With expectation high, and a capacity crowd back in the stadium for the first time in a year and a half, QPR set sail on their 2021/22 against Millwall at Loftus Road on Saturday.
Mercantile Credit Trophy >>> Saturday August 7, 2021 >>> Kick off 15.00 >>> Weather — Wind, sun, thunder, lightning, I think they’re hedging their bets >>> Kiyan Prince Foundation Stadium, Loftus Road, London, W12
It’s trendy in these Covid-19 times to say it’s not about the football. If you follow Queens Park Rangers around to Blackburn and Preston and Middlesbrough; to Bristol and Cardiff and Swansea; through somebody’s downstairs toilet at Luton or on that death-defying duel carriageway dodge to MK Dons; to Sorrento for aborted friendlies on plastic pitches, or salubrious suburbs of Naples with gunfire ringing all around, or Benelux for tours the police stick behind closed doors at the eleventh hour… and they never win… the obvious conclusion is it’s not about the football. If it was about the football you’d support somebody who wins — Liverpool United or Manchester Hotspur or one of that lot — and you’d do it from home so you had a decent view of the game. You’d find the whole "there’s been a goal Elland Abbey, but for who Chris Kamara…” Jeff Stelling shtick amusing and whimsical, rather than putting your fucking boot through the fucking television before heading out to shoot up a shopping precinct.
No, wankers like me muse in the Financial Times, what it’s actually about is people, and moments, and pubs. People, and moments, and pubs, and trains, and the hand towel so riddled with bacteria it greets you as you enter the gents in that little place we go in Burnley, and that time the guy got the whole carriage doing Twist and Shout on the way back from Derby, and the guy who clocked off for the night in the Blackburn Premier Inn but left the fridges unlocked, the Scotch eggs and pork pies and enormous spider webs in Burton, and the £600 we spent in 90 minutes in Nottingham Hooters, and the yard of onion rings in Birmingham, and that time we nearly drowned in Newport. That incident on the runway at Heathrow. Mel’s prolonged attempt to get The Carpenter’s Close To You established as an anthem away at Sheffield United. If Albert Adomah scores a last minute winner at Watford, and none of us are there to fall down the steps, and negotiate late opening with Mabel’s Tavern, and sing his song all the way home on the Northern Line, does he really score a last minute winner at Watford at all? It’s about camaraderie, and friendship, and loyalty, and masculinity, and loneliness.
But, some of you prefer the football to the overshares on LFW so, without wishing to sound like I’m flogging TRESemmé, here’s the science. QPR have the potential to be very good this season, at exactly the right time. The division, on the whole, is a mess. Multiple clubs have overspent trying to reach the big time and failed, leaving them in varying degrees of pandemic-enhanced financial crises, transfer embargoes, fire sales, and states. A dozen or more clubs we’d have considered way ahead of us in the play off pecking order for the last five years are now floating face down, surrounded by flies, only showing signs of life when poked with a stick. Several of them are now in the division below. All three relegated teams come back to this division with more issues than a former regular attendee of Michael Jackson's Neverland Ranch. QPR, meanwhile, have done that house clean, come through that painful process, had that therapy, sold that starlet, reinvested that money, and look in great shape. Summer recruitment was bold, decisive, strong and early. Had another club signed the players we’ve signed, for the price we’ve signed them, as early in the window as us, after the way we ended last season, and played the way we’ve played in the friendlies, we’d be pointing at them and saying: "Him. That’s the guy. That’s the guy right there.”
This, of course, is very frightening, because it’s QPR and QPR always find a way to stuff things up. Everybody says that about their club, but it is worth remembering the last time we unsheathed our pencil dicks and started windmilling them around like this we lost 5-0 to Swansea on the opening day of the season, didn’t win until December, only won four times at all, were relegated in disgrace, and have spent the last eight years mopping up the hurricane of piss that swept through the joint. Who is Millwall’s Michu? Show yourself. With the sparkling 2021 to date has come expectation levels I haven’t seen in this fan base since that summer of 2012 when there was genuinely a thread on our message board asking whether the fourth Champions League place was really that unattainable for us. How does a young squad cope with that? How does a team that has had zero expectation on it for years cope with that? How does the support base react if we, say, somehow, miraculously don’t beat Millwall AND Hull by loads and loads and loads and loads this week? With Sam Field injured we are weak at defensive central midfield; with only really Moses Odubajo in the team with electric pace what will we do if and when teams repeat what Derby and Huddersfield did to us at Loftus Road last year and just sit in with an aggressive midfield press and ask us to play through? Let’s resolve not to be those guys — not to hit the socials decrying Mark Warburton’s contract extension as premature if we don’t immediately start bumming the league in the gob. Our biggest enemy could be ourselves.
Maybe it is about the football a bit after all, on Wednesday at Leyton Orient, or next Saturday at Hull, or the following Wednesday at Middlesbrough, or in September on the Bournemouth trip we’ve already booked, or at Christmas when we’ll interrupt the festivities to travel to Bristol City. Tomorrow though, well let’s just say I’ve been booting myself up and down the Whetstone Stray all week for burning that Jaws analogy quite so readily in the Man Utd pre-season write up. QPR v Millwall tomorrow isn’t about QPR v Millwall any more than Jaws is a film about a shark (it’s fucking not, come at me) but I’ve done that bit now. Thankfully, not without forethought, I left the ‘what happened next’ bit out of the Hampton and Richmond write up the week before for just this occasion.
< /football >
I didn’t go to Hampton and Richmond, by myself, to watch QPR’s U23s lose to the locals because I was missing the football. I didn’t go and peer through the gates of my old junior school, and dangle my feet in the river we used to play in, and walk across the now overgrown green we used to play football on until it got dark, and stand in front of my old house, and sit in the pub my dad used to hide from my mum in, because I was desperate to take a last, lingering look at Todd Kane. I went because that’s the last place I was happy. Bouncy, legs whirling round in a circle, a million miles an hour, outgoing, gregarious, precocious, confident, loud, upbeat, blond little bundle of happiness. Class president, yeh I’ll run for that. School football team, absolutely. Art club, drama club, choir. I used to do one man shows in my fucking shed, weird mixtures of comedy and acting and music, which I would force my family to attend. I was confident, and outgoing, and handsome and nothing could fucking touch me.
What happened next, in a moment of decision making that borders on child abuse, is my parents took me out of one of the nicest corners of the best cities in the world and moved me 250 miles north to one of the most polluted and economically deprived parts of the entire continent, where I knew nobody, literally dumped me out of the removal van at the gates of a hellish secondary school on the first morning of the new school year and waved me off into five years of chronic torment. I won’t labour on my grandad dying immediately, and my dad dying immediately after that, and my dad’s best mate who took me to football in their stead dying after that, because I’ve milked that sympathy cow dry on this site long before now, as both regular readers will testify. The fact is, I was miserable when they were alive. There are few things worse than being different in a secondary school, even one that isn’t on fire more than it’s not, and being a little, blond, London-accented Clive, who liked trains, and producing his own handwritten magazines about things, in a grim northern secondary school was an utterly brutal experience.
In 1974 somebody tipped the wrong thing into the other wrong thing at the Flixborough chemical plant causing a massive explosion that loosened the window frames at the school 12 miles away. By the time I got there in 1996, they still hadn't been fixed. For eight months of the year the place was an ice box mixed with a wind tunnel — I was actually chuffed the local delinquents kept setting light to it, kept us all warm at least. It sat atop the large hill that runs through the middle of Scunthorpe and looked out over a playing field beyond which was 20 miles of absolutely fuck all and then Doncaster, which if you were really lucky you could pick out in the distance on the three days a year we had sun. The wind, and the rain, and the sleet, whipped across those flats, over the top of the hill and into your face, whether you were inside or out. Can I wear my coat indoors Miss, the ink in my biro has frozen? No, of course not, it's against the uniform policy. "Character building" they call this stuff, if they're an unfeeling cunt. The canteen served chips, with an assortment of sauces. I would walk across that field, into that wind, by myself, at the end of everyday, and as a fucking 13-year-old would get home and run a bath so I could feel warmth again, and then I’d sit in it and cry. Every night. Everything, everything, that was different about me was suppressed, because to be different (and by different I mean, for instance, reading books) was to be targeted. I emerged from the whole experience an embittered, cynical, rabidly depressed, maladjusted weirdo, trained to expect the worst of everybody and everything, conditioned to hide everything unique in my personality and soul, with a chip on both shoulders (no sauce with those). Bar three teachers, and one English teacher in particular, who took me in as a fellow inmate, I detested everything about it. I hated it, and them, and what had happened to my life. And it, them, and my life, hated me.
QPR was the escape. Something to do with my grandad yes, then something to do with my dad of course, and then something his best friend and I did to try and cling to his memory, but also just an escape. A place where I could be me again, a place I felt comfortable, a place I felt accepted, a place I enjoyed, something to look forward to every week. However bad the week was, however horrendous it got, QPR was there at the end of it to count down to. We went to the game the weekend after we lost Tom, and Rob, and I went the week after I lost Stuart. Because however bad it’s got, QPR have always been there, and that’s been the out. When I was at university and lonely, and poor, and suffering some pretty severe PTSD over what had happened to me between 12-16, I went to every QPR game home and away. When I was starting my career, on an annual salary of £12,500 with a 75 mile round commute, trapped in relationships that panicked me but I didn’t know how to end, I went to every QPR game home and away. As I’ve gone through break ups, and realisations, and career turbulence, and financial strife, and everything else grown up, I went to every QPR game home and away. When bosses frowned upon, or outright refused, my often rather outlandish requests to be able to leave at lunchtime on a Tuesday because we had West Brom away, they were the bad guys, they were in the wrong, it wasn’t me being unreasonable. Why didn’t they understand? Fuckers. When colleagues got religious holidays I fumed, because if you want to celebrate Diwali, or Eid, or Easter Sunday, or Yom Kippur, that’s absolutely fine and please feel free to do so, but I want to go to Preston v QPR on Tuesday night and that’s apparently not the same thing in everybody else’s mind except mine. I have turned down job, after job, after job, after job that even hinted at keeping me away. "You’ll have to work one Saturday in 15” — well you’d better believe that’s a no.
I have, as you can tell, got it out of all proportion. I’m a sad, mentally defective, lost cause. My friends now the only ones that have stuck around through the "fair-weather fans” tantrums when nobody wants to go to Huddersfield with me on a Tuesday night, because they know me, and that I’m beyond help. But even the normals need a QPR in their life. Maybe not in the rabid state I’m in, and maybe not QPR at all, but something. I used to peer out of the same window from the same seat of the 08.44 from Doncaster to London every Saturday morning and poke fun at the old guys on the end of the platform, out of bed at first light and facing the depths of a Yorkshire winter to write down train numbers and say "look at those sad bastards standing in the rain to spot trains” until one day Stuart, without looking up from his paper, said "and they’re standing out there looking in here at you saying ‘look at that sad bastard going to watch Oldham QPR in this’”. It might be fishing, or painting, or golf, or gardening, or archery, or fucking rock climbing. It might be bird spotting, or nightclubbing, or flower arranging, or sex, or fucking wine. But everybody has to have something. Something. Anything. Everybody has to have that thing to get up for and look forward to, that isn’t simply work, or feeding yourself, or looking after your kids. Otherwise you're just existing, and in actual fact you're not even doing that. Particularly, particularly, when times are tough, when life is bleak, and when everything else is going wrong.
For the last 18 months times have been tough, life has been bleak, everything has been going wrong, and we’ve basically had to sit in our homes. I’ve seen the tiny bit of my family that is still alive three times since last February - once for a couple of hours in my back garden. I’ve got up super early to run, I’ve worked incredibly hard at my kitchen table for want of something better to do, I’ve eaten, I’ve shit, I’ve showered and I’ve gone back to bed — sometimes, not lying, at six in the afternoon. And I've had the best of it - maybe you've been ill, or lost a loved one, if so my sympathies. Meanwhile, those setting the rules were railing their researcher, or touring Barnard Castle, and enjoying a two point uptick in the polls for their troubles. I have drunk my liver into a pulp, I have exercised my Achilles into a tattered mess, I have read books and completed Netflix and picked ridiculously long-running American TV series like ER and West Wing just to have on, washing over me, to fill the time and distract my busy head. I’ve done so many fucking Zoom quizzes that I have literally, God’s honest truth, been asked what Postman Pat’s surname is more than I’ve seen my mum in the last year and a half. (It’s Clifton, by the way.)
I have watched, and written about, QPR of course. It’s my job. God bless both the club’s media team for all their efforts to keep us connected, and for the deft and unique approach of Nick London and Andy Sinton to bringing us into the stadium as best they can. I’ve come to love them both very dearly, the guilt in their voice at being there when we cannot perfectly judged against the need to mainline us this horribly watered down form of our escapism. But it has felt like my job, when it never did before. Another thing on my diary, with the Zoom quizzes, and the 'Teams' meeting, and the kitchen table work. It’s like the thing you love the most has been taken, and put in a tank. Captured, like a butterfly from a rainforest, and transported across the world, to sit in a zoo, in a city, where you can pay an entrance fee, to stare at it through the glass. I celebrated the Adomah goal at Watford in my living room, but there were no steps to fall down. I called Keith Stroud a cunt, but he couldn’t hear me. Without me there, loudly echoing his self doubt around his ginormous eye-sockets, Richard Keogh actually played quite well against us last year. It’s Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs again — human beings need to belong.
Tomorrow, we belong again.
< /overshares >
Links >>> Season Preview — Contenders >>> Season Preview — Midtable >>> Season Preview — Derby >>> FA Cup cliff-hanger — History >>> Perennial dark horse — Interview >>> Bircham the realist — Podcast >>> Langford returns — Referee
Team News: QPR’s charm offensive on Stefan Johansen went one step further than his three-year contract this week when he was also named club captain ahead of Captain of Glasgow Rangers Lee Wallace. Johansen didn’t even make the bench against Leicester in the final friendly but has trained and is fit for selection tomorrow — please sound the "he’s naturally fit anyway” cliché klaxon. Andre Dozzell and Dom Ball have shared the deep lying midfield duties this summer with Sam Field out for four months with knee surgery and Luke Amos still a little way off a return from the ACL blow out he suffered last September. One or the other of them, with Johansen, means it’s going to be Austin or Dykes not Austin and Dykes up front, assuming Ilias Chair and Chris Willock both start. The rest of the team, with Moses Odubajo making a competitive debut at right wing back, Wallace on the left, and the back three of Barbet, De Wijs and Dickie ahead of Dieng pretty much picks itself. There’s more chance of me playing for QPR this season than Todd Kane, but he technically serves game 2/7 of his suspension for abusing Sergi Canos in the home victory against Brentford last season. Niko Hamailenen was another from last year’s first team squad not afforded a squad number with Sam McCallum loaned in to cover the left wing back role, and his tough and gritty upbringing will now continue with a five month loan spell at LA Galaxy. The many varied adventures of Dillon Barnes could yet include a loan spell at the QPR goalkeeping college in Doncaster.
Mason Bennett, who scored in this fixture last season, rolled his ankle in the 3-0 win at Ipswich in Millwall’s final pre-season friendly and is out for six weeks. The Lions are the latest Championship club to hang their hat on the fitness and form of Benik Afobe to lead their line this season — Billy Smart’s amazing non-scoring striker Jon Dadi Bodvarsson, Big Posh Matt Smith, Kenneth Zohore, Tom Bradshaw and Troy Parrott failed to make double figures between them in 20/21 - and he bagged twice in that win at Portman Road ahead of a likely competitive debut here.
Elsewhere: Another fantastical episode of Wayne Rooney’s Derby County this week — how and why did Netflix pass? — as the deadline loomed for putting some sort of squad together for the new Championship season.
On Wednesday evening, with season tickets yet to go on sale, a select group of supporter websites, groups and representatives were invited to meet owner Mel Morris (still with the "EFL on strings” we presume) to find out exactly what the fuck is going on at Pride Park. However, amidst talk of NDAs, updates have been few and far between since. In fact, they basically consist of one blogger saying he was tired on the train home and didn’t very much appreciate Derby fans haranguing him to find out what was said, and another posting a whopping four Tweet update from the four-hour meeting that said they were looking at some signings but nothing was close, there was some interest in their remaining players but nothing was close, there are three parties in talks over a takeover but nothing is close, and Mel is "angry the academy players don’t get more of a chance”.
Thursday dawned bright and early with the news that the collection of luminaries who have trialled over the summer waiting to be signed on free transfers — including second chance number 136 for the best player Alex Ferguson ever did see Ravel Morrison, our own Little Tom Carroll, Richard Stearman and Phil Jagielka with their combined age of 103, and Reading Reserves’ prolific twosome of Sone Aluko and Sam Baldock — had all been presented with blank contracts, without a name or a wage on, to sign so they could play at the weekend. The Rams have been in one of their famous disputes with the EFL over whether they’ve got a squad of 13 players (well, 12 now Wazza has snapped Jason Knight in half) or 19 — a debate which hinges on their decision to ditch out of last season’s FA Cup tie at Chorley because Covid/scared and pick a load of kids who now count as ‘players of first team experience’ as a result. In the end, three players were signed up, including 36-year-old Curtis Davies who the released to Sky Sports at the end of 20/21, Stearman, and former Wycombe keeper Ryan Allsop which is exactly what you need when you have a squad of 12 fit players and two of them are senior goalkeepers (David Marshall, Kelle Roos) anyway. They start at home to fellow relegation favs Sporting Huddersfield tomorrow who, plot twist, have a big Covid outbreak in the squad. Pre-match odds on that one will be fascinating.
I know this section basically exists for sarcasm and piss takes, but there are some genuinely fascinating matches on the coupon for the opening day (and Stoke v Reading). The division looks poor, a whole clutch of established names that have been in it for a while could be very vulnerable to the drop through their own chronic mismanagement and incompetence if the three promoted teams have anything about them, while at the other end the three relegated teams are all favourites to go straight back as ever but all of them come back to this level with issues of their own. The £100m transfer of Jack Grealish could render much of the hard work done on season previews irrelevant with Villa, and subsequently Southampton, now with money in their pockets which could in turn settle the summer-long sagas of Adam Armstrong at Blackburn and Arnaut Danjuma at Bournemouth, who would then in turn have cash to splash on their targets from other Championship teams. Would optimistic noises about Peterborough change were Bournemouth to replace Stoke-bound Sam Surridge with Jonson Clarke-Harris, for instance?
First up tonight, the team we rated as the worst of the relegated sides last year meets the side with that mantle this. Bournemouth tried to stumble their way back up through default under two woefully inadequate caretaker managers last season and should be better for having Scott Parker in charge even allowing for his dour style, while West Brom’s protracted search for a boss eventually landed on Barnsley miracle worker Valerian Ismael who must now try to impose his unique approach that worked so well with the children at Oakwell on a squad aged almost exclusively over 25. Sheffield United have divisional specialist Slavisa Jokanovic in charge, and a great squad on paper including the return of key man Jack O’Connell from long term injury, but are yet to make a signing ahead of their Saturday night start at home to Birmingham. How’s that Chris Wilder hangover? Fulham also have a new boss, Marco Silva, and they start their latest yo with a date on the Fourteenth Annual Neil Warnock Farewell Tour at Craven Cottage on Sunday lunchtime. Boro pulled off the coup of signing Argentinean starlet Martin Payero last week — he could be very special if he can overcome the not insignificant culture shock of moving to Teeside to play in between Matt Crooks and Uche Ikpeazu. Get a new agent mate.
The three promoted sides all start away. Bristol City had a disastrous end to last season with three wins from the final 25 matches, and the theory that players returning from injury and the magnificently overhyped super powers of Nigel Pearson will be enough to set them right gets an early examination from Blackpool’s team of Premier League academy loans and drop outs plus accident-waiting-to-happen Richard Keogh. City’s fixtures for the rest of August are unkind, so any sort of sloppy start here and the widespread tip of them being a potential relegation candidate could start to ring very true. Likewise Preston, who bolstered their hopes with a slew of signings this week led by the return of excellent keeper Daniel Iversen but still lack strikers, who start at home to League One champions Hull. Peterborough’s first return to this level in nine years sees them start down the road at fancied dark horse Lutown.
Elsewhere there’s a chance to post points after tumultuous summers for Blackburn and Russell Martin’s Swanselona. Cardiff are fancied, by us at least, but was Mick McCarthy’s exceptional run of results after taking over last season simply a product of how sick everybody was of Neil Harris? They start at home to Barnsley, now onto unknown European 5.1 and not who you want on the opening day unless your scouting of CEE is absolutely bob on. Coventry, back at the Ricoh Arena, against Nottingham Florist (one signing!! What sort of fresh hell is this?) rounds out the weekend on Sunday afternoon. It is, as it ever was, Forest’s year.
Referee: The very experienced, and usually very lenient, Olly Langford is in charge of this one, though he did show nine yellow cards and award two penalties while making rather the mess of Norwich 1-1 QPR at Christmas. Details.
QPR: The stats around QPR’s remarkable turnaround in 2020/21 have been done to death. From four wins in the first 23 games of the season, QPR won 15 of the final 23 which was a record bettered only by the top two Norwich and Watford. The final total of 68 points was a ten point improvement on the year before, and they finished ninth which was four places higher in the Championship. In defence, Rangers conceded 55 times which was 21 goals better than 2019/20, they kept 14 clean sheets across the league season which was up from six the year before. Worth pointing out though that for all that improvement, every other team in the top half of the table and three in the bottom half still conceded fewer goals than us last term. The 19 victories was Rangers’ best total since they won 23 on the way to promotion in 2013/14. QPR beat Man Utd 4-2, Cambridge 2-1 and Portsmouth 2-1 in their pre-season friendlies prior to last Saturday’s 3-3 at home to Leicester. It means the R’s have scored 11 goals in their summer fixtures but have also conceded seven and are yet to keep a clean sheet. They won five of the last seven games at Loftus Road in 2020/21, including a 3-2 victory against Millwall having trailed 2-0 at half time. Since Mark Warburton took over QPR are unbeaten in four against the Lions, winning three, and scoring ten goals in the process. QPR haven’t had a striker reach 20 league goals in a season since Andy Thomson scored 21 in 2001/02 in Division Two.
Millwall The Lions’ 3-2 defeat at QPR last season, having led 2-0 at half time, was an eleventh trip to Loftus Road without a win stretching back to February 1989 when Jimmy Carter and Tony Casacarino scored at the Loft End in a 2-1 win (Mark Falco scored QPR’s goal from the penalty spot). QPR have won five of those 11 games, including the last three in which they’ve scored nine times, with six draws. The result interrupted a nice spring run for Gary Rowett’s side, with four wins from six matches either side of it. They didn’t finish the season strongly, however, with only a 4-1 win against hapless Bristol City to show for their final six games — a run of four defeats, one draw and one win that included a 4-1 home loss to Bournemouth and 3-0 defeat to Swansea at The Den. They lost 6-1 at Coventry on the final day of the campaign to leave them with an overall away record of 8-7-8 for the season — Watford were promoted in second with one of 8-8-7. Wawll lost 1-0 at Nottingham Forest on the opening day of the 2017/18 season but in the three campaigns since have remained unbeaten for their first four league and cup games. Their pre-season consisted of a 2-0 win against Motherwell with goals for Ben Thompson and Big Posh Matt Smith; another 2-0 against Barnet with two more for the former QPR target man; a 1-1 at Gillingham thanks to a late Jake Cooper equaliser; a 3-2 loss to Premier League newcomers Watford with another goal for Smith and one for Murray Wallace; a 4-1 defeat behind closed doors at Arsenal; and then finally a 3-0 win at Ipswich last weekend with two for Benik Afobe and one for Jed Wallace.
Prediction: We’re indebted to The Art of Football for once again 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. Mick_S took the title on the very final weekend of the season last year giving him the dubious honour of finishing our match previews in 2021/22. Here are his thoughts on Millwall…
"It could be argued that the Millwall game is best done away with as early as possible, so here we are. I’m full of hope that after a strong end to last season and the way Rangers coped with Premier League opposition pre-season we can keep the momentum going and build on the good feelings around the club. This, alongside the work the club have done in the transfer market, really does make it feel a bit different as we get ready for Saturday. Always difficult to call this early, but if we can adjust to the first game noise - and that goes for both teams, I fancy us as winners,
2-1. I’ll go with Austin as our first goal scorer. Come on you Stripey Nigels.”
Mick’s Prediction: QPR 2-1 Millwall. Scorer — Charlie Austin
LFW’s Prediction: QPR 2-2 Millwall. Scorer — Charlie Austin
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Pictures — Action Images