One of the worst calendar years in living memory at Loftus Road draws to a close on Sunday with the visit of Liverpool.
Premier League >>> Sunday December 30, 2012 >>> Kick Off 4pm >>> Loftus Road, London, W12 >>> Live on Sky Sports 1
So that was 2012 then: a year of 22 defeats, seven league wins and no away successes from 20 trips on the road.
It’s essentially been a year where every time QPR had a key decision to make – either at management or board level – they got it wrong.
We began, almost a year ago, with a dreadful performance at MK Dons in the FA Cup where Rangers were lucky to escape with a replay having been outplayed and reduced to ten men by a season ending injury to Ale Faurlin. The massive QPR following that day taunted their own players with chants of “Premier League, you’re having a laugh” and Neil Warnock, barely able to speak and in agony after an operation earlier in the week to remove several teeth, rocked backwards and forwards furiously from his place on the bench. I still remember him angrily responding to that chant by immediately summoning two substitutes, which then of course left his team short when Faurlin’s knee crumpled minutes later. It looked like a classic case of a lost dressing room to me, and Joey Barton’s classless Twitter celebrations post-sacking suggested that was the case, but in hindsight it would have been better to stick with Warnock and ship out the players who didn’t like it rather than the other way around.
Warnock has since, several times, expressed a somewhat idealistic view of his time at QPR and what has happened since. He talks about the club losing its soul and signing too many big names who care little for QPR and put in miniscule amounts of effort for the cause but amongst it he neglects to mention that he loaned out Clint Hill while signing the likes of Barton and Shaun Wright-Phillips. He also left Heidar Helguson out for the first two months of the season in favour of such luminaries as Patrick Agyemang and Jay Bothroyd before relenting and finding he had a potential match winner on his hand.
Easy to forget that despite all of that, we didn’t actually lose that MK Dons game. Helguson popped up with a typically forceful equaliser just when all seemed lost. Such team spirit has rarely been seen since.
The decision to appoint Mark Hughes turned out to be a disaster, but given his reasonable record at Fulham and Blackburn I’d suggest it was more the manner of his coronation that caused the problem rather than the choice to bring him in. Had Hughes been interviewed along with a dozen other candidates and asked to present plans for the first team, youth set up, scouting system, training ground and so on it would have laid down a clear message to him very early about what was expected of him. As his plans for the first team turned out to be based around 16 expensive new signings and the youth and scouting systems improved by appointing lots of his mates to run it I’d also suggest that had the club run the interview process properly, they probably would have ended up with somebody different.
I lay awake and wonder what QPR would look like now had Gus Poyet been brought in instead of Hughes but alas QPR didn’t run a proper appointment procedure, and in fact confessed that Hughes had interviewed them as much as the other way around. That sent out a message that Hughes could pretty much do as he pleased with a blank cheque. What QPR clearly needed was a technical director with football experience to provide advice independent of the manager to a board that lacks this knowledge – what they got was Mike Rigg, another Hughes appointment, and Hughes’ “personal adviser” Kia Joorabchian, an omnipresent skin cancer on the sport as a whole.
Hughes made five signings initially and although QPR stayed up by the skin of their teeth it could be argued that none of them have worked: Bobby Zamora an expensive bad apple with a lamentable attitude, Samba Diakite’s early promise melting away into the lumbering oaf we see in hoops today, Taye Taiwo not retained at the end of a loan spell, Nedum Onuoha paid four times as much as his ability should really allow and now rarely picked. Djibril Cisse’s goals have been crucial, both to survival last season and sort of staying in touch this, and he’s a player I like, but judging by the reaction to him from some sections of the crowd and his frequent Twitter wars with supporters it seems the majority, or a very vocal minority, would happily get rid of him as well.
And this pattern of replacing players with people who were better on paper and worse in practice continued in the summer. Not only that but as the team got worse the wage bill escalated. Hughes replaced Paddy Kenny with Robert Green – very little to choose between the two apart from the latter earning four times as much – and then added Julio Cesar when Green turned out to not be much cop. QPR went from paying £20,000 a week to three goalkeepers to the thick end of £150,000 a week to four of them and has the goalkeeping been substantially better this season than last? Faurlin replaced by Granero, Helguson replaced by Zamora, Mackie replaced by Ji-Sung Park, Traore replaced by Fabio Da Silva, Nedum Onuoha replaced by Jose Bosingwa, Kenny by Green and Green by Cesar – expensive, needless, pointless moves that QPR simply didn’t need to make.
Then, having allowed Hughes to pack the club with his mates at all levels, he was difficult to sack when it clearly wasn’t working. Harry Redknapp was requiring snookers even before he arrived and it remains to be seen whether even that appointment was the right thing to do, chasing some forlorn hope of survival when what the club should really have been doing is planning how to bounce back under the guidance of a modern, progressive, young manager like Poyet or Malky McKay. Once again, the manager was appointed swiftly after the brief consideration of a single candidate and no interview process. Not only was 2012 the year of making bad decisions, it also seems to be the year of not learning from them.
It’s usually at this time of year that people jump around to D:Ream’s ‘Things Can Only Get Better,’ and however awful 2013 turns out to be, it’s hard to imagine it being worse than the last 12 months.
Links >>> Opposition Profile >>> History >>> Referee
Team News: Harry Redknapp will wait to see if Ryan Nelsen has recovered sufficiently from his flu virus to play, and start with Anton Ferdinand again if he hasn’t. Nedum Onuoha may be fit for a recall after hamstring trouble but Ji-Sung Park’s knee injury rules him out. Bobby Zamora and Andy Johnson are the long term absentees. Julio Cesar has recovered from his back injury so the headache of whether to start him or the accident prone Rob Green returns.
Liverpool have a doubt of Luis Suarez but given their reliance on the Uruguayan striker he’s likely to play through the pain on a swollen ankle. Former QPR youth team player Raheem Sterling is likely to be recalled following the defeat at Stoke on Boxing Day, along with midfielder Joe Allen who has missed the last couple of games.
Elsewhere: A full programme of Premier League games begins this lunchtime with Tottenham travelling to a Sunderland side buoyed by a win against Manchester City and looking for another to make it a successful Christmas and put some clear daylight between themselves and the relegated whirlpool behind them. Villa, 12-0 down on aggregate so far this holiday season, will be looking to do likewise along with their opponents at 3pm Wigan and Fulham could do with a win at home to Swansea as well although a draw looks a good bet in that match. Reading hosting West Ham and Southampton travelling to Stoke are the other two games for QPR fans to keep an eye on today.
At the other end of the table Man Utd v West Brom may be more competitive than usual given the Baggies’ outstanding season to date, and Newcastle will have to bounce back quickly from the disappointment of leading three times at Old Trafford but not winning when they go to Arsenal for the Saturday evening ESPN game. Norwich v Man City makes up today’s list.
On Sunday Everton v Chelsea is the early kick off on Sky prior to QPR’s home match with Liverpool.
Referee: Well isn’t it nice to see that there is some accountability among the refereeing community for lousy decisions? Fresh from failing to award the most obvious handball penalty you could ever wish to see at Loftus Road on Boxing Day referee Chris Foy and his linesman Harry Lennard are paired together again for Arsenal v Newcastle. Meanwhile Anthony Taylor, who had both his red cards at West Ham v Everton rescinded on appeal, is straight back into the action at our game with Liverpool. His full QPR case file is available here.
QPR: Rangers have one win and four draws from nine home matches in the league this season – the division’s worst record. They have three draws and seven defeats from their ten away matches which is second only to Reading in the appalling stakes. The 22 league defeats in 2012 is the worst record of any top flight club and defeat here would be the third time this season the R’s have lost three consecutive games. The R’s have shipped a league-leading four own goals this season, while Liverpool have benefitted from four at the other end which is also a division high figure.
Liverpool: Liverpool have never had fewer points at this stage of a season since the three points for a win rule was introduced. They have only won 11 matches in 2012 – their worst ever record, well shy of the 14 achieved in 2010. They have also lost 17 times this year, another club record. Liverpool have only lost once to a team in the bottom half of the table this season – 3-1 to Villa a fortnight ago – and have taken 20 points from a possible27. In contrast they are yet to win against a team in the top half.
Prediction: Reigning Prediction League champion Nathan McAllister says…
“I have written before that the strengths of mediocre sides don’t really need to be overstated to explain why QPR are not likely to win a given match. It was not so long that they were one of four teams guaranteed a Champions League spot every year, but ‘mediocre’ would seem to be a pretty fair description of Liverpool right now. At the half-way point of the season they sit in tenth place, with six wins and as many defeats. This season they have been the flat track bullies of the Premier League: they are yet to beat a team in the top half of the table in ten attempts yet they have won six and lost only one of their nine games against teams in the lower half of the table. I’m fully expecting them to make it seven from ten at Loftus Road on Sunday.
“Any hope I had that Rangers might be good enough to pull themselves out of trouble has been almost entirely extinguished after watching their last two performances. Rangers’ next five matches see them play Liverpool, Spurs, Man City at home and West Ham and Chelsea away, and it’s very difficult to see them picking up more than one or two points from those fixtures. That would leave them with 12 points from 24 matches, nine points less than they had at the same point last year. To get to the 40 points that Redknapp has targeted for safety they would need 28 points from the last 14 matches – title winning form, basically. Oh well, at least I can live with the despair. The thing is I remember reaching exactly the same point – that any hopes of Rangers staying up had completely gone - last season when we were losing 2-0 at home to someone (now, who could that have been?) with 15 minutes remaining – and that was the precise moment there was this quite extraordinary turn-around in QPR’s season.
“Could history be about to repeat itself? Nah, don’t think so.”
Prediction: QPR 0 Liverpool 2
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