A nasty looking knee injury for popular midfielder Ale Faurlin marred a much improved QPR performance, and stylish victory, against Derby County at Loftus Road on Saturday.
In 1986, Steve Martin climbed aboard the wing of his light aircraft to address the people of Santa Poco on the imminent threat of invasion from El Guapo. Two of the other Three Amigos stood, looking somewhat bemused, as he began to speak.
"All of us have an El Guapo to face some day,” he said. "For some shyness might be their El Guapo, for others a lack of education might be their El Guapo. For us El Guapo is a big dangerous guy who wants to kill us. The people of Santa Poco can conquer their own personal El Guapo, who also happens to be the actual El Guapo.”
Ale Faurlin’s El Guapo is a mixture of bad knees and even worse luck.
In January 2012 the Argentinean midfielder seemed to have the world at his feet. Rated by QPR manager Neil Warnock as his best player, he’d adapted beautifully to the Premier League in the first half of the season and was in the sort of form that starts attracting interest from higher up the food chain. When you consider the money Liverpool subsequently paid for Jordan Henderson from Sunderland and Charlie Adam from Blackpool it makes you wonder what Faurlin might have fetched on the open market that summer had he maintained his faultless consistency through an entire campaign.
He might reasonably have expected a rest on the first Saturday of January, but with pressure mounting on Warnock — and the lessons of Jamie Mackie’s horrific leg break in the previous year’s FA Cup third round game not heeded — he was selected to start a cup tie at MK Dons. Ten minutes from time he went up for a header, landed on a straightened leg, and obliterated his left knee.
Faurlin has never been the same since. Never the quickest, he’s slowed to a crawl, and things that came naturally before now require effort. He’s been leggy, and a yard short, and never quite there where he used to be before. With his contract up at the end of the season, and manager Harry Redknapp seemingly very unsure of his talents — to the point where he loaned him out to Palermo last season and brought in Jermaine Jenas instead — his future at Loftus Road was in the balance.
And then at Wigan on Wednesday, through the wind and the chill and the rain, and the storm and the flood, Ale Faurlin was back. All high cheek bones and confident niggliness, he snapped into tackles and forced issues like he always had done before. The hair gel, dark skin and South American heritage can have lazy pundits questioning his suitability for such northern Wednesday night away days in the second tier but Faurlin has always mixed it better than anybody else at QPR during his time with the club and it was wonderful to see him revelling in the Wigan mud. Could it be true? Was he back to his best?
On Saturday against Derby County at Loftus Road he picked up where he left off. Joey Barton was recalled to the midfield alongside him and had his best game of the season, Jermaine Jenas was pushed further forward into a position that meant even he had to get involved and affect the game, Matt Phillips and Junior Hoilett mixed the sublime and the ridiculous in wide areas and Charlie Austin led the line with bravery and balls. It was QPR’s best performance of the season by a distance and there, at the heart of it all, was Ale Faurlin — tackling, niggling, winning headers, passing the ball around effortlessly.
For the first time this season QPR looked like the real deal. But the problem is, when Faurlin is at his best — scrambling around, winning back possession and setting QPR on their way — it involves a lot of incidents where he’s at full stretch, diving in, climbing high and landing awkwardly. It’s conducive to bad knee injuries.
On a yellow card and tiring, Faurlin may have reasonably expected to be substituted. He was starting to look leggy after a tremendous shift of hard work supressing his influence of prodigious young talent Will Hughes. Harry Redknapp gave him that bit longer and when your luck’s out, your luck’s out. Scan results pending, Ale Faurlin’s right knee crumpled beneath him during another challenge 13 minutes from time. Initially it looked like he was staying down to try and persuade referee Jon Moss — in eccentric form — not to issue him a second yellow card, but as the QPR medical team rushed to his attendance and Joey Barton knelt beside him and held his hand, the potential magnitude of what we were seeing started to hit home.
Faurlin is the antithesis of the modern footballer. Somebody who is desperate to stay in London, with QPR, regardless of other money making opportunities elsewhere. Somebody who rides around on the bus and spends his spare time in Ravenscourt Park doing circuit drills. Somebody who nobody has ever had a bad word to say about regardless of what context they met him in. Somebody who uses his Twitter account to post photographs of him baking, painting and running through streaming sunlight with his young son.
Bad things happen to good people. Faurlin rolled over and hammered his fist into the turf. Contract up at the end of the season, could this be the final act of his QPR career? Heartbreaking stuff.
The stretcher bearers nearly dropped him on his head as well.
A terrible shame in so many ways, least of all because it completely overshadowed an excellent QPR display — their first really decent showing of the season, despite the overwhelmingly positive results suggesting otherwise.
Derby County represented dangerous opponents. Joint top scorers in the division, and now managed by Steve McClaren who helped put this QPR side together during a tumultuous post-relegation summer, they’d have fancied their chances on a ground where they hadn’t lost in ten visits dating back to 1982. Rangers came into the match on the back of three away games that had yielded just two points and progressively more monotonous performances. I could comfortably name 70 billion things more interesting than the 0-0 draw at Wigan on Wednesday.
On Friday Harry Redknapp described his team as a "hard to beat” outfit, rather than one which will take the game to opponents — an acceptable by-product of the necessary ship steadying required during the off season. But the R’s were much more positive here, setting the tone early and maintaining it well throughout.
Phillips, struggling for form and fitness since a transfer window move from Blackpool, made a big difference attacking down the right. He’s either terrific or awful, often within the same move, and never anything in between, but his positive, direct approach and eye for a lethal low cross caused the Rams difficulties all afternoon. After five minutes he headed a whipped Joey Barton corner over at the near post and five minutes later a devilish low delivery was turned goalwards by Austin, saved by Derby keeper Lee Grant and nudged over the line for the opening goal by Jenas.
In the second half the former Wycombe winger tried a different tack, cutting in field from his flank and ghosting past two would-be tacklers with a peculiar running style that makes him deceptively evasive. He beat Grant again with his shot but the ball smacked against the underside of the crossbar and bounced away to safety.
That would have made it 3-1 to QPR and been a much fairer reflection on an entertaining game that the home team had much the better of.
Before half time Austin fired another Phillips cross over the bar after Derby had been caught dallying in possession from their own free kick — the higher tempo, higher pressing approach is something we haven’t seen much of from QPR this season and caught the Rams cold on several occasions.
Benoit Assou-Ekotto has been reasonably lacklustre since a loan move from Spurs — almost looking like a man who believes this is all a bit beneath him really — but he too was better on Saturday than in any previous game. He crossed well for Barton ten minutes before half time but the midfielder’s shot was blocked. Junior Hoilett — like Phillips, either excellent or tragic and never anything else in between — bumbled in from the left flank and saw a shot hit Phillips and fly over the bar. Austin later headed a corner off target when he should have scored.
Derby were led from the front by former Norwich man Chris Martin, although he looks like he’s been stirring lard into his tea since leaving Carrow Road and a justified twenty sixth minute booking for a dive on the edge of the QPR penalty box was his only noteworthy contribution. Rangers’ Clint Hill and Richard Dunne rarely looked troubled at centre half.
And yet the teams went in at half time deadlocked at one each. In the twenty seventh minute referee Jon Moss awarded a generous free kick to the visitors for an alleged foul by a mixture of Joey Barton and Ale Faurlin on Simon Dawkins midway inside the QPR half. Jamie Ward, almost as little as Little Tom Carroll, chipped the ball to the back post where centre half Jake Buxton rose fifteen feet into the air with the considerable advantage provided to him by placing both hands on Charlie Austin’s shoulders and headed across for Dawkins to volley into the net. It had to be a foul, but Moss was unmoved and the goal stood.
Having made a mistake what you then want from your match official is consistency. If Jake Buxton is allowed to lever himself that high into the sky using that method then Hill, Dunne and everybody else on the QPR side should be allowed to do the same thing. Moss, who refereed the whole game like an arrogant Premier League official believing this would be a comfortable walk in the park for a man of his ability and ego, instead decided that from that point on no climbing of any sort by any player would be allowed. Fine for that one moment, that one goal, but strictly frowned upon in every other circumstance for the rest of the afternoon.
Within seconds he’d whistled Charlie Austin for climbing over Buxton - the irony was lost on nobody — and on the half hour Jenas had to head a deep Derby free kick behind for a corner after Hill was adjudged to have held down Big Fat Chris Martin.
Then deep into the second half, with the Faurlin injury darkening the mood and the 2-1 lead looking needlessly fragile, Moss awarded a succession of dangerous Derby free kicks on the edge of the penalty box for Hill and Dunne doing exactly what Buxton had done for the goal. Robert Green scrambled across his line to claw one Ward effort out from under the bar, and another shot from the former Chesterfield winger dipped wide of the post with the QPR keeper covering all eventualities.
Bad fouls on Barton after 16 minutes by Ward and after 38 minutes by Hughes brought no card from Moss, and then a minute before half time the midfielder was kicked again without a free kick being awarded at all. By this point Barton’s tattered boot had flown off and the bemused midfielder pursued the referee down the field to show it to him and wonder about the rules of the game. Unusually Barton was able to channel the frustration into football, rather than retribution, and he jinked past two Derby men in first half injury time before teeing up Hoilett for a long range shot over the bar.
The second half initially threatened to ratchet up into a real classic. Assou-Ekotto tried to set the tone early with a cross for Jenas but he turned the wrong way, out of the danger zone, and the chance quickly turned into a Derby counter attack which Clint Hill finished in typically uncompromising style. Two minutes later Hill fouled Ward and the diminutive forward picked himself up to thrash the free kick over himself, then Green had to save nervously from Bryson and get up quickly to force Martin and the ball into the side netting after Danny Simpson had been caught out in a rare moment of dalliance on the edge of his own box. Back came Rangers with an Austin back heal at Grant after a powerful run by Hoilett who’d been set away by a firm tackle from Faurlin, then Assou-Ekotto intercepted well to free Hoilett for a cross that Barton would have headed home but for Keogh’s last gasp intervention.
Terrific, rip roaring, frenzied stuff.
The crucial goal came just after the hour, with Phillips powering away down the right and drawing a foul from Craig Forsyth who couldn’t possibly complain about the resulting yellow card. The placing of the ball for the set piece was the source of some conjecture — it looked a borderline penalty when Phillips finally hit the deck and yet Faurlin was forced to line up the delivery some five yards outside the box. No matter, the Argentinean played it plum into the danger zone and a mixture of Buxton, Jenas and Hill guided the ball beyond Grant and into the net. Derby’s defensive weaknesses — averaging two goals conceded a game against since McClaren arrived — continues, particularly from set pieces.
There were signs that QPR might struggle to hold onto their advantage. Faurlin was booked for a late challenge and Hoilett likewise as he desperately tried to retrieve a situation caused by his own lousy control of a simple ball in the Derby half. Phillips’ shot off the bar reassured and concerned in equal measure and McClaren sent on robust forward Connor Sammon for Dawkins to hunt an equaliser. The Faurlin injury threatened to undermine QPR further but once Traore replaced Hoilett it was the home team who looked more likely to score again — the Senegalese left sider crossed for Austin to shoot but the ball deflected behind, then the former Burnley striker sprung the Derby offside trap but took a fresh air shot when he seemed certain to score.
Five minutes of added time brought the face-tearingly frustrating series of Derby free kicks, and a foul by Derby sub Mason Bennett on Faurlin’s replacement Karl Henry that could easily have brought a yellow card, but QPR stood big, and tall, and strong and deserved their win.
The cost it came at will be determined by Ale Faurlin’s scan results which are due tomorrow.
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QPR: Green 7; Simpson 7, Dunne 6, Hill 7, Assou-Ekotto 7; Faurlin 8 (Henry 77, 6), Barton 8; Hoilett 6 (Traore 80, -) , Jenas 7, Phillips 7; Austin 6
Subs not used: Johnson, Onyewu, Wright-Phillips, Chevanton, Murphy
Goals: Jenas 11 (assisted Phillips/Austin), 63 (assisted Faurlin)
Bookings: Faurlin 65 (foul), Hoilett 67 (foul)
Derby: Grant 6; Wisdom 7 (Bennett 90, -), Keogh 6, Buxton 6, Forsyth 6; Ward 7, Eustace 6, Bryson 6, Hughes 7, Dawkins 6 (Sammon 72, 6); Martin 5
Subs not used: Smith, Jacobs, Freeman, Ball, Morch
Goals: Dawkins 23 (assisted Ward/Buxton)
Bookings: Martin 26 (diving), Wisdom 41 (foul), Eustace 45 (foul), Forsyth 61 (foul)
QPR Star Man — Joey Barton 8 Back from suspension and looked noticeably fresher and more purposeful with his play. Helped drive the team on with able assistance from Faurlin, Phillips and Jenas in a vastly improved midfield display that carried genuine thrust and threat throughout.
Referee — Jon Moss (West Yorkshire) 4 Wildly inconsistent, well short of the standards one would hope for from a Premier League official.
Attendance — 18,171 (1,800 Derby approx) There seemed to be something of a malaise around the place to begin with, and QPR haven’t exactly done a lot to raise the hairs on the back of your neck this season so that was a concern as the Derby fans comfortably outsung their hosts at first. But as the game developed into an absorbing contest, and the night drew in, so the noise improved and by the end this was a setting worthy of the fine match that took place.
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Pictures — Action Images