father of all meltdowns with the fourth official on the sideline. I certainly thought Sunjic could have been sent off for the late horror lunge on Barbet.
QPR 2 Luton 0, Friday November 13, 2021, Championship
QPR: Dieng 7; Adomah 6 (Kakay 80, -), Dickie 7, Dunne 6, Barbet 8, Wallace 7; Johansen 6, Dozzell 7, Chair 7 (Amos 89, -); Willock 8, Austin 6 (Field 79, 6)
Subs not used: Ball, Archer, Thomas, Duke-McKenna
Goals: Willock 10 (assisted Chair), Austin 55 (assisted Dunne)
Bookings; Dozzell 59 (foul), Austin 75 (foul), Dickie 90 (foul)
Luton: Sluga 5; Bree 6, Lockyer 6, Bradley 5, Naismith 6, Onyedinma 6; Campbell 6 (Jerome 79, 5), Mpanzu 6, Lansbury 6; Cornick 6 (Muskwe 68, 5), Adebayo 7
Subs not used: Shea, Hylton, Clark, Bell, Osho
Bookings: Lansbury 13 (foul), Bradley 53 (foul), Adebayo 57 (foul)
Referee — Matt Donohue (Manchester) 7 Not a referee we have particularly fond memories of but I thought he refereed this well. Quite a lot of yellow cards, but I’m not sure you could argue with any of them. Luton have had a bit of a bitch and moan about the free kick awarded against Sonny Bradley in the build up to the second goal when it looked like Willock doing most of the shirt pulling, but he did rather needlessly push him in the back when the ball first arrived so I’m not sure it’s the cut and dried scandal the ever chippy Nathan Jones would like to have everybody believe. Overall, pretty good.
Hull 0 QPR 3, Saturday August 14, 2021, Championship
Mood shift. From the mental and physical torture of waiting for seemingly inevitable concession, the dread of seeing that little virgin at the front in the grey tracksuit giving it large when it happens, time standing still while Hull agonisingly click, click and click away again on the wrack, waiting for the satisfying snap of the spine, to a tranquil paradise where football is fun, and sex dolls are flying through the air, and songs are sung by an away following for whom only pre-booked train tickets stand in the way of their desire to stay here and watch this football game for the rest of the night and most of tomorrow. The game was up for Hull, they knew it, Moncur’s frustrations manifesting in a rather silly tackle on Ball that, once airborne, was always likely to elicit a red card from Matt Donohue.
Hull: Ingram 5; Coyle 7 (Emmanuel 75, 6), Jones 6, Greaves 6, Elder 6; Smallwood 6 (Williams 73, 6), Docherty 6; Longman 6 (Smith 35, 6), Moncur 5, Lewis-Potter 7; Magennis 6
Subs not used: Eaves, Baxter, Cannon, Bernard
Red Cards: Moncur 71 (serious foul play)
QPR: Dieng 8; Odubajo 7, Dickie 9, De Wijs 8, Barbet 7, Wallace 7; Johansen 8 (Thomas 86, -), Ball 7, Chair 7 (Dozzell 59, 6); Willock 7, Dykes 6 (Kelman 85, -)
Subs not used: Kakay, Archer, Dunne, Adomah
Goals: Willock 16 (assisted Chair), Dykes 68 (assisted Johansen), Dickie 74 (assisted Wallace)
Referee — Matt Donohue (Manchester) 7 Not a referee we have happy memories of, but few complaints here. Two identical penalty appeals were waved away at opposite ends in quick succession, Dykes and Lewis-Potter both exaggerating a push at the back post, and he was right to do that. Moncur, we can debate, but as soon as you leave the ground and lunge in you’re giving the referee a decision to make and at the time, admittedly from the other end of the ground, it looked a bad one. Grant McCann was also stewing afterwards about an apparent handball penalty, but I have to say it wasn’t one obvious enough to really register for me and to be honest the line of questioning on it felt more like Radio Roverside trying to fill up to the news at half past rather than any belief the referee had not been any good. Overall, fine.
Middlesbrough 1 QPR 2, Saturday April 13, 2021, Championship
Second half started well. Nice overs to get Stefan Johansen into space for a shot wide. Wallace continuing his remarkable 2021 renaissance with a charge into the penalty area and what looked like a foul for a spot kick until the replay showed it up as one of the worst dives ever seen on a football field. Referee Matt Donohue perhaps generous not to book the Scot for that one. Lee Wallace, I expect this of some of the others, but you’re a military man.
Boro: Archer 6; Fisher 6 (Johnson 55, 6), Hall 6, McNair 6; Spence 5 (Coulson 63, 5), Saville 7, Howson 6, Bola 5; Kebano 6, Watmore 7, Bolasie 8 (Assombalonga 82, -)
Subs not used: Bettinelli, Akpom, Fletcher, Hackney, Coburn, Malley
Goals: Bolasie 28 (assisted Kebano)
QPR: Dieng 6; Kakay 5, Dickie 8, Barbet 6; Adomah 6 (Ball 74, 7), Thomas 6 (Lumley 60, 8), Johansen 6, Chair 6 (Duke-McKenna 86, -), Wallace 8; Willock 7 (Field 74, 6), Dykes 7
Subs not used: Kane, Bonne, Bettache, Hämäläinen, Kelman
Goals: Dickie 15 (assisted Dykes), Wallace 18 (assisted Dykes)
Red Cards: Dieng 58 (denying obvious goalscoring opp)
Yellow Cards: Kakay 31 (foul)
Referee — Matt Donohue (Manchester) 7 Somewhat ironic that in the first game with this referee since he incorrectly bottled a red card for a professional foul in our defeat at Brentford we should then have a man sent off for the same thing, but you couldn’t argue with Dieng’s red card, nor much of anything else he did in a game of several big decisions. Probably should have booked Wallace for his second half dive in the penalty area.
Brentford 2 QPR 1, Friday November 27, 2020, Championship
Rangers came on really strongly at the end of the first half, and should not only have led at half time, but also been playing against ten men. The decision to leave Jansson out and go with Sorensen at centre back against Dykes instead was, even allowing for the Swede’s niggling hamstring issues, not one of Thomas Frank’s better ideas. It had threatened to come home to roost all half, with Dykes turning in his best performance for QPR so far, and sure enough eight minutes before half time the Scottish international got in behind his man, clean through on goal, with the ball under control and the goal opening up in front of him. With no other defenders around, and the ball not running through to the goalkeeper, it was the dictionary definition of a clear goalscoring opportunity and so when Sorensen admitted defeat and barged the QPR man in the back making no attempt to play at the ball as he broke into the penalty area a free kick and red card were the only decisions that could be reached. Referee Matt Donohue chose yellow.
Given that Dykes, shortly after, was played clean through again with the excellent Ilias Chair up in support for a square ball and snatched at a horribly skewed left footed shank into the stand you could joke about it not being an obvious goal scoring opportunity because it was him, and that it’s probably a good job he was fouled, but it was a dire piece of refereeing, and it wasn’t the only decision he butchered either. Rangers would end the game with ten men, and you couldn’t really argue with either of Todd Kane’s yellow cards, one for a deliberate pull on Mbeumo, the other for a late thigh high challenge on Marcus Forss. You could, however, wonder why Kane was sampling the early bath water for two fouls, while Master of all He Surveys Ivan Toney was allowed to kick and niggle his way through the whole game, including a first half incident where he felt aggrieved that a free kick wasn’t awarded for a good Niko Hämäläinen tackle so chased the Finnish full back down the field and deliberately booted him up in the air. Such red-mist retribution is usually mandatory card territory - here it warranted a friendly word on the side. Likewise, you might find it difficult to tell the difference between Brentford’s Dalsgaard banging his hands together in the linesman’s face and screaming "fuck’s sake” over the award of a throw in in the fortieth minute, and Dominic Ball's frustrated spiking of the ball into the turf over an identical incident on 74, other than one received a yellow card, and one didn’t.
Matt Donohue, like Michael Salisbury who had a torrid afternoon in our recent home game with Watford, is a very recent addition to the Championship list. With crowds in, neither fixture is one I’d expect to be given to somebody who’s only been refereeing at this level for a season or so. May I venture to suggest the people who decide such things are taking advantage of games being behind closed doors — although by the looks and sounds of things ‘behind closed doors’ means something rather different to Brentford than it does to the rest of us — to get some higher profile, more difficult Championship action into some younger, less experienced referees. Neither Salisbury nor Donohue looked at all comfortable in either game, and big decisions were bottled in both. Usually I’d follow a ref rant with a "but QPR didn’t lose this because of the officials…” paragraph, but not today. They were, to a large extent, refereed out of the contest, and Warbs Warburton’s righteous fury in the post match was fully justified.
QPR had been so irrelevant and inadequate in the first half that mighty, progressive, future-gazing Brentford had to change their entire set up at half time to cope with them. On came Jansson, immediately sharing some of Toney’s diplomatic immunity to knee Lyndon Dykes in the back off the ball in full view of the referee to no punishment, and the hosts switched to a back three. Rangers had scored one, missed a sitter, tested Raya with a long ranger from Chair, and been fouled when clean through on goal in the first half, but struggled to create chances thereafter — the exposure of Sorensen, in particular, brought to an immediate halt by the change.
Brentford: Raya 6; Dalsgaard 5 (Jansson 46, 7), Pinnock 6, Sorensen 5, Henry 8; Dasilva 5 (Jensen 46, 6), Janelt 6, Marcondes 6 (Forss 71, 7), Mbeumo 6 (Ghoddos 87, -), Fosu-Henry 6 (Canos 71, 6); Toney 8
Goals: Janelt 14 (assisted Henry), Toney 64 (assisted Marcondes)
Yellow Cards: Sorensen 39 (denying clear goalscoring opportunity), Canos 90+6 (foul)
QPR: Dieng 6; Kane 6, Dickie 7, Barbet 7, Hämäläinen 5 (Bonne 85, -); Ball 6 (Adomah 80, 5), Carroll 7; Osayi-Samuel 7, Chair 6, Willock 6 (Thomas 71, 5); Dykes 7
Subs not used: Wallace, Masterson, Kakay, Kelly, Bettache, Kelman
Goals: Dykes 26 (assisted Osayi-Samuel)
Red Cards: Kane 83 (two yellows)
Yellow Cards: Hämäläinen 29 (foul), Kane 65 (foul), Ball 74 (dissent), Kane 83 (foul)
Referee — Matt Donohue (Manchester) 3 Inconsistent, incoherent, incorrect decision making from an easily influenced referee way below the standard required to officiate at this level.
QPR 2 Charlton 2, Saturday December 21, 2020, Championship
Charlton were tits deep in shit themselves. One nil down and it should have been three. That’s not to say they didn’t have chances — Joe Lumley made a good save with his legs to stop Lyle Taylor equalising Cameron’s goal straight from the kick off. But this was a team without a win in ten games and with an injury list that the script writers of the Casualty Christmas Special would baulk at, and initially at least they looked exactly that. Referee Matt Donohue, with all the passive naivety we saw from him at Cardiff earlier this season, allowed a blatant and fragrant attempt to kick Eze out of the game from Darren Pratley continue unchecked for a quarter of an hour under the It’s a Bit Early For A Yellow Card Legislation of 1988 before finally booking the crusty old git for repetitive hacking and dissent. With that nipped in the bud, and Jonathan Leko forced off through injury barely ten minutes in, they looked to be in all sorts of problems.
QPR: Lumley 6; Kane 5, Hall 7, Leistner 7, Manning 6; Cameron 5, Amos 6 (Scowen 78, 6); Pugh 6 (Chair 78, 6), Eze 7, Wells 4 (Osayi-Samuel 66, 8); Hugill 6
Subs not used: Barnes, Wallace, Bouncing Bomb, Smith, Ball
Goals: Cameron 5 (assisted Eze), Pugh 70 (assisted Osayi-Samuel)
Bookings: Manning 53 (unsporting), Amos 55 (foul), Hugill 81 (foul)
Charlton: Phillips 7; Matthews 6, Lockyer 6, Sarr 6, Purrington 3 (Pearce 27, 5); Leko — (Morgan 11, 7), Pratley 6, Gallagher 8, Doughty 7 (Oshilaja 88, -); Bonne 6, Taylor 7
Subs not used: Ledley, Solly, Maynard-Brewer, Dempsey
Goals: Taylor 56 (assisted Morgan), Sarr 90+5 (assisted Phillips)
Bookings: Pratley 17 (dissent), Morgan 53 (unsporting), Matthews 89 (foul)
Referee — Matt Donohue (Manchester) 6 I’ve heard and read loads of grief for this referee so far today but I didn’t come away thinking he’d done anything particularly wrong. He’s new on the Championship list this season, and he’s often quite weak when it comes to dealing with cynical, senior, experienced professionals engaging in the dark arts — we saw that in spades against Cardiff earlier this season and then again here with Darren Pratley hacking his way through Ebere Eze in the opening stages. There was a shout for a late penalty on Hugill, but I didn’t particularly think it was. And five minutes of stoppage time was completely fair — compounded by somebody in Ellerslie Road throwing the ball away causing extra time to be added in which Charlton scored — and was what was added despite the incorrect announcement that there would only be four.
Cardiff 3 QPR 0, Wednesday October 2, 2019, Championship
The time wasting in this one started after little more than a quarter of an hour. Every time the ball went out for a throw in, a farcical routine would kick into gear whereby a Cardiff player would set off at walking pace looking for the ball, then having located it set off at walking pace in the other direction to find a towel to dry it with on the first day for three fucking weeks where there’d been no rain, then walk back to roughly where the throw in should be taken, then walk very, very slowly away from that spot down the line, and finally chuck the ball. Every free kick awarded was followed immediately by the ball being nudged ten or 15 yards away from where it needed to be by a player who would then stand on the spot and refuse to move back without a prolonged argument about whether the offence had actually been committed very slightly further back. Goal kicks were taken in the sort of time a half decent artist might be able to complete an oil on canvas of Smithies lining the thing up.
All of this was passively overseen by referee Matt Donohue, in his first season on the Championship list and completely and utterly out of his depth here in dealing with experienced, professional, cynical footballers. He refereed like he was scared to say anything to the players under his charge, twice in the first half playing advantages through bad fouls and failing to return to the offender later for even so much as a word. He happily let Morrison pull that towel trick all night, only very occasionally blowing his whistle for a second time and making a hand gesture that I think was supposed to signal that perhaps a minute and a half is long enough to prepare for a throw in and the ball should probably be back in play by now. He did go and speak to Smithies at one point, delaying the game further, to make it clear that he absolutely wouldn’t stand for very much more of this stuff for very much longer. And then did. Dust the sand out of your vagina and do something about it for goodness sake. Despite it all, the standard two minutes was added to the first half and four to the second. It didn’t matter, QPR would have lost regardless, but two minutes was a bold call given what had gone in that half and four at the end of the second was, frankly, a total fucking shambolic embarrassment that should see him spending some time back down the divisions for a few weeks.
I’ve said this a fair bit, usually after losing to Preston, but QPR are horribly naïve in this sort of situation. Do I want us to go full Ben Pearson on the situation? No. But when the referee is standing there scratching his pubics while Sean Morrison ambles off down the touchline looking for a towel to wipe the ball for a routine throw in on a dry night, it’s not beneath us or unbecoming to get in the referee’s ear and ask what in the name of fuck is going on. On Saturday Jake Livermore spoke to the referee so much in the first half I thought it might be his dealer - asking why every QPR offence wasn’t a yellow card, and downplaying everything West Brom did. We just sort of kick around and let it happen, timid lads in the playground, bullied by the bigger boys.
Cardiff: Smithies 7; Peltier 6, Morrison 7, Flint 7, Bennett 5; Bacuna 5, Pack 6; Whyte 5 (Hoilett 87, -), Tomlin 6 (Paterson 65, 6), Murphy 5; Glatzel 5 (Ward 81, -)
Subs not used: Etheridge, Nelson, Mendez-Laing, Coxe
Goals: Morrison 11 (assisted Flint), Pack 45+1 (assisted Whyte), Paterson 72 (assisted Bacuna)
Bookings: Whyte 87 (foul), Paterson 80 (unsporting)
QPR: Kelly 5; Rangel 5 (Kane 66, 6), Cameron 4, Leistner 5, Manning 6; Ball 5 (Wells 63, 5), Scowen 6; Osayi-Samuel 6, Chair 6 (Pugh 80, -), Eze 7; Hugill 5
Subs not used: Lumley, Wallace, Mlakar, Masterson
Bookings: Manning 80 (unsporting)
Referee — Matt Donohue (Manchester) 4 Out of his depth. Taken for a fool by more experienced players who knew what they were doing. Allowed the game to descend to a pace so slow it was literally stationary for long periods. You could drink eight pints of Carling and produce a piss stronger than this bloke.
QPR 3 Wigan 1, Saturday August 24, 2019, Championship
Wigan, so comfortable in the first half, were now having a bit of a panic for themselves. Kipre, a human Redwood for the first 45, was starting to sway a bit in the growing storm. A high boot on Ilias Chair — not difficult, to be fair to him — was right on the cusp of the penalty box but drew only a free kick from newbie referee Matt Donohue. Rangers protested, as well they might, they haven’t scored a direct free kick since Yeni Ngbakoto did so at Birmingham City in February 2017 and have spent the early rounds of 2019/20 hopelessly punting one attempt after another into the base of the wall. Not, it should be said, that we’ve been a lot better with penalties recently either. All runs come to an end eventually though and with two QPR men allowed to stand on the end of the Wigan wall (thought there was a new rule about that this season?) Ebere Eze was able to cutely pick his spot to the left of the defenders, and the keeper, but not so far that the ball couldn’t neatly beautifully in the side-netting for 2-1. We have choreographed handshakes now too, just in case any Spurs scouts are in the house.
QPR: Lumley 5; Rangel 5, Hall 6, Barbet 6, Manning 6; Scowen 5 (Leistner, 46 7), Ball 5 (Smith 71, 6); Eze 8, Chair 7, Pugh 7 (Hugill 68, 6); Wells 6
Subs not used: Kane, Osayi-Samuel, Owens, Kelly
Goals: Wells 48 (assisted Rangel, pre-assist Manning), Eze 61 (direct free kick, won Chair), Hugill 81 (assisted Eze)
Bookings: Char 45+2 (diving), Hall 78 (unsporting)
Wigan: Marshall 4; Kipre 6 (Massey 78, 6), Dunkley 5, Fox 5; Byrne 6, Robinson 7; Morsy 5, Evans 5, Jacobs 5 (Naismith 56, 5); Lowe 6 (Lang 59, 5), Garner 5
Subs not used: MacLeod, Mulgrew, Roberts, Jones
Goals: Kipre 2 (assisted Fox)
Bookings: Dunkley 58 (foul), Kipre 65 (foul), Robinson 76 (foul), Garner 78 (unsporting)
Referee — Matt Donohue (Manchester) 7 Lot of bookings, but all justified. Maybe could have done more to stop Joe Garner being Joe Garner before it finally boiled over into a spat with Hall for which both were yellow carded but everything else pretty spot on and game management was fine.
A chunky 108 yellows (4.6) in 23 games with two reds on top for Donohue this season. Ten yellows at Bristol Rovers 1-1 Stevenage in League One, nine at Leeds 1-1 West Brom, eight at Birmingham 2-2 Swansea… a clutch of sevens.
He finished last season with 35 appointments, 138 yellows (3.94) and three reds, with eight yellows and a red at Boro v Preston his top haul. It was the second successive season he’s finished on 138 yellows.
QPR have a decent record of 5-4-2 from 11 appointments with this ref across his five seasons so far in the EFL, while Rotherham are 1-2-3 from six. His last game with the Millers was their 1-1 draw at home to Swansea on the opening day of last season.
The Twitter @loftforwords
Pictures — Action Images