QPR enter uncharted League Cup territory - full match preview
Tuesday, 26th Aug 2008 11:47

QPR have a rare second round cup tie to look forward to on Tuesday as Carlisle United come to W12 for the first time in 14 years.

Queens Park Rangers v Carlisle United
Carling sponsored League Cup
Tuesday August 26, Kick Off 7.45pm
Loftus Road, London, W12

Well I have to say I don’t think much to these cup victories. After so many disasters in recent years I thought we would get a cup of some sorts for winning at Swindon earlier this month but it turns out all we have to show for our efforts at the County Ground is another match against League One opposition.

If things had worked out differently in May it could have been Doncaster at home in the League Cup tonight on the back of a league game on Saturday with Carlisle United. I went to see John Ward’s men at Nottingham Forest at the beginning of March season and they were excellent in a 1-0 away win. That result put them second in the table, two points clear of Doncaster and five ahead of Nottingham Forest. By the end of the month they’d won four and drawn two of their next six to go three clear of Doncaster and a massive 12 ahead of Forest. For reasons known only to themselves they won only one of their last eight while Forest won all of theirs and Doncaster won the play offs.

So Carlisle, for so much of the season the best team in the division, got left behind in favour of a Forest team that had been pretty dire for most of the campaign but come home with a wet sail and to compound matters Doncaster won the play off final, beating a Leeds team that Carlisle really should have beaten in the semi finals. They haven’t let it get them down though and come into this game with three wins and a draw from four matches.

A stern test then for QPR who have rarely had the stomach for these occasions in the past but showed that required added touch of class to get past Swindon in the last round – 3-2 flattered the losing side in truth. Likewise on Saturday where Doncaster were lucky to escape from Loftus Road with just the two goal defeat. Rangers missed some gilt edged chances in the first half and really eased up in the second where there appeared to be a thumping good win there for the taking. In the end though, after the mauling they received from Sheff Utd the week before, the QPR players were probably just grateful to get back on track.

Looking at Carlisle last season and Doncaster on Saturday it would be fair to assume that the Cumbrians would have made a better fist of taking on QPR than Doncaster Rovers did and they have a chance to prove that on Tuesday night at Loftus Road. The R’s slotted nicely into a new system on Saturday with two holding midfielders and three attacking ones behind a lone striker. While QPR fans may baulk at the idea of playing one up front against the likes of Doncaster and Carlisle at home it worked very nicely at the weekend and with all our strength lying in the midfield area, and our main weakness being in attack, it makes sense and worked well at the weekend.

What personnel we see in the hoops this week and in what formation they line up remains to be seen although using the Swindon game as a pointer there will be changes, and if Carlisle’s performances over the last 18 months are anything to go by Rangers will have to be careful.

Five minutes on Carlisle United
Carlisle seemed to be a club in terminal decline when Paul Simpson took over as manager midway through the 2003/04 season.

They’d enjoyed relative success during the mid 1990s with Michael Knighton in the chairman’s chair, he of juggling a ball in front of the Stretford End and spotting aliens above the M6 infamy, and won both the Third Division and the Auto Glass trophy in 1995 under the guidance of Mick Wadsworth. The team looked very promising with big David Reeves up front, a midfield that included Paul Murray and Rory Delap and a youth system that was about to produce Lee Peacock and Matt Jansen. The future looked bright and it should have been but the best players were sold, the money was spent unwisely, and Wadsworth resigned halfway through the following campaign.

They were relegated to Division Three at the first time of asking, suffering a similar fate to our own at the end of the 76/77 season although where we had to watch Wolves take on Liverpool a week after the end of the season and see the title slip through our fingers Carlisle had worries of a different kind as York replayed a game at Brighton and won to relegate the Cumbrians. That game had been cancelled midway through originally when Brighton fans invaded the pitch to protest at the way their club was being run you may recall. With Jansen and Peacock to the fore they bounced straight back up again in 1996/97 where they again did the league and trophy double.

Despite that promotion the real decline was about to begin. Six games into the Division Two season Knighton sacked Mervyn Day as manager and appointed himself with predictable results. In the final game of the following season they needed to beat Plymouth to stay in the Football League at all. Everybody knows what happened next, drawing in injury time and with the thumb on the champagne cork across the country in Scarborough Jimmy Glass, a keeper who Carlisle needed special dispensation from the league to sign after the transfer deadline, went up for the last corner of the match and scored. Carlisle were saved, Scarborough never recovered and went out of business a year ago.

They finished one off the bottom the season after as well, Chester City went down instead, and were 22nd in 2000/01 as well. It seemed only a matter of time before they made the drop into the Conference. Irishman Roddy Collins came in as manager as part of a takeover but he did little to halt the decline, even leaving only to be reappointed at one stage, but after six years of near misses and lucky escapes their number finally looked to be up in 2003/04 when they lost 18 of their first 21 matches. In came Simpson who, although a former player and fans favourite, had not excelled as a manager at Rochdale and looked a forlorn appointment. What followed was nearly the most incredible escape ever seen – 40 points from a possible 75 in the second half of the season.

In the end it wasn’t quite enough but the momentum was suddenly back with Carlisle after a near decade of going backwards and under Simpson they stormed to successive promotions from the Conference and then League Two at the first time of asking.

Simpson unsurprisingly got a chance at a higher level after this superb achievement and was replaced by Neil McDonald who had coached at Preston, Bolton and Crystal Palace before stepping into the hot seat for the first time at Brunton Park. He seemed from the outside to do a good job as well, taking Carlisle to eighth in their first season back in the third tier but then, after losing leading scorer Karl Hawley to Simpson at Preston over the summer, he was surprisingly sacked after just one match of the 2007/08 season – a creditable 1-1 draw at Walsall.

The reasons for that have never quite been made clear, the statement at the time simply said the board had lost confidence in his ability to manage the team. Step forward John Ward, a former Bristol City boss who was in charge of tiny Cheltenham at the time, punching above their weight in League One. Under Ward Carlisle played some overly football and were right up there with Swansea as the outstanding team in the league for the vast majority of the season – I remember going to see them one night after work at Nottingham Forest and they were simply outstanding and won 1-0. If you’d said to me then that Carlisle would miss the second spot and Forest would take it I’d have said you were a mad man, especially as a month later with just six weeks of the season to go Carlisle were 12 points clear of Colin Calderwood’s men.

Beaten to it they were though, failure to beat Yeovil at home on the last day concluded a dismal run of two wins from the final eight matches and that meant the play offs. In the first leg at Elland Road Carlisle were back to their free flowing best, 2-0 up after an hour and unlucky not to be winning by twice as many, backed by a television audience eager to see Leeds fall flat on their face. However with half an hour to go Ward seemed to change the tactics. He made a couple of substitutions, tried to adopt a ‘hold what we have’ policy instead of going for the jugular and it cost them. Leeds pulled one back in the sixth of four advertised stoppage time minutes and then at Brunton Park Carlisle didn’t look the same side and eventually succumbed 2-0 and 3-2 on aggregate.

A promotion they deserved cruelly snatched away, but it doesn’t seem to have affected them unduly with three wins and a draw to show from their opening four matches this season – three of those have been away games as well. They seem to be a club on the up with an attractive side playing decent football, and this could quite easily have been a league fixture had things gone differently in May.

Men to watch
Carlisle may not have won promotion but a couple of their star performers from last season made the leap without them. Goalkeeper Kieran Westwood, a former Blackburn trainee, was in awesome form in the play off semi finals last season despite eventually losing to Leeds on aggregate and his performances were noticed by Coventry City who spent £500,000 to take him to the Ricoh Arena this summer. His replacement is former Man Utd youth team keeper Ben Williams who, despite starting his professional life at Old Trafford, always looked very, very suspect to me when he faced us with Crewe Alexandra. Dodgy under a cross and prone to letting some seriously soft goals fly past him, I remember a Paul Furlong free kick seeming to fly straight through him in a 2-0 win for the R’s at Gresty Road a couple of seasons back. Having said that he was in inspired form at Brisbane Road on Saturday to win them a point.

Also upwardly mobile is Joe Garner who joined Nottingham Forest for £1.14 million just before the start of the season. The young striker bagged 14 goals in 30 starts last season and was one of a number of Carlisle players unlucky not to get a shot at the Championship with the Cumbrians – he has his chance now with Forest but he leaves behind a decent number of striking options at Brunton Park.

We need no introduction to Michael Bridges of course who shot to fame at first Sunderland and then Leeds in the late 1990s but has massively lost his way since and rarely looked like returning to form since. Newcastle, Bolton, Sunderland again and Bristol City all had a bash at getting him right without success before he first moved to Carlisle in 2005. He scored 15 goals in 30 appearances there and that was enough for Hull City to immediately lash out £350,000 just in case he’d finally found his feet again. He hadn’t, and he’s been all the way to Sydney looking for form again before returning to Carlisle this summer on loan. Three sub appearances and no goals so far this season, but we all know how charitable QPR can be to basket cases like this.

Rangers would be well advised to keep a closer eye on former Middlesbrough youngster Danny Graham who ended an endless spiral of lower league loan deals by signing a permanent contract with Carlisle last summer and rewarded their faith with a 19 goal campaign. He already has two to his name this season, both coming in the 4-2 victory against Crewe, their only home game so far. Danny Carlton also has two goals after signing from Morecambe a year ago but Scott Dobie, once of West Brom and Forest, is suspended for this game after getting sent off at the weekend.

Further back Cleveland Taylor always looked like an exciting prospect to me at Scunthorpe United but never quite added an end product to his pace and tricks down the flank and stepped back down a division to Carlisle following the Iron’s promotion last summer. Scunthorpe are now back with Carlisle in League One of course but Taylor is used more as a substitute these days it seems.

QPR fans with good memories may recall Marc Bridge Wilkinson from our time in the lower division, he always used to be the top man for Port Vale whenever we faced them. Spells with Bradford and Stockport have followed since our promotion but he moved to Brunton Park last summer and has seven goals to his name so far from the middle of midfield, including one in a 3-2 win at Bristol Rovers on the opening day of this season. He’s flanked by Paul Thirlwell who enjoyed time at our level with Sunderland and Sheff Utd before dropping down a division.

At the back Danny Livesy, once of Bolton, is the mainstay with more than 130 appearances to his name. For me this Carlisle side isn’t as good as the one they had last season, but their excellent start to the season suggests I’m wrong and either way they have enough about them to cause us some serious issues this Tuesday.

Previous Meetings
QPR, then in the Premiership, met Carlisle United, of the new old Third Division, at this stage of the League Cup in 1994. Carlisle had beaten Rotherham in the first leg while QPR got a free passage courtesy of their superior league status at the time. Rangers scraped a narrow 1-0 win at Brunton Park in the first leg thanks to a goal from Les Ferdinand but things were much more comfortable when the teams returned to W12 – goals from Bradley Allen and Clive Wilson (penalty) secured a safe 3-0 aggregate victory for the Premiership side. The R’s lost a surreal and entertaining game with Man City 4-3 at Loftus Road in the next round.

Head to Head
QPR wins – 12
Draws – 3
Carlisle wins – 8

Previous QPR v Carlisle results:
1994/95 QPR 2 Carlisle 0 (Wilson, Allen)
1994/95 Carlisle 0 QPR 1 (Ferdinand)
1985/86 Carlisle 1 QPR 0 (FA Cup)
1982/83 Carlisle 1 QPR 0 (Second Division)
1982/83 QPR 1 Carlisle 0 (Second Division)
1974/75 Carlisle 1 QPR 2 (First Division)
1974/75 QPR 2 Carlisle 1 (First Division)

QPR’s 2-1 League Cup success against Carlisle on their way to the final in 1966/67 is the featured match in the Connections and Memories section this week. Click here for more details.

Team News
QPR will be without Fitz Hall who limped out of the Doncaster game early, he was replaced to great effect by Matt Connolly at the weekend and he is likely to deputise again. Kaspars Gorkss, Hogan Ephraim and Sam Di Carmine are now all fit and available for selection following various injuries or loss of form and all will be hoping to feature at some point. Likewise Lee Camp who kept goal at Swindon and is likely to do so again here. Patrick Agyemang is rated as 50/50 with a groin injury. Akos Buzsaky and Rowan Vine remain long term absentees.

Carlisle will be without striker Scott Dobie who is suspended following a red card in the closing stages of Saturday’s match. They picked up no injuries at Orient on Saturday but they will be missing Josh Gowling with a broken nose and Chris Lumsden who is a long term absentee.
Injury List

Referee
Hertfordshire's Keith Hill is the man in the middle tonight, his third game at Loftus Road in 18 months. Hill got an unprecedented nine out of ten mark on this website for his handling of our home victory against Blackpool last season so here's hoping for more of the same.
Details

Elsewhere
Sky have gone for the viewing figures again with Newcastle and Sunderland both on the road in their live matches. Kevin Keegan takes his side to Coventry tonight while Sunderland are at Roy Keane’s old club Nottingham Forest – cue much discussion about similarities between Keane and Brian Clough. There’s one or two attractive ties elsewhere though, West Brom facing an awkward trip to Hartlepool after two defeats from two league games for instance. Another of the newly promoted sides Stoke City have an awkward trip as well to League One Cheltenham while the third Premiership new boy Hull City go to Swansea City. Leeds against Crystal Palace and Ipswich against Colchester also have the look of games that the higher division side will not be relishing.

Form
These teams have just one defeat between them from the opening eight games of the season. QPR have beaten Barnsley and Doncaster at Loftus Road so far, turning in an unconvincing performance against the Tykes but dominating Doncaster from start to finish at the weekend. The R’s made it to this second round with a 3-2 win at Swindon that was far more comfortable than the scoreline might suggest but they did get hammered 3-0 at Sheffield United ten days ago.

Carlisle have three wins and a draw to their name so far. They got to this round of the League Cup courtesy of a 1-0 win against big spending League Two outfit Shrewsbury Town. They’ve also beaten Bristol Rovers 3-2 and drawn 0-0 at Leyton Orient on Saturday. So four away games in the first five matches to start but with a thumping 4-2 victory against Crewe in their only home game so far they’ve made an excellent start to the new season, putting the disappointment in last season’s play offs firmly behind them.

Carlisle have already scored eight goals in their four matches so far while QPR are one behind with seven. Blackstock is the top scorer for Rangers with two, Graham and Carlton have two apiece for Carlisle. Form Guide

Prediction
A more difficult game than the Swindon match in round one and another potential banana skin. Depending on the team selection I’d hope we’ve got enough about us to win this one but with half of Loftus Road closed it promises to be a strange atmosphere and that could play into Carlisle’s hands. I’ll go for a narrow QPR win and cross my fingers that I’m right.
QPR 2 Carlisle 1