QPR lost for the ninth time in ten games on Good Friday, comfortably beaten at home by Preston in a shambolic performance that finally turned the crowd on their own team in earnest for the first time.
This week’s Victor Meldrew moment came in the twenty-third minute.
It began, as these things often do, with the implosion of the Queens Park Rangers defence and the twisting to mush of what must surely by form be the three worst centre backs in this division at the moment. Robbie Brady collected a deflected cross in acres of space on the edge of the box and slipped it quickly into the similarly unattended Alan Browne in the penalty box. He checked back onto his right foot, went searching for the far corner, and found it. For once, though, the luck was with QPR. The ball not only hit the post but hit the post with enough ferocity to carry the rebound beyond Troy Parrott and Tom Cannon who were both waiting for it in the six yard box and instead to Stefan Johansen to clear. With PNE heavily committed to the attack Rangers then got the benefit of not one, but two breaks of the ball in quick succession as first Lyndon Dykes and then Chris Willock were able to help the ball forward despite visiting players getting to the loose possession first. In the end, Ryan Lowe’s men simply ran out of numbers, and now within seconds of almost falling behind here was Ilias Chair, with the ball, in the Preston half, with nobody for company other than goalkeeper Freddie Woodman down at the School End, and all the time and space and pitch and goal to do whatever he liked with it. Chair set sail for port, while the villagers stood on the quayside and held their breath. One touch too close, a second touch stumbling, a third touch out of feet, here comes the penalty box, forty yards, thirty yards, twenty, ten, touch number four, here’s the goalkeeper, touch five, and now the finish. One on one, with Woodman committed, Chair went across the keeper and missed. He missed. He missed not by a little, but by a lot. You wouldn’t have wanted any of QPR’s other jokers in that position, and he wasn’t even close. Truly, I don’t believe it.
On such moments are matches won and lost, match reports written and angled and, given that Rangers are now being kept from the relegation zone only by Reading’s points deduction, seasons rescued or condemned. QPR’s little Moroccan international is one of the few you couldn’t fault for effort and commitment, at times the criticism of him has been that he actually tries too hard and attempts to do too much by himself, but he’s also no stranger to being on the wrong side of these game-swinging moments. At the other end of this ground a couple of months back he had a chance from the penalty spot to level a game against Sunderland which subsequently blew out to a 3-0 loss after his weak kick was easily saved. Goals change games, who knows how things might have been different if that had gone in, for Chair, for the team, for Neil Critchley, for the season.
Or, so the footballing cliché goes anyway. I said that night, and I’m tempted to repeat it again now, that I’m not convinced how much difference it would have made at all.
We know this beleaguered team of ours are fragile, mentally and physically, and going 1-0 up in games is vital to any remote prospect they have of winning because if they go behind they immediately melt like a snowball passing through the seventh level of hell. This team has scored one goal or fewer in 23 of its last 24 games and so conceding first means a point is the best you can hope for, and in reality such is the lack of character and spine sides like Birmingham scoring after two minutes at Loftus Road essentially end the match before it’s even really begun. I mean, never mind goals, last week’s three shots on target in a 1-0 loss at Wigan was something of a treat — Rangers had managed two shots on target or fewer in 12 of their previous 15 games, and would finish this latest debacle with just the one. The two matches they have won in the last 25, including the corresponding fixture with Preston, have both been 1-0, accomplished by taking the lead and then spending much of the rest of the game riding luck and clinging on for grim death. Two other near misses, against Sheff Utd and Swansea, were that without the happy ending.
So, yes, Chair’s miss was significant. And yet, as against Sunderland, as against basically everybody we play, Rangers were so far off their opponent, so miles and miles short in effort and commitment, so incredibly inept at the basics of the sport, so devoid of plan or shape, that I’m not that sure it mattered much at all. You cannot win games of football at the professional level playing like this, set up like this… behaving like this frankly. It once again looked like a token effort from a non-league team miles out of its depth in a cup tie. You couldn’t really look at any aspect of the performance, of anybody’s involvement in it from the QPR point of view, and find a positive anywhere. Preston, in pretty decent form but not exactly tearing up many trees in tenth prior to kick off, won deservedly, comfortably, easily, in something crunching between second and third gear. Perhaps Roger’s Profanisaurus could help me with something more colourful for ‘pathetic’.
Let’s go through the big stuff — not so much shooting fish in a barrel as shooting a hammerhead shark in a mop bucket, so glaringly obvious were the problems and deficiencies, and so often were they exploited. The visitors, who have scored just 37 goals this season which is the lowest total outside the bottom four (or at least it was, they’ve gone past us now, natch), won the game with two quickfire goals from Everton loanee Tom Cannon.
The first because — running theme — we weren’t tight enough to opposition players from their throw in, so Daniel Johnson was able to receive unmarked, give it back to Robbie Brady unchallenged, he was able to pick his spot for a cross around Ethan Laird who, for some reason, was ten yards back from his man, and then Cannon set off earlier, ran quicker and wanted to meet the ball with his head more than Jimmy Dunne did.
The second because — running theme — we are thick as pig shit. Ilias Chair gives the ball away in the centre circle, it breaks loose towards Troy Parrott, Balgoun and Dunne rush towards him when it only needs one of them, both then miss the ball entirely (give me strength), and the now unmarked Cannon, who’s run off the back of Dickie and Johansen without either of them noticing, gets a free ride all the way through to Seny Dieng. Needless to say his finish was a good deal better than Chair’s in the same situation. Six goals in eight for the Everton youngster now — Preston get him on loan to bolster their attack this season, Cameron Archer on loan to bolster their attack this season, and we get Topknot Tyler.
It was miraculous North End didn’t score more than this. Seven minutes, Dieng has to improvise a save right under the bar after a mishit cross threatened to sail all the way into the Loft End goal. Just getting to seven felt like something of an achievement having conceded after one, two and five minutes in the last three games. By the twelfth minute Sam Field’s poor giveaway had the visitors in again, and Dickie had to block to stop Cannon scoring at that point. It was frightening just how easy we were to get in on in situations like that — turnover of possession, one or two passes later, one smash down the field, Rangers absolutely screwed. There was zero midfield to speak of, whatsoever. Some old codger in a Stefan Johansen shirt turned up for his weekly Friday walking football league at the Play Football pitches on South Africa Road, got waved in through the wrong door, and ended up nominally doing 74 minutes.
Browne hit the post. The now traditional totally free header from an opposition corner was squandered from eight yards by Jordan Storey who let Dieng make a save when he should have been completely out of the picture. Leon Balogun, at one point, decided to head off on a personal voyage of discovery with the ball at his feet as last man and, when that predictably ended up with a fire at the old folk’s home, a younger, quicker, more talented lad in Troy Parrott ran off with the ball and it was time for yet another clear streak through on the QPR goal which somehow Rangers managed to rally and force behind. Praise the fucking lord that one didn’t go in or I presume we’d all have been summoned back for more tea at the training ground so Balogun could explain that while his actions may have looked fucking ludicrously stupid at first glance, in actual fact there was very sound logic to them. Limping again by the end, of course, so that might be that.
Jimmy Dunne hit the deck at the start of the second half after catching one square in the gentleman’s area. He wasn’t the only one suffering with ball ache here.
Chair and Willock’s two v two break at the start of the second half might have yielded more had the winger not been so determined to get the ball back onto his right foot, burning away valuable time, losing the moment. Their clever corner, soon after, worked Willock into the penalty area all by himself, but he got caught between the idea for a cross and a shot and did neither — Lyndon Dykes out of reach at the far post.
The Preston first, however, had been coming. It would have been scored minutes earlier but for Sam Field’s brave block. It could have been scored off a prior corner as Dieng spilled a routine ball behind. And it was scored off a routine throw in and cross that QPR couldn’t defend. Once again, as opposition momentum builds, as pressure is exerted, our game smarts simply do not exist. Nobody going down injured, just to disrupt the play. No substitution, to stem the tide or plug a leak. Nobody rattling an opponent, just to get the crowd back into the game and let them know it’s not that easy, we’re not that soft, and you can’t have it your own way — not a single booking here, in a two nil home defeat. No tactical fouls, no free kicks, no dark arts, no break, no brains. Just Preston pressure, building and building, unchecked, and soon the inevitable, defensively horrific, opening goal. You can genuinely fish more intelligent life forms than this out of your bathroom plughole.
There had been an uneasy peace to the point of two nil. The QPR supporters have been implored, for several weeks by Gareth Ainsworth, for a thick 60 podcasted minutes by Ian Holloway, and now again at half time by legendary former player and manager Gerry Francis, to stay behind this team. So painfully fragile is their mood that all we’ve really got now by way of tactics is begging the crowd to try and sing them to victory. But some long overdue cracks had started to appear at full time at Wigan a week ago after two wins in half a season, and when your on-field reunion of the 1992/93 Premier League team includes its physio, a relative of one of the coaches, a reserve player who made six appearances in as many years, but not the talismanic top scorer of the side for fear of the reaction he will get given his current role at the club, it’s clear you’re sitting in a tinderbox dreading an ignition source.
The manner of Cannon’s second goal was the spark. The players were forced to stand and wait to kick off by their opponent, and they were roundly booed and told "you’re not fit to wear the hoops” by a sizeable chunk of the home crowd for the first time in many a year. In the face of this fire, they wilted entirely. QPR’s attempts to get back into the game simply did not exist — Freddie Woodman the latest visiting goalkeeper who needn’t have bothered changing for work. Lyndon Dykes was afforded applause when replaced with ten minutes to go by the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man, but Stefan Johansen copped it when replaced by Luke Amos, and when Buster Merryfield came on for Ethan Laird it divided the ground square in two and set QPR fan against QPR fan in the stand. Incidentally, this week’s Ethan Laird sit down sweepstake winning time was 67 minutes. Needless to say none of the four substitutions made a scrap of difference. I’ll be honest, I’m quite surprised to sit here and discover Amos, Lowe and Martin came on at all, because I don’t remember seeing them, and I was one of those who stayed to the end. Lowe’s interest and excitement in playing for this team feels similar to mine in the new season of Made in Chelsea.
It's really best for all concerned that Tom Cannon’s attempt to chip Seny Dieng for his hat trick goal on 71 minutes wasn’t barwide. Such was the manner of the chance — one long punt out of the Preston penalty area, Dunne comes to meet the ball by the dug out and runs past the thing, Cannon now with a clear run at the goal because that’s all it takes to get in on us these days, Leon Balogun coming across to mop up and falling straight on his arse (two sugars in mine Leon) — I genuinely think it might have started a riot if he’d scored it.
It’s tempting to sit here - after yet another home game in which every first contact, every second ball, every 50-50 challenge — and do all that tubthumping stuff about passion and effort and commitment and running about a bit, which this team lacks entirely. But you don’t solve the problems with this team by trying harder, and it is a worry when you hear Gareth intimating, like Ian Holloway before him, that everything can be solved through effort and application. It would certainly help, but there’s nothing about this team’s tactics or set up that suggests to me it’s going to win another game this season even if it does double its effort level.
There’s no pattern to it, no shape, no real attacking plan at all other than get the ball up the field as quickly and directly as you can. The amount of times we just whack the ball into the channel, whether there’s somebody there or not, frequently in fact just sending it flying off into the stand, is mesmerising in its own way. When the long balls are actually aimed at a live human from the team sheet, it’s frequently one surrounded by seven opponents with no runner beyond, nobody dropping off, nobody really even in the vague vicinity looking for a knockdown or second ball. Frighteningly easy to play against. So much of what we do I watch it and then think ‘ok, now what?’ Frequently the absolute best case scenario, barring some fucking Trevor Sinclair-style miracle bicycle kick from 30 yards out, is we win the header and flick the ball on down the field a little bit further away from our goal than it was before. Again, one chance in the game, one shot on target all afternoon, as the home team. I don’t really see a logical process of how, for instance, we intend to get Chair and Willock on the ball in decent areas, and once they are there what they’re to do with it next. It’s just, they’re good players, they’ll stand up there, we’ll put the ball in their half, maybe something will happen by accident, or coincidence, or law of averages. Look how bleak some of the numbers are again. Pass completion, bar Chair and Willock, every player in the team completed at 60-something percent or less. Paal 54%, Field 55%, Dykes 46%, Dieng 38% (!!) — basically the entire team giving the ball away every other time they have it.
Every manager we’ve had here recently has quickly come to the realisation that our centre backs are so ropey and slow that you have to protect them, by playing a back three (which we are at least now doing) and stationing somebody in front of them — Grant Hall, Dom Ball, Geoff Cameron. We’re just letting them be exposed, over and over again, often by one pass, or one lump forward. Preston’s second and what should have been their third goal was just one straight ball down the middle of the pitch, panicking our three central defenders into a collective bed shitting the moment it was played. Every opposition corner feels like a goal — Storey should certainly have made it so in the first half.
I can’t remember Laird or Paal crossing the halfway line with, or receiving, possession — wing backs such a huge part of modern attacks, and a key component of our early season goodness, and here’s Paal touching the ball less than anybody else, just 21 times.
And, at the risk of repeating myself, you don’t win many games of football while losing midfield. We didn’t so much lose it here, as surrender it. Watching Sam Field and the artist formerly known as Stefan Johansen go in as a two against a three of Daniel Johnson, Alan Browne (later Josh Onomah) and the always superb Ben Whiteman went beyond chastening into really quite embarrassing. A carve up wholly predictable from the moment the team sheets went in. Like sending a couple of Christians in with a bottle of insect repellent to fight three lions.
There was certainly a good deal of anger around from the moment the second goal went in. Me, I was angry weeks ago. I’m into acceptance now. For me this was nothing we haven’t seen before from this team, for weeks and weeks and months on end, and came as no surprise at all as my prediction in the match preview would attest to. This team is not good enough, it’s not committed enough, it’s not intelligent enough, it’s not confident enough and it is neglectful of the very basics of the sport. It’s also not currently set up in a way that can mitigate any of that — packing the midfield, for instance, to try and stem the unchecked flow of possession and opposition right down the middle of the pitch and straight in on Tilly, Tom and Tiny back there at will. In fact its set up, attitude to possession, systems for defending corners, even marking from simple throw ins, exacerbates and exposes all of this rather than minimises and covers it up.
It was… sad. Sad to see this team like this, these players like this. Sad to see and hear Gareth Ainsworth already reduced to a husk, just as we always feared we might do to him — ten years at Wycombe given up for this, poor bastard. Sad to see these supporters subjected to this again. Sad to see the club in this state again. Sad to see and hear and feel the ground like this once more. Sad that it’s only a Reading points deduction keeping us above water now, and sad that we all know that’s not going to be enough. Seeing the class of 1993 at half time, with their striker unable to join them for fear of being hounded from the field, actually added to the bleakness rather than reduce it. If I hadn’t seen such riches, and all that.
Gerry Francis tried to finish on a note of optimism, saying we’d hopefully soon be roaring back to the level "where Fulham and Brentford are”. We used to play those two in pre-season friendlies when he was the manager. Now even catching up with them feels less aspiration, more absolute pipe dream.
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QPR: Dieng 5; Laird 3 (Adomah 67, 3), Dickie 3, Balogun 2, Dunne 2, Paal 3 (Lowe 67, 3); Johansen 2 (Amos 74, 3), Field 3; Chair 3, Willock 3, Dykes 4 (Martin 80, -)
Subs not used: Archer, Dozzell, somebody called Richards it says here
PNE: Woodman N/A, Storey 6, Lindsay 6, Hughes 6; Potts 6, Browne 7 (Onomah 45+2, 7), Johnson 7 (Ledson 88, -), Whiteman 8, Brady 7 (Fernandez 80, -); Cannon 8, Parrott 6 (Woodburn 80, -)
Subs not used: Diaby, Cornell, Slater
Goals: Cannon 59 (assisted Brady), 63 (assisted Onomah)
QPR Star Man — Terry Fenwick
Referee — Geoff Eltringham (Durham) 7 Crowd got a bit aggy with him at times, so you guys will probably disagree with me, but I’d always much rather games were refereed like this. Even got a yellow card out for a time wasting goalkeeper early enough in the game for it to make some difference which I love — though why on earth Woodman felt the need to do that I’ve no idea, wouldn’t have scored if we were still there now.
Attendance 14,620 (700 PNE approximately) Now in open revolt and only likely to turn more toxic from here barring some miraculous transformation on the pitch. Again, something really quite profoundly miserable about the whole experience. I genuinely, foolishly, thought we’d never have to suffer the likes of this again.
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