LoftforWords ramps up its look back at QPR’s last spell in the Premiership with a run down of the ten best Rangers moments between 1992 and 1996.
1 - Jan Stejskal’s penalty save at Newcastle
Jan Stejskal always cut a bit of a bemused figure in the Rangers' goal, and towards the end of his time with the club his form dipped alarmingly with crucial errors costing us points at Leeds and against Man City at home. Despite that, for the majority of his time in W12 he was absolutely superb and his best moment, and the best moment of our time in the Premiership in my opinion, came on a memorable awayday at Newcastle that will also feature prominently in our countdown of the best QPR Premiership games later this week.
Newcastle had just been promoted into the Premiership during the first coming of Kevin Keegan the Geordie Messiah. This was pre-Ginola, Asprilla and Ferdinand era and at the time they were making waves in the higher division with the likes of Andy Cole and Malcolm Allen while redeveloping St James' Park in impressive style. I'll save the details of the game for the memorable match countdown but, briefly, Les Ferdinand was absolutely magnificent having missed an England game during the week through injury and opened the scoring in the twelfth minute with a low shot in off both posts. Malcolm Allen equalised for the Magpies in the second half but Bradley Allen hooked in a second for Rangers almost immediately. The R's withstood a barrage of pressure in the second half to hang on until the second minute of stoppage time when disaster struck.
With the whistle about to sound Newcastle launched a final forlorn attack down the right through Steve Watson. The youngster sent in a tired low cross which Alan McDonald stopped low to block away. The appeal went up from the Geordie faithful on the vast terrace behind the goal – "HANDBALL" was the cry. And handball it was, at least according to referee Keith Hackett and, more to the point, his assistant referee that day Roger Fernandez. Now Fernandez is an interesting character – a Doncaster based official who ran the line for many years before making a late, and fairly disastrous, breakthrough into Football League refereeing. In his one and only match in the middle with QPR he gave two penalties against them in a cold Tuesday night 2-1 defeat at Grimsby Town . We must have upset the fat, greying, incompetent bastard somehow. Anyway, Alan McDonald politely enquired of both Hackett and Fernandez what exactly the decision was for and in the end had to be restrained by team mates Ray Wilkins and Clive Wilson.
It mattered not, with the last kick of the match Malcolm Allen saw his powerful penalty palmed away by Stejskal and the final whistle sounded before the ball had even left the goal mouth leaving the players to celebrate wildly with their Czech goalkeeper and the QPR fans stuck in the corner terrace to go absolutely crazy.
When Don Howe bought Stejskal in 1990 he had been out to the World Cup in Italy in need of a goalkeeper, and picked the outstanding one from the tournament for QPR to sign. Those really were the days.
2 - Les Ferdinand’s six goal Easter
A fair chunk of the features this week will be given over to my belief that only, really, Alan Shearer can hold a candle to Les Ferdinand in the Premiership era. Nobody, not Drogba, not Torres, not Cantona or anybody else performed so consistently for so long in such poor teams as Les. The highlight of his time with Rangers was Easter 1993. Rangers had slipped out of the top four, where they’d been all season (Champions League places these days), and eventually recovered to fifth thanks to a phenomenal run at the end of the season. It began on Easter Saturday at home to Nottingham Forest who, at the end of the Brian Clough era, were about to be relegated. When they visited Loftus Road they were that year’s West Ham, “too good to go down” the pundits said, and when Kingsley Black scored twice in the second half to pit them 3-2 up that might have been the case. Les had already beaten Steve Sutton to a through ball and lobbed in his first goal followed by a Clive Wilson penalty after a foul on Andy Sinton by that stage but Forest seemed to have done enough to win. Two more close range strikes from Ferdinand, the second a vintage diving header, won the game for Rangers who then travelled up to Everton on Easter Monday.
Ferdinand spoke in his autobiography about the racist abuse he used to receive at Goodison Park that spurred him on to register his best goal scoring figures against the Toffees of any other Premiership side. That included a second hat trick in three days at Goodison that Monday which earned Rangers a fantastic 5-3 win. It could have been more comprehensive as well. Andy Impey lashed in from range and although Tony Cottee equalised with a header it was all Rangers from that point on. Ferdinand slid in powerfully for his first, made the most of a error from Neville Southall fro his second, combined beautifully with Bradley Allen for his hat trick, and then watched on as Bardsley drilled in a fifth with a free kick. Late goals from Barlow, after Cottee had hit the bar, and Preki added respectability Everton scarcely deserved after being comprehensively outplayed.
Just to really put the tin hat on it, Les made it seven goals in a week the following Saturday by opening the scoring in a 1-1 draw at Leeds.
3 – Clive Wilson’s last minute Millwall penalty
"I wasn't too worried about the prospect of a replay over at the New Den," said manager Ray Wilkins of this incident. Had it finished 0-0 that's exactly what Rangers would have faced, on a Tuesday night against a side managed by Mick McCarthy that was developing a real reputation as a cup giant killer. Chelsea and Arsenal had both felt the force of Millwall on and off the pitch in the 1994/95 season and it looked very much like QPR would be next as the replay beckoned in injury time. Wilkins said he was confident, but I don't think you'd have found many QPR fans who either agreed with him or fancied journeying to deepest, darkest South London to find out. The players clearly felt the same because in the third minute of stoppage time centre half Alan McDonald defied convention and joined the attack in the penalty area. His presence unsettled the previously unflappable Millwall defence and drew a blatant handball and penalty which even the visiting players didn't contest. The celebrations when the kick was awarded were raucous enough, when Clive Wilson slammed the kick past the ever brilliant Kasey Keller the roof flew off Loftus Road and Rangers were on their way to the quarter final. Seven other teams went into that draw, Rangers would have taken any other tie than the one they ended up with – Man Utd away. A shame, it seemed like our name might have been on the trophy that year.
4 – I was there when Jensen scored
When Arsenal signed John Jensen they thought they were getting a reasonably prolific goalscoring midfielder. Indeed that was the role Jensen fulfilled in the Danish national team which was admitted into Euro 92 late, after Yugoslavia was expelled, and subsequently won the entire competition. But as time went on and Jensen's first goal hadn't arrived it started to become a bit of a standing joke in British football. The Arsenal fans would playfully taunt Jensen with cries of 'shoot' whenever he got the ball in the opposition half. Well QPR have always been very obliging with these players that haven't scored for 800 matches (Lloyd Doyley) and teams that haven't won for half a season ( Swindon ) and they were happy to provide Jensen with his golden moment at Highbury on New Year's Day 1994. The goal when it came was a fabulous one, curled in past Tony Roberts from the edge of the penalty area. Arsenal fans produced t-shirts for those who were there, and Jensen was splashed across the back page of every newspaper the following day. What the t-shirts didn't mention, and the papers rather glossed over, was that QPR had already scored one through Kevin Gallen and won the match with further goals from Andy Impey and Bradley Allen in the last five minutes. Where was by that point? On my way back to the tube station with my granddad who had trouble walking and would always set off early to beat the crowd. So I never did buy the QPR version of the 'I was there when Jensen scored, and Gallen, and Allen, and Impey' t-shirt because, well, I wasn't.
5 – Kevin Gallen’s first QPR goal
It was once said of Gerry Francis that if he won the lottery, he would sit in his kitchen and look at the ticket for a week thinking of all the things that could go wrong if he claimed the money before actually cashing it in. With Kevin Gallen he had the football manager equivalent of a winning lottery ticket and there was a strong argument that Gallen, physically strong for an 18-year-old, should have been introduced to QPR's ailing first team long before he was. Leaving him in the youth team just wasn't cricket, given that in the second before his debut at Man Utd in August 1994 he'd rattled up 76 goals in the South East Counties league, which Rangers won along with the League Cup ahead of a West Ham side that counted Frank Lampard and others among its number. He made his home debut on the Tuesday night after the Man Utd away match, where he'd had a goal harshly ruled out for offside in a 2-0 defeat. Ferdinand and Sinclair had already scored for Rangers but the porous backline that dogged our Premiership years had shipped two in return so it was left to Gallen, at the Loft End, with just minutes remaining to arrive late and bundle a mishit side footed effort past Kevin Pressman and into the net for a late winner which drew a standing ovation from the crowd.
6 – Devon White’s Lower Loft send off
Although a small chunk of Lower Loft terrace remained through to the end of the 1993/94 season, the last time it stood in its entirety was for a home match with Everton in the April of that campaign. Rangers' form had imploded following the sale of Darren Peacock to Newcastle and the subsequent noisy fan protests that followed, so expectations were low for the historic day with Everton in W12. Tony Cottee gave the visitors the lead after half time and after big defeats against Leeds, Oldham and Sheff Wed in prior games it seemed like business was re-commencing as usual.
Not so. The R's gave the Lower Loft a terrific send off with a stirring late fight back to win the game 2-1. It's the first of those two goals that I've included in this countdown, simply because it was much more hilarious than the eventual winner smashed in by Les Ferdinand in typical style. The equaliser was scored by Les' always amusing partner for the day Devon White – with his fist. A loose ball in the area deceived Neville Southall and just needed to be knocked over the line from a yard out but sat up at an awkward height as Everton defenders moved in to clear. White couldn't stoop low enough to head it in, nor could he stretch his leg high enough to turn it in with his knee, so he thrust out a cheeky fist and punched it in instead. Exactly what you'd expect of a man known as 'Bruno' to the QPR fans. Everton went crazy and Southall chased the referee down the pitch to protest. The Welsh international's mood didn't improve much when Ferdinand struck his late winner.
7 – Gallen scores all fucking night
Something that is rather glossed over in the annual season reviews during QPR’s Premiership years is the various games against Chelsea. Rightly so, because our record was absolutely abysmal, and various horrendous memories will be brought flooding back on LFW tomorrow when we round up the ‘Top Ten Worst Moments’. But there was one particular goal so fantastic, so memorable, that they wrote a song about it that is sung at Loftus Road to this day. Kevin Gallen was by no means the first QPR player to score against the old enemy at the Loft End in the Premier League. In 1991/92 Bradley Allen hooked in from an impossible angle to secure a point, and a season later Les Ferdinand banged one in from close range only for Chelsea to equalise later.
But when Kevin scored, we actually won. The only time QPR beat Chelsea in the Premiership and it was one of our own who got it, rising majestically to register a rare headed goal and give Danny Dichio a shining black eye with his elbow at the same time. The 1980s were littered with memorable successes against Chelsea – the unforgettable 6-0 home win with Byrne and Bannister running riot, and the 2-0 win at Stamford Bridge with Michael Robinson scoring from the halfway line, will live forever in our memories – but the 1990s basically came down to that one header from Kevin, removing his magic hat just long enough to give us all a night we’ll never forget. The Leroy Griffiths inspired remarkable 3-1 pre-season friendly win ten years ago apart, we’ve had nothing to cheer against the club from down the road since. We go up against them this season, fighting a tooled up army with toothpicks and paper shields. But will those Chelsea superstars have ever experienced anything like Loftus Road when QPR are taking the game to their fierce rivals? That’s the one game this season where we, the fans, could win us the points.
8 - Ferdinand’s last goal at Loftus Road
This almost went in the ‘Top Ten Worst Moments’ to come later this week to be honest, but in the end I compromised by putting the last game of the 1994/95 season at Man City in there and leaving Les’ final act at the Loft End in the greatest memories section. I have nothing but fond memories of this day, and I remember thinking as a youngster that I couldn’t understand why all the grown ups around me could only manage wry grins as we put Tottenham to the sword yet again at Loftus Road. In the media the talk was all of Klinnsman, but not for the first or last time in his Spurs career he was marked out of the game by Danny Maddix (Klinsmann didn’t manage a single goal against Rangers in his time in England, mainly thanks to Maddix) and although the perennial scourge of QPR Teddy Sheringham gave Spurs the lead before half time the R’s struck back. I remember the searing heat this game was played in because before the game by grandfather (a pretty heavy gent it must be said) sat outside The Goldhawk on a white plastic garden chair that slowly wilted in the heat and eventually tipped him out into the bus lane of the Goldhawk Road after the back legs finally buckled. Les made the most of a Gary Mabbut error to steal in and equalise before capping his final match at Loftus Road in a QPR shirt with a powerful winner after Maddix had knocked down David Bardsley’s free kick. He just sank to his knees after that, and looked up to the sky with his sweat glistening in the sun. The finest QPR player in a generation had just said goodbye in the finest possible style.
9 – Penrice goes half the length against Villa
The start of the 1994/95 season was a traumatic one for QPR who lost on the opening day at Man Utd and then struggled with form and injuries on the field, and the continuing situation with Richard Thompson's chairmanship off it. The 1993/94 season had rather petered out towards the end and by the time Aston Villa came to Loftus Road on a Saturday in October reports had surfaced that Rodney Marsh was to be brought in over Gerry Francis' head as a director of football. Rangers, down in the relegation zone, faced a daunting home double header with Villa in town on the Saturday and Liverpool on the Monday, and with Les Ferdinand not fit for the first match and only young Danny Dichio available to replace him the prospects looked bleak. In the build up to the game, Rangers were knocked out of the League Cup by Man City 4-3 after initially taking the lead through Kevin Gallen after just eight seconds.
In the end it was even more of a shame that Francis resigned in the week after the Villa and Liverpool games because they produced six points and two fantastic performances. Rangers had taken the lead in the first half against Villa when Paul McGraph (possibly still on the drink at this stage of his career) inexplicably allowed through ball to bounce in behind him and Dichio seized on it, rounded Nigel Spink and slotted into the empty net. Villa came hunting for an equaliser in waves in the second half and the QPR fans were begging for the final whistle by the time former Villa man Penrice scored a killed second goal that will live long in the memory for all who were there.
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 Spink 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, Spink 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.
10 - Alan McDonald’s winning penalty at Grimsby with his socks down QPR have never been particularly great with cup competitions, even in the early days of the Premiership when they were seen as something worth competing for and playing your strongest team in. The 1992 League Cup second round, played over two legs, pitted us against lower league side Grimsby Town and while that was all very well for the home leg, which Rangers won 2-1 thanks to two goals from Les Ferdinand, it meant that our team of Premiership stars would have to endure a second leg on the banks of a the Humber. It may only have been September, but it was typical Grimsby weather and in a howling gale Rangers surrendered their advantage when a backtracking Andy Sinton put through his own net and Neil Woods headed home powerfully at the Pontoon End either side of a goal from Dennis Bailey. Town developed a reputation as a cup upset side in this era, West Ham and Liverpool two of their victims, and it looked like QPR might go the same way when the match went to penalties. If there's one thing QPR are worse at than cup ties, it's pressure penalties. Clive Wilson, the regular taker, missed his but Grimsby wasted two so we went down to sudden death. Up stepped Big Alan McDonald, in front of the QPR fans, with his socks pulled down round is ankles, to put Rangers through with possibly the most unconvincing penalty that goalkeeper Paul Crichton conceded in his entire career. Rangers went on to win at Bury before being thrashed by eventual finalists Sheff Wed at Hillsborough in round four.
A 4-1 win against Tottenham at Loftus Road, with a diving header from Ray Wilkins amongst the goals, makes our finest matches countdown later this week. We have three hat trick against Everton to reflect on as well – Ferdinand’s is included here, Sinton’s in the best matches countdown, and Bradley Allen is unlucky to miss out as his at Goodsion Park in 1993/94 was probably the most skilful and included a team goal that included the thick end of 20 passes before its execution. If there’s a tradition for the R’s to keep up next season, battering Everton away every season would be a rewarding one. The first ever Monday night football at Man City with the live band, cheerleaders, Richard Keys and Andy Sinton made the shortlist but not the final ten, as did a rare win at White Hart Lane at the end of the 1993/94 season when Trevor Sinclair scored a brilliant first and then made the most of Devon White’s Ultimate Fighting Championship routine on Eric Torsvedt to win the game late on. Bobby Gould resigning in the tunnel after Rangers had destroyed his Coventry side 5-1 at Loftus Road nearly made it too, although Coventry sadly had the last laugh on us in the end.
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