As QPR see a disappointing 2022 out in shambolic fashion against Luton, they couldn't really face a more difficult start to 2023 with Sheffield United in town on Monday.
Lancashire and District Senior League >>> Monday January 2, 2023 >>> Kick Off 20.00 >>> Weather — Bright and breezy >>> Loftus Road, London, W12
The end of one year and the start of another is always a chance to reflect on what has gone before and look forward what’s to come.
At this point a year ago, you and I were upbeat about both. No team in the Championship had taken as many points as QPR through the calendar year of 2021, and had they replicated that haul from August to May rather than January to January they’d have been promoted. Typical bloody Rangers, perhaps, but in the last game of the year Yoann Barbet’s injury time winner at Bristol City was part of a sequence of four consecutive away wins. The trip wire, we thought, would be the African Cup Of Nations and the absence of Seny Dieng and Ilias Chair, but the R’s continued their form through an unbeaten January of four wins culminating in a 4-0 demolition of Reading just before the transfer window closed.
The performances weren’t there. Mark Warburton’s team were poor at Ashton Gate, and the win was against the run of play in injury time, much the same as the previous one at relegation-bound Derby. That was the same in the New Year game at Birmingham, and especially at Coventry a week later where we got our arse handed to us for most of the afternoon and won 2-1 again almost by accident. Stoke and Bournemouth both won quite comfortably at Loftus Road in this period. Actually, the team had been on a pretty steady decline throughout that first half of the season — performances never again reached the peak of the 3-2 at Middlesbrough in August and were certainly a far distance away from what we’d been producing in the second half of 2020/21 — but when the wins keep coming through last minute worldies by Andre Gray, or injury time headers from centre backs, or Albert Adomah climbing over the top of former R Jake Bidwell, you start to believe it’s written. In this country, if your opponent hits the post a couple of times, the underside of the bar, your keeper makes four amazing saves, you don’t think you’re about to get tonked, you wonder whether it might ‘just be our day’. Performances or no performances, much of the talk at the end of January was about whether we might run Bournemouth down for second. Actually, the results were masking issues with the team, and escalating politics and problems behind the scenes. In the end, we regressed back to our mean.
This New Year you and I, I suspect, are very downbeat about both. The appointment of Mick Beale was a reasonable swing at both building on the good stuff Mark Warburton had done, and curing the toxic hangover he had left. But QPR, again, (again), despite running a director of football system, despite having a good and growing analytics and recruitment department, attracted him here, at least in part, by letting him recruit his own players. We should never have been doing this in the first place, and we should never do it again. Managers bring in people they know, they bring in their mates, they bring in players from agents they know and like, and they bring in short term fixes to stop them getting the sack in the next three weeks over and above sounder, longer term options. It’s just the way it is now managers are afforded all of a fortnight of bad results before Joe Public wants them binned. Kenneth Paal has been an excellent signing, and will be up there in the Player of the Year voting, so this is an odd example to pick but bear with me. QPR had wanted another Dutch league prospect George Cox — they’d wanted him for a long time, they’d got as close previously as having him touring Harlington ready to sign, and twice (once with a Lee Wallace contract extension and Sam McCallum loan, and then with the Paal signing) they went ‘what manager wants manager gets’. Paal has worked out fine, most of the rest of them have not. Les Ferdinand is certainly not beyond scrutiny and criticism here, but the DOF system is sound in the modern era, and if he were to go then with this ownership we’d definitely need another one. I actually wish we were doubling down on that system even deeper, because in our position allowing a manager to bring in Leon Balogun is insane stuff. ‘What manager wants manager gets’ does not work here. When Beale walked away it left a good half a dozen players here who are only here because of him, and the results are there for all to see.
Short and medium term, I’m fascinated to see what new gaffer Neil Critchley makes of what he’s inherited here. Nothing of what’s occurred over the last seven days at QPR is ‘ideal’, and for me it should never be acceptable at this club to produce what was served up in that Luton game on Thursday night, but from a strategizing point of view it’s given the new manager a really, really clear picture of the strengths, weaknesses, contradictions and confusions in our team.
The performances have declined half on half, across three games.
The first 45 minutes at Preston was some of the best stuff these players can produce: Tim Iroegbunam piling on from midfield and striking the post from 25 yards; Ethan Laird jinking and diving past multiple challenges to almost score the goal of the season; Lyndon Dykes roughing centre halves up and being a royal pain in the arse, supporting runners getting up with him and posing goal threat; the centre backs not only defending well but also passing the ball forwards out from the back progressively, quickly and creatively; Paal exceptional; Dieng bright, alert, making a key save, taking the pressure off his defence with a command of the box. We’ve seen this stuff frequently enough this season to know it is within this group of players: Bristol City, Millwall, Sheff Utd and Watford away; Cardiff, Middlesbrough, Hull and Reading at home.
The second half at Preston was worse than the first, the first half at Cardiff was worse still and the second half was something of an abomination, the first half against Luton regressed still further and if they ever produce the second half against Luton ever again I swear to God I’m coming down there myself. I look at things like Laird’s performance at Preston versus his one against Luton — he goes from Kyle Walker to somebody who Kyle Walker wouldn’t even trust to come around and clean his pool. Iroegbunam, best player on the pitch at Deepdale by a mile, then look at him for that Alfie Doughty goal. At Preston the big plus of the first half was all three midfielders were thrusting forward in support of Dykes, meaning that when he roughed up the centre backs and won flick ons and knock downs there were options there to make something of that. Iroegbunam, Field and Dozzell all could/should have scored at Preston. Our strikers aren’t very good, fine, but it is worth remembering that at the point we won at Sheff Utd in the corresponding fixture, we were the third top scorers in the division, and we’d shared them around the team more than any other side in the league. Then, against Luton, we’re back to Dykes being isolated 30 yards away from anybody, toiling against three centre backs alone with lousy service, and getting brickbats for that. Two goals in nine games for the team and absolutely zero goalscoring threat from the midfield whatsoever. The centre backs, so progressive and forceful with their passing last Saturday, back to playing very slow, very predictably, very pedestrian, underhit, bobbly slop backwards and forwards to each other on Thursday.
There’s inconsistency, there’s "that’s the Championship mate”, there’s young players learning their trade, and then there’s the distance between QPR’s best and worst this season, which is fucking Sydney to Detroit with three changes and a refuelling stop.
Critchley, in just a week, has got to see those two extremes. Taking over midseason is never ideal, he’s still assessing what he has here, but I’m hoping that it was at least instructive. Stefan Johansen is absolutely crucial to the midfield, and Jake Clarke-Salter makes a colossal difference to the defence because he will step out and play the ball forwards. Unfortunately, we can clearly rely on the fitness of neither, and if we’re just going to trundle along saying "it’ll be alright when Stefan and Jake are back” then we’re not going to end up trundling along to anywhere good. Like spending six hours on the M6 to end up in Stoke. Rob Dickie used to do what Clarke-Salter does, he was one of the better players in the league at doing that in August last year when he scored three times in a month, but he’s another where you just look at him now and wonder how somebody who has previously been that good is now this bad. Dickie, to Laird, to Dickie, to Dunne, to Dieng, to Dickie, to Dunne, to Dieng, to Dunne, to Dickie… all at a fucking glacial pace. It’s over there guys, it’s the posts with the net hanging off the back, shall we start making our way towards it at some point?
As ever, the FIFA Ultimate Teams and Football Manager veterans are out in full force making plans for January: we need this, this, this and this; get rid of him, him, him and him. It just doesn’t work like this. There are FFP headroom issues. To get rid of players under contract you either have to pay them up or find a taker for a loan deal or permanent transfer and if you haven’t been that impressed with George Thomas or Macauley Bonne then why do you think anybody else will have thought any different? Over the past 18 months there has been vague — very vague — interest in Seny Dieng from Everton, and Ilias Chair from Middlesbrough. And not for very much money in either case. That is it. Nothing at all in Chris Willock, which with 18 months of contract and two hamstring injuries in nine months is not a great shock. Nothing in anybody else.
January is a lousy time to be doing business at value anyway, and although we were successful in adding Field, Johansen, De Wijs and Austin to a beleaguered and potentially relegation-bound squad two years back, the money it cost to do that, and subsequently sign them and five others that summer, sucked up the last of the Eze funds and now leaves us in an awkward spot. We have driven into a cul-de-sac from which the only escape is a significant player sale. There may be loans going back and new loans brought in to replace them, we may pay a Bonne-type up and try to use that head space to bring in a Jamal Lowe or his non-union Mexican equivalent, but essentially Critchley, as he did at Blackpool (which is why we’ve hired him), will mostly have to get the best out of what he has here.
While he’s doing that, I’m just as fascinated by how the people above him see this going from here medium and long term.
The Ebere Eze sale bankrolled this club not only through Covid, but also allowed it to push the boat out a bit last season and have a tilt at promotion — our utter failure through the spring of 2022 looks a starker and starker missed opportunity with every passing week. Who knows, maybe he keeps performing for Palace, Newcastle spend some Saudi blood money on him, and his sell-on rescues us all over again. Until that happens, QPR loses £1.8m a month and teeters on the brink of breaching the league’s FFP rules. Its wage bill, in a good and tight year, is £18m, and in recent accounts has been nudging higher and higher above £20m again. Its income, under the rules of the league, would sustainably support a wage bill of only around £8m, and if you try and put a squad together on a wage bill of £8m at this level then you’ll not only very quickly drop from this level, but also most of the way through the level below as well.
The solution, and plan, to solve this has been to develop players to sell. Ideally we want to be doing an Eze-style deal every third summer so there's always at least one on our rolling three-year FFP calculations. Willock, Chair, Dieng, Dickie, Dunne, Clarke-Salter, Dozzell, Paal and others are all here for that expressed purpose — we need them to come in, play, play well, attract interest, and leave for good money. But it’s a plan for a pre-Covid era. It’s a plan for a time when Bristol City would get £8m from another Championship club for Jonathan Kodjia. When Gary Madine was worth £8m. When Kenneth Zohore would get you £8m. When Aden Flint moved for £7m and then £4m between Championship clubs. That market has died entirely. Occasionally now you get to the last week of January and some idiot parachute payment club, with a manager so poor he’s managed to fuck up even the massive advantages that gives you, decide to double down and give the pillock another chance to get them over the line with a late spending spree — and in that circumstance clubs like Peterborough and Cardiff can still get some dough for Siriki Dembele and Kieffer Moore to try and make Scott Parker look like he knows what he’s doing. Given the state of play at both Norwich and Watford at the moment, perhaps that could be fertile ground again January 20-31ish. But nobody else at this level is paying any kind of serious money for Championship standard players at all. Relative to when the whole travelling circus was kept on the road only by Alex Smithies and Luke Freeman, QPR do indeed have some sellable assets at Championship level now. But sellable assets at Championship level are now not sellable assets at all. It’s either Eze, or Jarrod Bowen, or nothing.
What the alternative to that is, I don’t know. Fuck it, chuck a load of money at it, ignore the rules and gamble you’ll get promoted? Didn’t work for us last time, even though we did go up. Throw our hands up and go properly within our means, spend the League One wage bill this club can support at this point and quickly find our way back there as a result? Can’t see that going down well. Get a team that has shown itself capable at numerous points of the last 24 months of being capable of competing at the top end of this division into the play-offs and a cure-all promotion? Well, look, Huddersfield made last years play-offs, and Barnsley the year before. It’s not impossible, and we should be capable of it — again, this is one of my biggest frustrations with this team, it is capable when it pulls its finger out.
It’s a tight spot, but we have been in them before. One of the positive things our Blackpool correspondent said about Critchley was he tends to be at his best when his back is to the wall. That’s very QPR. At this time of year for reminiscing and looking back I’m reminded of all the other multitude of times we thought we were doomed and we came out suddenly and landed a punch. I don’t expect us to get anything against Sheffield United - obviously one of the two outstanding teams in this league and certain to be promoted, with an away record better than every team’s home record so far bar Burnley’s — but then you didn’t expect Luke Freeman to beat Marcelo Bielsa’s Leeds for Steve McClaren, or Sam Di Carmine to slay promotion-bound Birmingham for caretaker boss Gareth Ainsworth. If you’d sidled up to me in the stand behind the goal at Notts County while I was giving Paul Furlong’s hell’s abuse for cupping his ear to the away end after we’d lost 3-0 there one afternoon and told me he’d end up being the hero of that season, the promotion that followed, and one of my favourite QPR players of all time I’d have laughed. If you’d told me the team that lost to Vauxhall Motors was only one Lee Cook loan signing and Olly realising Gino Padula was quite good away from a promotion push I’d have sworn at you quite aggressively. Even Mark Hughes' rabble came from two down to beat fucking Liverpool and spark a run that kept them up. There’s often just a little moment, that ‘just when I’m out you pull me back in’ thing, that QPR produce, and it’s frequently at these cold, dark, mid-winter games where your expectations of it happening are so low you struggle to even leave the house to go to the game.
Leave the house we shall. The only certainty of 2023, like 2022 and every year before it, is that LFW will be there to see it. If you’re there with us, at Loftus Road for the home games, behind the goal at Fleetwood next week, at Blackpool on a Tuesday in March, it’s a big part of my life to be one of you. If you follow from afar, if you rely on the brilliant Nick and Andy to be your eyes and ears, if you come to LFW to provide that insight and nostalgia about what it used to be like on the road with the team, if you’re just here because misery loves company, you’re very welcome and I’m privileged to be part of keeping your connection going. However far it seems, we’ll always be together, together in electric dreams.
Happy New Year everybody.
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Team News: To be added the other side of New Year’s Day.
Elsewhere: One would think the links of Steve Bruce to the vacant Norwich City job are just lazy clickbait based on a three-year playing stint he had there in the mid-1980s. Nothing in his recent performances, or preferred style of play, fits at all with what Norwich are supposed to be doing, and one would think the last bloody thing Steve Bruce needs is to work for a club owned by Delia Smith.
Still, amazing comedy value in that one so I’ve got everything crossed. Give it another week and they can probably have the man they face on Monday afternoon Slaven Bilic, now one win from the last five games and scoreless in four of those with listing Watford following a 4-0 shellacking at Swanselona last time out. Obviously Russell Martin, another former Canary and a much more ‘progressive’ coach by modern standards, is also posting short odds for a switch to Carrow Road, but that big win over the beleaguered Hornets was a first win in nine for him and he’ll do well to follow it up with anything from a home game with league leaders Burnley.
Those games make up a Monday list of seven games including our own, with all the others kicking off at 15.00. Two of the early season fancies who started abysmally but are now coming on strong have a good chance to further their recent runs with sans-Bruce West Brom hosting Reading on a run of seven wins from eight games, and Michael Carrick’s Boro taking a sequence of six wins from eight to Birmingham who have just started to slip and slide a bit of late with one win from six.
It's been a desperately poor Christmas for Preston who lost all three games over the break having set themselves up with a 4-1 win at Blackburn, and their game at a similarly dire Stoke side doesn’t immediately scream New Year classic. Nor, really, does Wigan Warriors v Hull FC, a much better Rugby League game than it is a Championship match, and Kolo Toure is danger of going four for four.
Before all of that, five games on Sunday. Blackburn and Cardiff start that off at midday, then it’s Coventry v Bristol City, Huddersfield v Lutown and Millllllllll v Rotherham. There’s also a trip to the seaside for Sunderland, who’ve gone roaring up to fourth in a compressed Championship table with a big win at Wigan, but now lost in-form front man Ellis Simms who’s been recalled by struggling Everton in an effort to bolster their attack. That might provide some hope of a much needed result to Blackpool, who Simms initially made his EFL name on loan to during Neil Critchley’s time there.
Referee: Well I guess some good news is we’ve got our latest tranche of torment at the hands of Keith Stroud and Gavin Ward out of the way, and now we’re back to Josh Smith again. QPR are unbeaten in four appointments with this referee. Details.
QPR: Queens Park Rangers are cratering. It’s now just one win from nine games, and they’ve scored only two goals across those fixtures. They have failed to score in four of their last five and seven of their last nine. The Luton debacle was their second consecutive 3-0 defeat at home, and fourth loss in a row at Loftus Road. Opta’s Jack Supple tells us it’s the first time Rangers have lost consecutive home games by a three goal margin since 1948, when the second was also a 3-0 loss to Luton, and it’s the first time we’ve been beaten four times at home in a row in the second tier for the first time since 1949. They have gone from topping the table on October 19, to thirteenth by the end of December and are now just three points and three places from their coveted home of sixteenth. There are now only six teams in the Championship that have scored fewer than our 27 goals this season, four of the teams below us in the league have bagged more including fourth bottom Rotherham. QPR’s surprise 1-0 win at Bramall Lane in the first meeting this season, one of only five defeats for Paul Heckingbottom’s team this term, was Rangers’ first success against this opponent in six attempts. The Blades did the double over Rangers in 21/22 and 18/19 and have lost only two of their last nine visits to Loftus Road.
Sheff Utd: No Championship team won as many points during 2022 as Sheffield United’s 93 across the calendar year. Our conquerors from Thursday, Luton, are next with 82 while interestingly it’s Millwall in third with 72 - QPR took 63 which puts them tenth. The Blades have won eight of their last nine games, including each of their last five. Only Burnley have scored more than their 43 goals for this season (just shy of two a game, and not far off double what QPR have scored). Centre back Anel Ahmedhodzic has scored four league goals so far, which would make him QPR’s third top scorer. Nobody has conceded as few as Sheff Utd’s 22. They have won their last five away matches, at West Brom, Bristol City, Cardiff, Wigan and Blackpool. Their overall away record this year as 8-2-3, easily the best in the league — their away record is better than every home record in the league, including their own, bar Burnley’s, and three Championship teams have won fewer points overall than the Blades have got from their away games.
Prediction: We’re once again indebted to The Art of Football for agreeing to sponsor our Prediction League and provide prizes. You can get involved by lodging your prediction here or sample the merch from our sponsor’s QPR collection here. Congrats to Aston who was ‘top at Christmas’, his prize is winging its way to him. Meanwhile, last year’s champion Cheesy tells us…
"I don't think a game has ever affected me more than the Luton one did. I just have no idea where this club is moving at the moment. Neil seems too nice a fella. I'm sorry to say that I think it’s time to sell our assets before they are worthless and to start building a squad, not a first eleven. If Shodipo and Roberts start against Sheffield United, I think I will go into meltdown. Roberts was an embarrassment against Luton. God knows how much he is costing us every week.”
Cheesy’s Prediction: QPR 1-3 Sheff Utd. Scorer — Ilias Chair
LFW’s Prediction: QPR 0-3 Sheff Utd. No scorer.
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