Back from an international break and facing two home matches in four days, QPR have challenged their supporters to ‘make some noise’ at Loftus Road as Reading head to town.
Championship >>> Saturday October 14, 2016 >>> Kick Off 15.00 !!!!!! >>> Weather — Cloudy, warmer than it has been, rain later >>> Loftus Road, London, W12
Winning the League Cup as a Third Division team, the plastic pitch, Terry Venables’ tactical revolution, Rodney Marsh, Stan Bowles, Roy Wegerle, Ray Wilkins and Peter Reid together in the same midfield at the same time, guns in the boardroom, the Four Year Plan, wealthy supporters buying players when the club is skint… Queens Park Rangers have always been a bit unusual and innovative one way or another. And this week they’ve been at it again, openly admitting the atmosphere at home matches is poor and needs improving with the low key launch of a ‘Make Some Noise’ campaign.
Two things to start with: firstly, this was an idea born from supporters initially and voiced in a meeting with our excellent CEO Lee Hoos, rather than something the club cooked up itself; and secondly, the atmosphere at our home games is absolutely terrible - almost morgue-like. Nevertheless, in openly admitting and publicising that, QPR are placing a gun to the head of football’s sacred cow and squeezing the trigger. You do not, ever, under any circumstances, intimate that the football supporters don’t back their team loudly enough. Even if it’s true — as it clearly is at QPR at the moment — you do not ever say it. They get very antsy about it.
Let’s be honest though, name me the last time Loftus Road really fizzed and crackled as it we know it can. Now name me the last time we booed our own team off at half time, or booed a pass made by one of our own players, or booed a substitution the manager made. Whether we like it or not, whether we want to hear it or not, whether we’re ashamed or not (and we should be) we are the fan base that abused our own players and manager in a match last season to such an extent that the manager of the opposition - the manager of a vile, bastard, wart of a club — felt the need to walk down the touchline and put his arm around our boss in a public display of solidarity. And we won that match 3-0.
Try another one, name me the last time we genuinely frightened or intimidated an opposition player at Loftus Road. Juan Mata maybe? He and his Chelsea team mates totally lost the plot in the face of ferocious QPR support, we played a huge part in a 1-0 win. Fantastic. That was five years ago lads. Name me another.
David Seaman and Andy Sinton used to speak about being afraid of coming back to Loftus Road after they left for other clubs because of the blood, spit and bile that would come their way. Impossible for them to play their natural games in that situation. Can you name me an opposition player we’ve done that to recently? Richard Keogh last season maybe? Not exactly fire and brimstone though was it?
How about this one, name me the last time we made it more difficult for one of our own players to play at Loftus Road? Either through sitting in complete silence, or worse booing and abusing our own players, we are frequently making it more and more difficult for the QPR players to play their natural games.
Against Blackburn at home last month, we were openly booing during the match because a player had chosen a safe option rather than taking a risk with the pass, as if introducing the added element of ‘how will the crowd react to this?’ into his thought process would help him make a better choice next time. On more than one occasion QPR supporters have chanted "off, off, off” as the referee has called Karl Henry across to him for a word after a foul. And let’s not pretend it would all stop if Henry was finally taken out of the team, because there’s been a long line off boo boy targets before him and we’ll find somebody else again afterwards. I’ll bring this one up again: the guy replying to a Tweet directed at Nico Hämäläinen and Osman Kakay congratulating them on their performances against Sunderland saying that in actual fact they were "atrocious” - what a wonderful alert for them both to go back to when they turned their phones on in the dressing room afterwards. In an earlier round of the League Cup, Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink felt compelled to turn around to somebody in the Paddocks who’d been criticising Mide Shodipo for his choice of ball — 19 years old, three senior appearances.
It’s little wonder the club feels things have descended to such a point that some tentative ‘Make Some Noise’ publicity is required. But they face an uphill battle.
Primarily because ‘atmosphere’ cannot be quantified or produced, it’s an entirely natural thing born from many factors. Any attempt to deliberately or artificially inject it and you end up with that clapper stick horror show we saw at Fulham last weekend. If the fans want to make noise they’ll make noise and if they don’t they won’t and any attempt to change that by handing out leaflets, giving everybody some inflatable sticks to bang together, or introducing musical instruments is only going to make things worse.
Partly for some reasons specific to QPR, none of which are going to change. The insistence that we have to have a ‘family stand’ (do we?) and that it has to be the huge stretch of seats right behind the goal at the home end. Moving supporters out of seats they’d sat in for years in South Africa Road and Ellerslie Road in order to wedge in more posh seats, or press benches at Richard Scudamore’s insistence that were only ever occupied by no-nothing dickheads from the Far East when Manchester United were in town - both sections sit largely empty now we’re back to playing Preston North End. The cost of tickets, which are dear by Championship standards and are topped up by a £3.50 booking fee which is never quoted in the original price. The fact the club is going through a transitional stage, taking its medicine for the previous five years of folly, which means we all know in our heart of hearts we’re not going to be anywhere near the promotion picture this year. All of this makes for smaller and/or grumpier crowds.
And partly for some reasons that afflict the sport in general, again none of which are going away.
This prehistoric idea that the Taylor Report is some sort of all-knowing, all-seeing, never-to-be-questioned tome and that all seater stadiums are the be-all-and-end-all, terraces are dangerous things and anybody who says anything different is disrespecting those killed at Hillsborough. Hillsborough, a disaster caused by fencing, and incompetent/corrupt policing, not by terracing.
The cost of tickets generally, which means football crowds are ageing and increasingly middle and upper class. Another question for you, how many groups of teenage lads do you see regularly attending QPR games now? Or games anywhere? Five, six, seven, a dozen lads, college age, few beers, bit lairy, few more beers, down the game, make a bit of noise, slag their goalkeeper off, home via the chip shop. Doesn’t happen. Because by the time said group of lads have paid for a bunch of tickets; found a pub in Shepherd’s Bush that isn’t the Sindercombe Social, or Brew Dog, or the Defectors’ Weld and doesn’t have some hairy cockwomble holding up the queue while he asks the barman if he could try a little sample of Troll’s Knob before ordering half a pint of it for £4.50; bought several rounds of piss weak lager at London pub prices; and then sat through the football where the stewards will harass them for standing up or swearing and people around them are encouraged to report them on a specially dedicated anonymous text line, they’ve realised they were much better off staying at home in their flat, sticking the Premier League game of the day on a hooky stream, buying 20 beers from the supermarket for a tenner and using their phone to stick a "mental acca” on something Ray Winstone recommended them. Whether you like those pricks or not, they were the ones making the noise guys.
The rising cost of tickets has also seen a not-too-subtle shift in the attitude of those who attend football. Football supporters have quietly moved from abusing the opposition for being the opposition, to abusing their own team for not justifying the outlay to come and watch them. Now it’s like going to anything you might buy tickets for in the West End or the Royal Albert Hall: this is expensive, so it better be good. Asking why we’re not getting het up and singing is like asking why people aren’t making a row during The Woman In Black — it’s because we’re sitting, observing, judging, hopefully enjoying, but if not booing and posting a negative review on TripAdvisor. When you’re charging £100 for mum, dad and two teenage sons to come and watch, that’s the realm you’re moving Queens Park Rangers v Reading into.
In addition, the attitude that footballers earn so much money these days that they should be perfect, in behaviour and performance, and if they drop below perfection it’s absolutely fair enough to abuse and ridicule them is a sport wide problem, exacerbated by social media, and is a big part of this. People have noticed that our tickets cost 20 times more, and players earn a hundred times more, than they did a decade or so ago and yet neither the footballers nor the football has got any better and they’re — justifiably — not happy about it.
And then there’s the kick off times. The latest round of fixture changes enforced on us by Sky mean that QPR will play 14 of their first 25 league games this season on a time and/or day other than Saturday at 15.00. Our first four matches this season were all moved from their original kick off times for television, even though only one of them was actually shown live. We go from November 19 to January 21 without a Saturday 15.00 at Loftus Road — and as the January 21 one is Fulham it’s a fair assumption that this will also move. Even in the Premier League, with Man Utd visiting, and the ground absolutely packed, and everything riding on the game, the atmosphere was abysmal when the game kicked off early in the day. Similarly, games that started at 17.30 on Saturday’s hummed with electricity — like it or not, alcohol intake is important in this as well. People don’t want to drink too much on a Sunday because they’ve got work the day after, people would rather watch football on a Saturday than a Sunday and nobody wants to go to football in a time measured in AM — combine all three of those, as we endured against Leeds this season for instance, and it’s going to be bloody quiet.
Take our home match with Wolves in December as another for instance. Wolves are well supported, it’s not that far away, Saturday at 15.00 in present circumstances I’d expect 14,000-15,000 for that one and it wouldn’t take much of a game to get the place going. Now moved to a Thursday night and on television you can immediately close the lower School End and cut the away support in half; the Lower Loft will be about a third full; the rest of the ground will be sparsely populated as season ticket holders who live out of town or simply can’t be bothered on a cold night stay at home and watch it on television instead, and again nobody with work the following day is going to want a skinfull beforehand. I’m now anticipating our lowest, and quietest, league crowd for years for that one. And the return fixture is on New Year’s Eve! Who, from either side, in all honesty, wants to spend their New Year’s Eve at Wolverhampton Wanderers v Queens Park Rangers? For fuck’s sake.
Messing around with the fixtures to the extent QPR have been subjected to this season encourages more and more people not to bother. Why buy a season ticket when the fixture list is decimated to this extent? Pick and choose your games instead. When people start thinking like that in a support base as small as QPR’s you start getting empty seats and reduced atmosphere.
For all of that, the atmosphere at Loftus Road would still be better if the football was better. It’s a chicken and egg situation - the supporters can help the players but the players need to give the supporters something to get excited about. Again, I think this is a football wide problem rather than one exclusive to us. The infiltration of the foreign possession-based game, and the 4-2-3-1 formation, has changed the way English football is played. It’s very difficult to play with two up front and two wingers now because most teams play with five midfielders meaning you get easily outnumbered in the middle, and dangerous players get space in between your lines, as we saw in our home game with Fulham last season. So teams tend to match up and games like Newcastle at home or Fulham away where there were shots raining down on goal don’t happen as often any more. It’s all very attritional stuff based on fitness and shape and discipline and defence. This is particularly bad in the Championship where the quality is poor, there are far too many matches and teams are rewarded for just hanging in there over long periods of time, weeks and months at a time, with the stuff that matters only really getting sorted out at the end.
So if QPR want to improve the atmosphere at home games, they’re going to have to row against several tides, some of which are sport wide, most of which are out of their control, and none of which are going to change. But there are things they could do.
The easiest of which is play a more expansive brand of football. For all the defence of Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink, and Karl Henry, and everything else lodged on here in recent weeks… it is bloody awful to watch. There’s no rule written anywhere that football has to be granular, defensive, cautious, risk-averse stuff in order to be successful. Chuck a bit of caution to the wind for goodness sake, I felt alive watching Shodipo’s 20 minute cameo at Fulham last week, let’s have some more of that. Get those two massive strikers we’ve bought up there together and sling a few crosses in.
But if you want to leave the manager to it, and frankly we probably should, then you need to think more radically than a tentative ‘errr, would you mind, if it’s not too much trouble, and we’re absolutely not saying you’re bad supporters or anything, but we’ve noticed it’s a bit of an issue, and if you could make a bit more noise that would be great’ social media campaign which the vast majority of said ageing QPR support won’t see.
Ditch the family stand. Relocate the season ticket holders in there to the vast open spaces which are now opening up around the stadium as people drift away from the club — in Ellerslie Road where press benches sit unused, in South Africa Road where posh seats have been deserted by Johnny Come Lately corporate tossers, and in all stands around the ground where we’re now seeing rows and rows of empty seats at every game. Honestly, I got into QPR as an eight-year-old because it was a chance to be with my dad and his mates and feel like a grown up, and the atmosphere, not because I got to sit with other kids in a quiet stadium and play PlayStation at half time.
Make a massive play of ‘the return of the Lower Loft’. Huge marketing push. Cheaper tickets in that part of the ground for those aged between 15 and 30. Get the R Block and Q Block down there, behind the goal. Make a big thing of it. Stock the bar with something other than the Carlsberg rat’s piss they serve now, charge a bit less than this city’s average weekly salary for a round of them. Steward it like grown ups, rather than a troop of power hungry gibbons, and let people stand up. QPR, the club where you and your mates can come and have a few drinks and stand right behind the goal and sing a few songs and not break the bank doing it.
Then not only explore but actively pursue and campaign to become the first club at this level with a new ‘safe standing’ area. Happy coincidence — it would solve our problem of a limited capacity at the same time. Be the trendsetters again.
Or just accept the grim reality that football, and Shepherd's Bush, have changed.
Links >>> Magilton’s QPR go goal crazy — History >>> Threat on the bench — Referee >>> The Marc Bircham show — Podcast
Highlights from the last meeting between these sides, on this ground towards the end of last season, where Grant Hall’s first goal in QPR colours was only enough to secure a 1-1 draw for the hosts.
Team News: QPR have their usual post international break headache with Massimo Luongo, sadly just after the well-travelled Australian had hit his best form again at Fulham a fortnight ago. The break should have given Seb Polter and Idris Elba chances to shake off their niggling problems from September and both will compete for starting places here, along with Denzel Washington who scored at Fulham last time out in what was certainly his best performance for the club so far. Throw in Yeni Ngbakoto coming back to fitness, and Mide Shodipo tearing it up as a substitute at Craven Cottage and we’ve suddenly got one or two options in forward areas. Still, get it wrong and I’m sure we’ll all be chanting Sandro’s name by the hour mark.
At the back Rangers have Jake Bidwell and James Perch out long term, but there’s light at the end of Jack Robinson’s never ending tunnel as he prepares to return to full training once more after two years of injury hell. Jamie Mackie is out long term.
Reading nonsense to follow.
Elsewhere: Uncle Neil Warnock’s latest "last job in football” is at the Red Dragons, where he’s immediately ruined the forthcoming version of Football Manager for everybody by hoovering up all the unattached players he can find to strengthen his beleaguered team — including our former charge Junior Hoilett, Leeds’ Sol Bamba and former Arsenal man Marouane Chamakh. The seventh annual Warnock farewell tour begins this evening with a visit from the Wurzels, whose loan striker Tammy Abraham followed his 12 goals in 14 matches start to life at Ashton Gate with a brace for England U21s during the week. He’s coming our way on Tuesday.
There’s another match tonight as well, because who doesn’t want to spend their Friday night at Nottingham Trees v Brum? With league leading Borussia Huddersfield hosting the Sheffield Owls at noon on Sunday, that leaves just the nine fixtures crammed into Saturday before we all go again three days later.
The Aston Villa Train Wreck hosts Wolves in the televised evening game as Steve Bruce settles snugly into the manager’s leather chair once more.
Tarquin and Rupert could find themselves in trouble once again this season if the recent slip in form continues. Their team of penalty taking experts heads to Barnsley this weekend. Three teams lurk a point behind them, and two behind QPR — Ipswich who are at The Mad Indian Chicken Farmers, Nigel Clough’s Burton Albion who go to struggling Wigan Warriors, and Preston who are high-flying Brighton.
Newcastle v Brentford and Norwich v Rotherham are also football matches taking place this weekend.
And then there’s the Derby Sheep. My word. I’d say it’s wonderful to see Shhteve McClaren back in work, but he’s only just left work, and only just left Derby. Presumably they’ll be lining up Paul Clement for a high profile return come the end of the season, and then maybe get Nigel Pearson involved given that he’s now out of a job. Just needs Brian Laws to get the Scunthorpe job now and we’re laughing. As if the farce needed deepening, it’s the Champions of Europe heading to the Midlands this Saturday.
Referee: Versatile comedy actor Steve Martin is the man in the middle for this one, but there’s danger lurking on the bench should he pick up an injury. Trevor Kettle, whose idea of comedy is the systematic destruction of a Football League match people have paid good money to see, is on fourth official duties. Full details here.
QPR Rangers only won four away matches in the whole of last season, and two of those came in the first month. The win at Fulham last time out means they’ve already clocked up three on the road from six games played. That’s in stark contrast — and this perhaps speaks to the atmosphere issue again — to the home form where Rangers are winless since the first day of the season with two draws and two defeats in W12 in the league since. They’ve conceded a league-leading ten goals on their own patch already, although that’s skewed slightly by the Newcastle massacre. Contrary to the popular belief that Rangers are struggling to score goals, they’ve notched 14 in 11 matches this season which is the same as league leaders Huddersfield and fourth placed Brighton and slightly above the division’s average which is currently 13.8 (hat tip to columnist Antti Heinola for that one). One to discuss more when we play Brentford next week but Rangers have now won their last three London derbies, which is quite the turn around on what was occurring before.
Reading: The Royals currently sit eighth in the table, largely thanks to their start at home where they are unbeaten in six matches including three wins. Away from home they’ve won two (at Cardiff and Barnsley, as well as a League Cup tie at Brighton) and lost three (at Wolves, Newcastle and Brentford). They’ve only scored five goals in five league games on their travels and the defeats at Newcastle and Brentford were both by four goals to one. Having beaten league leaders Huddersfield, Reading come into this game on the back of that defeat at Griffin Park and a draw at home to Derby.
Predictions: Reigning Prediction League champion Dylan Pressman reckons…
"After a week off, the lads will continue their winning ways with an efficient win at home against the Fakes. First QPR goal scored by the big German menace.”
Dylan’s Prediction: QPR 2-0 Reading. Scorer — Seb Polter.
LFW’s Prediction: QPR 1-1 Reading. Scorer — Idris Elba
The Twitter @loftforwords
Pictures — Action Images