QPR travel to Blackburn this weekend hoping to bring an end to a dreadful run of FA Cup form stretching back ten years.
FA Cup sponsored by Eon >>> Saturday, January 8, 2011 >>> Kick Off 3pm >>> Ewood Park, Blackburn
A word to the wise if our esteemed manager happens to be dropping by and reading this – if the club’s press boys suggest a behind the scenes filming session on this trip for the official website it might be worth politely declining.
It’s strange that QPR have this knack of pulling the same teams out of the cup competition hats. Two ties with Luton, two with Chelsea (one in the League Cup) and now two with Blackburn in the last decade – all ending in defeat as you would expect from a team that hasn’t won an FA Cup tie of any sorts for ten years. The odds on pulling the same team twice, particularly in the FA Cup where everybody from the Dog and Duck up gets to play in the competition, must be colossal and yet we’ve managed it three times now.
Rangers travel to Lancashire this Saturday with their mind on other things. An early exit here may well be beneficial and offer Rangers fans a win against Blackburn or a win against Burnley next week and they’d take the Turf Moor victory all day long. Last time we came here at this stage of the FA Cup in 2006 it was the exact opposite. Languishing in lower mid-table and in poor form QPR brought 4,000 fans with them to Ewood Park in the hope that a cup upset and subsequent run in the competition may liven up the second half of the season. In the end we lost 3-0 with Craig Bellamy in fine form but as ever with QPR in recent times it was the events off the field that have lived longer in the memory.
We all know now that barely a fortnight after the Blackburn defeat Ian Holloway, the man who rebuilt our team and won our first promotion since the early 1980s after taking over from Gerry Francis, was placed on gardening leave and subsequently paid off and released in favour of Gary Waddock. That had seemed an inevitability really since Gianni Paladini had taken over the running of the club, and would have happened 18 months earlier when Ramon Diaz was poised to take over only for Holloway to win seven games on the spin, and then another two to make it nine wins from ten games, which made him untouchable. By the time we went to Blackburn QPR were clearly on the wane, although with the budget available to Olly that perhaps wasn’t a surprise, and opinion was divided among supporters. I remember thread after thread after thread on the old Rivals board arguing the toss over whether he should stay or go.
That opinion shifted against him after the Blackburn game – not because we had lost to a clearly superior Premiership team, or because Holloway had once again plucked a maddening team selection that included Shabazz Baidoo instead of Gareth Ainsworth and Georges Santos in the centre of midfield out of the air. No, the source of the problem was the club’s own official website which produced a two part, behind the scenes video diary of the team’s trip up to Lancashire and pre-match preparation.
There is no problem with such features in general, and indeed Billy Rice who ran QPR World at the time had produced some fantastic examples during the promotion season that made for the club’s greatest ever end of season video/DVD. However it was clear to all that saw the Blackburn video that it should never, ever have been shown publicly. There was almost 20 minutes of footage in all and never once in any of it did the players look like they were remotely interested in anything that was going on. They talked like naughty school boys while Holloway tried to address them, ignored his pre-match team talk, and generally looked like they didn’t want to be there. It looked like a dressing room lost.
Most damning of all though was Holloway’s pre-match briefing where he prepared his side to face the Blackburn side he predicted would be selected by Mark Hughes. It’s always difficult to call cup team selections because of the amount of players that get rested but only two of the names on Olly’s Blackburn team sheet actually started the game that day and he spent five minutes going through what he saw as their chief threat – midfielder Steven Reid – without realising he was actually suspended for the game and couldn’t play. Their best player on the day, as it turned out, was winger Sergio Peter who Holloway failed to even name among the Blackburn subs.
He looked like a man who had lost his team and had no idea what he was doing. I was a staunch Holloway supporter at the time but when even I knew Steven Reid was suspended and he didn’t I remember clearly changing my mind and coming round to the idea that it was time for a change. I’ve long since held my suspicions about why exactly that video was allowed to be put out on an official club source, so clearly and obviously undermining a manager that the board wanted rid of in front of the fans, but it’s one of those things we’ll never know the full story about I’m sure.
There’s little danger of the same thing happening to Neil Warnock, but he’s a superstitious type so if offered the chance to take part in similar filming this weekend he may want to decline on this occasion.
Recent History: If you listen carefully you might actually be able to hear Jack Walker turning in his grave after recent events at his beloved Blackburn Rovers.
Blackburn were the club that Jack built. They remain the only team other than Man Utd, Arsenal and Chelsea to win a Premiership title and while it’s fair to say they bought it with Walker’s steel millions they did so at a time when buying a title was a much more romantic and innocent affair. An ageing steel tycoon taking over his hometown football team, rebuilding the stadium and leading them to a league championship. They spent big money for the time, but it was miniscule compared to the vast sums Man City are currently throwing at a similar project – Kevin Gallagher cost £1.5m, Graeme Le Saux £700k, Tim Flowers £2.4m, Chris Sutton a whopping £5m and of course Alan Shearer £3.6m. After running Man Utd close the year before they won the title in 1995, pipping Ferguson’s men on the final day despite a defeat at Liverpool thanks to Ludek Miklosko’s heroics in goal for West Ham who held United to a 0-0 draw and cost them the title. Hilarious.
Although the departure of manager Kenny Dalglish and the ill-advised decision to replace him with his assistant Ray Harford sparked a rapid decline and relegation in 1999 they were back in the top flight within two years and have been there ever since, looked after by the trust Walker set up to take care of his assets following his death. However the going has got progressively tougher as more and more super rich owners have arrived at other clubs. Blackburn have been forced to sell their best players such as David Bentley and Roque Santa Cruz to raise money for squad strengthening – the budget for buying players has effectively been zero for a few seasons now – and having appointed Paul Ince as manager in 2008 with chaotic consequences they have been lucky to remain a Premiership team.
The prime reason they have, like him or not and I suspect most people don’t, is Sam Allardyce. Chucked out by Newcastle Big Sam was hired by Blackburn with a clear mantra to mop up after Ince and keep the club in the Premiership. You know what you’re going to get with Sam – he will play an unashamedly direct and at times violent game that aims to intimidate enough points out of teams each season to keep his sides in the Premiership. He’s like a top flight version of Aidy Boothroyd and he’s just as full of shit and arrogance. Having said in a column earlier this week that football is simply all about winning I must concede that there comes a time that there does have to be some pleasure in the experience of going to football somewhere along the line and watching Allardyce’s teams is about as pleasurable as stubbing your toe on the end of the bed on a cold day.
But what else could Blackburn really do? With no money to spend they needed somebody to keep them in the top flight until they too were picked up by some rich foreign idiot in the same way half the Premiership has been in recent times and Allardyce was just the man for that job.
This season Blackburn finally got their takeover in the form of Venky’s, a family of Indian chicken farmers, and since they completed their deal to takeover at Ewood Park before Christmas Rovers have been mired in a farce that our own Flavio Briatore would have struggled to create. Venky’s arrived on the scene saying all the wrong things. They claimed that owning a Premiership side would be good for their company, spreading its name through Europe, but admitted that transfer funds would continue to be measured in hundreds of thousands rather than tens of millions. The widely quoted figure for squad strengthening this January was £5m – barely enough for one average Premiership player these days.
Venky’s were introduced to Blackburn and advised through the takeover by agent Jerome Anderson, who runs the Kentaro Sports Agency. Within days of the takeover being completed stories about Allardyce’s preferred transfer targets this January being thrown out in favour of less than illustrious names such as Kris Boyd, an unmitigated flop since joining Middlesbrough from Rangers last summer, and Geovanni, once of Hull City but now of the San Jose Earthquakes. The connection? Well the new transfer targets were all clients of one Jerome Anderson.
Allardyce didn’t like this very much, as you would expect, and when he was seen laughing and joking with his big pal Sir Alex Ferguson on the way off the field at the end of Rovers 7-1 drubbing at Old Trafford the writing was on the wall – particularly as Venky’s had arranged a banquet and beamback of the match for thousands of invited guests in India to show off their acquisition. Allardyce was gone within days with Venky’s making the usual noises about thanking him for his efforts, taking a new direction and appointing a top quality replacement.
The replacement they chose, initially as a caretaker but then until the end of the season and now possibly even longer than that, is Steve Kean whose managerial experience stretches as far as assistant manager positions at Fulham, Coventry and Blackburn under Chris Coleman and Sam Allardyce. Kean is, wouldn’t you just know it, one of Jerome Anderson’s clients himself. So now we have a single football agent advising the board of a Premiership football club to appoint his client as manager and sign his clients as players. Only in football would such a conflict of interest be allowed to continue unchecked by authority.
Anderson has tried something similar to this before. When Sven Goran Eriksson took over at Man City and spent Thaksin Shinawatra’s money on the likes of Elano, Geovanni, Bojinov and others it was Anderson pulling the strings at setting up the deals there as well. Again he had spied a very rich new owner of a football club with very limited knowledge of the sport and quickly worked his way into the seat between the manager and the chairman. Shinawatra’s questionable approach to human rights while the Prime Minister of Thailand eventually caught up with him, forced him to sell the club and ended Anderson’s project at Eastlands.
If Anderson is doing this through ego, and a belief that his knowledge and contacts in the game can be used to build a Blackburn side capable of achieving the top five finishes that Venky’s have rather boldly predicted for their new club then Rovers fans better start hoping and praying that he’s right. If, however, he’s doing this because he recognises that having a Premiership club owned by your own board and run by your own manager can become a massive cash cow ripe for milking with your own clients signing on big money for big signing on fees all of which you get a cut of then it may already be too late for Blackburn.
The farce has only deepened this week with the club making bold statements about their intention to sign first Ronaldinho on a £20m three year deal, and now David Beckham – both of which seem to have very little basis in truth.
Manager: So who exactly is Steve Kean, apart from being the Jerome Anderson client in the right place at the right time? Well he’s a former player of little distinction, starting at Celtic where he never broke into the first team and moving around Alloa, Bath and Newbury Town around a spell in Portugal as well. He played with Chris Coleman during a loan spell with Swansea and has subsequently worked as his assistant with Fulham, Real Sociedad and Coventry. He was approached to be an assistant to Luis Felipe Scolari at Chelsea having learnt to speak Portuguese during his playing career but the move never went through.
Kean initially got the job with Allardyce in 2009 after Karl Robinson had left to join the MK Dons. Despite being apparently rated as a promising young coach there was no indication that the Scot would be anything more than a caretaker at Blackburn after Allardyce’s shock sacking. However after flying out to India to meet the owners himself Kean was confirmed as the boss until the end of the season and Venky’s have since stated that they are planning to offer him a three year contract.
Promoting from within has rarely worked in Premiership history – Les Reid at Charlton springs immediately to mind as an unmitigated disaster, but Stuart Gray and Steve Wigley at Southampton, Ricky Spragia at Sunderland and Sammy Lee at Bolton are other examples. The move to sack Allardyce and replace him with Kean sparked an angry reaction from the players who openly criticised the situation – captain Chris Samba was the most vociferous having been a key member of the team and an ideal exponent of the former manager’s direct style of football. He was back in the team for the win against Liverpool on Wednesday but has requested a transfer in January.
Blackburn did not begin well under Kean – drawing at home to West Ham who are notoriously hopeless travellers and then being booed from the field by their own supporters after a 2-0 home defeat by Stoke. However, they have rallied, and while it’s fair to say they couldn’t have timed their meetings with West Brom and Liverpool much better when you consider the respective form of the clubs two 3-1 victories are credible and have taken some of the heat off the new man in charge who I think supporters and players are right to be suspicious of.
Things can go one of two ways now for Kean. Either the players will continue to revolt and his attempts at progressing the team from simply a long ball outfit looking for survival will flounder, or the supporters and players will actually find that despite the farce of it all it is quite nice to be passing the ball around and playing a decent standard of football after all. If it’s the former Blackburn will be relegated sooner rather than later, and Kean’s chances of getting a job elsewhere will be seriously inhibited. If it’s the latter then however they came to the decision this whole farce may be viewed as a moment of genius.
Three to Watch: This is always a tricky section to write for such a cup tie because nobody has any idea what sort of sides will be turned out. If I was writing this for a Blackburn website I’d probably put Adel Taarabt, Tommy Smith and Jamie Mackie as the three but there’ no guarantee that any of them will play. Kean will not want to weaken his position with a cup upset so I’d expect Blackburn to be reasonably strong – let’s see if I can pick three of his starting eleven here.
Senegalese forward Mame Biram Diouf has impressed me whenever I have seen him this season. He is on loan from Manchester United and looks to have a decent all round game and turn of pace and he put our fellow Championship high flyers Norwich to the sword earlier this season with a hat trick in a 3-1 League Cup victory. Diouf has been used sparingly, although Steve Kean has kept him on the pitch for every minute of his five games in charge so far, and I would expect him to start against us on Saturday.
The 23-year-old averaged a goal every other game over two seasons with Norwegian side Molde, who were promoted into the top flight during his time there, and with Ole Gunnar Solskjaer an active presence both in his homeland and at Old Trafford he became a United player during the last January transfer window with Alex Ferguson saying he was pressed into action by interest in the player from other clubs. He scored his first, and so far only, goal for United against Burnley last season in a 3-0 home win and has six to his name for Rovers so far this season in all competitions. Blackburn do of course have the more unacceptable face of the Senegalese Dioufs among their number with El Hadj fulfilling the role of pantomime villain for all visiting supporters.
Last time we came here for a cup tie the star man in the game was left winger Sergio Peter who ripped QPR apart down the flank and seemed set for a bright future in the Premiership only to be offloaded to Bayer Leverkusen at the end of the season. Rovers fans will be hoping for better from young Canadian winger David Hoilett who is another who seems to be benefiting from Kean’s arrival with more emphasis on attractive football leading to a couple of recent starts. He’s a raw talent at the moment, but has plenty of pace and could cause us problems.
And finally big Chris Samba - the Premiership version of Danny Shittu. He is an enormous centre half, and was therefore used as a centre forward on occasions by the footballing visionary that is Sam Allardyce. Samba initially signed for Rovers from Hertha Berlin for little more than £500,000, which remains an absolute steal, and has become a mainstay of the Rovers side since then. He has recently been transfer listed after objecting to the way the new owners have dealt with Allardyce and the club since taking over but he started the game against Liverpool in the week.
Samba, as you would expect, really excelled under Allardyce and benefited from various morally questionable tactics such as, against Fulham earlier this season, deliberately running headfirst into Mark Schwarzer whenever Rovers put a high free kick into the area – an idea that ludicrously brought him a goal on the day thanks to the shambolic refereeing of Anthony Taylor who was subsequently dropped from the Premiership list. A big threat in every sense of the term from set pieces, but also a highly accident prone defender.
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Recent Meetings: As already said these teams last met at this stage of this competition back in January 2006. QPR were coming towards the end of Ian Holloway’s reign and took 4,000 fans with them to Ewood Park for the third round clash. Blackburn were under the guidance of Mark Hughes, boasted an impressive squad and still included the likes of Brad Friedel, Lucas Neill and Craig Bellamy against the R’s despite a host of changes. Rovers were just too strong for Rangers on the day, Holloway’s decision to leave out Gareth Ainsworth against the club he started his career with and desperately wanted to face was shown up to be a mistake when the Hoops only really started to have an effect on the game after his second half introduction. By then Blackburn were two up thanks to goals from Todd and Bellamy, and everybody’s favourite Welshman made it 3-0 before the end.
Blackburn: Friedel, Neill, Todd, Khizanishvili, Matteo, Thompson, Savage (Pedersen, 77 ) , Tugay, Peter, Dickov (Kuqi, 77 ) , Bellamy
Subs not used: Enckelman, Nelsen, Emerton
Goals: Bellamy 36, 86, Todd 17
Bookings: Matteo, Neill
QPR: Royce, Bignot, Shittu, Rose, Milanese, Rowlands, Santos ( Ainsworth, 55 ) , Langley, Cook ( Donnelly, 75 ) , Baidoo, Furlong ( Moore, 75 )
Subs not used: Cole, Evatt
Bookings Milanese (QPR)
The last time these sides shared a division was in 2000/01 when QPR were relegated to the Second Division and Blackburn were promoted into the Premiership under Graeme Souness. Ironically, considering what happened five years later, this was one of the first games under Ian Holloway’ charge for Rangers. The only real surprise of the April meeting at Loftus Road was that Rangers took a first half lead through Chris Plummer – Rovers soon pegged them back with goals from David Dunn and Matt Jansen before half time and Eyal Berkovic four minutes from the end.
QPR: Harper, Rose, Plummer (Koejoe, 83 ) , Ready, Baraclough (Burgess, 60 ) , Wardley, Bignot, Peacock, Bruce, Thomson, Crouch (Knight, 61 )
Subs not used: Miklosko, Kulcsar
Goals: Plummer 15
Bookings: Ready
Blackburn: Friedel, Curtis, Berg, Short, Gillespie ( Hignett, 69 ) , Mahon ( Berkovic, 75 ) , Flitcroft, Dunn, Duff, Jansen ( Hughes, 86 ) , Bent
Subs not used: Filan, Bjornebye
Goals: Dunn 25, Jansen 45, Berkovic 86
Head to Head >>> Blackburn wins 16 >>> Draws 7 >>> QPR wins 14
Previous Results:
2005/06 Blackburn 3 QPR 0 (FA Cup)
2000/01 QPR 1 Blackburn 3 (Plummer)
2000/01 Blackburn 0 QPR 0
1999/00 Blackburn 0 QPR 2 (Wardley, Gallen)
1999/00 QPR 0 Blackburn 0
1995/96 QPR 0 Blackburn 1
1995/96 Blackburn 1 QPR 0
1994/95 QPR 0 Blackburn 1
1994/95 Blackburn 4 QPR 0
1993/94 Blackburn 1 QPR 1 (Ready)
1993/94 QPR 1 Blackburn 0 (Ferdinand)
1992/93 Blackburn 1 QPR 0
1992/93 QPR 0 Blackburn 3
1990/91 QPR 2 Blackburn 1 (Falco, Barker – League Cup)
1986/87 Blackburn 2 QPR 2 (Bannister, Walker – League Cup)
1986/87 QPR 2 Blackburn 1 (Byrne, Brazil – League Cup)
1982/83 Blackburn 1 QPR 3 (Stainrod 2, Flanagan)
1982/83 QPR 2 Blackburn 2 (Allen, Fenwick)
1981/82 Blackburn 2 QPR 1 (Allen)
1981/82 QPR 2 Blackburn 0 (Gregory, Allen)
1980/81 QPR 1 Blackburn 1 (Francis)
1980/81 Blackburn 2 QPR 1 (Neal)
Played for Both Clubs: Simon Barker
Blackburn 1982-1988 >>> QPR 1988-1998
The story goes, certainly from Jim Smith’s perspective anyway, that QPR had been watching Blackburn trainee Simon Barker for the thick end of two years before actually buying him for £400,000 in 1988. Barker, a trainee at Blackburn before the Jack Walker revolution, came through the Ewood Park ranks to sign senior forms in 1982 and made 182 league appearances for Rovers in which he scored 35 goals. He was tipped as a ‘new Paul Gascoigne’ in the press at the time but when Smith first came calling Rovers manager at the time Bobby Saxton told Smith he wasn’t ready to step up to the First Division but promised to call the QPR boss when he felt he was. In July 1986 the call came, the deal was done, and Barker became an integral part of the QPR team for the next decade.
Despite being at the end of his contract at Ewood Park Barker cost the R’s £400,000 in the pre-Bosman days and admitted in an interview with QPRnet that he found it difficult to settle at first and would liked to have returned to Blackburn given the chance. Nevertheless the England Under 21 international initially made his name at Loftus Road as a goal scoring midfielder under Don Howe and then Gerry Francis although he found his opportunities limited in the early Premier League years by the superb Indian summer enjoyed by Ray Wilkins. He scored memorable goals, including a fabulous strike at the Loft End in a 3-1 win against Everton in the 1991/92 season that ended a long run of home games without a win.
Barker remained with Rangers through the Ray Wilkins era when we were relegated from the Premiership and continued to score goals in the First Division although by this stage his rather inoffensive style had earned him the unfortunate nickname ‘Mavis’ among the QPR fans. He was eventually released on a free transfer to Port Vale, after a sell out testimonial match at Loftus Road against the Jamaican World Cup side of 1998. Naturally he scored for Vale on his first return to Loftus Road but retired after two seasons at Vale Park and now works for the PFA.
Team News: Bring your boots and get a game. To go with long term absentees Lee Cook, Peter Ramage and Akos Buzsaky QPR are now without Patrick Agyemang for the rest of the season with a stress fracture to his shin – although how he has managed to get a stress fracture from just 45 minutes of first team football in two months is beyond me. Kyle Walker has returned to Spurs, Matthew Connolly is suspended, and Fitz Hall has his usual big bout of nothing rendering him doubtful. Heidar Helguson missed the Bristol City game with an injury and Clint Hill has also been carrying a knock. Antonio German is cup tied having scored in an earlier round for Southend.
Blackburn team news to follow.
Elsewhere: FA Cup third round day is one of the most eagerly awaited events on the football calendar, although thanks to the television contracts this set of 32 fixtures will take place from Saturday to Monday. The whole show gets underway with Arsenal v Leeds on Saturday lunchtime, with Leeds’ abysmal defence and exciting attack almost guaranteeing a glut of goals at the Emirates. It concludes on Monday with Derby’s visit to Conference side Crawley – the Rams are on a run of six without a win and Crawley have spent big in pursuit of league football but it’s still astonishing to find the Championship side 11/10 against to win this tie with some bookmakers. There are stories and potential upsets pretty much everywhere you look in between those two games – Birmingham go to Millwall, struggling Middlesbrough to Burton Albion, Wolves to Doncaster and Everton to Scunthorpe and none of the perceived favourites will be relishing those ties. Sheff Utd can push Gerard Houllier close to the sack as they host Aston Villa, Roy Hodgson may very well have already gone by the time Liverpool go to Man Utd in the tie of the round on Sunday. Stevenage welcome Newcastle in a re-run of a famous cup tie of years gone by. Leicester v Man City is the Sunday afternoon televised game. It’s a terrific third round draw all in all, the best for many years, and the television companies could have picked from 15 intriguing ties.
Referee: Premiership opposition means a Premiership referee although quite how Peter Walton is deemed an ‘elite’ official is beyond me. A picky, niggly referee lacking any feel for the game or commons sense. On top of that he has shown a pathological fear throughout his career of awarding QPR a penalty – regardless of how blatant the appeal. A full inglorious history of his QPR matches can be surveyed here.
Blackburn: Rovers’ recent record in this competition isn’t a great deal better than QPR’s – beaten at this stage last year by Aston Villa, by Championship side Coventry in a fifth round replay the year before, and by the Sky Blues again the previous season 4-1 at home in the third round. Rovers have won the FA Cup six times, although the last time they managed it was 1928. Blackburn are currently ninth in the Premiership and beat Liverpool 3-1 on this ground on Wednesday – their fifth home win of the season following successes against Everton, Wigan, Villa and Wolves. Arsenal, Chelsea and Stoke are the only three teams to win on what has become a notoriously difficult place to play since Mark Hughes took over as manager. QPR’s last win here, 2-0 in late 1999, cost Brian Kidd his managerial position at Ewood Park.
QPR: Rangers’ cup form is well documented. The R’s have not won in this competition for ten years, the worst record of any side in the country. Since the Third Round replay win against Luton at Loftus Road in 2001, followed swiftly by a 6-0 defeat by Arsenal, we have been beaten by Swansea (4-0), Vauxhall Motors (penalties), Grimsby (1-0), Forest (3-0), Blackburn (3-0), Luton (1-0 replay), Chelsea (1-0), Burnley (2-1 replay) and Sheff Utd (3-2 replay). Our best performance in this competition was a final appearance in 1982 when we were beaten by top flight Spurs as a Second Division side in a Wembley replay. Since then a quarter final against Man Utd at Old Trafford in 1995, and a quarter final replay against Liverpool in 1990 is the best we have managed. An unbeaten 19 game start to this season has given way to three defeats in the last six games, although two wins and a draw from four games over Christmas have extended QPR’s lead at the top of the Championship to five points. Rangers have won only one of their last ten against Rovers, and have failed to score in seven of those fixtures.
Prediction: Usually I say a draw for our Third Round ties, because it’s the outcome nobody wants. However on this occasion I am going for a Blackburn win for three reasons. Firstly Steve Kean isn’t in a position where he can afford a cup upset, or to throw away chances of a home victory to build the confidence of his team and the club’s confidence in him, so I think we may see a stronger Blackburn team than we may have done had Allardyce remained in charge. Secondly Neil Warnock doesn’t want to progress in this competition and QPR are focussed completely on the league. Thirdly even if we did want to make a go of this competition our recent record in it is abysmal, and we hardly have a side to put out.
Blackburn to win by two, 9/2 with Sky Bet and various others