| Swansea City 0 v 0 Stoke City EFL Championship Saturday, 5th October 2024 Kick-off 15:00 |  |
That sinking feeling again – Report Sunday, 6th Oct 2024 23:25 by Clive Whittingham If you chose to take the positives from Tuesday night’s loss at home to Hull City then QPR were in the mood to make you look and feel very stupid indeed at Derby on Saturday. After Tuesday’s 3-1 home loss to Hull City made it one win from eight to start the Championship season, and six at home in league and cup without a win, we mused on which bit of the performance Queens Park Rangers would take into their future games. For the second time in 2024/25 already, QPR created a game-winning number of chances in a home fixture only for poor finishing and inspired goalkeeping to keep them at bay. Hull's Ivor Pandur, Plymouth's Conor Hazard both man of the match as visiting goalkeepers to Loftus Road. Marti Cifuentes spent his pre-match media duties this week extolling modern Moneyball thinking that if you keep having 20 shots on goal game after game then you may lose once, you may lose twice, but you won’t keep losing. We’re all in, Pete. So, would that carry forward? However, also not for the first time, Rangers (yet to keep a clean sheet in 11 league or cup games) conceded defensively shambolic goals which, even to the beered up layman, looked not only entirely preventable but also completely predictable before they happened. If I can point at a geezer and say “don’t like the look of that” and the professional footballers don’t sniff the same danger... that’s a worry. All the criticism about being too nice, too naïve, too passive, soft-underbelly flooding back through a series of abysmally defended corner kicks. So, was it in fact time to start paying attention to the flashing amber warning light on the dashboard? The first chance to provide hope for the future or fuel for the fire came at newly promoted Derby. Spoiler alert, Rangers spent 90+ minutes pissing petrol into the flames. The R’s took what good bits there were about that Hull performance and tossed them aside, then timesed everything that was bad about it by a thousand and beamed the results into the sky like the Bat-Signal. Well and deservedly beaten, only Paul Nardi’s remarkable top corner save from Jerry Yates, one-on-one stop from Blackett-Taylor late in the game, and a last-ditch block by Field and/or Dunne from Marcus Harness’ goalbound shot, prevented this being three or four nil. You couldn’t have complained if that had been the outcome. The best part of two and a half thousand Rangers fans came to Derby searching for Eldorado and were rewarded with the TV show rather than the golden kingdom. Despite Paul Warne’s understandable struggles to compete in this league with Rotherham’s budget, he frequently took points off QPR home and away. The Millers’ infamous 2018/19 campaign, where they won only one of their 23 away games, featured a 2-1 victory at Loftus Road. They played Rangers nine times while he was in charge in South Yorkshire, winning four with another three ending in draws. A 3-2 at Loftus Road under Mark Warburton, and a 5-1 a couple of years prior under Ian Holloway, were QPR’s only victories. Against Rotherham. Rotherham. Here Rangers were beaten by Paul Warne side for all the reasons they’ve been beaten by Paul Warne sides in the past: they did the basics impeccably, we were too busy being clever shits to bother. Once again being asked to compete as a newly promoted team with financial challenges in a league dominated by parachute payments, Warne is staying true to form and making sure he has a team that does the fundamentals of the sport at this level really, really well. Derby win headers. They win headers all over the pitch, but they win headers particularly in both boxes. Centre backs Eiran Cashin and Curtis Nelson were a physically imposing bedrock for a League One promotion last year and have settled well into a Championship campaign in which the Rams have already won four times at home (imagine) and kept four clean sheets in the process (stop it). Ten minutes after half time Nelson took a long run at a chipped Mendez-Laing corner and harsh beasted a bullet header right into the QPR coal hole.
QPR don’t win headers. Christian Nourry has been keen to tell anybody who’ll listen that as part of this summer’s data-led approach to recruitment everybody who came in ranked “in the top 50% of the squad physically” but has never further clarified exactly what that means. Fastest? Most press-ups? Five cream crackers in a minute? Holding their breath under water? What do you bench? 285, what do you bench? Two of them are four foot tall, and the one who isn’t plays like a 5ft 3ins teenager trapped in a 6ft 4ins man’s body, upset he was made to get out of bed before ten in the morning. For the second game in a row the zonal set up to an opposition corner allowed the attackers a free run at the cross over the top of static defenders with no man marking and no blocking. Like Tuesday, it had idiots like me at the back of the away end asking “what on earth are we doing here?” long before the ball was even delivered. This is where Curtis Nelson eats, and we served him five courses with a side salad. Derby get the ball wide, early and often, and put good balls into the box from there, early and often. Invited to do so again from the kick off after Nelson’s goal by Madsen’s inept giveaway, Kayden Jackson didn’t need asking twice. Journeyman forward, largely a failure at this level previously, got the ball straight out of his feet, no messing about, banged it across with accuracy and threat and Marcus Harness helped it on its way into the top corner to send the fans behind that goal into an ecstatic frenzy. It can be that simple. It doesn’t have to be inverted goalkeepers and spreadsheets. Get on the front foot, get it wide, get it in, get in front of your man. It’s the Championship. It’s the Championship, get used to it. QPR don’t get the ball wide, and don’t put good balls into the box from there. In possession, full backs Kenneth Paal and Harrison Ashby are instructed to “invert” into the midfield - narrowing the pitch, crowding the play - presumably because we heard the word “invert” on Monday Night Football and thought we’d dick swing that about for a bit with our game model. Given chances to attack full backs one on one, get to the byline, deliver crosses, Koki Saito, Karamoko Dembele, Paul Smyth and Ilias Chair all held on too long, tried to do too much and - worst of all, most damagingly of all - checked back inside over and over and over again. Get to the byline and get a good ball in. If nobody attacks it, nobody scores, that’s their fault. Cease these senseless intricate fuckball attempts to score the perfect goal. We're not good enough for that. We haven't laid a platform on which you can build that. We haven't earned that. Derby win tackles. When there’s a loose ball dropping, they want to be first to it. When there’s a 50/50 challenge, they put a body on the line. When you get hit by one of these Derby players, you stay hit. Paul Warne is an honest, straight-forward, likeable guy. Football could do with a lot more like him. This is a team in his image. I couldn’t help but warm to them both while they were handing us our own arse. We were pathetic in the face of their apparently overwhelming desire to… tackle us occasionally. The amount of times we fell over, bitching and moaning, looking for a free kick. It’s a tough sport this, despite all attempts to make it otherwise, and you have to compete. Derby know they’re not going to be able to spend as much as Sheff Utd or Burnley, they know they’re not going to possess the firepower of Leeds or Norwich, but you don’t need to spend a fortune to get a team together that runs for each other, that works for each other, that tackles for each other. Those are the basics. You have to do at least the basics. You have to compete. QPR don’t win tackles. There is at least some mitigation here. With the likes of Steve Cook, Jake Clarke-Salter, Jack Colback, Ilias Chair, Sam Field, Jimmy Dunne, Morgan Fox… there was at least a bedrock of solid, experienced Championship players contracted for this season. Onto that they’ve layered ten signings from places like Westerlo, Lugano and Brest (I can’t even be arsed to do the line), some of whom will settle and do well, some of whom will do neither, all of whom will take time. In that context the last three players you would want injured are: Clarke-Salter, who’s not only your best defender without the ball but also your only ball playing left-sided option in defence; Jack Colback, who may be a liability with referees but wouldn’t let the midfield be bossed about by this; and Ilias Chair, who is your best player.
What was already going to be a tough initiation is being conducted now without three key, established, experienced players down the spine of the team. The result is what you got on Saturday. Ebou Adams was the man of the match by a long street, because he got about like he wanted it, because he tackled people with intent, because he competed with determination, because he physically bossed the area of the pitch you have to dominate if you want to win football games. Nicolas Madsen was the worst player on the pitch by a thousand miles because he did absolutely none of that. The second goal microcosmed the whole thing. You don’t need a 90-minute re-run, you don’t need highlights (extended or otherwise), you don’t need to sit through me fucking waffling on. Just watch that second goal: that was us, backwards, sideways and clueless; that was them, aggressively forward and purposeful; and that was the game. What do you not want to play against? What frightens teams? Pace and width, for a start. Have you ever heard an episode of the chuffing Overlap where they say “oooh, you know what, I used to love it when a team came to ours with two quick wingers and stretched the pitch widthways”? Footballers are terrified of pace. You don’t want to play against teams with quick counter attacks. You don’t want to play against teams that commit big numbers to the attack. You don’t want to be facing big, high, inswinging corners, right on top of your goalkeeper, in a penalty box packed with Duncan Ferguson tribute acts. QPR did none of this here. Their attack was slow, narrow, and predictable. Everything takes Too. Fucking. Long. Get on with it. Yes, get on with it. What pace there is in the team spends its time running into cul-de-sacs and delivering corners that start badly and fade away from there (Dembele), or offer a final ball akin to a blind monkey operating a wheeled cannon (Smyth). Rayan Kolli cannot get in this team because there are 'better players ahead of him', and Alfie Lloyd is an unused sub. There are some odd things going on. The amount of times Paul Nardi is standing at the edge of his area looking for a quick release to spark a swift counter against a team committed upfield, only to find teammates chugging back telling him to hold it and calm down so we can go back to pissing about in front of a set defensive shape, is criminal. That guy must wonder what on earth he’s got himself into here. At the moment he’s the one standing between us and some actual humiliations. The hours and hours we’ve already spent this season rainbowing around in front of teams in neutral areas of the pitch is just so much fucking nonsense. It’s the Championship, teams will just watch you doing it, and laugh. What do you want when you’re attacking a corner? A free charge at the ball, a running jump, over the top of a static defender. And we gave Curtis Nelson that. I’d say amateur hour, but I’d have buzzed this shit off stage before that kick was even delivered. The best-case scenario from here is we get important, senior players missing from the spine of the side back up to fitness. There is a danger, particularly in Colback’s case, of Ryan Manning syndrome, where you become a better and better player for QPR the longer you don’t play for QPR. Nevertheless, the sudden thirst for his return is testament to just how dreadfully players like Andersen and Madsen are doing in those positions while he’s out. The longer it continues the more the decision not to just balance the summer intake a little bit with a pragmatic Isaac Hayden signing (so important to our turn around in 23/24, highest win percentage of any QPR player), looks idealistic and naïve. Still, you’d also hope that a few of the new arrivals get up to speed and start performing – for the model to work, in an intake of ten like this you probably accept five will fail, four will succeed, and one will go on to be a big sale. That would be this working. And that can still happen. We’re a dozen games in, it’s no time to judge anybody. We’ve been really unlucky with who got injured, and if the goalkeeping performances in the Plymouth and Hull games hadn’t been so extraordinary we’d potentially now be around tenth. The worst case in the short term is the confidence just drains out of this team, so that even when senior players return the team no longer believe in themselves or what they’re being asked to do. There was a lot of defeatist, slouched, heads down, shoulders slumped, walking about and sulking at 2-0 here. Three defeats in a row, seven conceded, one scored (and that a penalty). Flashing warning light. Medium and long term the worry is the club that likes to talk the talk more than almost any other has once more been taken in by somebody with great chat. The cast changes and liberties are taken with an ancient script but Hamlet always dies in the end. Our owners are incredibly benevolent, enormously generous, very genuine, crave success, and have absolutely no idea what they’re doing. It has repeatedly made them susceptible to snake oil salesmen. They tried to buy Alex from Chelsea and instead got talked into hiring Mark Hughes as manager, Mike Rigg as technical director, and Kia Joorabchian as de facto head of recruitment. When that crashed and burned they hired king of talk over substance, Harry Redknapp. His modern day, non-union Mexican equivalent Steve McClaren was still to come (he’ll do the accent too if you want). Mick Beale’s Powerpoint presentation was three years away. We brought in Retexo, a self-start two-man band recruitment consultancy for off field and back-office appointments, to evaluate where we were going wrong. The Mark Bowen-like conclusion we reached was take the director of football and CEO roles, amalgamate them, and give it to the guy doing the review. A dozen games into that experiment we're getting absolutely bullied out of a Championship game in which Ebou Adams is the man of the match. Flashing warning light, klaxons. On Saturday, QPR were pathetically easy to play against. Didn’t win tackles or headers, didn’t support the man with the ball, no width, no pace, no tempo or urgency. Physically and mentally weak. We pisballed about, in neutral parts of the pitch, very slowly. The dildo of consequence rarely arrives lubed. Both teams got what they deserved here. One of them by doing the basics really well, the other who thinks the basics are a bit beneath them. Links >>> Ratings and Reports >>> Message Board Match Thread Derby: Zetterstrom 6; Nyambe 6, Nelson 7, Cashin 7, Forsyth 6; Goudmijn 7, Adams 8, Harness 7 (Phillips 74, 6); Jackson 7 (Blackett-Taylor 82, -), Yates 6 (Collins 82, -), Mendez-Laing 7 (Wilson 66, 6) Subs not used: Brown, Turley, Vickers, Ward, Washington Goals: Nelson 54 (assisted Mendez-Laing), Harness 55 (assisted Jackson) Yellow Cards: Cashin 38 (foul) QPR: Nardi 6; Ashby 4 (Chair 63, 5), Cook 5, Dunne 5, Paal 4 (Bennie 80, -); Madsen 3 (Fox 63, 5), Field 5; Dembele 5, Andersen 4 (Celar 62, 4), Saito 5 (Smyth 62, 5); Frey 4 Subs not used: Santos, Dixon-Bonner, Lloyd, Walsh Yellow Cards: Dunne 90+5 (foul) QPR Star Man – Paul Nardi 6 Kept the score down. Again. Referee – David Webb (Durham) 6 Fine. Attendance – 29,305 (2,362 QPR) I’d still be checking the hard drive of anybody who brings a drum to a football game. 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