 Thursday, 19th May 2011 00:04 by Clive Whittingham Part two of the annual LFW end of term report focuses on the attacking success stories and failures in our Championship winning side. Attacking Midfield7 Adel Taarabt – A It was John Gregory who refused to name a number ten in his QPR squad because there was nobody worthy of the tradition that the number carries at Loftus Road. Adel Taarabt may wear seven, but he truly is a player in the mould of some of the great mavericks we have had in W12. People like Bowles, Marsh, Wegerle and Currie were entertainers, and that is exactly what Taarabt is. That he didn’t win the club’s Player of the Year award is, in my opinion, a bit of a joke because he was clearly the outstanding man of this year by some distance. Having won the overall Championship Player of the Year award he missed out on the main prize at QPR to Paddy Kenny, who was a worthy winner but I’m sure would concede himself that Taarabt probably deserved the accolade. My two theories are that supporters were put off voting for Taarabt either because of his tantrums in one or two games (Hull away the most famous example, but Bristol City away also qualifies) or because they were so sure he’d win it anyway they looked elsewhere for people worthy of credit. Sometimes the most obvious answer is the correct one, and Taarabt should have won the main award. Taarabt is my Player of the Year. He does things that I want to see, things I don’t mind paying the high ticket prices to be there for. The fourth and final goal against Swansea was a season highlight – Joe Allen’s resigned shoulder shrug and “for fuck’s sake” exclamation as Taarabt popped it through his legs and then drilled it in from long range took place right underneath my seat in the F Block and was an absolute joy. Football porn. But more impressive even than that is Taarabt’s astonishing assist tally, which LFW has down as being even more prolific than the official league count – an explanation of how we count assists is at the end of this article. This is a player who is supposedly selfish and doesn’t pass – the outstanding outside of the right boot ball through for Routledge to win the Coventry home game is the most memorable but just look at the sheer amount of goals he has either scored or contributed to this season. Those who pick on Taarabt’s faults miss the point that without them, he wouldn’t be playing for QPR. Can he have the same impact in the Premiership? Will he even be here come the kick off in August? For now, who cares? He’s given us 12 months of absolutely astonishing and at times breathtaking football to enjoy and I’ll always be grateful to him for that. LFW’s Player of the Year by miles. Stats >>> 43 league starts and one sub appearance >>> 19 goals scored >>> 23 assists >>> five penalties scored, none missed >>> five LFW Man of the Match awards >>> average LFW mark 6.86 >>> 7.09 average interactive rating 10 Akos Buzsaky – B/C Is there a more luckless man at QPR? I think we would all agree that Akos Buzsaky, fit and firing, is one of the Championship’s outstanding players. In his first season with us he was superb. However I think since then he has rather lived off the reputation he forged for himself in that De Canio team. In the months and years that have followed he has either been injured (no fault of his own) or below par - probably because for the last two years when he has played he’s always only been feeling his way back to fitness when another injury has struck. He was due to start this season next to Alejandro Faurlin instead of Shaun Derry but was injured for the first match of the season and Derry has never looked back. When Faurlin succumbed in September Buzsaky had a chance, and he played well at Ipswich, but the deep lying role didn’t suit him much and he was then injured again in the home match with Norwich. He returned, and impressed, at Middlesbrough but didn’t really get a look in thereafter and at times Warnock’s will to try anybody but Buzsaky seemed very strange. He got a start in the last game against Leeds and did some good and bad things – he did enough to suggest he should have been used more often in my opinion – but appeared to be trying too hard. So what do we do now as his contract nears its conclusion? Buzsaky will be on a tidy wedge – do we keep him in the hope that he will get fit, rediscover the form of two years ago and step up to the Premiership? Or do we decide that the gamble on his fitness isn’t one we can take again and the money would be better spent elsewhere? I think we should keep him, and play him. I think he has Premiership standard technical ability, touch and passing that a lot of our players lack. Should we release him, somebody will get a hell of a player at our expense and if he does stay injury free next season I’d expect his performances to make us regret it. For me we should give him one more final chance. Stats >>>Nine starts, ten substitute appearances >>> No goals, one assist >>> 6.27 average interactive rating >>> 6.53 average LFW mark 12 Jamie Mackie A In the summer Neil Warnock said he’d heard good things about Jamie Mackie and his progress in a poor Plymouth team – he owes a pint to whoever told him those good things. Mackie was an instant success at Loftus Road, scoring on his debut against Barnsley on the opening day, bagging the ninety sixth minute equaliser against Derby at Pride Park, and registering eight goals in the first eight games of the season. Things dried up a little for him thereafter, his early form won him a Scotland call up and he scored for them against the Faroe Islands and got the first in the Boxing Day rout of Swansea but his season tally for the club was destined to remain at nine. Even when not scoring Mackie’s exuberance and work rate made him a valuable team member – he even filled in successfully at right back against fellow promotion chasers Nottingham Forest, helping QPR to secure a 0-0 draw at a ground they’ve never enjoyed visiting. But it was that enthusiasm and attitude that got him into trouble at the beginning of January – an FA Cup game at Blackburn that Warnock had intended to rest Mackie for before the player talked him round, and a tackle with Gael Givet that was a fool’s mission from the moment he launched himself into it, resulted in a season ending broken leg. The ugly aftermath with El Hadji Diouf merely distracted attention away from what was a massive blow to our chances at the time. Mackie will return from his broken leg a Premiership player, and any shortcomings he has when compared to his top flight rivals will be comfortably covered up by his unbelievable work rate which will be a key asset to us in what promises to be a tough year back in the top flight. The concern must be that players, and Rowan Vine is the prime example, sometimes cannot get over the mental aspect of such an injury. Mackie broke his leg lunging into a tackle too enthusiastically, but that’s a big part of his game and it will be interesting to see whether his brain plays up and detracts from that key element of his play when he returns to the side. One factor in our success this season has been an ability to avoid injury to key players – only Mackie and Buzsaky and Orr have suffered long termers out of what I would class as our starting 11. When those three have been injured we’ve found excellent stand ins - Shaun Derry came in for Buzsaky and never left the starting 11, he could have been the Player of the Year, Kyle Walker was a superb loan to cover for Orr and for Mackie we picked up Wayne Routledge… Stats >>> 27 starts no substitute appearances >>> Nine goals for QPR and one for Scotland >>> Four assists >>> Two LoftforWords Man of the Match awards >>> 7.00 average interactive rating >>> 6.85 LoftforWords average rating 15 Wayne Routledge A Now I was sorry to see Routledge go when we lost him to Newcastle last January. At the time he was leading our assist total, and was one of the best attacking weapons we had in what was a very poor QPR team indeed. His attitude hadn’t been great at times, the previous year’s Player of the Year dinner a case in point although he wasn’t alone on that evening, but overall I didn’t think it was a particularly good move for us – especially considering the small amount of money we got for him. When Jamie Mackie was injured and the news broke that Wayne Routledge may be the man to come in and replace him I was pleased. Routledge had once again been up to the Premiership and failed to make an impact, this time with Newcastle, but as a team we lack pace and he certainly has plenty of that to go with a dangerous attacking game in the Championship. My fear was that Mackie is clearly a very hard working player who did a lot for us defensively and fitted into the team ethos very well. Would Wayne Routledge do the same? In a word, yes. Routledge has once again been a potent attacking weapon for us, slotting perfectly into the attacking midfield trio that has been so key to our season and scoring and creating a decent amount of goals in the half season we have had him. But it’s his work rate, and willingness to track back and defend wide areas for the team, where his game has come on so much since we last saw him in Hoops. I’ve always said that Routledge is a player at his level in the Championship – except for one decent season there for Palace he has failed to make a Premiership impact with Spurs, Villa, Fulham, Portsmouth or Newcastle and the amount of clubs he has had in a short period of time (eight in eight years) shows that he is a man who has never quite been able to cut it at the top level. But given this new string to his bow, this added defensive steel that he either brought with him from Newcastle or had drilled into him by Neil Warnock, could next season be the one where he does make some sort of impact? A permanent £1.5m deal is said to be in the offing, and with lack of speed a big problem to address this summer I would hope that we’d be able to get that one done reasonably quickly. Stats >>> 20 starts, no substitute appearances >>> five goals, six assists >>> two LoftforWords Man of the Match awards >>> 6.98 average interactive mark >>> 6.74 average LoftforWords mark 21 Tommy Smiith A/B Like Routledge, Tommy Smith is another who has often excelled in the Championship only to struggle in the higher league. He signed on the last day of the August transfer window but in true QPR style the deal wasn’t done in time and so we had to structure a series of one month loan deals to get him through to the January transfer window when we finally could sign him. Since then I would say he has been a good. Better than steady, not excellent, but pretty decent. He said himself after notching a key second goal at Watford at the end of the season that he’d been due a goal, and he perhaps hasn’t scored as much as I would have liked him to or thought he would. That said, six goals and seven assists is not a shabby return by any means. I’m willing to give Smith the benefit of the doubt for next season. He’s a good quality player, but more importantly like Routledge he just seems to fit quite well at QPR – both the club as a whole and the system the team plays in. If we are to stay in the top flight for any period of time then we need better than Tommy Smith, but in the short to medium term there are other areas we should be looking to strengthen before replacing a player I think could do us a reasonable job in the top flight. Stats >>> 23 starts, ten sub appearances >>> six goals and seven assists >>>one successful penalty at Portsmouth and no misses >>> two LoftforWords Man of the Match awards >>> 6.81 average interactive mark >>> 6.68 average LoftforWords mark 25 Hogan Ephraim B/C Has Hogan Ephraim blown his big chance at Loftus Road ? Since signing here, initially on loan from West Ham when John Gregory was the manager, he has been left in limbo more than most by the constant changeover of managers. Some liked him (De Canio, Sousa), some didn’t (Dowie, Magilton), some thought he was a striker, others a winger, sometimes he was used in the much talked about ‘hole’ between the two. But his career has never really taken off at Loftus Road as it suggested it might way back in 2007 when he appeared for the first time as a substitute on a sunny day at Bristol City and looked absolutely fantastic. Ephraim has always had his attitude going for him – on and off the pitch he seems a genuinely nice, committed, down to earth, hard working lad. But his use as a squad member for a Championship team I would suggest has always been in doubt. With Neil Warnock in charge he had a real chance to stick a marker down. Warnock attempted to sign him at Crystal Palace so clearly saw something he liked, and started with him in all but one of his games in charge at the end of last season. For the first time in his QPR career Ephraim started this season as the man in possession, the first choice. And he started very well indeed. Goals against Sheff Utd and Middlesbrough and early ratings on LFW of 7,8,8,6,8 and 7. But one of the main criticisms of Hogan has always been that he tends to disappear from games – not in a Shaun Derry “you don’t realise how much hard work he does” sort of a way, more “where the fuck has he gone”. And that problem started to creep in again from October onwards. With Tommy Smith pressing for a start Warnock persisted with Ephraim for longer than he really should have done and although he made further appearances late in the season owing to injuries, scoring but playing poorly at Doncaster for instance, he never hit the heights of the first six weeks of the season and I would suggest is probably going to have to look elsewhere for hi football very soon. Stats >>> 20 starts, nine sub appearances >>> three goals, four assists >>> one LoftforWords Man of the Match award at Sheff Utd >>> 5.61 average interactive mark >>> 6.04 average LoftforWords mark Quieter class members: The end seems to be nigh for Lee Cook who only has a substitute appearance at Blackburn in the cup for another season of injury woe. He had returned to the side at the end of last season but the new medical team brought over from Palace by Neil Warnock in the summer took one look at his troublesome knee and immediately withdrew him from all training and ordered him to work on rebuilding the muscle inches he has lost over the last three years of troubles. Like Martin Rowlands, Lee Cook is a player who gave us good service during tough times so it’s wrong to simply write them off as past it (and if you are, then don’t ever boo a returning QPR player on an opposition side at Loftus Road again for perceived lack of loyalty) but it is hard to see a future for either at Rangers. Cook, I fear, is only one more serious set back away from having to pack in altogether, which would be a terrible shame for a player who was in flying form just before the takeover was completed. Elsewhere the tendency of Romone Rose and Josh Parker to secure loan deals elsewhere, often at good clubs like Wycombe, only to be returned to Loftus Road early is a worry. Young Bruno Andrade, the club’s Young Player of the Year almost by default in the absence of any other real options, must show a better attitude than his predecessors from our youth team if he is to continue his progress. Cypriot Georgios Tofas didn’t disgrace himself as a substitute at Norwich but smacked a little of one of those Armel Tchakounte/Ugo Ukah/Alessandro Pellicori type deals that QPR have done far too many of in recent times where an unheard of player comes and goes without ever making any kind of impact leaving you with the belief that some dodgy agent is probably enjoying a nice foreign holiday at our expense over the whole thing. Strikers8 Leon Clarke – D Ahhh big Leon . For all of Neil Warnock’s success stories last season, there were one or two notable failures and Clarke was certainly one of them. He was the first signing last summer from newly relegated Sheffield Wednesday, with whom he’d suffered a broken foot on the final day of the season celebrating a rare goal. When playing against Rangers for Wednesday he scored the winner against us in a dire game at Hillsborough 18 months before joining us but mostly he appeared slow, lazy and overweight with a dreadful first touch and a remarkable lack of strength (or willingness to assert himself) for a man so big in physical stature. This isn’t me being smart with hindsight, I said all this last summer when we signed him – of course I gave Clint Hill and Shaun Derry similarly dismissive write ups as well. Initial reports seemed promising. Clarke played on the left of the withdrawn attacking three in pre-season, playing his part in a fine goal down at Torquay in one of the friendly games. The weight he was obviously carrying at Wednesday was shed as well, to the point where he was barely recognisable in the pre-season training photographs from Harlington and actually looked quite ill. Talk of “realising this was his last chance” and “knuckling down” started to circulate. But Leon Clarke is a poor footballer. He’ll always get a club, as we’ll no doubt see this summer, because there will always be a manager like Neil Warnock who looks at him, sees a fine physical specimen, thinks “he should be a right handful, maybe I’ll be able to get him right” and takes a chance on him. Despite him being awful for an awful Sheff Wed, and awful for a very decent QPR, Phil Brown didn’t hesitate to take him to Preston halfway through the campaign – and he was subsequently awful there too, not able to make the worst team in the league for the last three months of the season. In his defence, his chances at Loftus Road were limited - and when he came off the bench against Cardiff at home and Coventry away he looked half decent. But when given a start at Norwich he was pathetic – scared of the ball, scared of opponents half his size. A waste of a considerable amount of space, earning a very decent living from a game he’s clearly not very good at. Stats >>> Four starts, 11 substitute appearances >>> No goals, two assists >>> five starts, one sub appearance and one goal on loan at PNE >>> 4.97 average interactive mark >>> 5.36 average LoftforWords mark 9 Heidar Helguson - A Ah ha, it’s that oh so rare of things, it’s a chance for LoftforWords to give it the big “I told you so.” Such a rare moment is one to savour, so allow me to do so for a line or three. LoftforWords recommended Helguson as a potential signing before we bought him in a ‘This Week’ column. That the column also recommended five other players who all turned out to be crap is not important at this juncture. LoftforWords persistently said that QPR were a far better team under Paulo Sousa when Helguson played in it, and repeatedly stated last season that it was ridiculous that he should be on loan at Watford while we arsed around with Tamas Priskin and Marcus Bent. Having been given a chance by Neil Warnock, Helguson has this season finally proved this site right. Good man. Helguson’s problems are obvious – he’s terribly injury prone, which isn’t a good thing in a league where you play three games a week more often than not, and he has a tendency to miss the target from positions when it appears easier to score. But Helguson’s strength, and the reason he always makes our team better when he plays in it, is his physical build and hold up and lay game. With Neil Warnock preferring a one up front formation with his game winners stationed in a withdrawn line behind, and insisting that his defenders do not mess around with the ball too much in their own half, it could be reasonably argued that the man at the top of the team is the key component. Indeed the difference between QPR when Helguson plays and when Rob Hulse plays (except for Cardiff at home) is there for all to see. Helguson has a reputation of being a little fragile because he’s got a knee like a rusty gate hinge and the medical certificate on his file was bought by the club from the internet for a score – but he stands up to some fearful abuse from centre halves at this level without ever (Leeds at home being the exception) complaining about it. He is the key man in bringing people like Taarabt and Routledge into games, he wins free kicks constantly through his experience in the game and he has led our line superbly well this season. Such is his overall positive impact on the team I treat the 13 goals he scored this season as merely an added bonus. The challenge now, with years advancing on him, is to find a Premiership Helguson to play in that position next season. Stats >>> 32 starts and two sub appearances >>> 13 goals and seven assists >>> five successful penalties, none missed >>> one LoftforWords man of the match award >>> 7.05 average interactive mark >>> 6.58 average LoftforWords mark 19 Patrick Agyemang C Big Dave. What to say? Two of my all time favourite lines relate to this player – firstly that his eight goals in six starts after joining from Preston initially could be attributed to a “tear in the fabric of reality” and secondly from earlier this season that he plays like “a supporter who won a place in the team in a raffle.” Let’s start with what Patrick Agyemang should be. Patrick Agyemang should be very useful to a team in this division. His embarrassingly bad control of the ball and technique when he does eventually get it within reach of him means he’s never likely to be a first choice for any team with any ambition in the Championship, but here in English (and Scottish) football that doesn’t preclude you from forging a decent career at a reasonably high level in the sport. Agyemang should be a useful impact substitute, and as all 19 of his appearances this season came as a second half substitute it would appear Neil Warnock agrees. Now he’s shed his Magilton-era weight he’s pretty quick, very physical, and although his initial scoring run was a total fluke he did show in that time that he is reasonably composed in front of goal. Patrick Agyemang should be a really good, viable option to have on that bench to send on with 20 minutes left for play to fill a tiring opposition defence with dread. Something different for them to worry about – quicker than Helguson and Hulse, more physical than Routledge and Taarabt. A big pacy battering ram. At Derby, and Bristol City, and Cardiff – that’s exactly what he was. In other games (Hull at home is the obvious one but it’s not the only example) he gave off the same aura as the half time round the pole contestants – plucked from the crowd at random and not entirely sure what he’s doing there. The attempted lob of the goalkeeper in the Hull game is the moment in the season everybody will remember him, and hang him, for forgetting the crucial points he won us with late goals at Pride Park and Ashton Gate. That incident for me sort of sums up the problem with him – he’s often trying to be something he isn’t. He’s never going to be chipping goalkeepers from 20 yards or dancing past three men with a mazy dribble, but that’s not what he’s there to do. He is there to rough up centre halves, to unsettle defenders, and to frighten opponents with his pace. At some point this summer he should sit down with a copy of the Wolves home game from two seasons ago when, live on Sky, he absolutely annihilated Michael Mancienne simply by playing to his very basic strengths. Even then he’s probably not good enough to be coming with us to the top flight, but were I a Sheffield Wednesday or a Preston looking to make an impact in League One next season I’d have him on my shopping list. Stats >>> 19 substitute appearances and no starts >>> two goals, no assists >>> 5.39 average interactive mark >>> 6.06 average LoftforWords mark 20 Rob Hulse C/D The most disappointing player of the season for me, based on expectations against output, was Rob Hulse. Having banged on for many long months about the need to sign a proper, proven striker I honestly believed that Hulse was the man when we secured him right at the end of August but so far it hasn’t proved to be the case. Our first sight of Hulse this season was in The Green after the first match of the season when we went back to watch the evening match and he was playing for Derby at Leeds – playing well too, and banging in a damn fine goal. He was injured thereafter, and when we signed him the biggest fear was his fitness. Sadly by the end of the season many were more grateful when he was injured than when he was fit to play. The problems with Hulse as I see them are as follows. One – confidence. He cut a disgruntled figure before he’d even got on the pitch for us, precisely because he hadn’t got on the pitch. Whether that’s just his natural body language and I’m reading too much into it he looked to me like somebody who expected to waltz straight into the team on reputation alone. Two – Heidar Helguson. Having already run through what a vital cog Helguson is in the machine the task of replacing him is not an easy one, and Hulse’s hold up and lay it game is not nearly as good as Helguson’s. When he’s played this season he’s played as if a conventional target man with a smaller partner nipping round his heals and that simply isn’t the way we play. Three – service. Either because his hold and lay game isn’t as good as Helguson’s, or because he’s a tall lad and players look up and see him there and take an easy option, the service to Hulse when he’s played has been far too long and direct. Consequently he’s been left to try and flick things on which, even when he has done it successfully, is no good to a team with all its game winners line up behind him. Four – opportunities. He hasn’t had a run of games to get settled and adapt to the team to be fair to him. It is worth remembering just how good he was in one of our biggest games of the season, at home to Cardiff. He was a clear Man of the Match that day. He scored at Scunthorpe as well, but again appeared static and devoid of self belief in that game even after giving us the lead. If he is to succeed here, and he’s shown plenty of times before in his career that he’s well capable, he must adapt his game to suit the formation and style of play we use. Stats >>> 13 starts, nine sub appearances >>> two goals >>> one start, one sub appearance and one goal for Derby >>> one LoftforWords Man of the Match award v Cardiff >>> 5.46 average interactive mark >>> 5.88 average LoftforWords mark 29 Ishmael Miller B I thought Ishmael Miller would have more of an impact then he did – personally I saw him as our best bit of January business at the time. Ultimately his well taken goal against Leicester secured us a vital extra two points, and plenty more belief into the bargain, so his loan was worth it just for that but he flattered to deceive for much of his spell here. Often he was used as a wide man in the attacking three behind the main striker, and although he was never ever suited to that he did play well and set up a goal for Heidar Helguson at Preston. Presumably he was signed with the lone striking role in mind but he rarely played there. His first appearance against Coventry at Loftus Road was impressive, on as a second half sub he was denied a goal only by Keiren Westwood making a fine save and he looked a proper handful that day, but I’d say he never played that well again during his time with us while conceding that he was often out of position and never really got a run of starts to go at. All in all the impression I was left of him was that he’s sort of a Premiership version of Patrick Agyemang – a big physical lad useful off the bench when other options have been tried but lacking sufficient technical ability to be a success at the highest level. Stats >>> Four starts, eight sub appearances >>> one goal v Leicester >>> one assist v Preston >>> eight appearances and no goals for West Brom >>> 6.60 average interactive mark >>> 6.37 average LoftforWords mark Quieter class members: As mentioned earlier with Parker and Rose, Antonio German has been given two loan spells this season with decent clubs – Southend and Yeovil – and made little of them. He scored on his first start for the Shrimpers but was subsequently dropped for turning up late for a game and the deal was not renewed. At Yeovil, where Max Ehmer has gone and worked hard to make a name for himself in a struggling team, German couldn’t even make the starting 11. If you look back to what I said in this report last season I’ve never been his biggest fan and I don’t expect him to make much of a living from the game either here or elsewhere. Rowan Vine is only continuing to do so based on his past reputation – Hull took him and he didn’t score, Brentford took him and found him in poor physical condition so didn’t play him, MK Dons stuck with him for three months and were rewarded with one goal. It’s sad to see a talented Championship player reduced to barely League Two standard through an injury that simply wasn’t his fault, but his already tidy wage packet will no doubt have increased further with a promotion he had nothing to do with so sympathy only goes so far. He’s not good enough for the clubs that can afford him, and no doubt not in any rush to leave and take a pay cut to play for the teams that can’t. Let’s hope we have more luck with Troy Hewitt who was signed from Harrow Borough midway through the season after a lengthy trial period but is yet to appear for the first team. One thing our promotion will hopefully bring is a better reserve and youth set up, as that side of things is totally inadequate for players like Hewitt who need some decent standard second grade football to prepare them for first team action. Notes - Interactive ratings are taken from the post match ‘have your say’ feature. The LFW average ratings and individual breakdown are taken from this site’s full match reports over the season – players only receive a rating if they play for more than ten minutes in the game. The assists are also taken from our match report and vary from official figures. The general rule on LFW has been to count the last pass in the move as an assist, although on occasions we have credited no player with an assist for an individual goal, and two players with an assist for a single goal for example Tommy Smith for the corner and Matt Connolly for the header prior to Pat Agyemang’s equaliser at Bristol City. For news, comment and tales of drunken awaydays along with various witty asides, follow @LoftforWords on Twitter Photo: Action Images Please report offensive, libellous or inappropriate posts by using the links provided.
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