QPR were beaten 3-1 by Reading at Loftus Road on Sunday despite a goal against his old club by Kevin Doyle, and a sending off for former Rangers’ favourite Kaspars Gorkss.
Harry Redknapp warned against writing QPR off in the Championship title race despite this latest defeat at home to promotion rivals Reading, but it’s going to need every ounce of experience garnered during his 50 years in the sport to stop the wheels falling off the R's bounce-back attempt completely. Rangers, missing key players through injury, are listing badly at present.
At the moment Redknapp seems to be part of the problem rather than the solution. Despite Burnley running three goals through the wide open spaces proffered by a 4-4-2 formation that suits neither the defenders nor the midfielder’s at QPR’s disposal Redknapp stuck with the shape for a lacklustre 1-0 defeat Derby on Monday and paid the penalty for using it again here.
Team selection continues to fluctuate wildly — Gary O’Neil and Little Tom Carroll started at Pride Park then didn’t even make the bench here, while Armand Traore played well against the Clarets only to miss out against Derby and then return for this game. Niko Kranjcar started on the wing in Derbyshire, then in the middle of a four-man set up here, neither role he’s suited for.
Rangers have seven loanees with an eighth arriving in the form of Ravel Morrison on Friday so two are currently having to sit out with league rules limiting sides to five — Carroll was the fall guy here, but having not even made the bench for the previous two matches Manchester United’s Will Keane led the attack from the start against Reading.
Then, after impressing as arguably QPR’s best player for the first 56 minutes, he was inexplicably the first man removed to be replaced by Bobby Zamora who, after an impressive recent cameo against Bolton, was back to his lumbering, ineffective self here.
It’s all turned into a bit of shemozzle and while any team in this league would struggle if they lost players of the calibre of Charlie Austin, Danny Simpson, Ale Faurlin and Matt Phillips all at once, QPR have a much bigger squad, with vastly more experienced players, and a fat cheque book other sides at this level could only dream of. There was still more than enough quality available for selection on Sunday to avoid the comfortable defeat handed down by the Royals and an ugly on-field set-to between Richard Dunne and Benoit Assou-Ekotto after the third goal had gone in suggests there are more problems at Loftus Road currently than just a bad run with injuries. The right-sort revolution is in danger of coming apart at the seams.
Reading, like the rest of the top six teams in the Championship, were experts at executing the very basics of the sport — and that was more the enough to secure a victory. Garath McCleary and Jobi McAnuff provided threat in wide areas and Adam Le Fondre and Pavel Pogrebnyak formed an awkward big-man-little-man combination up front. With a physical back four and leggy, athletic central midfielders like US-born Danny Williams and former Crawley man Hope Akpan, they were the latest side Rangers have faced just lately who seemed to have more energy and tempo about them right from the beginning of the game.
They scored with the first meaningful attack — Le Fondre crossing for Williams to head home unmarked after arriving late from a deep-lying midfield position. Embarrassingly easy that one, and it was almost 2-0 immediately when Williams headed straight at Green when left unchecked again from a McAnuff free kick. Then Pogrebnyak had good cause to ask why no team mate had gambled on his knock down into the six yard box on the quarter hour. For the umpteenth time this season Rangers had started a match at a snail’s pace against opponents intent on asserting themselves right from the off.
It looked ominous at this stage but a goal against the run of play by former Royals favourite Kevin Doyle brought Rangers back into the game. It won’t be winning any awards for aesthetics, with the Irish forward eventually poking in from no range at all when Keane’s toe poke fell to him off goalkeeper Alex McCarthy, but credit is due to Armand Traore whose pacy wing play caused the panic initially, and Junior Hoilett who kept the pressure on after former Rangers an Kaspars Gorkss had blocked the first effort on goal impressively in the six yard box.
Reading have been almost as inconsistent as Harry Redknapp’s team selections of late — beating Bolton 7-1 at home then losing on their own patch to lowly Sheffield Wednesday — and their response to the Rangers equaliser betrayed nerves. Soon Hoilett was firing a low cross into the near post and causing more consternation in the six yard box, then Keane rose highest to glance a near post header onto the roof of the net from the resulting corner. Keane, a gangly youth who looks like he could do with a week in the sun, started the game with a hideous first touch but grew into the flow as the first half wore on and was arguably the pick of the home players before half time.
A swift counter attack from Traore, who finally seems to be coming back into a little personal form just as everything else falls apart around his ears, gave Hoilett a chance to shoot and McCarthy — hero of the first meeting between these sides this season — needed two attempts to gather.
Both teams had had their 15 minute spells at this point, and referee David Coote — in his first ever QPR appointment — decided it was his turn to dominate proceedings for a quarter of an hour before half time. Certainly no complaints could be made about quick fire yellow cards for Clint Hill after he’d been skinned by Le Fondre and hauled him back, or Williams who was turned by Hoilett on halfway and also elected for a cynical tug back to halt the attack. But Pogrebnyak was then released without further punishment after an obvious shove on Joey Barton and play was also allowed to continue with Hill down with an obvious head injury. Later the referee awarded Reading a free kick for a non-existent push from a distance of 30 yards away when the linesman next to the incident had given the home team a throw in and Rangers were lucky that no visiting player was available to turn in Obita’s extraordinarily good cross through the Loft End goal mouth.
No emergency surgery required on the QPR team at half time for once, and Joey Barton’s ambitious 20 yarder that flew just too high at the start of the second half hinted at better to come. Traore’s enthusiastic running drew a foul and yellow card from McCleary but Rangers were about to capitulate in a mad five minutes that would take them from 1-1 and on the front foot, to 3-1 down with their attacking threat removed and fights breaking out among team mates.
First Alex Pearce, only available to play at all because of a generous decision to overturn a red card from the Sheffield Wednesday defeat a week ago, slipped the attentions of Clint Hill and headed Obita’s corner firmly into the net from a yard out in front of the jubilant Reading fans. Redknapp then infuriatingly removed Keane for Zamora, stunting Rangers’ attack for the remainder of the game, and with fights breaking out in the Ellerslie Road stand over the abuse handed out to the former Fulham man, Reading piled forward again and made the game safe with a spectacular long range goal from McCleary.
The quality of the strike wasn’t in doubt — curling, swirling and dipping over Green and into the top corner from fully 25 yards out in quite magnificent style — but given that McCleary had scored from long range in the first meeting between these sides this season at the Madejski Stadium one does have to wonder why Benoit Assou-Ekotto felt safe back-tracking 30 yards and allowing McCleary the time and space he needed to execute the shot in the first place. Not since Zesh Rehman’s nadir in the 5-1 defeat at West Brom has anybody backed off quite so far, for so long, for so little reason and the actions of the full back — not a known giver of fucks it must be said — drew criticism from the centre backs to his right. Suddenly, in an embarrassing repeat of a previous spat between the Cameroonian left back and Charlie Austin, Assou-Ekotto was moving towards Richard Dunne and spoiling for a fight which Clint Hill had to intervene in to prevent the R’s being reduced to nine men for scrapping between themselves. The behaviour typifies Assou-Ekotto’s attitude to life at QPR, which has dipped from a low starting point along with his performances since the possibility of a January return to Spurs was taken off the table. Personally I’ve grown weary of Assou-Ekotto’s half-arsed performances of late and would quite like to have seen The Landlord stick one on him.
Rangers were rocking and Barton had to take a suspension-triggering tenth yellow card of the season for fouling McCleary — had he not done so Reading could have been in for a fourth — and Kranjcar followed him into the book for pulling back McAnuff. The game became a stop-start affair, littered with cards and injuries, not helped by an incredibly pernickety refereeing display from Coote. Sky’s decision to schedule this against Arsenal v Liverpool on BT Sport didn’t exactly look shrewd — anybody watching this instead needs their head examined — but for all of that it could have turned into a cliff hanger ending, and potentially another three all draw, had Doyle headed home his second of the game from Hoilett’s deflected cross on the goal line. Only he will know how he missed.
But with Zamora lumbering around it’s doubtful Rangers would have pushed for an equaliser with any degree of threat. The crocked forward even had the nerve at one stage to openly slate one of QPR’s better players on the day Traore for not reaching one of his misdirected flick ons. Given Zamora’s money to return ratio, and non-existent contribution this season, it’s a wonder it didn’t provoke a second on-field dust up of the day between team mates and, again, it didn’t suggest a happy camp at all.
The game slowed back to a crawl with a clutch of substitutions. Michael Hector replaced Le Fondre for the visitors while Redknapp sent on Yossi Benayoun for Assou-Ekotto. Benayoun the latest in a long line of midfielders QPR have accumulated who is neither particularly good in defence nor in attack, neither quick nor slow, not really suited to a wing role nor a place in the centre, not a prolific goalscorer or particularly creative — just bodies, endless stacks of middle of the road midfielders who add little and cost a fortune. Last week at Derby Jermaine Jenas came on and made no difference whatsoever and here Benayoun did exactly the same. Next week it might by Gary O’Neil and the week after Karl Henry. The times I have fans of other teams say to me "oh I forgot he was at QPR”. It’s a transfer policy from the back of a cigarette packet and it’s lumbered QPR with a squad that is massively bloated in numbers and wages but wholly ill-equipped to cope with injuries to three or four decent players.
Kaspars Gorkss did his best for his former side with a wild challenge on Junior Hoilett close to the far touchline that brought an immediate and deserved red card — although I’m not sure it was vicious enough for a loyal servant to the club to be booed off by the home fans — but any attempts the visitors did make at capitalising on that numerical advantage were ended by referee Coote who bizarrely decide to start blowing his whistle and awarding fouls for mysterious pushing offences every time the ball went within 20 yards of the Reading penalty area. That restricted the R’s to long range shots only — Traore hit on at McCarthy, Barton smacked a volley a foot over the top.
Reading took off Pogrebnyak, who’d mixed powerful front play with powder puff injury feigning in equal measure throughout, and sent on Hal Robson Kanu but that was needless clock running at that stage with the game already well won.
Reading, like Leicester and Burnley before them, were more than good enough to beat QPR with a basic set up — strong defence, two good wingers, two good strikers, plenty of legs in midfield. QPR look old and staid and slow and grumpy and lethargic. They look like a team of 30 year olds coming to the end of a long hard 46 game season, which is exactly what they are — with the lack of consistency in team selection hamstringing them further.
Harry Redknapp needs to find a system that suits the players he has left at his disposal better than this one, and a way of injecting some life, speed and confidence into his team — who knows, maybe pick one of the younger players for once — or this is going to get a good deal worse before it gets better.
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QPR: Green 6; Hughes 5, Dunne 5, Hill 6, Assou-Ekotto 5 (Benayoun 78, 5); Hoilett 6, Kranjcar 5, Barton 6, Traore 6; Doyle 6, Keane 6 (Zamora 57, 5)
Subs not used: Onuoha, Jenas, Henry, Murphy, Maiga
Goals: Doyle 20 (assisted Traore/Hoilett/Keane)
Bookings: Hoilett 14 (foul), Hill 25 (foul), Barton 60 (foul), Kranjcar 62 (foul)
Reading: McCarthy 6; Gunter 6, Gorkss 6, Pearce 7, Obita 7; McCleary 8 (Kelly 90+3, -), Williams 8, Akpan 7, McAnuff 7; Pogrebnyak 6 (Robson-Kanu 85, -), Le Fondre 7 (Hector 73, 6)
Subs not used: Federici, Drenthe, Guthrie, Blackman
Goals: Williams 10 (assisted Le Fondre), Pearce 56 (assisted McAnuff), McCleary 58 (unassisted)
Sent off: Gorkss 70 (serious foul play)
Bookings: Williams 29 (foul), McCleary 46 (foul), Obita 90 (foul)
QPR Star Man — Armand Traore 6 End product often poor, but improving and at least provided some enthusiasm, pace and work rate to the team. Will Keane was also in with a shout had he stayed on for longer.
Referee — David Coote (Nottinghamshire) 4 A bit of a pain in the arse really. His grasp of the laws around injured players seemed rather loose — Reading were allowed to play on with Clint Hill on the floor with a face injury, then in the second half play was stopped with Pogrebnyak sitting down half a yard from the touchline. The final ten minutes where he awarded free kicks for mystery offences every time QPR went near the penalty area was bizarre. Red card for Gorkss probably justified.
Attendance — 16,522 (1,800 Reading approx) Subdued home crowd as you would expect, mocked by their stripey visitors throughout the second half. Horrible day all round.
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Pictures — Action Images