 Wednesday, 9th May 2012 22:49 by Clive Whittingham This Sunday isn’t the first time QPR have travelled to Manchester to face City in a must-not-lose game. Last time though they got a helping hand from their hosts. Recent MeetingsQPR 2 Manchester City 3, Saturday November 5, 2011, Premiership QPR came closer than most to toppling Manchester City during the Sky Blues’ formidable start to the Premiership campaign. The absence of Vincent Kompany from the heart of the City defence and a no-fear attitude from Neil Warnock’s side seemed to catch Roberto Mancini’s team cold and Rangers were desperately unfortunate not to take something from the game. Rangers took a deserved first half lead when Jay Bothroyd planted a firm header past Joe Hart and the former Cardiff man clipped the outside of the post with a similar chance moments later when he should have made it two. That profligacy was punished either side of half time when first Edin Dzeko and then David Silva clinicly put the visitors in front for the first time but Rangers roared back and equalised when another Bothroyd header was deflected into the net by Heidar Helguson. Sadly there was to be no fairy tale though as City overpowered their hosts once and for all with 15 minutes left to play and Yaya Toure buried a winning header at the School End. A fantastic game played out in a raucous Saturday night atmosphere. QPR: Kenny 7, Young 6, Gabbidon 6, Ferdinand 7, Traore 7 (Hill 90, -), Mackie 7 (Smith 84, -), Barton 7, Faurlin 9, Wright-Phillips 7, Bothroyd 8 (Puncheon 76, 5), Helguson 9 Subs Not Used: Murphy, Orr, Derry, Andrade Booked: Barton (foul) Goals: Bothroyd 28 (assisted Barton), Helguson 69 (assisted Traore/Bothroyd) Man City: Hart 8, Richards 7, Savic 5, Lescott 6, Kolarov 8, Barry 6 (Balotelli 75, 6), Y Toure 8, Milner 7, Silva 8, Aguero 6 (Johnson 68, 6), Dzeko 8 (Toure 88, -) Subs Not Used: Pantilimon, Zabaleta, Nasri, Clichy Booked: Balotelli (diving) Goals: Dzeko 43 (unassisted), Silva 52 (assisted Dzeko), Y Toure 74 (assisted Kolarov)
Man City 1 QPR 3, Wednesday March 8, 2000, First Division QPR have never played at Eastlands, but did win against City the last time these teams met in Manchester at Maine Road. Joe Royle’s City were on their way back to the Premiership but had only drawn at Loftus Road earlier in the season and slipped to a shock First Division defeat against Gerry Francis’ team. Rangers were comfortably in midtable at this stage but put on a real show for the faithful travelling fans who were positioned high in the corner of Maine Road on a rather rickety temporary stand that seemed to sway in the Wednesday night wind. Chris Kiwomya, who had scored in the first match, opened the scoring eight minutes before half time and an own goal from Wiekens before half time doubled the lead. A late penalty from loaned Derby striker Mikkel Beck sealed the win before Jeff Whitley bagged a consolation. Man City: N Weaver, R Edghill, G Wiekens, R Jobson, D Granville (I Bishop, 46), D Tiatto (K Horlock, 69), J Whitley, J Pollock (P Dickov, 60), M Kennedy, L Peacock, S Goater Subs not used: S Wright-Phillips, T Wright Goals: Whitley 84 QPR: L Harper, J Darlington, C Plummer, K Ready , D Ward, I Baraclough (M Rose, 62), P Murray, G Peacock (S Wardley, 27), R Langley, C Kiwomya, M Beck Subs not used: S Slade, K Rowland, L Miklosko Goals: Kiwomya 37, Wiekens og 45, Beck pen 73 Booked: Ready, Baraclough
Previous ResultsHead to Head >>> Man City wins 20 >>> Draws 15 >>> QPR wins 122011/12 QPR 2 Man City 3 (Bothroyd, Helguson) 2003/04 QPR 0 Man City 3* 1999/00 Man City 1 QPR 3 (Kiwomya, Wiekens og, Beck) 1999/00 QPR 1 Man City 1 (Kiwomya) 1997/98 Man City 2 QPR 2 (Sheron, Pollock og) 1997/98 QPR 2 Man City 0 (Ready, Peacock) 1996/97 Man City 0 QPR 3 (Spencer 2, Slade) 1996/97 QPR 2 Man City 2 (Sinclair, Murray) 1995/96 Man City 2 QPR 0 1995/96 QPR 1 Man City 0 (Barker) 1994/95 Man City 2 QPR 3 (Ferdinand 2, Dichio) 1994/95 QPR 3 Man City 4* (Gallen, Sinclair, Penrice) 1994/95 QPR 1 Man City 2 (Wilson) 1993/94 QPR 1 Man City 1 (Penrice) 1993/94 Man City 3 QPR 0 1992/93 QPR 1 Man City 1 (Wilson) 1992/93 QPR 1 Man City 2** (Holloway) 1992/93 Man City 1 QPR 1 (Sinton) 1991/92 QPR 4 Man City 0 (Ferdinand 2, Wilson, Barker) 1991/92 Man City 2 QPR 2 (Wegerle, Bailey) 1991/92 QPR 1 Man City 3* (Penrice) 1991/92 Man City 0 QPR 0* 1990/91 QPR 1 Man City 0 (Ferdinand) 1990/91 Man City 2 QPR 1 (Sinton) 1989/90 QPR 1 Man City 3 (Wegerle) 1989/90 Man City 1 QPR 0 1986/87 QPR 1 Man City 0 (M Allen) 1986/87 Man City 0 QPR 0 1985/86 Man City 2 QPR 0 1985/86 QPR 0 Man City 0 1978/79 Man City 3 QPR 1 (Busby) 1978/79 QPR 2 Man City 1 (Hamilton 2) 1977/78 Man City 2 QPR 1 (Abbot) 1977/78 QPR 1 Man City 1 (G Francis) 1976/77 QPR 0 Man City 0 1976/77 Man City 0 QPR 0 1975/76 QPR 1 Man City 0 (Webb) 1975/76 Man City 0 QPR 0 1974/75 QPR 2 Man City 0 (Rogers 2) 1974/75 Man City 1 QPR 0 1973/74 QPR 3 Man City 0 (Leach 2, Bowles) 1973/74 Man City 1 QPR 0 1969/70 Man City 3 QPR 0* 1968/69 Man City 3 QPR 1 (Leach) 1968/69 QPR 1 Man City 1 (Bridges) 1950/51 Man City 5 QPR 2 (Hatton, Smith) 1950/51 QPR 1 Man City 2 (Hatton) * - League Cup ** - FA Cup
ConnectionsStan Bowles >>> Man City 1967-1970 >>> QPR 1972-1979Bowles played for seven years at QPR as part of the club’s greatest ever side that came so close to winning the league championship in 1976. He is widely seen as the best player ever to wear the blue and white hoops. His time at Manchester City was somewhat less successful. As a teenager in the city he worked as a bookies runner for the notorious Quality Street Gang, and got rather too involved with the gambling himself, which didn’t do him any favours in the eyes of City’s manager Malcolm Allison who rarely picked Bowles after he’d progressed through the ranks there and eventually offloaded him to Crewe. A year later he was at Carlisle, playing alongside John Gorman, where scouts started to pay attention after 14 goals in 33 Second Division appearances. QPR took the plunge for £112,000 as they hunted for a replacement for their previous maverick striker Rodney Marsh who had just been sold to Manchester City. The stories of Bowles, most true some not, are the stuff of legend. On one of his rare England appearances he wore odd boots, one from Puma and the other from Nike, after signing boot deals with both. He has been accused of/acclaimed for hitting the FA Cup with the ball when Sunderland placed it at the side of their pitch following their final victory in 1973 – although it’s since been suggested that it was actually Tony Hazell that did it, by accident. Bowles scored twice in a 3-0 win. The tales of arriving in the dressing room ten minutes before kick off having previously been in the South Africa Road betting shop in full kit are too numerous to fully recount here. Bowles would regularly go and see chairman Jim Gregory for cash handouts to fund his notorious gambling habit. On the pitch though there was no doubt about his ability. In the 1976/77 season he set a goal scoring record for an English player in the UEFA Cup, scoring 11 goals across four two legged ties as Rangers advanced to the quarter finals before losing on penalties to AEK Athens. He subsequently attracted interest from Hamburg pre-Keegan but turned the move down and finished at QPR with 97 goals in 315 appearances. Bowles said: “I loved the place – still do. We had a great team – ten international players. There was Phil Parkes in goal, Dave Clement and Ian Gillard at full-back, the centre-halves were Frank McLintock and Terry Mancini, in midfield it was Terry Venables, Gerry Francis and Dave Thomas, and up front me and Don Givens. I used to hit the ball miles in front of Dave Thomas and knew he would always catch it, he had such pace on the wing. A smashing player, genuinely two-footed. Don Givens was a good striker. I didn’t get on with him, but we worked well together on the field. He tried to tell me to stop hanging around with gangsters and to stop drinking. I suppose he meant well but I didn’t want to hear it.” Bowles gained a scandalously low five England caps, under three different managers, due in no small part to his reaction to manager Joe Mercer when he was substituted in a game against Northern Ireland in 1974 although his first cap had come in Alf Ramsey’s last match in charge in Portugal. Six years later he did the same to Brian Clough at Nottingham Forest and missed out on an appearance in the European Cup final after a row over playing in John Robertson’s testimonial. Clough sold Bowles on to Orient for £100,000 after eight months. He finished his career with Brentford. Bowles can still be found in and around Loftus Road on matchdays, posing for pictures and enjoying the hospitality. Others >>> Shaun Wright Phillips, Man City 1998-2005, 2008-2011, QPR 2011-present >>> Joey Barton, Man City 2002-2007, QPR 2011-present >>> Ishmael Miller, Man City 2005-2008, QPR (loan) 2011 >>> Keith Curle, Man City 1991-1996, QPR (coach) 2010-present >>> Tim Flowers, Man City (loan) 2002, QPR (coach) 2008 >>> Steve Lomas, Man City 1991-1997, QPR 2005-2007 >>> Richard Edghill, Man City 1993-2002, QPR 2003-2005 >>> Robert Taylor, Man City 1999-2000, QPR (loan) 2001 >>> Gareth Taylor, Man City 1998-2001, QPR (loan) 2000 >>> Tony Scully, Man City 1997-1998, QPR 1998-2001 >>> Trevor Sinclair, QPR 1993-1998, Man City 2003-2007 >>> Mike Sheron, Man City 1990-1994, QPR 1997-1999 >>> Mark Kennedy, QPR (loan) 1998, Man City 1999-2001 >>> Paul Walsh, QPR (loan) 1991, Man City 1994-1995 >>> Clive Wilson, Man City 1979-1989, QPR 1990-1995 >>> David Seaman, QPR 1986-1990, Man City 2003-2004 >>> Peter Reid QPR 1989-1990, Man City (player manager) 1990-1993 >>> Trevor Francis, Man City 1981-1982, QPR (player manager) 1988-1990 >>> Clive Allen, QPR 1978-1980, 1981-1984, Man City 1989-1991 >>> John Burridge, QPR 1980-1982, Man City 1994-1995 >>> Barry Silkman Man City 1979-1980, QPR 1980-1981 >>> Rodney Marsh, QPR 1966-1972, Man City 1972-1975 Memorable MatchMan City 2 QPR 2, Saturday April 25, 1998, First Division Queens Park Rangers had been the visitors at Maine Road for the first ever live Premiership match on a Monday night at the start of the 1992/93 season, but nearly six years later both had fallen on hard times. Mismanagement in the dug out and boardroom had seen both drop out of the top flight and by the time they clashed at Maine Road at the end of the 1997/98 season they were both staring unthinkable relegation to the Second Division square in the face. Man City had responded to this by replacing manager Frank Clark with Joe Royle which brought a rally of three wins from four matches in February, but then just a solitary success from the following eight matches. By the time relegation rivals QPR came to town for the penultimate match of the season only a win for Royle’s men was good enough to stave off relegation until the final day of the campaign. QPR meanwhile, under the guidance of manager Ray Harford, had taken a slightly different path to salvation. The experienced, uncompromising duo of Vinnie Jones and Neil Ruddock had arrived from the Premier League – Jones signed permanently from Wimbledon, Ruddock on loan from Liverpool – to shore up the side. It had certainly had an effect; Rangers had gone unbeaten in five games coming into this key fixture, but all of them had been drawn. Another stalemate would suit the R’s just fine at Maine Road. In true QPR style the beginning of the game was mired in farce. Ruddock and Jones made their presence felt amidst a highly charged atmosphere by starting a fight in the tunnel before the teams emerged but it only served to wind up the home players and within a minute they’d taken the lead. City’s mercurial midfield talent Georgi Kinkladze set off on a trademark mazy run right from the kick off and drew a foul from Nigel Quashie on the edge of the area. With goalkeeper Lee Harper still setting up his wall Kinkladze tried his luck with a quick free kick and found the net. The referee gave the goal the thumbs up and Rangers found themselves behind. But it’s not just the glorious ability of Rodney Marsh and Stan Bowles that QPR and City fans have shared down the years, both clubs richly embrace farce as well. Seven minutes later Rangers caught City keeper Martyn Margetson thinking about other things as he chose to pick up a pass back on the corner of his own six yard box under pressure from Kevin Gallen. Not only pick it up, but then give the ball straight to Gallen to take a quick indirect free kick to Mike Sheron who slammed in an equaliser against his former club. The general consensus in the away end was that the officials would have liked nothing better than to disallow it, but having allowed Kinkladze his opportunist first they didn’t have a leg to stand on. The stage was set for a goal that has gone down in QPR folklore. In the twenty first minute of this monumentally important game David Bardsley knocked a percentage ball down the right flank into the Manchester City half where central midfielder Jamie Pollock swooped in to tidy things up. Now Jamie Pollock, bless him, was not a particularly gifted footballer. Throughout his career with Bolton, Palace, Man City, Middlesbrough and, improbably, Osasuna, Pollock was an unfancy, uncompromising, central midfield enforcer. Think Lee Cattermole with less ability. Why, therefore, he felt able to try and execute what came next successfully only he and God knows. But thank that God he did. Pollock moved onto the ball on the corner of the penalty area and executed a delicate lob over Kevin Gallen as he came across to try and get involved. In the style of Paul Gascoigne against Scotland in Euro 96 he then collected the ball as it fell on the other side of the players but rather than bring it down he elected to go with his head and lob it up to Margetson who could then catch it and move away down the field. Perhaps it was Margetson’s previous failure with a back pass that persuaded him this was the best course of action – whatever the reasoning, the execution was pure genius. Margetson was poorly positioned and Pollock hadn’t noticed. He lobbed up a header with too much elevation and too much power that had the keeper beaten from the moment it left Pollock’s forehead. The scenes in the away end as it bounced into the net have stayed with me forever. A mixture of euphoria and shock. The drama didn’t end there. Lee Brabury equalised for City just three minutes after half time, peeling his shirt off and wheeling away in celebration in front of the QPR fans in the process. Rangers also had Nigel Quashie sent off late on but clung to their precious point and relegated City in the process, despite going on to lose their final game of the season at home to Bury. The City fans took a biblical rain shower at full time as a sign, the QPR fans were grateful to see it as things threatened to turn nasty outside. Pollock was subsequently named the most influential human being of the millennium, beating Jesus Christ and Karl Marx into second and third, in an American university poll hijacked by QPR supporters. Apparently he is now the manager of Spennymoor Town in the Northern League Division One. Man City: M Margetson, R Edghill, K Horlock, G Brannan (C Russell, 88), C Symons, A Vaughan, J Whitley, J Pollock (I Bishop, 84), S Goater, G Kinkladze (P Dickov, 73), L Bradbury Goals: Kinkladze 1, Bradbury 48 Booked: Kinkladze QPR: L Harper, D Bardsley, I Baraclough , V Jones, D Maddix, N Ruddock (A Heinola, 70), S Yates, N Quashie (s/o 87), M Sheron (M Rose, 46), K Gallen, S Slade (G Peacock, 79) Goals: Sheron 7, Pollock og 21 Bookings: Ruddock, Baraclough. Sent off: Quashie Highlights >>> Pollock own goal >>> QPR 1 Man City 2, FA Cup 1993 Highlights >>> QPR 4 Man City 0 91/92 Highlights >>> QPR 1 Man City 3 91/92 Highlights >>> QPR 1 Man City 0 1990/91 Highlights >>> Bowles goal v Sunderland 1976/77 >>> Bowles breaks UEFA Cup scoring record v Cologne >>> Bowles fabulous goal v Cardiff Tweet @loftforwords Pictures – Action Images Photo: Action Images Please report offensive, libellous or inappropriate posts by using the links provided.
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