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QPR pay price for Ramsey’s overly cautious approach — knee jerks
Sunday, 26th Apr 2015 21:36 by Antti Heinola

Antti Heinola says QPR manager Chris Ramsey simply wasn’t positive or daring enough with his team selection and substitutions in Saturday’s blown must-win home match against West Ham.

Team Selection

In terms of the midfield, I can see Ramsey's thinking, even if I didn't agree with it. That midfield four had worked their little cotton socks off against Chelsea and you could certainly argue that keeping the midfield nice and compact gave us a solidity rarely glimpsed this season, so it was understandable that he kept that combination. I'll deal with that further in the next knee jerk, but for now let's look at the defence, where the changes were made.

If Ramsey's argument for keeping that midfield together was because of a strong performance against Chelsea, then I find it difficult to understand why you'd change the back four. I think Dunne is a good player - he looked finished during the second half of last season at times, but he's probably been our best centre half this season (not that that's saying a great deal), but picking him here looked like a bad call from the moment the team sheet was released. Unless Ramsey was convinced we'd be facing Carlton Cole with Nolan just behind him, I can't really see the thinking behind breaking up the Onuoha-Caulker partnership which was finally starting to bear fruit - not least because taking Onuoha's pace out of the centre causes us problems beyond just having someone who might have been able to keep up with Valencia - it means a deeper defence, a slower defence and more ground for our one-paced midfield to cover.

Then you have the issue of Mauricio Isla. If we're being loyal to Karl Henry, why drop Isla after he did such a tremendous job against Hazard and Chelsea? Was he dropped because he was facing the wrong way when Green ballooned his kick straight to Hazard? If you're dropping him for that, then why not drop Green too? Not playing Isla meant Phillips only had Onuoha to support him, who's not in Isla's class when it comes to passing, movement, vision or attacking ability. I could have understood Onuoha at right back against Chelsea, to do a job on Hazard, but here, in a game we had to take to the opposition, it seemed perverse.

Still, Ramsey has earned some faith, so let's say before the game he perhaps wanted to keep things very tight, with the idea of stepping on the accelerator and taking some risks late on if we needed a goal. A bit cautious to my mind, but fair enough.

Substitutions

You see, the thing is, if the above *was* Ramsey's intention, then it makes his use of subs utterly unfathomable. I honestly cannot understand what happened yesterday after 70 minutes. We all knew - and Ramsey knew because he said it in his press conference - that this was a game we had to win (barring an unlikely miracle at Anfield or the Etihad). So even if he planned to make sure we were in a position to win with 20 minutes left, where was the final push? Why was Taarabt left sitting on the bench? Why did he, Isla and SWP fail to even warm up after half time? It made absolutely no sense at all.

The way we were set up, as with Chelsea, made it very clear that we had two outlets: the long ball to Zamora, or a pass to Phillips. That's it. Everything - *everything* - that wasn't pumped to Bobby went down our right side - not ideal when Cresswell had such a good game against our most dangerous player. Let's just accept that line up for a moment - but then come the fifty fith minute, come the sixtieth minute, come the seventieth minute, for Christ's sake come the eightieth sodding minute, surely we had to sling on someone from the bench to play on the left who might offer some kind of threat and some diversity and unpredictability to our attacks? And this is not a dig at Henry, who played well, but he is not and never will be a 'danger' to any team. That's why he didn't play much last season: teams defended against us in numbers and his brand of steady, controlling midfield play was rendered obsolete. We often didn't really need a holding midfielder; we needed someone to create chances.

Had this game been two weeks ago I would have had sympathy for Ramsey because he had no choices, but on Saturday he did. He had several choices in fact - the prime one being the unpredictable maverick with a good record against West Ham who will, given even ten minutes, be guaranteed to create something.

We *had* to win this game. We had to. A draw was never going to be enough. So we might as well have gone down attacking than whimpering off clutching what will almost definitely be a useless point. After 70 minutes, Henry was offering nothing in terms of what we actually needed. Indeed, he drifted so far into the centre that the left side of the pitch was almost empty. Ramsey did try to address that by bringing on Yun, but again it was the wrong substitution. With Yun at left back and Henry playing almost in the centre, he couldn't maraud because he had no cover. Had he come on for Henry (or Sandro, with Henry going inside), and played left midfield with Clint sweeping up behind him, that might have made more sense, but as it was, the change really changed nothing at all. Worse: within ten minutes it was obvious it wasn't changing anything and yet still Ramsey sat on his hands.

West Ham were awful - as awful as we were, and while we had some poor luck in terms of the disallowed goal (which, if we're honest, would get disallowed 19 times out of 20) and Charlie's miss, we never really looked like winning the game. They were absolutely there for the taking - a kinder opponent at this stage of the season we could barely have wished for.

And as this a knee jerk column and there should be some controversy sometimes, I'll say this: I was behind Ramsey. I was impressed. I felt it was difficult to judge him when he barely had a squad to choose from. But yesterday he did, and he blew it. He was cautious in the extreme. If you can't gamble in a game like that with 20 minutes left then I'm afraid you're not a manager. You're just not. Can you imagine Warnock in that situation? For the last ten minutes we'd have been three (maybe two!) at the back, two holding midfielders and everyone else up front. Ramsey did nothing. And that, in my opinion, was unforgivable. He cannot have gone to bed last night thinking, 'Well, I did everything I could,' because he didn't. He froze, and we're down. And on Saturday alone, I wouldn't give him the job.

The penalty

Not a brag, but a sad fact: I called this as soon as it was given. Since his opening day miss, Charlie has put every penalty hard and low down the middle. He was, in truth, lucky to have not missed another one since. With all the pressure of a crucial kick, he was always going to do the same and a save seemed to me very likely, and so it proved. Not sure what's happened there - last season he was smashing them in the corners, even the top corners, now he seems very nervy. Even worse, it clearly affected him badly, as his apologetic tweet confirmed afterwards. I felt, he hid a bit after the penalty - twice in the second half he loitered at the back post instead of attacking the middle or the front post as he would normally, when fully confident, and so great crosses went untouched. Still, without him we'd be fourteenth in the Championship right now - all I have is gratitude for what he's done for this club.


The atmosphere

I don't think the fans were nervous. I think we all expected us to go out there and give it a real go - like against Chelsea, but with a bit more attacking intent. But it was clear from very early on that perhaps that late Fabregas goal had more effect on the players than we realised. With one or two exceptions, we looked nervy, worried, cautious and a bit unsure of how to attack the game. This quickly translated to the stands and while the fans did their best, they turned up expecting thunder and got damp drizzle. A frustrating game to watch that only became more so as it dragged on to its inevitable conclusion.

Footwear

Amateurish, really. A QPR player slipped over at least eight times in this game, and I'm tempted to say it was ten. Many of those slips were from Green, who looked absolutely petrified every time the ball came near his feet. Within 20 minutes four kicks had been messed up. I love Greeno, but he looked in no state to play on Saturday. Good save from the free kick, mind, and did well to come out to the onrushing Downing (although had he continued to run instead of dithering it would have been a much easier clearance). He wasn't the only one, though. Sandro, Dunne, Caulker and Barton all slipped too. What's going on here? No West Ham player slipped in the game that I can recall. Is it bad choice of footwear? How can we not know our own pitch? And why, when our players spent the first half looking like they were playing on an ice rink, did we water the pitch even more at half time?

Sandro

Still not looking anything like a £10m player, this was at least a vastly improved performance from him and he looked immensely fitter, too. Made some great challenges, almost scored, looked faster and stronger. Good display alongside the tireless Barton, who had another super game.

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062259 added 22:11 - Apr 26
Very fair comments on team selection and in-game tactics. And don't forget West Ham had most of the big chances; Downing should have gone down for a penalty in the first half, Green made two tremendous saves and they missed an open goal. Apart from a late save by Adrian from Fer, West Ham were rarely stretched.

But it wasn't about yesterday, and we know it. Here's what it's about:

1. Calamitous failure not to invest in a striker before the season began, in the mid-bogglingly naive belief Remy would stay.
2. Failure to remove Redknapp in time to do some business in the January window.
3. Six consecutive home losses.
4. Eleven consecutive away losses.
5. Inability to win a single game (out of 22 played so far) against a team higher than 13th. Only 4 home draws to show for those 22 games.

Results in the last couple of weeks just rub it in:

Burnley 0 Leicester 1
Leicester 2 West Ham 1
Spurs 0 Aston Villa 1
Palace 0 Hull 2

The writing has been on the wall for weeks, and as usual only misplaced hope has sustained us.

Not any more.
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dixiedean added 11:16 - Apr 27
Antti I agree with every word of this and I uttered most of them before , during & after the game, esp about our players wearing high heels instead of football boots ! In fact my post on Clive's report says many of the same things you mention, esp about Ramsey. Basically we need someone with more ' presence' whatever that means . Maybe more streetwise . I said before the pen I hope Adrian doesn't know it's going down the middle, but sadly he twigged it. We all knew where it was going .Lately we've had an over-reliance on Phillips & Austin and both had an off day for different reasons, so we had nothing. Hence we needed to chuck on a wild card eg Adel. I think 062259 puts into into clear perspective with his post above. You need look no further than Point 1 IMO -points 3,4,& 5 are a direct consequence of 1 & 2 . I think a big turning point was the idiotic penalty Villa got in 94th min v WBA - they gained massive belief from that win and Sherwood's prancing on the touch-line.
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fitzy1963 added 19:57 - Apr 28
I must agree. I always worried about Ramsey and this showed on Saturday. They had an 18 year old centre back and apart from one occasion where Bobby bullied him he had a walk in the park. Adel might not be everybodies cup of tea but he causes mayhem. We needed to win but did not press them at all.
It showed on Saturday that we needed an experienced manager (Pulis) to make the right decisions. Never mind at least I can just go down the road and see us against Cardiff next year, unless results go for us big time. Fingers crossed
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