Portsmouth, who are excellent at home, beat QPR, who are ropey away, 2-1 at Fratton Park on Saturday, and if you’d gone there looking for surprises or learnings about either team you’d have left disappointed.

Here’s another reason you need to just relax, breathe and enjoy the 4-0 wins at home to Derby when they come.

The week before you were trying to make it back into Coventry from wherever in the hell on earth Coventry’s ground is in time for the last train back to London after losing with the last kick in the last minute. A week later you’re hiking back to Portsmouth and Southsea, because of course Fratton station can’t cope with a couple of hundred people, only to be greeted by some Vicky Pollard type taking a brief time out from birthing feral children to screech the roof down with the Pompey chimes.

When people say in August “I’d bite your hand off for 12th” they do tend to forget that means you lose as many as you win. With a dozen games left to play QPR now have an even 11-11-12 record. Against Luton (repeatedly), Watford, Blackburn, Preston, Derby we’ve enjoyed watching our team. Against Millwall, Swansea, Middlesbrough, Leeds we really haven’t. If, as now seems likely, Portsmouth are playing Championship football next year, it will owe much to the six points delivered their way from Shepherd’s Bush. Against Pompey, QPR have been complete crap. Twice.

The annoyance in this latest meeting came not from the result or even the performance. Sometimes maybe good, sometimes maybe shite. Such is the life of a midtable Championship football fan. For me, the irritation here came from the inability of the team, players and manager to heed the lessons they’ve been taught and learned about each other previously. The non-parachute payment teams in this league progress slowly, over seasons, by turning thrashings into defeats, defeats into draws, draws into wins, and wins into comfortable wins. You don’t accomplish that by doing the same thing that didn’t work before all over again expecting a different result. A pair of 2-1 defeats to Portsmouth, who were unashamedly themselves and very effective throughout this meeting, shall be submitted into evidence as exhibit A.

What do we know, for instance, about Josh Murphy, who Portsmouth picked up at the end of his contract from fellow promoted side Oxford in the summer? Get him engaged, get him tackled, force him wide. Don’t let him check in from left to right and shoot for the far corner. When teams let Ilias Chair do this we ask whether they’d actually bothered with any pre-match video prep. It’s Ilias Chair module 1.1, we say. Where have you been? And, so, you do have to wonder what Jimmy Dunne was up to, slip or no slip, letting the lesser twin waltz in from the left touchline unchallenged to pick his spot from the edge of the box and find the corner.

What happened at the start of the season when we tried slow, steady, ponderous build up out of the defence? Jake Clarke-Salter, and latterly Ronnie Edwards, can do it. Steve Cook, Jimmy Dunne, Sam Field… these people cannot. Teams lined up in shape ahead of us, watched us do it, laughed, pressed high, and feasted on the goo within. We went 13 games without a win. Portsmouth won their first game of the season at Loftus Road, one of only two away wins to this point, in that collection. Why then, particularly after Rangers have just conceded a bad goal, have we got Steve Cook laying a hospital ball out to Dunne woefully short, and then those two flapping around hopelessly as Murphy crosses between static defenders for Ritchie to tap in a second?

I’m going to repeat myself a lot in this report, but here goes anyway – we know this doesn’t work. We know this doesn’t work. So, stop fucking doing it. Cook continues to look ropey after his injury.

Rangers were rather stuck between a rock and a hard place all day.

On the rare occasions they did try to play football, they weren’t able to go around or through Portsmouth’s high press. Brave balls into midfield were ignored. When they were played they were, more often than not, just banged back to the sender without even so much as a check to see if another forward pass might be on. Varane gave one of his early season performances when we needed him to step up.

More commonly, QPR tried to bypass that altogether with a longer, direct ball straight up to the top. Michi Frey, sadly, gave a comically poor performance as de facto target man, wholeheartedly schooled by Matthews and the middle Portsmouth defenders, and justifiably booked on half time for the latest in a series of totally daft fouls. His attempt to check inside and get a shot away in a two v two first half counterattack was laughably poor – I’ve checked inside Gatwick Airport quicker than that. He is a bit like one of those big dogs that thinks it’s a small dog when it comes to sit on your knee.

We couldn’t play Portsmouth at QPR football, so we certainly weren’t going to come to Fratton Park and beat them at Portsmouth football. Nardi’s infuriating tendency to scuff his kicks low and left when the team had set up high and right in stark contrast to the distribution of opposite number Schmid who has a right foot like a cannon, could kick a ball from here to the Isle of Wight, and hung up one ball after another onto the R’s defenders for the excellent Colby Bishop to charge around after all afternoon. It would have been 3-0 but for an extremely generous decision from referee Thomas Bramall to award a free kick for Bishop’s meagre contact on Nardi after Jimmy Dunne had again allowed Murphy to cut inside and a high ball had subsequently looped up into the six-yard box. I’d have wanted that goal and fumed if it had been disallowed against us.

It was just about the only decision Bramall gave in Rangers’ favour all afternoon. A collection relatively straightforward free kicks and throw ins in the first 20 minutes were either given in the wrong direction or ignored altogether to the benefit of the home team. Saito, and later Yang Min-Hyeok, were on the end of artillery fire so heavy I thought Lyse Doucet and Orla Guerin were going to rock up and start covering it, and yet Bramall seemed happy to let it go on. Twice players cracked through Saito in the first quarter of an hour and he was eventually withdrawn after taking an elbow to the face from Dozzell which was seen, given as a free kick, but apparently didn’t warrant a yellow card. This official has refereed Portsmouth four times at Fratton Park and they’ve won every game. You couldn’t help conclude he was cowed by the division’s most boisterous home support. Was brave enough to book Chair for dissent in stoppage time though. So, well done for that. Don’t sweat the small stuff when there’s big crime to fight, eh?

QPR, though, too meek and mild in response. It’s not the referee’s fault we lost this game. It took until the third minute of stoppage time for Rangers to respond with a meaty challenge of their own – Alfie Lloyd’s thumping tackle provoking a minor exchange of handbags and yellow card for Saydee. We needed more of that, earlier. It’s all very well talking the pre-match talk of knowing what to expect from Fratton Park - where Pompey have now won eight of 11 games laying the foundation for their survival - but you have to walk the walk as well. Stand up and fight. Too many of our players were anonymous, particularly down the spine of the side. John Mousinho's side, meanwhile, were well drilled and efficient in their work.

This speaks to another repeat failing from before Christmas. You don’t win games by losing midfield. QPR worked their way out of that funk by stodging up the middle and sacrificing some of their midget ‘tens’ for the legs and hard yards of Kieran Morgan. Just lately we’ve tried to open back up, sacrificing one of those three midfielders for an attacker again, so we can get Ilias Chair at ‘ten’, the in form Koki Saito in from the start, and either Paul Smyth or Min-Hyeok down the other wing. At home this is producing entertaining results and big wins, but away it’s leaving us too open and we’ve now lost three on the spin. Here we were back to September Varane. Field was turgid.

Morgan, just 18, was always going to need taking out and resting at some point. Away from home though, this system is too open. There’s too much focus on technical, flicks and tricks and not enough on running, tackling and heading. We’re not good enough as a team to do that yet. It needs a pair of bollocks to get points on the road in this league. For all the recent improvement it’s now three away defeats in a row, two away wins from ten games, and three from 16. Just to rub it in, the midfield here was dominated for an hour by former loanee Isaac Hayden, who was excellent and made a point of applauding the QPR fans and spending time with Marti Cifuentes at full time, and to a lesser extent Andre Dozzell, who lifted his own very presentable chance for a third goal over the bar in the second half. Callum Lang, Portsmouth’s player of the year elect and best midfielder, was out injured.

Rangers were much better for the introduction of Jack Colback – one would have thought the perfect personality for a start in this sort of game – and Min-Hyeok who got on the ball more in 20 minutes than Smyth had in 70. Hyeok set up fellow sub Alfie Lloyd for the same chance he scored recently at Millwall but this time he skewed wide. Ilias Chair isolated Jimmy Dunne at the back post and he beasted Ogilvie before chipping home delightfully to halve the deficit (it was just about the only thing Dunne did right all day). Chair headed straight at the keeper when well picked out by Hyeok, and then a stoppage time chance for Dunne to equalise somehow squirmed back to home keeper Schmid. One of those goes in, we roll back to London with a 2-2, here I am writing about a great comeback, terrific spirit, vital changes by the manager.

Rangers only lost by a goal, it could easily have gone another way, it wouldn’t have needed too much to change it back in our favour, and so you do have to wonder why those three substitutes were left to stand in the technical area, dressed and ready for action, for in excess of ten minutes before finally being introduced to immediate positive effect. We don’t criticise Cifuentes often, but what exactly did we gain by burning off another quarter hour on something that obviously wasn’t working? It was the only thing we didn’t rush all day, and by the time they came on it was a thick 20 minutes overdue.

Overall, I thought 2-1 flattered QPR really. We weren’t good enough at playing our game, and we certainly weren’t good enough at playing them at theirs, on both sides of the ball. Karamoko Dembele got three minutes at the end, while Harrison Ashby was allowed to come on and ponse about with his academy-boy-with-a-posh-watch routine ten minutes before him. I’m always the first to say I don’t understand the sport or know what I’m talking about and those substitutions occurring that way round prove it once and for all. I know nothing.

I do know I don’t like that baby vomit kit. I didn’t like it to start with and it’s now four defeats and two draws wearing it. If something isn’t working, stop doing it. Theme of the day.

Links >>> Ratings and Reports >>> Message Board Match Thread

Portsmouth: Schmid 6; Swanson 6 (Devlin 61, 6), Matthews 7, Atkinson 6 (Poole 39, 6), Oglivie 6; Hayden 7 (Pack 61, 6), Dozzell 6; Ritchie 7 (Saydee 79, -), Aouchiche 6 (Bramall 79, -), Murphy 8; Bishop 7

Subs not used: Archer, Blair, Yengi, Gordon

Goals: Murphy 48 (assisted Dozzell), Ritchie 51 (assisted Murphy)

Yellow Cards: Ogilvie 17 (foul), Poole 86 (foul), Saydee 90+5 (retaliation)

QPR: Nardi 4; Dunne 4, Cook 4, Edwards 5, Paal 5; Field 4 (Colback 68, 6), Varane 4; Smyth 4 (Lloyd 68, 4), Chair 5, Saito 6 (Ashby 80, -); Frey 4 (Min-Hyeok 68, 6)

Subs not used: Fox, Morgan, Morrison, Walsh

Goals: Dunne 74 (assisted Chair)

Yellow Cards: Frey 45+1 (moronic repeated fouling), Chair 90+2 (dissent)

QPR Star Man – Koki Saito 6 Did well under heavy fire.

Referee – Thomas Bramall (Sheffield) 5 Intimidated.

Attendance 20,426 (2,159 QPR) Irritated.

If you enjoy LoftforWords, please consider supporting the site through a subscription to our Patreon or tip us via our PayPal account loftforwords@yahoo.co.uk.

Pictures - Reuters Connect

062259 added 01:33 - Feb 24 Sixteenth
0

WestLondonlalalalala added 07:40 - Feb 24 Agree on the kit never again please.
0

nick_hammersmith added 09:55 - Feb 24 Field put in a great crunching tackle early on, which should have set the tone, but instead went into his shell after getting a knock himself. It was almost like an advert for signing Isaac fcking Hayden all game, which is NOT what we should be doing in 2025
0

gazza1 added 10:40 - Feb 24 Pretty much 'spot on'.....pretty disappointing display from most of the players.
0

Brighton_R added 13:58 - Feb 24 Was at the game and as Clive mentioned, the most baffling thing was the delay in getting our subs on. The ball went out numerous times so there was plenty of opportunity to do it but Marti held off for 10 minutes while Colback and Yang stood there on the touchline getting cold. Wasn't as if we were battering them either. We were as weak and clueless as we'd been for the rest of the game. Plenty of fellow away fans were screaming at him to make the subs. Wish the clueless club 'reporter' had asked Marti in the post-match interview why the delay in getting them on. Should have been done at half-time anyway.And Colback was an obvious starter for a game like that. I love him but Marti got a lot wrong Saturday

0

Blogs 31 bloggers

Tranmere Rovers Polls