LFW begins its annual number crunch and review of the QPR players’ individual performances across the season with the goalkeepers. It’s going to be a long week folks.
Few positions in the 2012/13 QPR team sum of the skewed thinking of Mark Hughes last summer, and the club as a whole, as the goalkeeping spot. Rangers succeeded in taking a squad with three goalkeepers earning approximately £30,000 a week between them and turning it into one with four taking home around £130,000 every seven days without making any discernable improvement to the team whatsoever.
The first step in that process was casting aside Paddy Kenny and bringing in Robert Green. Now there’s been a good deal of hindsight about a lot of the mistakes QPR have made over the past 18 months and it’s very easy to sit here now the whole thing has fallen apart and say that the club made this daft decision or that bad signing – Kenny had played poorly for much of last season, albeit playing injured for some of the campaign, while Green had impressed in West Ham’s promotion campaign.
You couldn’t say that Green flagged up the same warning signs as the likes of Jose Bosingwa, Esteban Granero, Ji-Sung Park and Julio Cesar – who’d all come from big clubs having achieved pretty much everything they were ever likely to and will have found QPR incredibly small time in comparison. Green had spent his career prior to signing at Rangers with clubs of a similar size. But the question Rangers should have been asking therefore was why was he so keen to make what seemed to be a sideways move from a club where he’d been for a number of years and just won a promotion? Or more to the point, why were West Ham happy to allow him to leave? Hammers chairman David Gold was fielding Tweets from fans on a daily basis asking why the club weren’t giving Green a new deal and the simple fact was they thought they’d made a fair offer for his ability and QPR had offered far more. West Ham allowed him to leave, brought in Jussi Jaaskelainen on a free and less wages, and were all the better for it.
QPR meanwhile had a goalkeeper who wasn’t that much better (if he was in fact better at all) than the one they’d allowed to leave and had broken the bank wage wise to do it. Another thing that was perhaps overlooked during a summer when it felt wonderful to be a QPR fan and see them spending serious money for the first time in the club’s history, especially as Kenny subsequently blotted his copy book after a bitter parting to Leeds, was that the former Sheffield United stopper was a good fit for Rangers. There’s no way a man of Kenny’s height (6ft), weight (14 stone) and style (unorthodox) should be keeping goal in a top flight anywhere in Europe in an age of Petr Cech and Manuel Neuer but then there’s no way QPR in their 18,000 seater stadium and training ground borrowed from a college should be either. Kenny was a strange, scrambling, never-say-die sort of a keeper who fought tooth and nail to keep his sheet clean in a variety of unusual ways, had an understanding with his defence, and a rapport with the QPR fans. Rangers got rid of all of that to sign Green, who seems to concede goals for fear of causing offence to opponents.
He conceded some amateurish goals during the pre-season matches and followed that up by allowing a speculative long range shot from Michu slide through his hands and into the net after eight minutes of the opening game with Swansea. LFW said at the time…
Since he’s arrived here he’s done nothing but concede ludicrously awful goals – one on the tour of Asia, two in Germany last week, and now one here. He looks depressed frankly. He carries himself with the confidence and self-worth of an underappreciated poet with a gay porn addiction. He looks like a man who expects to concede goals, and retrieves balls from the back of his net with an air of “told you so.” He’s like the Sunday league player pressed into goalkeeper service against his wishes because of a no show. - Swansea match report
So what did QPR do next? Well, they signed another goalkeeper of course, on even more money than Green. Mark Hughes said publicly it had always been his intention to sign two goalkeepers that summer, but privately told Green he would be dropped for the newcomer and if there was interest in him then he could go. The identity of the replacement is largely irrelevant – having cast Kenny aside despite his affinity with the club and fabulous performances in the promotion side, now they were ditching his replacement after two matches. Whether you rate Kenny, or Green, it didn’t exactly send a terrific message out to the players about their value to the club and how they would be supported through bad times and rewarded for good did it? Green had been brought in as number one and was now told he was surplus to requirements a fortnight into the new season because he hadn’t started well and somebody supposedly better had come along. That sort of thing doesn’t escape the attention of the rest of the players.
The replacement was Julio Cesar, a signing so outrageously good on paper that few really gave a stuff about Kenny or Green any more. Inter Milan’s Brazilian international goalkeeper came to Loftus Road on a free transfer. But why did Cesar want to come to QPR? Why were Inter Milan happy to lose him on a free transfer? How would he settle down into the totally different dynamic of playing for one of the league’s worst teams, behind a new and fairly rickety defence, in a new country and a new style of football? Questions largely ignored at the time, because it didn’t seem possible that this could be a bad signing, soon came back to haunt Rangers.
Cesar’s distribution was awful from day one, and his command of the penalty box in the more physical Premier League poor. Goals in an early home defeat against West Ham raised eyebrows. There were some fabulous performances – away at Arsenal first of all, and then during a fine January when he held Man City, Spurs and West Ham at bay almost single handed at times. The QPR fans taunted City’s England goalkeeper and Wash ‘n Go enthusiast Joe Hart with chants about Cesar’s perfect hair. Overall though the Brazilian has fallen well below expectations and finished the season not even making the bench. His dreadful positioning and decision making for an equaliser right on half time at Aston Villa felt like a key moment in the season. Performances either side of that in defeats at Swansea and Fulham were frightening. Sympathisers often said he was playing injured – but this seemed something of a chicken and egg situation with injuries often coming on all of a sudden when the going got particularly tough. Twice in closely fought away games he had to be substituted.
That has all meant sporadic recalls for Green, who has featured in five of QPR’s six victories during the season. He was impressive as a substitute at Southampton, from the start at West Brom in the cup, and in a draw at Wigan. But the simple fact is he remains an accident waiting to happen. I find myself looking away as balls go into the box. Against Aston Villa at home he spooned Brett Holman’s shot into the net from much the same range and at exactly the same time in the game as Michu’s on day one. His nadir, for me, came against West Brom at Loftus Road on Boxing Day when he took the somewhat unusual step of positioning himself two yards behind his own goal line at a corner and then found himself trapped by Fortune who did little more than stand his ground. Ordinarily a free kick would be awarded – but then ordinarily a goalkeeper would either take a theatrical fall or command the situation and get ahead of the man. Green did neither and ended up palming the ball pathetically into his own net. I mean Christ alive even David De Gea had dusted the sand from his lady parts and strapped on a pair of testicles by the end of the season.
Green stats:
17 starts, two sub appearances, 24 goals conceded. W5, D5, L9
Out of 10 – 2,6,6,6,7,5,8,6,7,4,8,4,7,6,5,6,6,5,7 = 5.84
Interactive ratings average – 5.7
Man of the Match Awards – 1 (Wigan A)
Cesar stats:
26 starts, 41 goals conceded. W2, D10, L14
Out of 10 – 8,8,6,6,6,6,9,6,6,6,6,7,4,8,7,8,9,9,7,4,7,4,3,5,6,5 = 6.38
Interactive ratings average – 6.92
Man of the Match Awards – 5 (Arsenal A, West Brom H FAC, Spurs H, West Ham A, Man City H)
Others >>> No appearances for Brian Murphy but a new deal signed today suggesting he’s being lined up as second in command to the number one next season. That’s likely to be Robert Green given that no other club of the size of QPR, Norwich or West Ham is likely to pay him what Rangers have him on so he’ll be almost impossible to sell. That may not be such a bad thing, as the Championship is more his level, but Rangers would be able to find a better goalkeeper for the second tier at half the weekly cost. Radek Cerny didn’t even make the 25-man squad and retired at the end of the campaign but deserves credit for some fine displays, often at key times, during a turbulent five year spell for the club. Youth teamer Aaron Lennox impressed in the pre-season games and may have potential, while Under 18s stopper Joe Lumley kept clean sheets for fun and was one of seven rewarded with a professional deal at the end of the season.
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Pictures – Action Images