The reception the QPR players got from their own fans after an evening of hard graft against Wigan shows how easy it can be to get the Rangers faithful onside, and will hopefully set the tone for the run in ahead of Saturday’s game with Blackpool.

Queens Park Rangers (3rd) v Blackpool (18th)

Old First Division, Old Old Second Division >>> Saturday March 30, 2014 >>> Kick Off 15.00 >>> Loftus Road, London, W12

You would think, for somebody with such a high opinion of himself as Sam Allardyce clearly has, that being booed off by your own fans after a powerful display of nerve and tactical adeptness had successfully seen off ten-man Hull City by a magnificent 2-1 margin would be a fairly chastening experience. If it was, he didn’t show it, walking out onto the pitch and cupping his ear at the paying faithful before telling every newspaper and television journalist he could find that he thought the Upton Park regulars were out of order.

Allardyce claimed never to have been booed off after a win before in his long career as a player and manager, but of course QPR minds will immediately have turned back to Paul Hart’s one and only win during a mercifully brief stint as boss at Loftus Road. That came against Bristol City in W12 over the Christmas and New Year period in 2009/10 and involved the R’s spending the last half an hour with three centre backs, two right backs, two left backs and two holding midfielders crowded around the edge of the penalty area, booting what little possession they did achieve away down the field in the vague direction of Patrick Agyemang, and hoping the final whistle wasn’t too far away. Thought a 2-1 scoreline was achieved that day, Rangers were booed from the field and Hart was gone within a week. His tenure was as close as I’ve ever come to not going to Rangers any more.

While it’s easier to have sympathy with Gurnham Singh than “Big” Sam Allardyce you can perhaps see his point of view on this one. West Ham may profess to be the “Academy of Football” but it’s been a little while since Bobby Moore and Geoff Hurst were strutting their stuff down the Barking Road and for most of the last 30 years they’ve bounced between the top two divisions. Allardyce took over after a relegation, promoted them straight back, kept them up and now seems to be consolidating their position. What more do the Hammers want? It’s all rather too similar to Alan Curbishley’s final days at Charlton, where Addicks would ring 606 to proclaim he had “taken us as far as he can” only to find after he left that he’d actually taken them as far as they were ever likely to go.

But football has rather brought these problems on itself. You cannot pay millions and millions of pounds in transfer fees and wages while charging people £52 to get into what used to be a working class sport and then get all flustered when they turn around and demand a little bit more than a long punt to Andy Carroll for their money. You can’t have your cake and eat it like that.

The Upton Park crowd apparently make the West Ham players nervous. No lads, nervous is mortgage payments, nervous is filling the fridge up every week so your kids can eat, nervous is a round of redundancies being made at work.

And besides, Allardyce’s claims this week that once West Ham have another win and are definitely safe they can relax and play some more expansive football are flawed — why does relaxed, expansive football automatically mean risky, losing football?

All of which means that if you’re a QPR player, you’re actually very lucky indeed. There’s no delusion of grandeur at Loftus Road, nobody demanding that just because Rodney Marsh, Stan Bowles, Tony Currie and Roy Wegerle used to grace this playing surface that the current crop should automatically be as talented and entertaining. No, in fact, all the QPR fans seem to want to see is a team in blue and white hoops committed to the cause, putting a shift of work in and having a go.

On Tuesday night against Wigan, Rangers were actually second best for big chunks of the game. They won largely because goalkeeper Robert Green made a string of fine saves to keep a much more fluent, more dangerous, quicker, more incisive, more creative team at bay. And yet the fans’ reaction to the performance, which was a determined, gritty, stubborn display full of work rate and endeavour but regularly lacking skill or finesse, was better than at any other home match this season. The fans could see the hard yards being put in, and feel the desire to win the game from the players, and they responded in kind.

If you ask around the pubs of Shepherds Bush tomorrow for best atmosphere at Loftus Road matches in the last ten years I dare say the following fixtures will come up — Oldham in the play-off semi-final, Birmingham in the snow, Preston when Dexter Blackstock scored the goal of the season and when Chelsea were beaten with nine men. Others will be mentioned as well — Man City and Liverpool in that first season back in the Premier League perhaps — but those four will definitely come up and they all have lots in common. Like Tuesday night they were 1-0 wins achieved in adversity, with backs to the wall, from performances that were far from perfect, often with the opposition playing a good deal better than Rangers did.

It seems all the QPR fans want to see is effort from their players. As long as they’re trying plenty of other flaws are forgiven. It’s rather a sad indictment of the players at Rangers for the last three years that the Rangers regulars have been so grumpy for so long, because they’re actually so easily pleased.

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Matt Phillips celebrates with his QPR team mates after opening the scoring with a long range shot against his former club in the first meeting between these two sides at Bloomfield Road back in December.

Saturday

Team News: It’s still very much a ‘bring your boots and get a game’ message at QPR at the moment. Yossi Benayoun’s late sending off against Wigan means he serves a one match ban just as he seemed to be finding some form and with Joey Barton and Niko Kranjcar both joining Ale Faurlin, Matt Phillips, Jermaine Jenas and Armand Traore on the injury treatment table, midfield numbers look low. Things aren’t much better up front where Charlie Austin is a long term absentee and Kevin Doyle has been returned to Wolves with a knee injury sustained at Birmingham a fortnight ago which has ended his season. With two games in a week far too much for Bobby Zamora to cope with, and Andy Johnson permanently disabled, it looks like Will Keane will have to lead the line by himself once more. Danny Simpson and Benoit Assou Ekotto could be in line for recalls at full back after recovering from their injuries.

Blackpool have their own problems in attack where Ricardo Fuller is injured and Robert Earnshaw is struggling for match fitness. Expect Everton loanee Apostolos Vellios to play a significant part.

Elsewhere: Well, this is it, Leicester v Burnley, first v second, it all comes down to this. And by all I mean the entire division, for this and every other season, ever. Winner takes it all, loser goes home, the rest of us needn’t have even bothered, and shouldn’t come back to try again in the future. It’s the match that will decide the Championship for the rest of time. Sky Sports’ Peter Beagrie says “it will be reminiscent of a gun-slinging duel from a Western.” Yes, very much like that, so make sure you’re fully tooled up and ready to deliver a hot kiss of lead to the heart of any Burnley or Leicester player who dares to stand in your way from 12.15 tomorrow.

Doesn’t seem a lot of point in bothering with the rest of the fixtures really does there, but then I suppose we need something other than a trip to B&Q to get us out of the house on a Saturday.

The play off positions below QPR are currently occupied by Derby, The Globetrotters and Reading. This weekend Derby are at home to struggling Charlton, Reading are at home to Huddersfield, and the Globetrotters make the short trip to Bolton. All three look like good opportunities to post maximum points, but a midweek win for Barnsley at the Madejski Retail Park had more “funny old game” clichés than a dinner round Ron Atkinson’s Dudley mansion to who knows what’s coming next?

The chasing pack outside the top six is essentially comprised of Nottingham Trees, Ipswich and Brighton. The Trees are at Ipswich this weekend, in the midst of a meltdown that’s now nine winless games and one noisy managerial sacking old — Mick McCarthy’s workmanlike Town side will fancy their chances here. Brighton are drawing 0-0 at home to Middlesbrough.

At the bottom, things are starting to look bleak for Ian Holloway’s Millwall who lost at home to a woeful Birmingham side during the week and now sit three points shy of Charlton who are fourth bottom having played three games more. They welcome Blackburn this weekend. Barnsley gave their hopes a shot in the arm with that Waitrose raid on Tuesday night, but they too have played twice more than Charlton — this weekend they face third bottom Yeovil with the winner of that one probably standing the best chance of catching the Addicks who will be hoping that old Billy Davies adage about a game in hand being worth five points on the league table stands them in good stead during a hectic run in.

Leeds v Doncaster in the flat cap derby is interesting purely because Leeds seem to be completely imploding on and off the field, and that’s never anything other than hysterically amusing.

Birmingham v Bournemouth and Sheff Wed v Udinese are pointless exercises that could be improved greatly by not taking place at all, leaving fans to enjoy a Saturday afternoon in the pub rather than sitting in the cold watching irrelevant nonsense.

Referee: Carl Boyeson, from East Yorkshire, a man with a chequered history with QPR in the past, is the man in the middle for this Saturday’s match with Blackpool. He was last in charge of a Rangers game back in 2010 when Antonio German scored for the R’s in a 1-1 draw at home to Swansea City but he is perhaps best remembered by the Hooped faithful for his poor handling of an earlier 2-0 defeat at Barnsley. This is his second Blackpool appointment in quick succession after their 1-1 draw at home to Forest in February. For his full QPR case file and recent stats, please click here.

Form

QPR: Rangers are back up to third after responding to a 3-0 defeat at Sheffield Wednesday ten days ago with two wins against Middlesbrough and Wigan. The midweek success over the Latics was QPR’s thirteenth maximum point haul at home this season where they’ve only lost twice (Reading, Leicester), and the clean sheet was a league-leading seventeenth of the season so far for man of the match Robert Green.

Blackpool: Blackpool have won two of their last four, against rock bottom Millwall and Huddersfield, but they were their only two wins in their last 24 games and followed a run of 18 matches without a win. Pool haven’t won away from home for 12 games, losing 11 of those including the last three in a row. In their last six away games they have only scored twice, and conceded 15. In three of their last four away games, they have conceded a goal to an opposing centre half- Wes Morgan, Grant Hanley and David Wheater.

Betting: Professional odds compiler Owen Goulding says…

“A somewhat resurgent QPR take on a struggling Blackpool side at Loftus Road as they look to cement their place in this year’s play-off lottery. With the senior players actually starting to look like they actually still have some professional pride, things suddenly look interesting again for the QPR faithful. The team selection was odd on Tuesday night with Yun Suk-Young probably wondering what more he could of possibly done to warrant a starting place but Harry, as he has so often done throughout his career, put his faith in experience and it paid off. The fact that Green was a standout man of the match lends to the theory Rangers were a tad lucky to take all three points but luck plays an important part in things at this stage of the season so it couldn't have come at a better time.”

“As for betting on this game, one stat jumps out a mile that makes me want to get involved in a big price bet. Blackpool have been woeful away from home and indeed have only taken one point from their last eleven away games. But the more interesting stat is in three of their last four away games, they have conceded a goal to an opposing centre half- Wes Morgan, Grant Hanley and most recently David Wheater have all profited from Blackpool's inability to cope with the aerial threat of the opposition. With Clint Hill fighting tooth and nail for the cause and having gone close a number of times recently, I can't ignore the prices on him to score first and any time at 33/1 a d 12/1 respectively worth a few quid of anyone's money.”

Recommended Bet: Clint Hill first and anytime scorer. 33/1 and 12/1 (Will Hill and Skybet)

Prediction: Reigning Prediction League champion Mase says…

“No let-up in the rate of games and it was disappointing to see another couple of knocks sustained on Tuesday which could lead to a selection problem this weekend. Barton, Morrison and Zamora were all struggling in the second half against Wigan and it we need them patched up and ready to go again.

“Blackpool have ground out a couple of important if unattractive 1-0 wins recently to arrest an alarming slump from play-off chasers before the clocks went back to fretting on survival now they're about to go forwards again. They should be ok even at this stage, two of the bottom four are going to have to go on the rampage to bring anyone else into the mix down there.

“I'm hopeful we will start in positive fashion and this is really a game we should be looking to win to further solidify our seemingly inevitable playoff finish. My predictions have been as shaky as anything recently but let's hope I'm back on track here.”

Mase’s Prediction: QPR 2-0 Blackpool First scorer — Morrison

LFW’s Prediction: QPR 1-0 Blackpool First scorer - Morrison

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snanker added 12:35 - Mar 29 Just the sort of classic fixture that after recent good work could possibly undo the R's with those well documented injuries & notably ex francophile Barton's absinthe ! 1-1 me thinx Cheers
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snanker added 23:08 - Mar 29 Me thinks correct. Sad to know your side so predictably well ! Now for the Bournemouth away day cold, windy but mostly gloomy !
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