QPR's long winter begins with Doncaster trip - match preview Friday, 29th Nov 2013 22:45 by Clive Whittingham A hectic period of winter fixtures kicks off for QPR at injury-ravaged Doncaster Rovers on Saturday. Doncaster Rovers (20th) v Queens Park Rangers (3rd)Old First Division, Old Old Second Division >>> Saturday November 30, 2013 >>> Keepmoat Stadium, Doncaster , Up North >>> Kick Off 15.00 Christmas apparently — according to Boots anyway, who played Driving Home for Christmas to me for the first time this year at lunchtime today when I popped in for a tin of diet coke and a new deodorant. Doesn't seem more than a couple of weeks since the LFW summer barbecue was conducted in 35 degrees of heat and betting columnist Andy Hillman (30) was clambering over fences and asking neighbours for our ball back. The Championship is a relentless, monotonous, unforgiving, drawn out thing at the best of times, and at this time of year it almost becomes a behemoth to be wrestled and coped with rather than attacked and conquered. The task for clubs in QPR's position, up at the top of the table and sporting a large and healthy squad of players, is to make sure you don't collapse during a quick-fire blast of a dozen games in four weeks. Even the wonderful 2010/11 promotion winning side, which only lost five times all season, suffered two quick defeats around the festive period against Watford and Leeds . It's an inevitable by-product of the onslaught. For Doncaster , sporting a small squad to start with and with an injury list that looks more like the result of an angry taxi driver rampage than the rigmarole of regular football games, the challenge is keeping in touch with the teams in the immediate vicinity. Yeovil are most at risk of being cut completely adrift, and have responded today with three loan signings including former R Ishmael Miller. Doncaster 's players are dropping like flies at the worst possible time. When even the loaned replacements — our own Yun-Suk Young the latest — are getting injured themselves it's all a little bit QPR circa 1991, and with no Bobby Gould on the coaching staff to dig a Darren Peacock or Andy Tillson out of the lower leagues at cost price it's bound to be a big concern for manager Paul Dickov. It's the time of the season to grind basically. The pitches are cutting up, the games are coming thick and fast, the stereotypical Tuesday night in *insert northern town here* is all the more freezing and uninviting and the job is to get through it all as best you can. Of course QPR have been grinding away like a Miley Cyrus tribute act all season anyway — third despite not scoring more than two goals in any match this season. The modus operandi for teams playing against Rangers this year is to look at the likes of Niko Kranjcar and Charlie Austin, automatically assume they've got no chance of winning, and park the bus in an attempt to win a 0-0 draw. Only Brighton have succeeded in doing so at Loftus Road this season, though that certainly wasn't for want of Charlton trying — I've met more interesting dead people with a lot more ambition than the dire Addicks side that inflicted a couple of hours of unadulterated tedium on us for the princely sum of £25 each a week ago. Rangers seem to have the knack of hitting upon a way to break through these teams once a game — last week it was Charlie Austin's bright idea to have a crack from long range, before reaching Charton's flat back nine, that did the trick. That's good enough for promotion if it can be maintained — Gary Megson's West Brom won promotion from this level with 19 1-0 wins and they were a good deal worse to watch than this Rangers team — but it will be interesting to see whether a time of year that ordinarily brings the worst out of teams tips QPR onto the other side of the knife edge they currently balance on and games start being lost by the odd goal rather than won. There's a deal of dissatisfaction around Loftus Road despite the lofty league position — spoilt fans from the Premier League generation you could say, horribly ungrateful to moan about one defeat in 16 matches from a team that only won four in total last season and embarrassed itself on a weekly basis. One theory for why that is, other than people wanting a bit more for high ticket prices in straightened times than watching 30 passes on the halfway line and a scrambled goal to beat a Birmingham City side that couldn't find its own arse with both hands, is that a good portion of the QPR regulars aren't in any great hurry to get back to the top flight. It's clearly necessary for the financial security and future good health of the club to be back among the television riches as soon as possible — a situation Rangers have created for themselves with their reckless spending and foolish strategy over the past few years — but take that away and the idea of rushing back to a league of £52 tickets, where ten wins a season counts as success, isn't thrilling many. They want to go and see a competitive, entertaining QPR team and they're only getting half of that at the moment. This is a team ticking the Championship off like a to-do list, rather than swaggering around drawing 3-3 and turning in the odd 4-0 home win. The record is remarkable given the mess QPR were in just three months ago, and huge credit must go to Harry Redknapp for it, but if you can think of as many negatives as positives when considering a premier League return it does rather feel like a long, slow drive to our own funeral at the moment. Doncaster fans looking in will scoff at these first world problems of course, but that's cricket — nobody is ever happy. Links >>> Opposition Focus >>> History >>> Podcast >>> Referee >>> Betting
SaturdayTeam News: A couple of the lads knocked for Little Tom Carroll earlier but he wasn't in, the word is he might be at his dad's this weekend, guess we'll find out in the morning. His mum did lend them his ball though so the match can go ahead. The elastic bands and chewing gum holding Junior Hoilett's hamstring together is starting to fray and is in need of replacement. Rangers may flog him one more time, for the first 23 minutes of this match at least, before he heads off for a nicely timed six week absence over the Christmas break. Nedum 'Chief' Onuoha also has hamstring issues and is out for anoher couple of weeks. Alejandro Faurlin and Bobby Zamora are the long term absentees and Tom Hitchock has joined Crewe on loan so cannot fulfil his unused substitute role this weekend. Doncaster welcome back Dean Furman who served his one match ban for a seding off against Yeovil a week ago at the midweek game against Charlton. Rovers have big injury problems in defence though with influential captain Rob Jones on the long term list, QPR loanee Yun-Suk Young out for six weeks and not allowed to play in this game anyway and Man City 's Reece Wabara sitting out training all week. Ireland youth international Enda Stevens has signed on loan from Villa this week to ease the crisis, and will start at left back. Martin Woods, best known as the one standing at the side of the Sunderland orgy video sorting himself out and saying "why does she keep laughing?", is fit to return to the team this weekend. Elsewhere: As the entire British nation threatens to disappear up the giant corporate arse of John Lewis, happily whistling along to Lily Allen's saccharine version of a song that was bloody awful in the first place as they vanish shoulders deep into the festering abyss, thank God in heaven for this crucial eight hundred and seventeenth round of Championship fixtures to take the right thinking members of society away from the lunatics to safe cold storage areas in towns and cities up and down the country. Expect football to take place in Nottingham this evening, where Reading are the rumoured visitors and the Sky cameras are in town for more "FL72 — lump em all in together, nobody's fucking watching anyway" action. Then it's all eyes on the South Coast for a pistols at dawn (12.15) fight to the death between Bournemouth and Brighton which shall determine once and for all which town has the best beach. Blackpool state their case against Sheffield Wednesday. Pressure continues to grow on Gianfranco Zola at Udinese following a defeat by champions-elect Bolton at Vicarage Road last weekend. Lose at home to rock bottom Yeovil this Saturday and he may be packing his Louis Vuitton washbag up for the final time. Huddersfield and Burnley are having a north-off, and British Transport Police are no doubt looking forward to Millwall's trip up to Leicester City , and Leeds' little jaunt over the hills to Blackburn for that matter. Middlesbrough v Bolton will no doubt attract the highest attendance for any sporting fixture anywhere in the world this weekend, everybody of course coming dressed as an empty seat as is the local tradition. The Globetrotters are playing Derby on Sunday and Charlton v Ipswich stands a good chance of being the most irrelevant football match ever played. But it could be worse; some bloody rabbit could stick an alarm clock by your head while you're trying to kip. Referee: Oliver Langford from the West Midlands is in charge of this weekend's clash at the Keepmoat Stadium. May be worth having a punt on a low number of cards — he's the league's most lenient official by some distance, averaging just 1.67 bookings a game throughout last season and only showing 28 in 13 appointments so far this term. His last QPR appointment didn't end well for the R's — the now annual League Cup first round exit to lower league opposition, against Rochdale in 2010. For his full Rangers case file, stats and news of significant appointments elsewhere this weekend please click here. FormDoncaster : The Rovers form guide makes for happy reading if you're a QPR fan travelling north this weekend. Only Yeovil have lost more home games than Donny's four so far this season (Blackpool, Burnley, Leeds, Bournemouth) and nobody in the league has conceded more than their 11 (out of 26) in the last 15 minutes of games. They have lost four of the last six matches, including a midweek game in hand at Charlton that was originally abandoned with them leading 3-1, as injuries have started to bite into Paul Dickov's small squad. They've scored just four goals in those games, and shipped 14 at the other end. Only Yoevil (ten) have scored less than Doncaster 's 14 goals from 16 games so far this season. QPR: Rangers could be forgiven for thinking that third is a pretty poor return for 35 points from 16 games played. No matter though, only goal difference is keeping the R's off the top and such two-points-a-game form almost guarantees promotion if it can be maintained across an entire campaign. Rangers have been solid defensively, the clean sheet against Charlton a week ago was the eleventh of the season in all comps and kept the Loftus Road goals against column to just two from eight home games so far. Away from W12 the R's have leaked a few more, but just eight conceded all season is easily the Football League's best record. The problem has been at the other end where they're yet to score more than two goals in a game and have scored eight fewer than second placed Leicester and ten fewer than league leaders Burnley. The R's have lost just one of 16 this season in the league and are unbeaten in the last four. Betting: Professional odds compiler Owen Goulding writes… "Yet another 1-0 win for Rangers last week sets them up for another trip to Yorkshire , where they have already won this season - yes you've guessed it, by one goal to nil. It's getting to be quite a habit. "It definitely felt, as in a number of our narrow victories this season, that had QPR really let loose, they could of put three or four past Charlton and with Doncaster only winning one of their last six games, the Rangers faithful will be hoping for a comprehensive performance here. Doncaster 's home form is all over the place really. Fine wins versus Blackburn and Leicester, and a credible point against Forest are more than decent performances to point to, yet they've also suffered convincing beatings by Brighton, Bournemouth, Leeds and Burnley along the way. "A very hard side to work out - from what I've seen of Doncaster this season, it seems manager Paul Dickov has overhauled their style of football and the ball spends much more time on the floor at the Keepmoat than it has done in previous seasons. Their main strengths lie in the highly industrious midfielder Mark Duffy who will need to be watched carefully, and surprisingly the 'elusive' Federico Macheda up front looks a threat. "Team news wise, there is no doubt the 'Born to play in the Championship' centre half Rob Jones is a big miss at both ends of the field for Donny, although Tottenham loanee Khumalo seems to have filled the void admirably. QPR could welcome back Tom Carroll which may help towards creating more chances for the never-tiring Charlie Austin, but I would expect it be a very similar line-up to last week for Rangers. So we have two sides, both intent on keeping the ball on the floor as much as possible- on a decent surface. This may resemble more of a training game. "Looking more closely at the match, The simple stats are that only Yeovil have scored less than Doncaster in the league this season, and in the top half of the table only Wigan (17) have scored less than QPR (18) and they've also played a game less. "This match has all the hallmarks of yet another QPR 1-0 win. I look at the match prices and I couldn't back QPR at 4/6, especially considering they have only won one of their last five away games -and as such, the 5/1 on a QPR 1-0 doesn't make massive appeal. There is a price which stands out a country mile for me and that is QPR to score under 1.5goals currently available at 10/11 with Coral, that represents a 52% chance of it happening. "In truth, QPR have only scored more than one goal away from home once in eight games this season, meaning for this season, it has actually worked out so far 87.5% of the time. With the price available virtually doubling your money on an outcome that is much more likely than the toss of a coin, it's my bet for this game." Bet of the day: Doncaster v QPR - QPR to score Under 1.5 Goals @10/11 (Coral) Prediction: Reigning Prediction League champion Mase tells us… "Having had the benefit of having read Clive's opposition profile piece, and 'researching' Doncaster's most recent results on the BBC, I now feel in a position to drill my thoughts into anyone who's reading this far down. "Donny are injury-ravaged and vulnerable, especially against teams with inventive and tricksy forwards. QPR fall within this definition, perhaps a little more profligate than we supporters would like, but nevertheless just 'good enough' to score one (or perhaps two) goals. "Rangers' result against Charlton was achieved in a languid - perhaps turgid - but confident fashion. Doncaster have since played the same opposition but came unglued in their rearranged fixture, having lead 3-1 in the initial game before it was rained off. Tough luck I suppose. "QPR travel to South Yorkshire in pitiful goal scoring and patchy away form, but at the same time narrowed the gap to Burnley at the top to mere goal difference last time out. "Although Doncaster seem to reserve good performances for the top sides (a very streaky win at home to Leicester I saw the highlights of on the BBC's weekly roundup particularly sticks in the mind), I reckon that QPR's quality should, eventually, carry us home in this one. The beauty many crave can wait." Mase's Prediction: Doncaster 0 QPR 2 First Scorer: Austin LFW's Prediction: Doncaster 0 QPR 1 First Scorer: Austin Tweet @loftforwords Pictures — Action Images Photo: Action Images Please report offensive, libellous or inappropriate posts by using the links provided.
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