Colin Speller returns to LFW with six champagne moments that didn’t actually happen in the final games, one that should have been more than it was and one that did finally count.
Of all the games attended in the wonderful season just gone, the home match against Leeds received the shortest and most cursory post-match deconstruction of any attended by the LFW crew, i.e. almost none.
In fact, the only discussion of the actual game I can recall in the aftermath was about the moment when Danny Shittu, sent on as an auxiliary striker in the second half, attempted to spin and half volley a bouncing ball into the roof of the net but only succeeded in bobbling one through to Kasper Schmeichel.
This set me thinking about the other recent moments that might have been. It has been a simply unbelievable season and there have been many wonderful, explosive and decisive incidents. My three favourites are Jamie Mackie’s goal against Derby which set the tone for the resilience of the team, Heidar Helguson’s last gasp winner against Crystal Palace which snatched victory from the jaws of a frustrating draw, and Ishmael Miller’s similarly dramatic late show against Leicester which stole three points when it looked like we would do well to get one. Those three moments alone produced us the five points that were the difference between first and second place.
Yet, despite everything that has gone on and the belief – on my part at least – that just about everything that could have gone right has gone right – there have been points in recent games where, believe it or not, things could have been even better. Moments where the fairytale was written, the script was in the players’ hands, but one by one they fluffed their lines.
”Queens Park Rangers secured a draw against Leeds in their final home match of the season thanks to a spectacular goal from an unlikely source. Centre half Danny Shittu scored a fantastic equaliser after being sent on as a makeshift striker by Neil Warnock…”
I’ve always liked Danny Shittu. When he first appeared in a QPR shirt in a dreadful 4-1 defeat away at Peterborough he was sent off and which hardly constituted an auspicious start. But there is nothing not to like about the big man who plays with a smile on his face and his QPR-loving heart on his sleeve.
Warnock admitted after the Leeds match that putting him on up front was fuelled by a mixture of emotion and desperation. Dan approached the task with his usual energy and commitment, but only really succeeded in proving that strength, enthusiasm and pace cannot make up for the positioning, timing and reading of the game possessed by a hardened pro-forward like Helguson.
Despite that, there was a glorious moment shortly after his introduction when he chased down a long ball, pulled it under control and fired it goalwards. Sadly, he was a tad too wide for an effective shot and the ball bounced into Schmeichel’s midriff. Had he scored it would have been, as Clive has already noted, our ‘Tony Adams’ moment – you may recall he scored the fourth and final goal in a title-winning home performance for Arsenal when the Everton defence parted like the Red Sea allowing him to waltz through it and smash the ball home.
It is reasonable to speculate that had he scored Dan would, like Adams, have simply stood there, arms aloft, as the adoring crowd saluted him. It would have been a fitting climax to the cameo he has delivered this year and due reward for his towering performance at Watford the week before. I really hope it isn’t the last we’ve seen of Dan, but I fear that the current Premiership may be a bridge too far for anything other than a back-up role. A true modern day QPR legend, all the same.
”Alejandro Faurlin brought even sharper focus on the FA charges relating to his transfer as his injury time free kick sealed a victory against Hull City at Loftus Road, and promotion into the Premiership for Rangers pending the outcome of a disciplinary hearing…
I bet you are shivering after reading that. I am! It is worth remembering that Faurlin had no less than three opportunities to score crucial goals in two games in succession and whilst it is difficult to imagine the media frenzy being any worse than it was (or more depressing) just think what it would have been like had he scored the goal that secured promotion.
Sticking with the reverse order of this part of the article, two of the chances in the same game were at Watford. The first, in the first half, came at the end of our best move of the match to that point when Taarabt cut the ball back to Faurlin who was at the edge of the box more or less in the centre of the goal. Unfortunately, the ball took a bobble off one of the many furrows on the pitch and with as much shin as foot involved in the shot it cleared the bar by a mile. The second chance was in the second half, with Taarabt (‘Mr Assist’) cutting the ball back from a corner. This time the connection was better but the powerful and accurate shot was within the reach of keeper Scott Loach and he palmed it away for another corner. Another yard away from him and it would have been in.
Probably the most significant chance for Faurlin to give the hacks their story though came in the dying embers of the Hull game when a goal would have won both the game and the league. This time Faurlin took a free kick outside the box and managed to get the ball up over the wall and down again. Sadly, it was probably too far down – a yard higher and it would have been in that awkward top corner spot that a diving keeper simply cannot reach. Instead it was palmed away by the skin of the keeper’s expensive gloves. Faurlin fell to his knees, the game was drawn, promotion had to wait another week but at least we were spared further excess in the coverage of the transfer affair.
”Patrick Agyemang re-opened the tear in the fabric of reality through which he once scored eight goals in six appearances to score a winner against Hull with a delicate chip over the stranded keeper at Loftus Road this afternoon…”
Okay, okay – so this one requires some imagination, I know, but Helguson scored a goal from a similar position (albeit at the opposite end of the field) against Scunthorpe earlier in the season, so why couldn’t big Pat do the same when presented the ball in much the same way? I digress here for a moment to mention that I’m now cited on Pat’s Wikipedia page as the source of the “tear in the fabric of reality” comment, following me mentioning it in a LFW pre-season match report I did for Clive and some subsequent mischief from Owain. All that just goes to prove that much of what you read on the internet is both circular in the nature of its sourcing, and wrong.
Anyway, most of you know what happened in the final moments of the Hull game – big Pat was presented with the ball, it sat up nicely and he had time and space for a number of options including pulling it down and thumping it home. In the milliseconds available to my over excited imagination that’s what he did but 16,000 QPR supporters could not force the necessary fissure in the space/time continuum so Pat, who varies from a big, powerful impact player to looking like a fan who has won the chance to play for the team in a raffle, chose to try a delicate lob which in the end was struck with far too much force and sailed over the bar. Hero status was within his grasp and then gone all in a second. We shouldn’t forget the crucial goals at Derby and Bristol City, but other than that this has been another poor season for the allegedly highly-paid forward.
”Cardiff City were left to bemoan a poor decision from an assistant referee after Heider Helguson sealed QPR’s promotion with a late winner from an offside position in South Wales today, avenging the agony of the R’s play-off final defeat in 2003…
Of the ones that got away this would have been a considerable layer of icing on an already rich cake. QPR had – amazingly for anyone who has supported them for as long as I have, but fully in character for the 2010/11 team – come back twice from being a goal down at Cardiff. The first, spectacular opener from Bothroyd had been more than matched by Taarabt’s latest piece of outrageous brilliance, only for Connolly to be spared the awkwardness of conceding a penalty for handball by Bellamy firing the ball home for 2-1. Cue much cut and thrust until Taarabt wriggled free to pick his spot with consummate skill.
Cardiff were kept out brilliantly by Paddy Kenny, then with Rangers pressing in injury time came the moment. One of the joys of Taarabt is that you are never sure what he is going to do next so it was perhaps not surprising that Helguson was not ready for what happened when the Moroccan headed purposefully into the Cardiff box. What he actually delivered this time was a shot-cum-cross that swept across the goal in slow motion. Helguson, at least a yard offside, did not react quickly enough and by the time he surged forward he was not quite up with the ball and his stretched shot sliced into the side netting.
Somewhere between the ball leaving Taarabt’s foot and Helguson hitting it I re-lived much of the last eight years of QPR football and still had time to dare to dream that this was about to be not just a splendid moment, but very much the climactic moment of the season. I use the word ‘climactic’ with some trepidation given that when QPR played Chelsea in the Carling Cup a few years ago , and were pressing hard, Clive turned to me and said ‘I warn you that if we score now, I will probably orgasm.’ This still rates as the most alarming thing ever said to me at a football match, and possibly the most alarming thing said to me ever, and it meant that for once in my life I was pretty sure I did not want us to score.
However, I am sure had Helguson scored at Cardiff it would have been a ‘better than sex’ moment for many. Sadly, it wasn’t to be, and the game ended shortly afterwards, but we’d done enough to see off the Cardiff challenge and left the ground confident in their ability to self destruct. Which they duly did against Middlesborough.It also saved us another week of Faurlingate.
”Tommy Smith haunted his former club Watford with a goal deep into injury time that finally, certainly, irrevocably secured QPR’s promotion to the Premier League…
Well, he did, didn’t he? Yes, we know that now, but how did you actually feel after the Watford result? There were tears and tantrums of joy in the LFW party in the stands at that moment, much of which is now in ghastly frame by frame detail on Facebook and elsewhere on the web, but as the champagne slipped down in Mabel’s Tavern later little did we guess at the media storm that was to open up during the following week.
Rather than bask in the glow of the result and its consequences, I spent most of the week sounding like a lawyer defending QPR’s case to a whole gaggle of amateur prosecutors at work whilst trying to tolerate a torrent of speculation dressed up as rumour dressed up as fact on the web and in the papers. Never mind the notion of ‘due process’ and independent panels, this was a media frenzy that only served to convince those of us outside the professional journalistic fraternity that much of what is written and spoken in the media is wilfully wrong, plain and simple.
I do understand fully the ying and yang of pleasure and pain but I did not expect to spend the week in which I had planned to bask in the limelight actually knotted up inside to the point of showing clear symptoms of stress. Suffice to say that it was a bloody odd way to end a fantastic season. Fortunately, we survived to enjoy the champagne moment that did eventually happen…
”At a little after 11.40am today, some random bloke ran into the Green Room public house in Shepherds Bush clutching a phone and shouting ‘We’ve done it – there’s no points deduction’…”
Ok, so it wasn’t a random bloke but apparently Andy Hillman, the LFW betting correspondent (not a salaried position). It could have been Bin Laden or Attila the Hun for all the attention I was paying in my heightened state of tension. There was already a rumour of an announcement at 11.30am and my guts had managed yet another twist as that time came and went.
Anyway, there was a moment’s silence, then as one we reached for our various brands of smart-phones. The local 3G system went into overload as various websites were searched hurriedly. Other people barked at the bar staff to put Sky Sports News on. Then Clive read out a text from the official site and Owain read a statement from the FA. At Watford, it had been Clive and Neil in tears. Now it was me. After 15 years my wonderful, wonderful football club was back in the big time.
Forget the moments that might have been, this was the moment to start to savour what was for real. Cue the party (and what a party!). You R’s!!