QPR, without a fit striker to call their own, face Middlesbrough, whose entire defence is injured, at the Riverside Stadium tonight, desperately trying to stop both seasons fading away to nothing.

Boro (14-8-14 LLLWWL 9th)v QPR (11-11-14 WLWLLL 14th)

Sky’s Super Saturday Brunch Spectacular >>> Tuesday March 11, 2025 >>> Kick off 19.45 >>> Weather – Cold again, that’s your spring done >>> Riverside Stadium, Middlesbrough, Teesside

LFW has never been shy of mocking Russell Martin’s extreme preference for idealism over pragmatism. That time we beat his Swansea side 1-0 while they spent 90 minutes trying to execute an elaborate goalkick routine which, even when it worked, advanced the ball only 18 yards up the field, and still with the goalkeeper. That time they set the Championship record for first half passes completed and then conceded to a crap Sheff Wed side from their first corner. Go and try that hubristic nonsense in the Premier League, we said, and you’ll get… well, you’ll get one win in your first 23 games and the sack, which is exactly what happened to Southampton this season.

Martin has always been stubborn on his idea that there is a right way to play football and a wrong way, and any slight concession towards the latter, even if it’s just to adapt for a specific game against a challenging opponent, is a sign of weakness which will be seized upon by the mercenary footballers from which point on you’re lost. Interesting (he’s always been an erudite and persuasive speaker to be fair), therefore, to hear him speaking on Monday Night Football this week about what went wrong at St Mary’s and admitting they grossly underestimated the importance of physicality and athleticism in their summer recruitment.

This has been a theme of QPR’s 2024/25 season as well. Rangers have got some good footballers. They have Koki Saito, Ilias Chair and Karamoko Dembele types who are capable of exhilarating moments of great excitement. They have good, progressive ball playing defenders like Ronnie Edwards, Jake Clarke-Salter and Liam Morrison who are capable of enacting the style du jour to which all teams apparently now have to adhere. They do have some more grizzled, experienced types like Steve Cook, Jack Colback and Jimmy Dunne. But, generally, this team is too slow, too small and too weak.

This came to a head at the start of November when Middlesbrough ran the rounds of the kitchen through Rangers at Loftus Road. A 4-1 defeat that would have been far heavier had Michael Carrick’s side not spent the start of the second half pisballing about time wasting and trying to hold onto their 2-0 lead when there were obviously goals (plural) out there for them. This the night of Nicolas Madsen’s zero tackles in central midfield stat, and an exceedingly rare LFW 1/10 mark.

Things picked up soon after that when the approach shifted from trying to dominate the ball and press high, to defending narrow and executing a block through midfield. Things like running and tackling and heading the ball were prioritised over the flicks and tricks, and Rangers recovered their season which at one point had them five points adrift at the bottom and wondering where the next win was coming from.

More recently, safe in midtable and neither going up nor down, Marti Cifuentes has tried to open things up again. Taking out one of the three defensive midfielders and re-introducing a third ‘ten’ behind the lone striker. Ilias Chair has had a go in the middle at last. At home, against Blackburn, Derby and others, it’s produced some exciting results. But fairly quickly, and especially away from home, the defeats are starting to stack up again. It’s six losses in eight now, after just one in the prior 13. Trying to get us into a more progressive, attractive, entertaining, attacking shape, style and mindset is a worthy cause ahead of next season when we’ve effectively got nothing to play for this. That has to be the aspiration, right? May as well work on it now as just try and grind out some grim 1-0 wins to move us from 16th to 12th. But the more we try it the more you have to conclude we just don’t have the personnel for it.

We’ll certainly be namechecking that Middlesbrough home match frequently in our end of season reviews, but Saturday’s defeat at West Brom won’t be far behind it. Not only because, for the third time this season, Rangers had a huge chunk of time to attack ten men and couldn’t even score a goal, but also because it was the day an already sub-standard set of strikers collapsed entirely and we were left with no choice but to select half a dozen midgets up front, comedically faced up against Kyle Bartley and Torbjorn Heggem. Out of my way puny boy.

Cifuentes certainly doesn’t want to go to The Hawthorns and start Paul Smyth on his own up front. No manager in his right mind would want to go into games in this league with Alfie Lloyd as his only available striker. When we’re assessing how well or otherwise the manager is doing at QPR it’s always important to bear in mind what they’re working with, and against.

A quote from our opposition profile of Middlesbrough tonight: “The players we brought in, they’ve been, in a word: meh. Morgan Whittaker has been getting there, and Mark Travers is an upgrade on Dieng and Glover, but between Ryan Giles, Samuel Iling-Junior, George Edmundson and Kelechi Iheanacho, all I have for you is a shrug of the shoulders.”

Just close your eyes and imagine, for a moment, the January just done, where QPR loaned in Yang Min-Hyeok and Ronnie Edwards, in a different parallel universe where they spent £7m on Morgan Whittaker, and stuck Mark Travers, Ryan Giles and Kelechi Iheanacho on top of that. And others besides. Imagine the hype and excitement. Imagine the Twitter. We’d have been going absolutely beside ourselves. The HMS Piss The League would have been setting fair sail. We’ve got to go and play against that tonight, praying that Michi Frey might be fit enough to give us an hour of toil in attack. Cifuentes is not armed for a fair fight.

For it all, Boro are ninth and in turgid form. Positive results against awful Stoke and Derby sides have quelled the criticism for now but Boro were dreadful in defeat at managerless Swansea at the weekend and have lost six of the last eight and eight of the last 11.

What Carrick and Cifuentes do have in common, other than recent results, is also related to the physicality rather than the skill and ability of their team.

Rangers went to West Brom at the weekend without a fit, senior striker. At Christmas all their centre backs got injured at once, which is why Edwards is here being prepared to play against us for Southampton next season. Boro come into tonight’s game without a fit first team or academy centre back to name. Dael Fry, who was the last man standing, went down injured in South Wales at the weekend. It’s likely to be a combination of veteran midfielder Jonny Howson and left back Neto Borges in the middle this evening. They were fearsome in W12 but the only starters from that game who are still available to start now are Borges, Morris, Azaz and Conway.

You may think that terribly unlucky, but here’s our Middlesbrough oppo profile from this time last year when the spate of injuries undermining their season cops a slim dozen mentions across the piece.

Michael Carrick, like Cifuentes, like Russell Martin, has strong ideals about how he wants to play. Is his squad, though, up to the physical demands of 46 games of Championship football? No long cup run to act as an excuse for Boro this season either – both these sides meekly ditched out of the FA Cup at the first possible opportunity in January. (Quite why this game couldn’t have therefore been played on fourth round day instead of us doing nothing that weekend and then having to complete this bloody trek on a Tuesday night is another matter).

I said at after the defeat at the weekend next year’s recruitment has to place more emphasis on the physical side of the game. We need to be stronger, more difficult to play against, and certainly quicker – it remains a mystery to me why we’ve made so little effort to add any pace back into this team since Bright Osayi-Samuel left, and even Bright was a Mel Johnson pick rather than somebody who had come out of the data and analytics. In addition to that, both Boro and QPR have got to look at the durability of their squads this summer. Michi Frey has been useful, effective, quite fun at times, but these sabbaticals are becoming too frequent. Rayan Kolli’s absenteeism is also a cause for concern in one so young. We’ve got one of the best left sided defenders in the league, but he’d never managed 30 games in a season before he got here and he’s barely been fit to play in the three years we’ve had him, so therefore what’s the point?

You can talk xG, xA, progressive ball movements, completed dribbles, midblock, high block, whatever you like. When you’re operating a slim squad on a limited budget, one of the key abilities you need in your players is availability.

Links >>> Boro continue to stutter – Oppo Profile >>> Ferdinand conquers Ayresome Park – History >>> Webb in charge – Referee >>> Middlesbrough Official Website >>> Teeside Gazette — Local Paper >>> FMTTM — Message Board >>> Boro Breakdown – Podcast >>> One Boro — Forum >>> Bonkers for Boro — Blog >>> Boropolis — Podcast

Below the fold

Team News: QPR come into tonight without long termers Jake Clarke-Salter, Zan Celar and Sam Field. Rayan Kolli will be back on the other side of the international break. Michi Frey is the main one who missed out at the weekend but should be okay for tonight. We wait to hear on Jonathan Varane who also missed the trip to The Hawthorns. Karamoko Dembele continued his comeback with another sub appearance at the weekend and may be in line for a first start since October. Liam Morrison also impressed off the bench after his two month absence. Koki Saito appeared to pull up lame after his final shot of the stoppage time on Saturday.

Dael Fry’s injury at the weekend leaves Boro without a fit and available centre back at either first team or U21 level, and they’re the latest Championship club considering a donation to the Eric Pieters retirement fund – the free agent has been training with Michael Carrick’s men. George Edmundson, Rav van den Berg and Luke Ayling were already sidelined, making the January decision to let Matt Clarke go to Derby feel a rather perverse act of self sabotage. Jonny Howson and Neto Borges ended the Swansea game as the centre backs and that’s unlikely to change here with academy defenders James Wilson out for the season with a knee injury, Harley Hunt hamstrung and Josh Dede with a broken foot.

Elsewhere: Are Red Bull Leeds falling apart again? Show me a good time. The apparent runaway league leaders let two points slip at home to West Brom last weekend and were the latest club to fall victim to fortress Fratton Park – deservedly beaten by Pompey on Sunday. Few teams would like to press down on their throat more than Wednesday night’s visitors Millwall, and Daniel Farke’s side could have slipped to third by then if Sheffield Red Stripe beat Bristol City at home to Burnley defeat West Brom at Turf Moor the night before. Darnell Furlong’s three match ban stands by the way – his appeal against the red card picked up against us at the weekend has been rejected.

Sunderland are in that same weird purgatory Harry Redknapp’s QPR found themselves in through the back half of the 2013/14 promotion season. The automatic promotion places are probably beyond them, but their gap to seventh is so enormous the play-offs are assured. It can be an awkward situation to manage to make sure you go into the end of season knockouts with form, momentum and a fit squad. Obviously QPR were successful in that situation, beating Wigan in the semis and Derby in the final, but were extremely fortunate to do so and those final three months of the season were mostly bloody awful. The Mackems have Preston Knob End at home this midweek.

A very different vibe at Frank Lampard’s Coventry who have once again come on strong from a lousy start. Another last minute winner from Bobby Thomas at the weekend won the Mark Robins derby and made it nine wins from ten league games, and five straight victories, to propel the Sky Blues into fifth. They have a great chance to continue that this weekend at struggling Derby, although the Rams did finally get their first win in 14 attempts in that John Eustace grudge match with Blackburn at the weekend. West Brom, already mentioned, cling to sixth as it stands.

The chasing pack are all well in touch, but nobody is in any kind of form really. The five teams immediately outside the play offs have won just two of ten games in the last two rounds of fixtures between them and ten of the last 30. Three of those victories have belonged to Bristol City who sit seventh before their trip to Bramall Lane, Blackburn haven’t won in three since Valerian Ismael took over and have an away game at Stoke on Wednesday, Norwich have one win in six before a homer against Sheff Wed while Watford host Swanselona.

At the opposite end of the table a couple of crunch games as Cardiff host Luton and Hull play at home to Oxford. Plymouth’s search for a maiden away win goes to Portsmouth.

Referee: Just the two wins in 17 outings with Durham’s David Webb for QPR, though we did beat Derby 4-0 last time out. Details.

Form

Boro: Middlesbrough have had a dreadful start to 2025. Since a New Year’s Day win at Hull they’ve won just three of 12 and lost eight of the others. Narrow wins against struggling Stoke and Derby stemmed a bleed of five consecutive league defeats but they were insipid in a 1-0 loss at managerless Swansea at the weekend. At home they’ve won only two of their last eight games – Watford, Sunderland and Blackburn have all won at the Riverside in that sequence while Sheff Wed, Burnley and Cardiff left with a draw.

Sheff Wed trailed 3-0 at half time here in that game and Michael Carrick’s side are weirdly flakey when taking the lead. Of the 23 times they’ve led a game this season they’ve ended up drawing five and losing four of those games. No team in the league has lost more times from a winning position. In the recent run of six league defeats in seven they’d scored the first goal in three of those before going on to lose (2-1 at both Portsmouth and Bristol City and 3-2 at home to Sunderland).

Emmanuel Latte Lath, who scored in the first meeting (along with every fucker else), remains top scorer here with 11 league goals despite leaving in January. Tommy Conway and Finn Azaz are next up with ten apiece (QPR do not have a player in double figures for goals this season). Azaz has ten assists to go with that – only Joel Piroe (21) has more than his 20 goal involvements in the Championship this season.

QPR: From one defeat in 13 games it’s now six losses in the last eight for QPR. They’ve lost three games in a row for the first time since October when they were beaten in four consecutive games by Blackburn, Hull, Derby and Portsmouth. Away from home they’ve followed up back-to-back wins at Plymouth and Hull with four straight losses at Millwall, Coventry, Portsmouth and West Brom in which they’ve scored just twice. For it all, they remain five points and places better off than they were at this stage last season.

The recent form of these two sides is remarkably similar. Since losing in the FA Cup third round they’ve both played ten games, with three Boro wins versus four for QPR, and seven Boro losses playing six for Rangers. It’s been 14 games since QPR last had a draw, away at Norwich on December 29, and 12 since Boro finished level, at home to Cardiff a week later.

The Riverside is one of those grounds where QPR have tended to do quite well recently, winning four of the last five visits and six of the last ten including a rare away win for Gareth Ainsworth last September when Andre Dozzell and Jack Colback both netted. It’s very much been a fixture for the away sides during QPR’s most recent ten-year stint in the Championship because Boro have only lost one of the last six and two of the last nine visits to Loftus Road, winning four including the last two.

Prediction: In our Prediction League for 2024/25 we’ll once again be handing out prizes for being top at Christmas and overall winner from The Art of Football - sample the merch from our sponsor’s newly extended QPR collection here. For the first time last year we had joint winners so this season you’ll be hearing from one or both WestonsuperR and SimplyNico in the match previews...

Nico’s Prediction: “Tonight, we endure a trip to the North East in a three game week (where we never do well). We are currently struggling with a lack of centre forwards given that Frey joined Celar and Kolli in the medical centre, and Alfie Lloyd is good only to come on and run around at 70 minutes against a tiring defence. The result? The game against West Brom saw us starting with four attacking midfield players all below 5 foot 7 inches tall, one of them being Paul Smyth as centre forward. As to Middlesborough, after beating us in one of the worst performances I can remember back in November, the wheels have slightly come off and they have their own fitness issues with a largely missing defence (albeit they still have some high quality forwards). I can see this being a poor quality draw to snap the run of losses.”

Weston’s Call “After the frustrations of WBA and to an extent Sheff Utd it’s another fairly tough fixture, we are at least catching Middlesbrough a little off form. Under normal circumstances I’d be hopeful of at least a draw. The problem is what team can we select, we have injuries to a number of key players and those that have come in, namely Lloyd and Yang, have been pretty awful. Unless Frey is back you have to ask where the goals will come from, I see another narrow loss.”

Nico’s Prediction: Middlesbrough 1-1 QPR. Scorer – Jimmy Dunne

WestonSuperR’s Prediction: Middlesbrough 1-0 QPR. No scorer

LFW’s Prediction: Middlesbrough 1-0 QPR. No scorer.

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Pictures - Reuters Connect

062259 added 12:44 - Mar 11 Flailing
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062259 added 12:44 - Mar 11 Flailing
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CateLeBonR added 15:41 - Mar 11 Injured thank god!
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TacticalR added 19:45 - Mar 11 Thanks for your preview. The issue with physicality is that it's not something you can just decide for yourself while ignoring the rest of the league. If other teams are physical you need players who can deal with that. We do seem to have a lot of smaller players. This is not to say that all physical teams are good, or that smaller players can't deal with taller players (Luongo had a great ability to come out of tackles with the ball). The fact that we don't have a reliable striker is a separate issue (and a seemingly never-ending one), although perhaps related in that if we had more of an attacking threat the smaller advanced midfield players would be able to get more involved in games (attack being a form of defence). We were always limited, even when we had Celar, and now we don't even have him available.

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