A ridiculous 45 yard screamer from Matt Phillips barely added consolation and respect to QPR’s ninth defeat in ten matches at Crystal Palace on Saturday.
You couldn’t help but conclude that this was a game lost in the tunnel, an hour before the kick off, when the team sheets were exchanged.
Crystal Palace, like last season, have been revitalised by a change of manager and Alan Pardew’s approach hasn’t differed much from that of Tony Pulis a year ago. The Eagles have a robust, physical spine to their team, particularly in the centre of midfield, even when inspirational captain Mile Jedinak is suspended — as he was on Saturday. Then they have quick, athletic, powerful wide players on both flanks and in support of the target man. That’s pretty much it. You have to match the former and nullify the latter to beat them.
That’s not something Premier League teams have found too difficult so far this season, at least at Selhurst Park. Prior to this match Palace had won only three times on their own ground, and only once in five outings in South London under their new boss. Seven teams have been to this stadium this season and won — the highest number of home defeats suffered at home by any Premier League team — and only bottom-placed Leicester (ten) had picked up fewer points on their own patch than Palace with 12.
QPR never, ever looked like being the eighth. They were three goals down by half time and the prime suspects in the hunt for scapegoats for an abject performance were the two full backs.
Darnell Furlong, in just his third ever game as a senior professional, was given a frightful time by Yannick Bolasie down the QPR right. Yun Suk-Young signalled his intention to deal with Wilfried Zaha rather more forcefully on the opposite flank with a firm but fair early tackle tight to the touchline, but he too was quickly back pedalling and offering few answers to his opponent’s speed and direct approach.
This accounted for the first two goals. Palace opened the scoring after 21 minutes when Bolasie toasted Furlong and crossed low for Zaha to bravely slide the ball home at the back post. Zaha suffered a sickening collision with the post as a result and was down for several minutes, but even playing on one leg he was too much for Rangers to handle for the rest of the game. A second, 20 minutes later, looked much the same, with goalkeeper Robert Green this time parrying a low cross-shot from Bolasie straight to midfielder James McArthur to roll into the empty net.
Furlong was withdrawn at half time, and replaced by former Palace favourite Clint Hill, seemingly as a damage limitation exercise, although manager Chris Ramsey said the youngster had pulled his calf muscle. Afterwards all the questions were about how fair it was for Ramsey to ask a rookie like Furlong to deal with a threat like Bolasie in a game of this importance at this stage of his career.
That rather ignored a lack of other options — Mauricio Isla and Richard Dunne are injured — and the actual problem here, which was in front and inside of the full backs, rather than Furlong and Yun themselves.
It is absolutely mystifying why Matt Phillips has been moved to the left wing. Ramsey was given praise for simplifying the right winger’s game, and playing him in the correct position, when he first took over and was rewarded with four assists in three games. Now on the left, Phillips is having to cut inside, narrowing the attack, complicating his game, reducing his effectiveness. Every time he had it, Palace knew he was checking back onto his right. It’s made him predictable.
It also meant that whenever Yun had the ball at his feet and looked ahead of him for options down the line, he often saw nothing but open grass and Palace shirts — because Phillips had drifted inside. And then when the ball was inevitably given away the South Korean was badly exposed with no doubling up help from the winger ahead of him. The third goal, scored immediately after the second by Joel Ward, was a defensive shambles from start to finish, but Phillips’ late arrival to help Yun out and then dreadful attempt at a tackle on his man played a big part. Green will also wonder how he was beaten by a bobbling shot so badly struck it barely reached the back of the net. Ward’s first goal for Palace in 98 appearances — we’ve always been good for one of those.
With ten minutes of the game left Phillips took his frustration out on the football, walking out of the centre circle and then inexplicably trying his luck from fully 45 yards out. He caught it as sweet as anybody has ever struck a ball before, and it fizzed through the air, past home keeper Julian Speroni and plum into the top corner for the Premier League’s goal of the season. It was an absolute thunderbastard. The sort of goal you see once in a lifetime. A wondrous strike. But it was mere consolation on a poor day for Rangers, and it didn’t alter the fact that Phillips is not even half as effective playing wide left for QPR as he was when he was playing wide right a month ago.
It’s not as if a great white hope and shining beacon of quality is keeping Phillips away from his favoured right wing spot. When the news came through before kick-off that Shaun Wright-Phillips would be given a first start since September 2013 on the right flank the QPR fans on the train to Selhurst were strongly considering jumping off at Balham and heading back to the pub. If Ramsey was going for an element of surprise, then this was more Leslie Nielsen in The Naked Gun than the Japanese at Pearl Harbour.
Wright-Phillips offered nothing, as you would expect. An appalling touch of the ball presented possession straight back to Palace whenever he received it. His inability to remain upright whenever the ball is at his feet is cartoonish — like the football is too heavy for his little feet and it knocks him over when he tries to control it. When he committed a foul in the second half the QPR fans in the side stand bayed for a sending off — only half joking.
But, worse than that, he used all the experience of 16 years as a professional to never once get anywhere close to helping out the youth team graduate playing at right back behind him. Furlong was unable to cope with Bolasie, not surprisingly, but the lack of protection he was offered from a senior professional at right wing ahead of him was scandalous. Wright-Phillips may care little about QPR or playing for them anymore, but to hang a kid out to dry like that was shameful. Presumably Ramsey had hoped Wright-Phillips’ experience and work rate may help Furlong out a little. Actually it was the football equivalent of signing up Harold Shipman as your family’s GP — somebody there who’s meant to be helping, doing the exact opposite.
There were other problems too. Karl Henry and a patently unfit Sandro at the centre of the midfield, totally unable to cope with McArthur and Joe Ledley against them. Steven Caulker and Nedum Onuoha allowing the defence to drop so deep they should all probably have been charged for seats on the front row of the stand behind the goal, and subsequently beaten from pillar to post by Glenn Murray. How Rangers are missing Dunne.
The primary result was goals. The first had been coming long before it was scored — Scott Dann headed Puncheon’s well-flighted corner over at the back post when it looked easier to score, and Sandro had got back with a goal-saving tackle as Bolasie streaked into the area unchallenged. The weight of pressure had to tell, and in the end it was only a surprise it took 21 minutes to do so. QPR should have had a free kick in the build up — Austin blatantly fouled as possession turned over — but even if Mason had blown up Palace would have scored soon enough anyway. Pardew’s men were turning the thumb screws and QPR were ready to cough. Having conceded two in a minute before half time, Rangers looked all set to ship a fourth only for a Palace player to, needlessly, haul back Steven Caulker in back play when the ball was well beyond him.
Caulker could have joined Palace in the summer and on this evidence they had a lucky escape. With a quarter of an hour to go he was lucky that Murray struck a shot straight into his chest after he’d lost his footing when last man.
To the right of the away end a topless boy no older than eight was hoisted into the air by his father to make blow-job gestures at the travelling fans. You could understand the sentiment, if not the quality of the parenting.
The secondary result was yellow cards. Henry booked by Lee Mason when Zaha, running free again, nudged the ball into clear space and then crashed to earth under a challenge the QPR man couldn’t help but make. He’d have been sent off in the second half had Bolasie not, very honestly, picked himself up and continued his charge down the left wing after being wrestled to the ground. In the end Sandro came across and clattered him a second time and also had his name taken. Only Onuoha can consider himself unfortunate, when he seemed to be sinned against only for a Palace free kick be awarded on the corner of the box in the second half. Onuoha unlucky to be penalised, but perhaps fortunate Mason didn’t take further action for his vehement, face-to-face protest at the decision. Dwight Gayle, on for Puncheon by that point, wasted the set piece.
You could only feel sorry for Charlie Austin, forced to try and feed on a succession of long balls pumped up to him which were less of a challenge for the home team’s centre half pairing of Dann and former R Damien Delaney than their last cooked breakfast. Only when Adel Taarabt, podgy but still the best QPR player on the pitch, had the ball at his feet did Rangers look threatening, but the Moroccan was often short of options to pass to and the home team crowded him out more often than not. In the second half Austin was able to plant a firm header straight at Seperoni — either side of him it was a goal — and then did likewise with a 15 yard volley of his own making. Rangers rarely looked like scoring, and only did so with a once-in-a-lifetime wonder strike.
So blame Furlong and Yun, blame Phillips and Wright-Phillips, blame Caulker and Onuoha, blame injuries, blame Chris Ramsey, blame who you like really, but consider this…
QPR have been in the Premier League for three of the last four seasons. In that time they have played 27 London derbies in league and cup. They’ve lost 18 of those and drawn four. This season they’ve lost seven and drawn one of the games against the other London sides. They’ve conceded 45 goals in those 27 games and scored just 18. On two separate occasions they’ve conceded six goals. This has been under four different managers, with vastly different teams and players. The constant is that when the going gets a little tougher, the atmosphere gets a little hotter, the intensity increases — QPR cannot live with it.
There isn’t the quality to match Arsenal and Spurs and there isn’t the attitude, stomach, pragmatism, strength and resolve to match sides like Palace and West Ham. Remember Fulham running riot, remember that Monday night when Sam Allardye bullied Granero and Faurlin with a massive three man midfield? This reminded me of those games.
QPR are playing at being a Premier League club and on days like this they’re playing at being a Premier League team, wanting to play with inverse wingers and false nines and young kids and wide open midfields and all of this sort of trendy shit without any sort of foundation or base. It’s naïve and it’s arrogant. It mirrors how QPR have conducted their transfer business in that time — we’re Premier League now, it says so on the tin, so we can do what all the other established Premier League teams do. Whether Furlong and Yun and Wright-Phillips start or not, whether Ramsey is the manager or somebody else, this will happen again while that attitude persists. It will happen again. Palace could have easily been another six goal humiliation.
It’s indicative of the way the club has been run, the team has been put together, and the ethos of those at the top making the big decisions. It shows what a bloody long road Les Ferdinand has got ahead of him if he is to turn it all around.
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Palace: Speroni 6; Ward 7, Dann 6, Delaney 6, Kelly 6; Ledley 7, McArthur 7; Zaha 8 (Mariappa 57, 6), Puncheon 7 (Gayle 56, 6), Bolasie 8; Murray 7 (Sanogo 80, -)
Subs not used: Ameobi, Hangeland, Hennessey, Souare
Goals: Zaha 21 (assisted Bolasie), McArthur 40 (assisted Bolasie), Ward 42 (assisted Zaha)
Bookings: Murray 58 (repetitive fouling)
QPR: Green 4; Furlong 3 (Hill 45, 6), Onuoha 4, Caulker 4, Yun 3; Wright-Phillips 2 (Grego-Cox 85, -), Henry 4, Sandro 4 (Kranjcar 84, -), Phillips 5; Taarabt 6, Austin 6
Subs not used: McCarthy, Hoilett, Vargas, Zamora
Goals: Phillips 78 (unassisted)
Bookings: Henry 29 (foul), Sandro 52 (foul), Onuoha 75 (foul)
QPR Star Man — Adel Taarabt 6 To borrow a phrase from Antti Heinola’s column this is like being acclaimed the fifth best cricketer in Serbia but, nevertheless, Taarabt kept possession of the ball, used it intelligently at times and posed Palace some problems which is more than anybody else did.
Referee — Lee Mason (Bolton Wanderers) 5 QPR should have had a free kick before the first goal, and the Onuoha booking was a farce, but Mason’s such a poor referee that it’s just nice to get to the end of a game with 22 men on the field and no deaths.
Attendance — 24,886 (2,400 QPR approximately) The usual brand of gallows humour from a large travelling support in the second half, including the "off, off, off” when Wright-Phillips committed a foul, and cheering the passes on the rare occasions they were completed, a rare bright spot on a bleak afternoon.
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Pictures — Action Images