QPR are back on the bottom of the Championship after taking a 1-0 lead against fellow strugglers Portsmouth and turning it into yet another home defeat.
Thus far, we’ve been watching Homer’s hog roast journey through myriad setbacks and disasters while reasoning and reassuring ourselves it will, eventually, be fine. It’s just a little dirty, it’ll be fine when the new signings get settled in and up to speed. It’s just a little slimey, it’ll be fine once senior players return from injury down the spine of the team. Well, that pig is now fully airborne, and it’s the farthest thing from fine. Queens Park Rangers are in trouble.
Like the missed chances and excellent goalkeeping in the games here against Plymouth and Hull City, you could once again make the ‘on a different day…’ argument if you choose to stay on the optimistic side for now. Here QPR got a fast start, and an early goal, only to be holed below the waterline by shambolic individual mistakes. Morgan Fox, making his first start of the season after injury, gave the sort of personal performance that could/should spark immediate retirement. Go straight to glue factory, do not pass go, do not collect appearance bonus.
However, if you cannot beat Portsmouth at home after taking the lead – Pompey a team so far wholly out of their depth in a first Championship season for more than a decade, yet to win, beset by injuries, recently trounced 6-1 by perennially-15th Stoke City – then you’ve got big issues. Chief among them – you’re not very good.
Rangers had Ilias Chair back for this one. His return to the lineup has been seen as key to Marti Cifuentes’ team kick-starting a stuttering campaign. But he was more guilty of a personal brain fart than most. Running so far clear on the Portsmouth goal in the first half he had time to marry visiting keeper Nicolas Schmid, raise a family on a small Iowa potato farm, divorce, and find love with another goalkeeper, he chose to use all that space to run up to the Portsmouth man and chip the ball delicately into his arms. Just score the fucking goal for goodness’ sake. Hubris becoming something of a theme at Retexo FC.
Chair’s inclusion from the start for the first time this season was one of several changes in personnel and shape from Cifuentes as he attempted to arrest a slide of six without a win and three straight defeats that we all hoped had bottomed out with an insipid showing at Derby before a much-needed two-week break. Fox was brought in to pad out the middle of the defence with Kenneth Paal to his left, Jimmy Dunne and Steve Cook to his right, and Harrison Ashby on the other side. Ostensibly a 3-4-3, it was chaotic and dysfunctional throughout. Only a couple of last-ditch tackles prevented Portsmouth getting in on Paul Nardi within the first few minutes.
Fox actually started the game with a positive contribution. A big meaty challenge in the middle of the field turned defence into attack. He then failed to free Dembele and Chair into the opposition half which felt like a missed opportunity, but when Ashby lobbed a hopeful punt into the gap between Pompey’s defence and keeper it tempted Schmid from his line enough for Michy Frey to rampage into the situation, creating a loose ball which Dembele was able to chip into the wide-open goal for his first in Rangers colours. Lovely. Now go and play.
Instead, concession. QPR have yet to take a lead into half time this season and have been in front for only 8% of their total minutes played. Here it took Portsmouth little more than ten to get level as Morgan Fox turned a situation well in his favour into one from which Freddie Potts was able to equalise by turning down multiple opportunities to seize possession of the ball, kick the thing into the stand, foul the man who’d taken it from him, or keep Lang from dribbling round him completely on his way to the penalty area. Cut back, shot blocked, Potts follows in, one one. QPR currently concede more on rebounds than the Detroit Pistons.
A ’sold out’ crowd (just fence those ones off behind the goal) had just started to turn on their team with so much backwards and sideways lameness creeping in when one long ball forward got Chair in for his glaring miss. That proved to be the opening ceremony in The Thick Shit Olympics. QPR entered the decathlon – ten disciplines to prove you really are a total fucking idiot – and scored highly in fouling players tight to the touchline when they’ve got their back to goal and are posing no threat to you. In the second phase from that resulting free kick, Saydee fired over from the edge of the box. Only a terrific intervention at the back post from Steve Cook prevented a second Pompey goal on the stroke of half time. Shots in return came mainly from long range, and mainly from Jimmy Dunne, neither ideal. Dunne’s free header from an injury time corner was much more his scene, but saved well by Schmid.
There were some hints that perhaps better might be to come at the start of the second half. Terrific hold up play by the hardworking Frey set Chair up for a cutback that provoked meagre handball appeals in the box, rightly ignored by referee James Linington who was right on top of his Saturday afternoon. Dembele got a pure strike away after a long run down the middle of the field, but it flew straight at the goalkeeper. Chair’s cross to the back post ten after the break looked inviting, but Ashby’s attempt to beat the goalkeeper to it and score a vital goal for his team amounted to rank cowardice.
With the stench of the first still ripe in the nostrils there was, unfortunately, a second shitting of the bed to come from Fox. Slack in control of the ball and then horribly clumsy with a tackle that exemplified the hours and hours he was behind the pace of the game all afternoon, Fox gave Linington choice but to award the easiest and most blatant penalty of his refereeing career. Callum Lang calmly stuck it away in front of the travelling faithful.
In the posh seats, visiting meatheads drunk on unexpected on field success and too much table wine started acting up and looking for agg. Like 1997 all over again. No John Spencer to bail Rangers out this time though – my God, if only. You couldn’t help admire Frey’s toil, but the attack carried zero goal threat throughout the second half. Sub Paul Smyth took time out from hopelessly banging the ball into touch to thrash a presentable chance through the six-yard box and wide – not accurate enough to call a shot, too powerful to be a cross. Marzipan dildo.
In fact it was more the Harry Redknapp era in W12 that sprung to mind as Cifuentes embarked on a series of bizarre substitutions which felt more like a manager proving a point than one actively trying to get back into a game. Chair, admittedly on the comeback from injury, and Dembele were both removed when the team needed a goal. Sam Field, on a booking it must be said, was hooked while Nicolas Madsen, anonymous to the point of police divers trawling the river looking for him, was left to complete a full 90. He makes Andre Dozzell look like Rambo at this point. Morgan Fox was also left on to the end, Jake Clarke-Salter an unused sub, despite a personal performance of such staggering ineptitude I actually wondered whether he might take the Portsmouth penalty for them. Mind you, we’d still have been level if he had.
On came Kieran Morgan and, hey, the boy showed bravery, wanted to be involved, got on the ball, and progressed it forward. But a boy is what he is, at risk of disappearing in a stiff breeze, asked here to play the first professional minutes of his life, 2-1 down in a key league game against a fellow struggler with the crowd in open revolt. His contribution outweighed Madsen’s by some magnitude, and perhaps that was the point being made. Cifuentes went on every podcast going, before he got here and had his press privileges revoked, about his Cruyffian ideals and 4-3-3 formation. That requires ball playing midfielders who can take the ball on the turn and play it. We’ve seen none of that in this team, these new signings, and certainly this midfield. Beat the ‘high press’ and 50 free yards are yours, as happened several times in this game. The midfield simply doesn’t exist. We’ve asked several times what exactly it is they’re so afraid of Cifuentes saying in interviews or fans forums that they feel the need to hide him away. Perhaps this was the first sign of those artistic differences spilling out onto the pitch. Fine, I’ll pick an actual child in there instead.
The stats screamed passiveness. QPR, already last in the league for tackles and interceptions, put up their lowest numbers of the season in both. They used a season-high 65% possession to muster just 21 touches in the Portsmouth box.
Koki Saito headed straight at the goalkeeper with one of those as the game petered out into a hopeless defeat met by boos at full time and a sad traipse of demoralised players straight down the tunnel. Frey beat the turf in frustration. For several of them – Ashby, Madsen – seeing them wander about sheepishly clapping the support was the only indication they'd ever been there at all. A first Portsmouth win of the season, a first league win for the Fratton outfit on this ground since 1961.
The performances are getting worse - from Sheff Wed to Blackburn, Blackburn to Derby and then to this. The good bits and positives of the games against Millwall and Hull are fading, while the bad bits are multiplying and festering. There wasn’t a single bit of the team functioning properly here. Strikers who carry no goal threat, midget wingers who cannot defend, full backs simply not up to the level, a midfield from the Wikipedia entry for great French military victories, and a defence being pulled apart all over the place. QPR, who’ve had the easiest start of any side fixture wise, have a very similar game to this on Tuesday against Coventry before a quickfire quad of Burnley and Leeds A, Boro and Sunderland at home loom.
Apart from that though…
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QPR: Nardi 5; Dunne 4, Cook 5, Fox 2; Ashby 3 (Morgan 64, 6), Field 5 (Celar 64, 5), Madsen 3 Paal 4 (Saito 73, 5); Dembele 5 (Andersen 81, -), Chair 4 (Smyth 64, 4), Frey 6
Subs not used: Santos, Clarke-Salter, Bennie, Walsh
Goals: Dembele 7 (unassisted)
Yellow Cards: Field 47 (foul)
Pompey: Schmid 5; Williams 6, Poole 7, McIntyre 6, Ogilvie 6; Pack 6, Potts 6; Lang 7 (Devlin 81, -), Saydee 6 (Lane 61, 6), Murphy 6 (Sorensen 80, -); O’Mahony 6 (Yengi 71, 6)
Subs not used: Archer, Dozzell, Kamara, Ritchie, Towler
Yellow Cards: McIntyre 54 (foul), Williams 85 (foul), Yengi 90+7 (foul)
Goals: Potts 18, Lang pen 57
QPR Star Man – Michy Frey 6 Maximum effort + mild effectiveness = QPR star man with a six.
Referee – James Linington (Isle of Wight) 8 A confident referee on top of his game.
Attendance – 17,438 (1,800 Portsmouth approx.) Now 13 wins from the last 55 games on this ground, and still they come.
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