With consecutive league wins secured for the first time in 54 games, and Ale Faurlin back pulling midfield strings, can Chris Ramsey add a rare cup run to a bright start to the season.
A week is a long time in politics, stock markets and Championship football.
This time a week ago QPR were heading to Wolves full of trepidation for the seemingly inevitable mauling that awaited. "Is Chris Ramsey being too cautious?” we asked as the QPR boss belied his promise to always play on the front foot by picking Karl Henry and taking Tjaronn Chery off too early against Cardiff.
Two games, six points and seven goals later it seems that, even by LFW’s standards, that was a little wide of the mark. To be fair, we’ve never professed to be anything other than a handful of uninitiated football fans talking lots of bollocks and getting predictions badly wrong. QPR are conceding two a game, but scoring even more freely than that with 12 notched in the last four games. Caution well and truly thrown, and the spectacle all the better for it.
Chris Ramsey’s critics say he cannot coach defence, and perhaps that’s true. Or maybe Rangers have simply conceded more since he arrived because he’s happy to expose the defence in order to commit more men to the attack. Ramsey won’t have been overly impressed to see a basic corner bounce all the way through the six yard box to an unmarked Rotherham player virtually on the goal line for their second goal at the weekend, nor will he be ignoring the amount of goals coming directly from QPR’s two full back positions. But he’ll have enjoyed the seven scored at the other end in the last two games and if that’s the price to pay…
I’m not sure I ever bought the "too negative” stuff after the Cardiff game. We’re not privy to Chery’s medical data, and even without him QPR were creating really good chances in that game right to the very end. Last minute goals against happen, and 30 yard piledrivers into the top corner are difficult to legislate and plan for. That game could easily have ended up 3-1 to Rangers, and then the table really would be looking good.
But Ramsey has undoubtedly gone for it a little bit more since that happened is with Ale Faurlin in midfield. Before Cardiff the talk was all about using the Argentinean sparingly after three ACL injuries in three years. Harry Redknapp last year and Mark Hughes two years prior both fell into the trap of throwing Faurlin straight back in as a regular starter only for the player to suffer a relapse. The problem is, as Ramsey is now coming to realise, QPR are a far better team with him in it so it’s difficult to resist.
Faurlin never was quick, and he’s positively arthritic on the turn these days, but his ability to see a pass and complete it quickly, without giving the ball away, is like nothing else Rangers have at the club. With him Rangers play incisive balls forward, through the opposition midfield into the feet of dangerous attackers in the space in front of the back four. Those dangerous attackers include Massimo Luongo, who has played further forwards since Faurlin was recalled to good effect. Without him, they’re prone to going too sideways.
Saturday was a warning sign. Playing a second game in three days Faurlin visibly wilted in the second half, slipping over and setting in motion the move for the first Rotherham goal and then almost doing the same thing again a moment later. He should have been withdrawn earlier, but then who else can play that role?
Chris Ramsey will need another striker of high quality if and when Charlie Austin leaves the club in the next week. He’ll be in desperate need of a centre half when Nedum Onuoha’s annual hamstring pull happens, because if you think we’re leaky now see how bad it gets if you take the captain out of that back four. But medium and long term, what the team needs if it’s going to play this style and score more than it concedes, is somebody who can do what Ale Faurlin does. He’s so good at it he’s doing it with a body that would qualify him for Shop Mobility, but where on earth you find another gem like him within price range God only knows.
Don’t expect to see him used tonight against Carlisle, and if that’s the case it will be interesting to see who steps into that breach and is both daring and capable enough of moving the ball riskily forwards, rather than safely sideways or back.
Links >>> Curle’s way of the high way — interview >>> Linington takes cup tie — referee
Emmanuel Ledesma wheels away to celebrate as he completes a hat trick in a 4-0 victory against Carlisle at this stage of the competition back in 2007. The club, infamously, produced souvenir t-shirts to mark the Argentinean’s first treble in English football as the hype at the start of the Flavio Briatore reign started to get rather silly.
Troy Archibald-Henville’s bad knees mean he doesn’t usually start two games in the same week so he may sit out. Striker Charlie Wyke is said to be in line for a recall but midfielder Kevin Osei has the plague.
Elsewhere: Another slim list of some 75,000 fixtures this week as the League Cup Second Round lumbers into view like your fat neighbour’s fat dog.
In the category of higher division teams potentially being embarrassed in lower league shitholes, we have Stoke City leading the way to Luton Town. Middlesbrough, Leicester and Ipswich go to Burton, Bury and Doncaster respectively. As we continue to read down the list, for want of something better to do with our time, we find Watford at Preston, Charlton at Peterborough and Norwich at Rotherham.
Bournemouth’s long old schlep up to Hartlepool on the same night Exeter go to Sunderland feels like something went wrong with the draw.
Wednesday night sees Everton heading to their favourite cash and carry — Barnsley.
Referee: James Lingington from the Isle of Wight is in charge of this one — a referee once accused by Birmingham manager Lee Clark of mocking his players during a defeat. His last QPR appointment was a 2-1 home win against Watford during the 2013/14 promotion season. Full QPR case file and stats available here.
Carlisle: Keith Curle’s switch to a back three this season has brought some fairly wild results so far — they’ve conceded 11 and scored ten in five games so far, drawing three, losing one, and winning the previous round of this competition 3-1 after extra time against League One Chesterfield. Jabo Ibehre has never been noticeably prolific during a journeyman career which has taken him through nine different clubs including Orient, Stockport and Colchester but he’s stuck away seven in five appearances so far including two against Chesterfield and three in a ridiculous 4-4 draw with Cambridge.
Betting: Professional odds compiler Owen Goulding tells us…
"I'm really not sure what team Chris Ramsey will pick here but whichever 11 he puts out, it's fair to say it will be a team that can score and concede in equal measures. Carlisle also have this facet about their game and with Ibehre in fine form in particular but a defence that has the same leaky feature as our own. I'm amazed to see William Hill offering even money for both teams to score. It's a must play.
Recommended Bet: QPR v Carlisle- both teams to score - @Evs (William Hill)
Prediction: While backing QPR to win cup games has been the equivalent of throwing all your money onto a very large fire in recent years, and the first round win against Yeovil could largely be put down to the woeful quality of the opposition, there is an important difference in the team taking the field tonight to the ones fielded in the knock outs before. Rather than a year ago where we had to suffer Shaun Wright-Phillips at Burton Albion, the changes Ramsey did make at Yeovil all involved players who want to play and push themselves forwards for first team contention. Seb Polter, Ben Gladwin, Jay Emmanuel-Thomas, Cole Kpekawa, Michael Doughty and others all have first team ambitions and have a chance to further those here. Given the respective records of both teams so far this season it would be foolish to confidently predict a clean sheet, but I do think QPR will squeeze through a high-scoring encounter.
LFW Prediction: QPR 3 Carlisle 2. Scorer — Jay Emmanuel-Thomas
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