For the second season running QPR had to settle for a point after huffing and puffing for the best part of an hour at Loftus Road against a Plymouth side with a man sent off.
There’s nothing quite so illogical as football’s spooky propensity to repeat itself.
In December 1987, Nigel Clough scored a four-minute hat trick against Queens Park Rangers for Nottingham Forest at The City Ground. Why should that matter to Gerry Francis’ QPR when they go to that same ground in 1994, and Bradley Allen gets "an important goal for his manager”? Why should it matter to Ian Holloway’s QPR in 2004? Or Neil Warnock’s QPR in 2010? It doesn’t, or at least it shouldn’t. It’s completely irrelevant. Useful fodder for sad bastards like me trying to write 48 match previews a season. And yet, 38 times we’ve traipsed up to that corner of the Midlands and only once we’ve won – that at the 35th attempt. ‘Ooooh we never win there’, mumble the faithful, gathering at St Pancras station regardless. "QPR have never won at Nottingham Forest and so a draw there is always a good result,” so starts the intro (the intro) to the club’s official 1990/91 season review VHS.
With the mental side of professional sport sometimes half the battle, perhaps these things become self-fulfilling. The players themselves find out we’ve never won at Nottingham Forest, and so start to believe in witches and fairytales as bizarre moments and refereeing decisions go against them there. Just wasn’t meant to be. Written in the stars. Nothing we can do about it.
It works the other way as well. QPR win at The Cardiff City Stadium more than Cardiff City do. Even Gareth Ainsworth’s waifs and strays got a victory there last August. There should be no rhyme or reason behind the R’s delightful propensity to score last minute winners against Derby, and yet there they go, into the Rams' net, with hilarious regularity. Luke Amos. Andre Gray. Zamoraaaaaaaaaaaaaa.
Last December, at Loftus Road, confidence and optimism about a brave new era was coursing through QPR. Their new manager, shape and system had quickly stuck three wins in three games on the board to blow away the stench of what went before. Next bout, Plymouth Argyle, yet to win away and. In theory at least a great chance for three points.
QPR favourites for the victory, always a dangerous thing. Play did not pan out as anticipated. Marti Cifuentes, very much in the fucking around and finding out stage of his reign, sprung a surprise with an experimental line up that included Charlie Kelman in attack from the start (it’s a bold strategy Cotton…) The Greens rather ran the show. Finn Azaz and Luke Cundle supporting Morgan Whittaker and Ryan Hardie. Just lovely, as Barry Davies might have said. That was until Dan Scarr went in at the knee on Ilias Chair (not hard when the knee’s only ten inches off the ground I suppose) and was sent from the field. Now with only ten men, the task and vibe were entirely transformed for the newly promoted visitors – Azaz being subbed after 28 minutes tells you everything you needed to know about what was to follow. QPR spent an hour crossing and heading, forcing free kicks and corners, huffing and puffing, and by full time the Pilgrims’ palace remained firmly intact. Nil nil.
Which brings us to yesterday, back at Loftus Road, against Plymouth once more.
So much has changed.
QPR have traded 13 players in and 14 out (including ten of the starters and subs from that night) as they assemble a robot army of analytics picks. Plymouth lost inspirational Stephen Schumacher, botched his replacement with Ian Foster, survived by the skin of their teeth under Monty Python’s Ministry of Silly Names graduates Neil Dewsnip and Kevin ‘Evil’ Nancekivell, and have now stuck all their chips on Red32 with Wayne Rooney. Wazza arriving in rain-sodden W12 dressed as a divorced trawlerman. SHE WON’T LET ME SEE THE WEE-UNS.
QPR favourites for the victory, always a dangerous thing. Initially, at least, they justified the tag. Karamoko Dembele, a silky beauty who has you screaming ‘TAKE MY MONEY’, turning out of trouble and into space through midfield, working the ball wide to Koki Saito on full debut, and his cross might well have been headed in by Michy Frey after a minute had debutant Nicolas Madsen not jumped in first and inadvertently diverted the ball away from a better option. No worries, Dembele was on the ball again in seconds, carving the visitors apart, sliding one through for Paul Smyth. We do criticise his finishing and final ball, we will be criticising his finishing and final ball again today, but I thought he was unlucky here one on one – a tremendous save by Conor Hazard. No worries, Dembele was on the ball again in seconds, whipping a corner in at the near post for Frey to head in the opener. Given how QPR scored at Bramall Lane last week it didn’t say a lot for Rooney’s homework. I hear you’re a set piece team now, father.
Not often you can say a goal scored after three minutes had been coming. An electric start.
And, yet, so much has stayed the same.
Plymouth, as here last year, were surprisingly good. An absolute world away from the complete shambles I sat through on day one up at Hillsborough - a 4-0 defeat that had Sheff Wed apparently automatically promoted straight away and Rooney dead in the water before he’d even got going. With Morgan Whittaker tight to the right touchline, and impressive Toulouse loanee Ibrahim Cissoko doing the same down the left, they looked like Roberto Martinez’s original Swansea side – stretching the pitch and opposition widthways, with the out-ball a latitudinal one across the park rather than the traditional Championship longitude knock straight behind the full back to turn him around. Ryan Hardie’s movement was good up front, Darko Gyabi looked the part in midfield. I have to be honest; I’d have quite enjoyed watching them if they weren’t playing against us. The equaliser they scored was a freak in several regards – Sam Field’s loose touch in midfield unlike him, Morgan Whittaker’s vicious 30 yarder in return flashing past Paul Nardi like a shell and completely unstoppable – but QPR had gone all passive instead of putting their foot on the throat of a vulnerable opponent. That too felt to me like it had been coming.
As had Adam Forshaw’s red card. Already booked for repeatedly pulling the irrepressible Dembele back multiple times in the same move – referee Gavin Ward waved a QPR advantage as Plymouth came away with the football – he then ridiculously clattered straight through the back of Jimmy Dunne within 60 seconds of Whittaker’s goal and was, wholly justifiably, sent off. We’re going to talk quite a bit about the referee, and whether he’s good enough for the Championship, but he got this decision exactly right, and Forshaw has no business playing central midfield at this level behaving and playing like this. One of the fucking stupidest things I’ve seen on this ground which, as we well know, is The Pantheon of fucking stupid things.
Here QPR were again, then. At home to Plymouth. Drawing a game they’re supposed to be winning. Now with an hour against ten men. Scarr was sent off after 25 minutes, Forshaw after 29. Could the R’s, this time, make numerical advantage count and win the game? Spoiler alert, no they couldn’t. Now just one win in 14 tries against Plymouth. Nothing quite so illogical as football’s spooky propensity to repeat itself.
You certainly couldn’t fault anybody’s effort in trying to do so.
Frey, who I’m more encouraged by in these early games than I was at the back end of last season, started flicking and tricking like drunk dad at a wedding. Whoooooaaaa, drag back - pulled a rabbit out of a hutch. Just like that. An accidental opening worked by this nonsense saw Dembele strike the top of the bar.
A Sam Field right footer from 20 yards. At this time of year? At this time of day? In this part of the country? Localized entirely within the School End penalty box? Did it score? No.
Field would hit the base of the post via the goalkeeper’s glove with a header early in the second half. Hazard, having a Danny Coyne of a day, turned aside a trademarked hooked volley by Steve Cook, and another Field header as Rangers worked the rebound back into traffic. Nice to see him in the box and threatening.
Zan Celar, on at half time, brought the ball down with back to goal on three occasions, spun on each of them, and fired over. The third one, in particular, was a bad miss. But at least he was involved, relative to his West Brom no show, and a late glancing header was in all day but for a late nick which took it behind for a corner. Jimmy Dunne headed a Kenneth Paal cross wide. Rooney responded by taking each of Plymouth’s best players in turn: Gyabi, Sissoko, Mumba. Thank goodness for that. Give it another five he might have subbed Hazard.
Rangers couldn’t have asked for a lot more from referee Gavin Ward. Often a problem child for QPR, it felt like every 50/50 decision here went the way of the hosts. Like we’d saved up our Gavin Ward chips over nearly two decades of torture at his hands and then chucked them all at trying to get a victory out of Plymouth Argyle one Saturday morning. Forshaw, as we’ve already established, is a moron. Even he almost lost his village idiot crown in stoppage time when sub Freddie Issaka cracked high and late through the shinpad of Kenneth Paal chasing a clearance towards halfway. A fuck off red card so rich and meaty that once he'd finished fucking the fuck off he should have been shown another and been required to fuck off all over again. Ward getting in between Issaka and the incensed Paal, administering the punishment quickly, was really good refereeing and probably saved QPR a red of their own. I’d have been angry too.
There was, however, more. In the first half Forshaw was rightly booked for pulling Dembele back after being skinned. Five minutes later Kenneth Paal also got rinsed by Morgan Whittaker, pulled him back deliberately, stopped the attack, professional foul, absolutely the right thing to do, take your medicine… no medicine was forthcoming. A word on the run. How can that be? It’s good for us, I’m happy, but how can that be? Two things the same, within a few minutes, with different outcomes. This is why people get annoyed.
People are going to get more annoyed still at the latest, greatest invention and innovation from refereeing HQ. Somebody, an alleged grown up, has sat down in a room this summer and actually decided that this is the protocol for this season. At every free kick and corner the game will be stopped for a minute (or more) while the referee stands with whistle to lips, peering into the penalty area, holding the taking of the set piece, holding, holding, holding… holding. Until… Into the crowd he goes. Performative horseshit. Two players picked our arbitrarily. And told…? Well, who knows what they’re told, because when the ball is delivered you are now, apparently, allowed to do whatever the hell you like, as long as the infringement is mutual. Grab his shirt with two hands, tear it from his back, throw him to the floor - as long as he’s got hold of your shirt as well, it’s fine.
Who has come up with this shit? What problem did they think they were solving? It’s going to be a farcical chaos, which is what the second half of this game descended into up to and including Jake Clarke-Salter wrenching back toilet graffiti Kornel Szucs from underneath a late Plymouth free kick which he’d given away himself, been booked for, and then got caught flat footed and wrong side under the delivery. Ward thought it was a penalty, as did I. Having lifted the whistle to give it he allowed a linesman four times the distance away to overrule him. None of you think it’s a penalty, I’ve read the message board. Under the current "interpretation of the rules” I understand why it’s not been given as a penalty. I don’t care. It’s a penalty. Clarke-Salter is wrong side, he knows it, he pulls him away from the ball. This will be the first of a catalogue of nonsense, for and against, in our games this year under this latest edict handed down by dickless wonders who seem to spend their lives working out how we can make the world’s simplest sport more complicated, more contrived, more contradictory, and more difficult to referee.
I’d almost feel sorry for Ward, forced to apply this stuff which he surely knows is such complete bollocks, but then in the 42nd minute he almost booked the wrong dreadlocked black guy for a foul on Madsen he wasn’t within 30 yards of – Gyabi and Cissoko sportingly coming together to talk him out of what would have been a very uncomfortable Monday morning email exchange between Argyle, the EFL and the PGMOL. That… shouldn’t be happening. Should it? Let’s be honest, that’s not ideal.
I was later reminded Ward can’t even tell time. Plymouth, with ten men, were obviously going to clock run the second half. And clock run they did. Players with nothing whatsoever wrong with them frequently sat down and demanded treatment. Treatment was summoned without question. Conor Hazard performatively fell out with each of his defenders in turn, conveniently always arguing with the defender furthest away from the goal kick he was meant to be taking. Substitutes walked off at a snail’s pace. I get it. We’d do the same. But you expect a referee to police this. The only person who made any attempt to do so was QPR sub Jonathan Varane. He tried to shuffle Issaka off after his brain fart and was, preposterously, booked for doing so. He’s doing your job for you, maybe you might like to jump in at some point. Any point.
Added time in the second half? Four minutes. Four minutes. It seems last year’s crackdown/clampdown/edict about getting the ball in play more and bringing an end to this division’s endemic time-wasting has now not only been abandoned but actively reversed. We’re going to encourage it. Filibuster the whole second half if you like – four minutes.
I’m not saying QPR would have scored. but this was a half where nobody would have batted an eyelid had the board gone up with 15 on it, and this is a persistent failure of Gavin Ward. Wait for it, wait for it, wait for it. Do the line, Bart. Here it comes. Yellow card for the goalkeeper for time wasting in the 94th minute. When the time has been wasted, the job has been done, the goalkeeper knows it doesn’t matter, the punishment is completely irrelevant and ineffective. Put a bullet in me. I’m done.
As for QPR, I’m Natalie Imbruglia levels of torn. You play a relegation favourite at home, they’re down to ten men for the majority of the game, you don’t win – that’s a poor result. Taking off Saito, who’d been disappointingly anonymous after last week’s fireworks, was fair enough. Adding strikers, putting Dembele and Smyth out on the wing, trying to stretch a disadvantaged side widthways, likewise. There was a point, around 52 minutes, where it just felt like we were starting to crank, with cross after cross, and corner after corner. Sadly, it soon died away. Plymouth actually looked increasingly dangerous when countering – Clarke-Salter booked for deliberately interrupting one such break. The steps we take to avoid our fate are the ones that lead us to it.
Crosses and set pieces. Crosses and set pieces. Cifuentes says we got fraught and emotional about our attacks, and he’s right. It just felt to me like we needed Dembele where he was in the first half, in the middle of the field, making things happen from ten, not crossing to strikers who can’t finish. So much of our ball in the second half ended up with Paul Smyth, who has nothing to offer but doesn’t stop offering that. I like him, you can’t not, but his execution of the final cross or shot is almost as abysmal as his diving. Hope is not a strategy.
This will, as I keep repeating in the match previews, take time.
You can see they’re so desperate to get that commanding, on-the-turn midfielder into this team that Nicolas Madsen – as tall as Rooney is wide - was thrown straight in from the start. Loved his click and collect over an opponent second half. Smooth touch of the ball. Played the game at his own pace, which could make him a bit of us or utterly infuriating. Probably both.
When you sign players of this profile, and from these places, you’re grappling with already unfavourable odds. Even when QPR were chucking money at proven players they were lucky if one of four worked out. This eclectic bunch of signings from European football’s backwaters will divide between settle quickly, settle eventually and don’t settle at all; shine quickly, shine eventually, or flop. Christian Nourry only needs one or two of them to grow into £10mish sales and he’s entirely vindicated. There will be a lot of teething between now and then, if then ever comes. There will be a lot of games like this. Look at Saito last week, look at him here. Look at Varane’s cameo v West Brom, look at his disasterclass at Sheff Utd. Michy Frey, Heidar Helguson one week, Harry and the Hendersons the next. Is Zan Celar our next Jan Mlakar, Sammy Koejoe, Adam Czerkas?
QPR had 30 shots on goal. They had ten on target (Jackett’s law, that’s usually a win). Conor Hazard had a day of days. Celar’s header, Field’s header, Cook’s shot… same performance, same team, different day, different keeper, victory.
I remember draws like this here early in Mick Beale’s reign, against crap Blackpool and Rotherham sides, before the team cut loose on an awesome winning streak. I also remember being told a home defeat to Huddersfield a couple of months later was apparently fine because we’d battered them with 36 shots (six on target), conceded flukey goals, and all would be well. A game, incidentally, where one Gavin Ward booked the goalkeeper for timewasting in… the 91st minute. The team won six of its next 48 games over a year and a half and got through four managers. It’s a miracle it wasn’t relegated.
Mark Hughes’ reign is, rightly, remembered as a total shuttle disaster. But once the opening day cataclysm at home to Swansea was out of the way we had a 0-0 here against Chelsea when we played exceptionally and Bobby Zamora missed a great chance ten minutes from time, and then went and played Gareth Bale’s Champions League Spurs side off the park at White Hart Lane but conceded two daft goals in a minute to lose 2-1. Sliding doors.
This is how we football fans are. Lucky boxer shorts, lucky socks, same seat in the pub. Because there’s nothing quite so illogical as football’s spooky propensity to repeat itself. We now just wait and see which fork in the road this particular iteration takes.
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QPR: Nardi 6; Dunne 7, Cook 6, Clarke-Salter 6, Paal 6; Field 6, Madsen 6 (Varane 81, -); Smyth 6, Dembele 7 (Lloyd 90+2, -), Saito 5 (Celar 46, 5); Frey 7 (Kolli 80, -)
Subs not used: Santos, Dixon-Bonner, Morrison, Tala, Walsh
Goals: Frey 3 (assisted Dembele)
Yellow Cards: Clarke-Salter 85 (foul), Varane 90+2 (staging an intervention)
Plymouth: Hazard 8; Edwards 7, Gibson 6, Galloway 7 (Ogbeta 87, -), Mumba 6 (Szucs 78, 6); Randell 6, Forshaw 3; Whittaker 7, Gyabi 7 (Houghton 62, 5), Sissoko 7 (Issaka 63, 4); Hardie 6 (Obafemi 63, 4)
Subs not used: Baker, Bundu, Pleguezuelo, Wright
Goals: Whittaker 28 (unassisted)
Red Cards: Forshaw 29 (two yellows), Issaka 90+2 (being a knob)
Yellow Cards: Forshaw 20 (foul), Forshaw 29 (foul), Gyabi 42 (foul), Randell 54 (dissent), Hazard 90+4 (time wasting – when they strap me to the chair please let them know the murders were just)
QPR Star Man – Karamoko Dembele 7
Karamoko Dembélé created 9 chances against Plymouth, the most by a QPR player in a league game since Luke Freeman vs Brentford in April 2017 (also 9).
🔵#QPR⚪️ pic.twitter.com/5iIkneI3km— Jack Supple (@JTSupple) August 25, 2024
Referee – Gavin Ward (Surrey) 5 There is no debate about the red cards. Plymouth brought them on themselves. You can make a case one way or another for the Clarke-Salter penalty appeal, and Ward is being asked to apply an interpretation to that rule which I personally think is batshit crazy and will become chaotic over the next few weeks before they inevitably row back as they do on every summer edict and clampdown they come up with on the backseat of their clown car. But how many games now do we leave talking about Gavin Ward when Gavin Ward has been the referee? He’s got no feel for the sport he’s officiating. He doesn’t know when to get involved, and when to leave it alone. He’s frantically waving advantage through Forshaw’s first foul on Dembele while Plymouth are bringing the ball away in the other direction. It was mostly to our benefit this time, but this guy shouldn’t be refereeing at this level. The none booking of Paal straight after he’d booked Forshaw for exactly the same thing, the mixing up of Gyabi and Cissoko, the farcical time keeping in the second half… he’s not good enough for this level. I’m sorry, I’m trying not to be an arsehole about it, but he’s not. I’m not going to pretend it’s easy, or that I could do it, but I can at least tell time. I know when the big hand goes past the three and stuff like that. Four minutes on that second half was incredible. I thought eight would have been skinny. Four.
Attendance 15,285 (1,750 Plymouth) Who are these 12.30 kick offs for? Really, who’s enjoying these? Who’s watching these games? Three sides of the ground packed, big away following, and an atmosphere like a morgue. A plague upon everybody making decisions about our sport at the moment.
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