At the end of another extraordinary week at Loftus Road QPR have to get their minds back on the field of play ahead of this Saturday’s trip to Goodison Park.
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Using ‘another’ and ‘extraordinary’ together in the same intro is something of an oxymoron. In truth this week’s events in W12 have not been anything out of the ordinary for our club at all. Another rich man, another change in the board room, another different direction for the club – all for the better this time it seems but it was hard not to feel a sense of “here we go again” as we all scrambled to catch a bit of Thursday’s uplifting press conference by any means possible.
It’s often easy to forget that QPR is a football team that has to go out on the field at the end of the week and perform. Our club has become staple copy for all manner of legal, business and finance publications to the point where it would be easy to mistake it for just another FTSE company.
On Thursday new owner Tony Fernandes and returning hero Amit Bhatia spoke of a new era of openness and fan engagement at Loftus Road. This, and everything else they said, was lapped up by the masses who have enthusiastically taken to Twitter to engage Fernandes on such crucial points as changing the club crest, and bringing back Jude the Cat. Horrifying memories of the past where crucial time at rare fans meetings with board members was wasted talking about the water pressure in the ladies toilets in South Africa Road come flooding (excuse the pun) back to me.
The dialogue from Fernandes and Bhatia on Thursday was clearly based around taking everything Flavio Briatore has said over the past four years and saying the exact opposite. I do wonder if they’re already regretting the open door policy though.
New badges and fluffy cats can wait until next summer by which time we need to still be a Premiership club. For me their priorities for the next nine months are very simple. Sorting our team out is priority one, closely followed by addressing our scandalous ticket prices so there is no repeat of last week’s embarrassment when the smallest ground in the Premiership had 3,000 empty seats for its first top flight QPR game in 15 years. Everything else can wait.
The problem is time. The season has already begun (badly) and the pace will not slow. For QPR the job is made more difficult by our fixture list. In the summer, before it was released, there was much talk of wanting the poorer teams like Wigan and the traditionally slow starters like Everton early on to try and get some points on the board. In the light of this week’s events that could be the worst possible thing for us. Neil Warnock has two weeks to get the new players we so clearly need in here, but it will take longer for them to bed down. If the team is not settled, performing and picking up points by the end of September then we’re in trouble because that marks the end of our “easy” start and the beginning of successive games against the Chelsea and Tottenhams of this division. It’s also worth remembering that QPR are effectively playing a seven month season this year. With Chelsea, Man City, Spurs, Man Utd, Liverpool and Arsenal all to play in the last ten matches if we’re not where we need to be by mid March we’re in trouble.
We’ve already wasted one winnable game, last week against Bolton. Those that were there will tell you that QPR were well in the game for the first hour and actually the better team of the two for the first 44 minutes. The disappointing thing, and surprising given the spirit of last season, was the way heads dropped and goals flowed once Bolton got a second. It was as if the players had suspected all summer the team wasn’t good enough and although they’d been buoyed by their bright start to the game they quickly slumped into “ahh I knew it” mode and gave up long before the end.
Our fixtures mean we cannot afford to just give games up like that while we await reinforcements. The players we have already must use the positivity of this week to their advantage and fight for every last point – on a personal level to keep their place in the team when the newbies arrive, and from our point of view to make sure the new arrivals have a platform to build on. It’s also not going to help Neil Warnock’s sales pitch to Premiership standard players if we’ve played three against Bolton, Everton and Wigan and lost all three.
Usually I’m the one on the message board laughing at those saying “this is the most important/difficult/crucial game of the season” because individual games are just a tiny fraction of the season as a whole. But, for a variety of reasons, I don’t think we can afford to take nothing from these back to back away fixtures.
Team News: Neil Warnock will be forced into at least one change this weekend with Clint Hill suspended for three games after his daft sending off in injury time against Bolton. Rangers are looking for a new left back anyway, Patrick Van Aarnholt has been mentioned, so it’s no surprise to find us short of cover there. Matthew Connolly will deputise in the meantime. Kieron Dyer left the field last week with the anguished look of a man set to spend the rest of his life in a wheelchair being fed through a tube inserted directly into his stomach and emptying his own faeces out of a detachable bag. As it turns out, he’s got a bruised foot. While Kieron’s mummy kisses that better for him Bradley Orr will likely get the nod again, despite being torn apart by Marin Petrov last week. Elsewhere expect the same team, which means another afternoon of frights from Hall and Gabbidon at the heart of the defence.
Everton have prepared for this season using Victor Anichibe in their attack more often than not. To be fair to the big Nigerian he’s not exactly living up to early promise and currently doesn’t seem a great deal better than Ishmael Miller who West Brom have just bumped off to Forest on the cheap after loaning him to us last season. QPR would probably be glad to see Anichibe emerge at 3pm on Saturday (no doubt with my terrible tips he’ll make a good bet for the first goal now I’ve said that) but it’s far more likely to be either Louis Saha, or Jermaine Beckford, or both with Tim Cahill making his trademark runs from deep. Promising young full-back-come-winger Seamus Coleman is the only injury doubt for David Moyes, Mikel Arteta has recovered from his knocks sufficiently to play.
Elsewhere: An intriguing game first up on Saturday as Arsenal meet Liverpool in the lunch time TV game. Liverpool have signed 376 midfielders this summer at great expense but the new look team failed to gel sufficiently to see off Sunderland at Anfield last week. Arsenal have stayed true to form and ignored their desperate need to reinvigorate the spine of their team with a keeper, centre half, central midfielder and centre forward and instead spent money on a temperamental wide man from the French league and a tippy tappy teenager from Southampton. Fabregas has gone, Nasri is soon to follow, the Emirates is not a happy camp.
The 3pm kick offs look uninspiring although Roberto Martinez can be assured of a hostile reception as he takes his Wigan team to his former club Swansea for the Welsh side’s first Premiership home game. Martinez had said he would stay at Swansea for his whole life as long as they wanted him (“they’ll carry me out of here in a box”) before he upped and left for another club he loved with all his heart. Villa v Blackburn is notable only because Stuart ‘The Disaster’ Attwell is refereeing it which should add comedy value. The evening TV game is Chelsea thrashing West Brom. Who did Roy Hodgson upset at fixtures HQ to pull Man Utd and Chelsea as the first two matches?
Three games on Sunday for you – first up Norwich who begin their season at Carrow Road but risk having the euphoria of a top flight return blown away by Tony Pulis’ ugly but efficient Stoke side. Wolves will be confident of making it two wins from two as they face notoriously bad travellers Fulham who played in Europe in the week. Bolton and Man City made outstanding starts to their respective seasons last week and meet at 4pm.
The weekend is rounded off by Man Utd hosting Spurs – a game that gave Clive Tyldesley four separate opportunities to mention his beloved Red Devils during last night’s Hearts v Spurs Europa League contest. The first Man Utd name drop came after just seven seconds of his commentary beginning.
Referee: Having started the season optimistically predicting that promotion would bring us a better standard of referee it’s somewhat disheartening to find us already under the charge of one of old foes from the Championship. QPR and Kevin Friend have a long and chequered history already but things didn’t go too badly for us with him last season. At Crystal Palace where we won 2-1 he ignored lengthy Palace protests to allow Heidar Helguson’s injury time winner to stand – correctly as it turned out on the replays afterwards. Then at Loftus Road in the first v second clash with Cardiff he denied Cardiff an absolutely nailed on penalty with the score at 2-1 and the clock ticking down. To be fair, QPR had a blatant one waved away in injury time as well. His full case file is available to view here.
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Everton: Having spent all summer saying that Everton are slow starters it’s probably worth examining that claim in more detail here – especially as their first match of the season was called off at Spurs last week so we have little else to go on. Last season Everton drew three and lost three of their first six league fixtures and crashed out of the League Cup on penalties at League One Brentford. Newcastle, Fulham, Blackburn, Wolves and Villa all took points from them in that period. The season before they lost 6-1 at home to Arsenal on day one and quickly followed it up with a 1-0 defeat at newly promoted Burnley. They then won three and drew two of their next six league games though. In 2008/09 they won just two of their first 12 in all competitions and didn’t win a home game of any sort until the first weekend in November.
Usually little can be gleaned by examining results from the end of the previous season -Bolton lost their last five games last term against meagre opponents but it didn’t seem to do them any harm last weekend. However in Everton’s case no players have come and gone so this is much the same team. For the record they won three, lost two and drew one of their final six games. At Goodison Park Reading won an FA Cup replay in March but they are unbeaten there in the league in 11 league games stretching right back to last November when West Brom won there 4-1. Chelsea were beaten here 1-0 on the final day of last season.
Their pre-season results have been poor, and goals have been very hard to come by. Werder Bremen, Villarreal and Philidelphia Union all beat the Toffees 1-0 this summer while Oxford and Southport beat second string sides 2-0. Last Monday a first team side could only draw 1-1 at Irish side Bohemians. Their summer wins have come against Bury (4-1), DC United (3-1) and Birmingham (2-1).
QPR: Having lost just twice at home in the whole of last season QPR opened up with a 4-0 home reverse last week against Bolton – the exact same score they had vanquished Barnsley by on the opening day of the previous campaign. Rangers found things slightly trickier on the road last term with four defeats, including a 4-1 mauling at eventually relegated Scunthorpe towards the back end of the campaign. In all though they won five and drew two of their last nine road trips. In their last Premiership campaign, 1995/96, it took until the third game for QPR to register a win – a 1-0 home success against Man City after defeats at Blackburn and at home to Wimbledon. They won their first away game at the third attempt too – 3-1 at Leeds after defeats at Ewood Park and Liverpool.
Prediction: There are so many ways this game could go, and if you look at QPR’s result against Bolton and the odds that are stacked in Everton’s favour this weekend you maybe wouldn’t think that the case. There was a real downtrodden, weary air about QPR by the end of last weekend’s game – as if the players believed they were already fighting a lost cause. The takeover this week should have lifted any semblance of that from their mindsets so I expect a more upbeat, never say die attitude this week. Sadly the key to this game will be how long QPR can keep a clean sheet. Everton are slow starters – the manager, players and supporters all know it but none of them can explain it. This will play on their minds.
In a strange way a 4-0 defeat on day one could play into our hands because Everton will be expecting and expected to walk this game with something to spare especially as it is now their first of the season. Nerves, combined with high expectations, could be a bad combination and Goodison Park doesn’t seem the happiest place at the moment with finances stretched and signings non-existent. If Rangers can hold it to 0-0 for an hour I expect the crowd to start doing a lot of our work for us.
Sadly though there is no getting away from the fact that a back four with Fitz Hall and Danny Gabbidon at its heart and a centre back with no Premiership experience at left back is unlikely to be able to hold out the likes of Louis Saha and Tim Cahill for any period of time at all, let alone an hour. It also can’t be denied that despite the lack of additions Everton are far superior to us in every department and so…
Everton 2-0, best priced 7/1 with Unibet
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