A few reflections on Rotherham... by PeterHucker 5 Mar 2023 17:14
Just thought I'd stick a few things about yesterday's match up here.....

The defending was just as bad as it has been in other recent games, possibly worse in fact.
I have no idea how GA is going to sort that out.
Every time the opposition get forward in open play we seem to be either outnumbered at the back, sluggish in comparison to the other teams, poorly positioned or all of the above.

But in attack I thought there were signs that things were improved from recent matches v Hull, Fleetwood, Blackburn, Sunderland, Huddersfield, Blackburn.
(I live up north so I mainly go to away matches)

Yes I know that's a pretty low bar but hear me out.

The change in style was very apparent. There was no passing it around between Dieng, Dickie, Dunne etc which as has been discussed before makes our play so very ponderous and easy to play against.
I still think Dieng had a few opportunities for a quick throw out to the full back. He did that once in the first half where he threw it out quickly down Kakay / Iroekbunam's side and it ended up with an actual attempt on goal.
That's not to say it was just total hoofball either, Johansen still making a few attempts to play through balls to the forwards.
Anyway I'm past caring how we play now, we just need to do whatever we can to stay up.

I was with my 13 year old at the match yesterday. He gets frustrated with people standing up in front of him so we always sit on the very front row at away matches. At some away grounds that means we are so lowdown we have a really crap view of the match but yesterday our view was decent and we were fairly central so got an upclose view of a lot of what was going on.

There's been talk of a lack of leadership on the pitch at QPR for years now. I thought there was a big improvement in this area yesterday. It seemed like GA has told the more experienced players to speak up a bit and they had responded well.
Adomah, Johansen, Field, Dunne, Martin all taking responsibility & talking to the other players. Adomah was particularly good with Drewe.

Being right behind the goal it was interesting to see the players reactions when the first Rotherham goal went in. Dieng & other defenders stayed on the floor for quite a while, Dieng lying down with his head in his hands.
Field in particular but also Johansen, Martin, Adomah seemed keen not to dwell on what had gone wrong but to get heads up again, give words of encouragement, get the ball back to the centre quickly to, as football cliches would put it "go again"

Drewe made a few mistakes and gave the ball away a bit, but I wouldn't say he did that any more than Laird / Pall have been doing recently.
The lad has some pace, and he was committed throughout the game. Plus the long throw is something nobody else in the squad can offer. It caused Rotherham a few difficulties, particularly in the first half so I'm hoping to see that a bit more over the rest of the season.
It might not be pretty but we are in a relegation battle so we can't afford to be precious about styles of play.

When the 2 subs came on, my son said to me that we needed both of them to improve the team and they actually did.
Richards got the ball down and Rotherham looked really shaky when he ran at them.
In the absence of Chair he may well be the only midfielder we've got who can do that so I hope that whatever's been making him unavailable for selection can be resolved, whether that's been physical injury or his head not being right or some combination of both.
The shoelace thing was still very annoying and baffling though and I'll come on to what happened with Richards at the end further down.
I loved Armstrong's aggression when he came on, he gave their defenders something more to worry about in comparision to Martin who worked hard and was very physical, but looked his age really.
How the fvck was the tackle on Armstrong for the penalty not a red card?

Also a word on the disallowed goal that Armstrong scored. When the ball came through, Armstrong and Johansen were both in contention for it and I liked the determination Armstrong showed in getting to it. He kind of shoulder barged Johansen off the ball to get to it!

As I said before I'm not going to make any attempt to put any kind of positive spin on the chaotic defending. There seems to be very little in the way of organisation in that and unless that changes quickly we are going down. I actually think we are going to go down anyway. Over the last 20 or so games, we have dropped 19 places in the table. So dropping a further 2 places in the next 10 seems quite probable to me.

But I just wanted to say that going forward I thought we showed more intent & belief than we have for quite a while. (to repeat it's a very low bar)

We always stay until all the players have left the pitch, not because we particularly want to but just because my son isn't good with crowds so we like to wait until most of the spectators have gone.

I've seen a claim on Twitter saying that Richards was the only QPR player that came over to applaud the away fans, that's total garbage.
I'm not sure all of them did. But most did. I definitely remember seeing Dieng, Dunne, Martin, Lowe, Drewe, Field, Kakay, Armstrong, Johansen and Adomah who walked all the way over from the bench.

But Richards was over by the away fans a little while before the rest of the players got there.
Over on my left there were a group of youngish lads, probably in their 20s, couldn't hear what they were saying but I could see they were giving it the criss-cross arms "no" gesture and a few other gestures too.
Not blaming those lads, they were p1ssed off and they had every right to be.
Not my style to have a go at the players in that way, I don't think giving grief to your own players achieves anything but all the same I want to be clear that I'm not criticising those lads.

Where I was behind the goal it was mostly old people and other people like me with kids.
All the QPR fans where I was standing were either applauding the players off (like my son) or neither applauding or having a go (like me)

As Taylor Richards came over he seemed to clock the lads giving grief and then deliberately look over towards our area and return the applause to the fans where I was.
Good lad I thought, don't get involved with giving anything back to those annoyed fans, nothing good can come of that. The professional thing to do is to just applaud the fans in general and don't interact with individuals.

But then something changed, all of a sudden he certainly wasn't ignoring those lads, he was walking towards them and gesturing to himself as if to say "are you saying that to me?"

I'm guessing that those lads were saying something about not trying or whatever and Richards felt that didn't apply to him and took exception to it.
I'm sure we all have a range of opinions on whether that should apply to him.
Weird shoelace thing apart, I'd say he did a good job yesterday. Whether that has been the case generally this season I'm not so convinced.

There was potential there for things to get very ugly, but thankfully Jimmy Dunne appeared on the scene and ushered Richards away. Dunne's a sensible lad.
Regardless of what anyone thinks of how he's playing right now, he shows signs of that leadership that we miss a lot of the time.

Very shortly afterwards QPR legend Tommy Collins appeared right next to us, very angry about something, most likely Taylor Richards I think. He was remonstrating with stewards and trying to get past them towards the players. Stewards were of course having none of it and other QPR fans came down to the front to lead Tommy away.

Just to be clear I'm not having a go at good old Tommy either, just reporting what happened.

Anyway after 1 win in, what is it now, 20 games, I really can't see us getting the necessary 3 or 4 out of the next 10.
But I've left many other recent games genuinely feeling that we are getting worse and worse and I really don't know where the next win is coming from.
So I just wanted to come on here to say that yesterday I saw a few faint positives and some signs of the "buying in" that Gareth is demanding.

I hope I won't get dismissed as a happy clapper / rose-tinted / Les Ferdinand apologist for coming on and not being 100% negative.
I can assure you I'm as miserable and pessimistic as you'd expect someone to be after 4 and a half decades of supporting this fvcking frustrating and infuriating football team. And if I'd posted on here after, say, the Huddersfield or Blackburn matches I would've not been able to find a single positive.

Anyway see you at Blackpool.

Come on you Rs!