QPR finally got their first win in 14 attempts, and Zan Celar his first goals for the club in his 20th appearance, as the R’s won 2-0 at Cardiff on Wednesday night.
Few groups of football supporters in this country have been put through it by their clubs as much as the hardy faithful followers of Queens Park Rangers in recent times.
Yes, yes, of course, Bury. Darlington. Scunthorpe. Bradford, Blackpool and Oldham. Clubs ground into the dust, driven down through multiple divisions, often deliberately, by malignant ownership. Premier League and Championship clubs turned to non-league nobodies. The very existence of some toyed with, and eventually chanced an unpaid tax bill or asset strip too far.
To pretend we’ve had it as bad as, say, Southend United is "Everton are the worst run club in the country” levels of higher league hubris. QPR are secure in a fantastic, old stadium they own. They have a new training ground. They’ve been reasonably stable in the second tier for a decade. Bored, maybe, but far from a crisis club.
From a pure results point of view, however, the numbers are there for all to behold and those who travel home and away to weep over. Over the last ten years only Rotherham (202) and Morecambe (198) have lost more games than QPR. Over the same period only Morecambe (710), Crawley Town (666) and Reading (646) have conceded more goals than QPR (644). Only Morecambe again (-176), Huddersfield (-162), Crawley (-129), Birmingham (-123) and Rotherham again (-122) have a worse goal difference over this time than QPR (-119).
Reaction to this sort of prolonged purgatory is usually forthright. Morecambe fans are marching through the streets of their town demanding the head of owner Jason Whittingham (no relation). Reading’s supporters are in outright revolt at the apparent deliberate destruction of their club by its Chinese owner. Rotherham’s chairman says this week he’s considering leaving the club amidst rising protest and criticism. And at QPR… patience. A remarkable level of tolerance.
There’s acceptance of the club’s place in the modern monied sporting landscape. There’s understanding of the restrictions we face. There’s more knowledge of FFP rules among season ticket holders here than the rest of the league’s supporters combined. It’s generally accepted that, while he doesn’t appear to have much clue what he’s doing, the owner is still writing important cheques to keep the club solvent each month and has invested in infrastructure with a new training ground. And, so, nobody says a thing. Week after week. The people running the club presently have no idea how lucky they are. Fanbases have razed the place to the ground for less – hell, this fanbase has razed this place to the ground for less.
You could call it pragmatism and realism, point to much bigger clubs than ours that have gone to the division below and beyond for ignoring financial realities. You could say it’s defeatist, fatalistic, cynical, and talk about all the Brentford, Brighton and Bournemouth examples who have soared past us and become some of the sport’s high rollers while working with all the same issues we have. Whatever it is, this is a club that used to run pitch invasions to protest profitable player sales while sitting eighth in the Premier League, where you can now go 13 games without a win, set a club record for home games without victory at the start of a season, and the fans sell out games regardless and sing the manager’s name in support. Marti Cifuentes lapped the pitch at the end of the latest failure in W12 at the weekend to offer his personal thanks, and seemed moved almost to tears in his subsequent media interviews. He says he knows of no other club where a manager could go on a run of results like this and receive a reaction like that.
There was, however, a moment in that Stoke match at the weekend where the good people of Shepherd’s Bush started to suggest that even they, now, might be coming close to the end of their tether. Having paid three years’ worth of season ticket money to see just 15 wins in 67 attempts on their own ground, the spectacle of Zan Celar burying his first half penalty a foot wide of the post after the goalkeeper had dived the other way, while another penalty taker with an exemplary record stood by hands on hips, was too much for some to bear. A striker who cannot strike, bought for substantial money, off a laptop programme, mooching about. Not even running. The Slovenian was booed from the field when he was substituted in the second half. A minority, maybe, but audible. Relative to what has gone before, a veritable uprising.
I’d guess if you surveyed the people who did that as to why, there’d be general acceptance that it isn’t really his fault. That it was a spontaneous reaction born more of frustration, anger and exasperation. That it was, along with the chanting of Marti Cifuentes’ name, an indication to others at the club we hold them responsible for this mess, not the foot soldiers trying to deal with the consequences of it game by game. None of this will have helped the disconsolate Celar. Booed more for what he represents than what he is, more for the failings of others than his own, but booed all the same. He headed to the dugout and attempted to violently dismantle it. A new club in a new league in a new city in a new country. A new language. Pressure to perform. No goals in 19 appearances. A litany of missed chances. A penalty wide of the post. And now, as your manager decides the quest for desperately needed winning goal must go on without you, his only fit and available striker, heckled by the most patient supporters in football. A brutal moment, on a human level.
On Wednesday night in Cardiff a, frankly ridiculous, 661 headcases decided to take another swing at it. QPR’s fourteenth attempt to win their second game of the season, the first waaaay back in August. Zan Celar, for want of literally any other option at all, was also sent out to try again, again.
Initially it was a spectacle that had you reaching for that trite definition of insanity. In the cold and the dark, surrounded by the vast and silent empty spaces of Cardiff’s soulless home, more empty seats than warm bodies, two of the Championship’s bottom four sides set about grinding through a game of biblically low quality. Paul Smyth almost scored straight from the kick off but was denied by a smart save by home keeper Jak Alnwick [sp]. Cardiff responded with a corner which should surely have been converted at point blank range by Big Dick Ng only for Paul Nardi to produce an astonishing block with his face.
That was it. That was it for what felt like hours. I made a note on 21 minutes about Cardiff leaving two attackers up at our corners, forcing us to bring three players back to mark them, and wondered whether that might be something we’d like to think about. Already reduced to thinking about where today’s paragraphs would come from. Solar powered street lighting? If I got lost in the jungle could I survive by eating my own shoes? What is Harrison Ashby trying to achieve with that outside of the foot thing he does, ALL THE LIVE LONG DAY?
How we all laughed and chuckled away to each other five before half time when Paul Smyth, who famously does not have a long throw, trundled across to the right to launch a long throw. Back those tiny arms go, lifting a giant football over and behind his head like Dennis Waterman’s character in Little Britain. And then with a great heave forward it comes, usually straight to the nearest opponent, like a schoolboy who pulled a place in World’s Strongest Man out of a raffle and is now faced with the boulder challenge. Ho ho ho, we’re fucking shit, etc etc. At least Jimmy Dunne won the first header this time, I suppose.
And then Zan Celar, back to goal, shifted the ball out of his feet with his first touch, and deposited it plum into the top corner with his second.
There are moments in time, sport, life, where the brain blue screens for a second, failing to compute the information it’s been fed by the eyes because it is so out of the ordinary. Like when you walk onto a broken escalator. Or you witness a car accident. Or Dom Ball scores from 35 yards out with his left foot. Also against Cardiff, funnily enough – Rangers had lost two of the last nine meetings and were unbeaten in four on this ground.
Zan Celar, back to goal, shifting the ball out of his feet with his first touch, and depositing it plum into the top corner with his second, is one of those moments. The fabric of reality is torn once more, and through a vortex that once gave us Patrick Agyemang scoring eight goals in six games, slips another minor sporting miracle you had to see to believe, and even if you had seen it you spent half time asking for second opinions. An outstanding goal. The away end had to pick collective jaws off the floor before launching into a rendition of "we were there when Celar scored”. Go get the t-shirt printing press.
QPR had QPR’d somebody else. The John Jensen treatment had been metered out, rather than received.
There was, incredibly, more. More.
Rangers are the Championship’s lowest scorers. They’ve scored one goal or fewer in each of their last 13 games, haven’t scored two goals in a game since August, only scored two goals in a game twice, and haven’t scored more than two in a game since last season. If they were to win in South Wales on what is a very happy hunting ground for them, it was always likely to be 1-0 and hang on in there. Having led for only 5.6% of their gametime this season, another divisional low, it wasn’t something they were well practised in. So commenced a torturous second half of time wasting, gamesmanship and a block so deep and low they had to take a canary down there with them to make sure they wouldn’t suffocate.
Paul Nardi was outstanding. Outstanding. His footwork is alive and on point, allowing him to make difficult saves look relatively simple. A back post stop from a free Callum Robinson header was terrific, but it was done from a standing start after tracking all the way across his goal alertly, when I think most keepers would have been having to dive for that – and probably not got there. Saves of shots from range, repeatedly, from giant Welsh boy Ruben Colwill, repeatedly, and from whatever else Cardiff could throw at him. I could have done without him letting Calum Chambers’ header bounce towards the goal before claiming it – it forced an emergency readjustment and gather right under the crossbar which caused the whole world to fall out of my arse – but this was an exemplary goalkeeping display from QPR’s clear and distant player of the year so far.
Things would have been so much more comfortable had Alnwick not made his best save of the night to keep out a well-executed Paul Smyth half volley for two nil. Without that second, the script seemed written for Chris Willock. A talented player who, sadly, spent the majority of his time at QPR battling both injury and "advice” that really he should be earning tens of thousands of pounds more somewhere else. When Hull City were so desperate for promotion last January they were willing to pay for a Fabio Carvalho to add to the Jaden Philogene, Jean Seri and Ozan Tufan luxuries they already had, Willock was also on their radar. The meeting didn’t survive the opening offer. And so now here he is, patently unfit, completely disinterested, parked on the bench for the worst team QPR have played this season, trundling out into a half empty stadium in the depths of winter to go through the motions of pretending he’s not going to cut inside and shoot from 30 yards, when he is in fact going to cut inside and shoot from 30 yards before. Cheers, dad.
Sam Field has seen that film before. Seen that film before and not rated it at all. In an evening of hard slog through the middle of midfield in which Jonathan Varane not only impressed, but also showed previously unseen willingness to press forward with the ball, Field was also still ready to do hard yards late in the day.
When Willock stepped in for that jump shot he loves so much, Field was there waiting and took the ball from him. Harrison Ashby used the thick of his foot, rather than the outside, to free a ball over the top of a stranded defence. And in an away end that had barely been able to look for the last half an hour, now a new kind of terror altogether. The fear of achievement, the fear of what if, the fear of just imagine. Imagine if we won. Think of the celebrations. Think of the relief. The joy. The happiness. It’s been so, so long. Think of that first beer. Think of that twelfth beer. Think how long we’re going to make that poor little bastard tend bar at the Premier Inn. And all the stands between us, and it, now, is Jak Alnwick [sp]. Oh, and the fact it’s Zan Celar, through on goal, with nobody around him, and time to think. Time to think about all that had gone before. Time to think about all those misses. What is your greatest fear? A baseball being hit in my general direction. Hatty, grab a bat you're hitting for Burnsy.
…
I was not expecting Celar to chip the goalkeeper. This a player apparently so bereft of belief and esteem that even a penalty kick when the keeper has dived out of the way is beyond him. Now here he is chipping one who’s stayed in his path. Bold strategy Cotton, we’ll see how that works out for him. Over the goalkeeper it goes. Off the turf it skips. A beautiful finish, exquisitely executed. Who is this guy? Where did he come from? Frankly, who cares? It’s rolling towards us, high behind that part of the goal, gawping down with wide eyes and open mouths. I know it nestled in the net. It said in the paper this morning. "Willock, what’s the score?” rang out across the city, loud and vitriolic. Crossing the line was enough for me. I didn’t need to wait for the rest. And neither did the away end, which collectively dissolved.
Marti Cifuentes once again used his post-match to fire barbed warnings upstairs about the shortcomings of the set up he’s working in. This is just one win. The team is still separated from the bottom of the table only by Portsmouth postponements.
There were positives here: for the second time, after Sunderland at home, I started to see a bit of what QPR Twitter rave about in Varane; Liam Morisson was again positive and front foot at centre half, though worryingly couldn’t last the 90 heightening concerns we’ve covered one fragile centre back with another; Dunne and Cook toiled and tackled alongside him, leading the rear-guard; Koki Saito was love in a hopeless place, a rare shining beacon of quality in Championship match of dire standard.
Cardiff, though, were appallingly bad. If they’re not firmly ensconced in relegation trouble come May, I cannot wait to see the standard of the teams that are. And QPR were able to beat them only by packing ten men around their own penalty area for a whole half, shithousing every opportunity they had, praying, and relying on the goalkeeper to bail them out as they allowed shots and crosses to come into their box time and time again. We brought on Kenneth Paal to try and stem that, and somehow got worse - Paal dangling a foot in and letting the man walk round him over and over.
It certainly wasn’t anything to get carried away by. We will not get very far playing like this. At best a fragile start to hopefully a recovery, more likely a brief respite from the beatings.
For now, it’s not the night or the time for that. It’s about the team pushing Zan Celar forward to the front of the group in front of the away end to absorb the applause and adulation from the same people who, just a game ago, had appeared out of patience and tolerance for any more of him/this. They chanted "Celar again”, at first ironically, and then with genuine feeling. The relief on his face, like a weight had been lifted from his shoulders. Again, on a pure human level, from one extreme to the other for him. And those who travelled and sang joyfully long into the night. A joy they’d long forgotten and feared never feeling again. Reconciliation between fans and player. Redemption arcs be arcing.
If a week’s a long time in politics, four days in football is an eternity.
Links >>> Ratings and Reports >>> Message Board Match Thread
Cardiff: Alnwick 5; Ng 4, Goutas 5 (Meite 82, -), Chambers 5, Bagan 4; Robertson 4, Ralls 4 (Turnbull 76, 4); Tanner 4 (Willock 62, 4), Colwill 5, O’Dowda 4; Robinson 4
Subs not used: Daland, Fish, Horvath, Reindorf, Rinomhota, Siopis
QPR: Nardi 8; Dunne 6, Cook 6, Morrison 6 (Fox 81, -), Ashby 5; Varane 6, Field 6; Smyth 5 (Paal 67, 4), Madsen 5 (Andersen 81, -), Saito 7 (Morgan 90+5, -); Celar 7 (Kolli 90+5, -)
Subs Not Used: Santos, Dixon-Bonner, Bennie, Walsh
Goals: Celar 40 (assisted Dunne), 90+1 (assisted Ashby)
Bookings: Dunne 85 (foul)
QPR Star Man – Paul Nardi 8 Zan Celar is the narrative, Paul Nardi is the man of the match.
Referee – Steve Martin (Beverley Hills) 7 Very skinny four minutes of stoppage time at the end given the amount of clock running QPR had done – we’d have been stewing if had been the other way around – but otherwise pretty good.
Attendance – 16,204 (661 QPR) If ever you wanted an advert against identikit new stadia, it’s this place on nights like last night. Vast areas of it completely empty, or closed altogether, with more empty seats (17,076) than those with people in them. Zero atmosphere, with every moan and grumble from the disgruntled home fans audible to their own players. An absolute godsend for the away team, and notoriously travelsick QPR have now won four and drawn one of their last five visits.
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