After wins against high flying Wolves and Preston QPR looked well set for an assault on the top six over Christmas. So what went wrong, and what do we actually want from 2009?

Yes but, no but
Well didn’t Robbie Keane look chuffed to bits with Liverpool’s 5-1 win at Newcastle on Sunday? Jumping for joy he was. I appreciate it is often difficult to spot sarcasm in print so for those of you not lucky enough to see the Geordie nation humbled in its own back yard yet again on Sunday lunch time let me tell you that Robbie Keane’s reward for two goals against Bolton two days previously was a place on the bench. Well done Robbie, now piss off. And he did not look overly thrilled about it.

My tips are infamously bad and no sooner had I tipped Liverpool for a poor Christmas period and spectacular fall from the summit in the second half of the season in the latest edition of A Kick Up The R’s than they won 3-0 and 5-1. However I still do not think they will win the league this season and I think Benitez’s constant fiddling and chopping and changing, especially with players that clearly do not respond well to it, will prove to be their undoing. He has already dropped points at home to West Ham and Fulham where he did not play his best starting eleven and Keane is obviously suffering through starting irregularly and being substituted after an hour in most of the games he does make it into the team for. He has been a good goal scorer for Wolves, Coventry, Leeds and Tottenham in this country and now suddenly cannot do it for Liverpool – the only thing that has changed is the inconsistency of his selection so it is clearly having a bearing.

Thank goodness we never leave a striker out for the next game after he has just scored two goals. Oh no, wait….

Now I will lay my cards on the table here – I do not agree with the way we approached the Christmas games and think we may live to regret it come May, however I can actually come up with more coherent arguments for doing it Sousa’s way so you may have to excuse a more jumbled and non-sensical column than normal this week. Well it is New Year’s Eve for goodness sake, you should be drunk by now anyway.

After the Preston game I felt really optimistic about the two matches we had against Charlton and Watford . I had seen Charlton against Derby two weeks before our visit and they were, to use a technical term, absolute shite. Watford too have not had a good season and although they paralysed us in the first fixture I would have fancied the Woodbridge WI to have turned us over that day and our home record remains imperious. It is not often I am optimistic but I thought four points was the absolute minimum we would get from the weekend. To have come away with two is bitterly disappointing.

The win against Preston was a highlight of the season so far for me. Not only was it a superbly entertaining game and great advert for the league but it looked like QPR were really starting to click into Sousa’s diamond midfield system. Since he took over there have been positive signs in every game but there have also been times when certain players did not seem to have a clue what was expected of them. Teaching an entirely new way of playing to a team midway through the season must be incredibly difficult – since taking over Sousa has had just two full weeks without a midweek game to work with his players on the training ground so they have had to learn on the job and to see it coming together so soon and against a good side like Preston was very rewarding.

Why then should that be seen as the time to make six changes to the side? Against Charlton we looked to have gone back several weeks. Many of the players seemed uncomfortable in the system, the ball retention was poor and we were lucky to get away with a point where a performance even half as good as the one against Preston would have surely yielded a thumping win and three points. We almost won by accident as it was. That lacklustre form went on into the Watford game where six more changes were made and, despite the return of the likes of Helguson who I think would have made the difference at The Valley, we were poor and again lucky to draw. We are now ninth with 38 points when we should be sixth with 42.

Personally I do not see why matches on a Friday and Sunday should be treated any differently to our regular Saturday then Tuesday fixtures. We play the same team in both games and then turn it out again three days later the following weekend without even thinking about it but suddenly Friday Sunday is a problem.

Perhaps more damaging than the loss of points and places is the loss of momentum. I felt with the win against Wolves, draw at Plymouth and fine victory against Preston that we were really starting to get up a head of steam. That feeling has gone completely now after the weekend. Helguson looked lively and confident against Preston where he was unlucky not to hit a hat trick but he was a shadow of that against Watford after being dropped for Charlton. It just seems like a massive opportunity missed to me.

However, as I said, it is actually easier to make coherent arguments for Sousa’s decision than it is against them. Firstly the transfer window is about to open and as the new gaffer seems to have, or at least believes he has, more of a say in transfers than his predecessors Sousa needs to know what he has at his disposal. This was a last chance before the buying begins for him to look at people like Alberti, Di Carmine, Hall, Connolly and others who have not been regulars since he took over. It is no use replacing somebody before you have had a good look at them and perhaps the performances against Charlton and Watford may have helped him to solidify a few views on people that he already had based on their training – certainly the Charlton performance should have finally put to bed the idea that Sam Di Carmine can be used as anything other than water carrier. Flavio Briatore has said again this week it is a long term plan and there is no pressure to be promoted this season. Perhaps Sousa took a risk in the short term to have a look at his squad in more detail for the long term.

Secondly the few players that did play in both games looked absolutely knackered by the end of the Watford one – Martin Rowlands is the prime example, he was blowing through every orifice by the end of the game on Sunday and he was not alone.

Thirdly the teams that did keep the same side for both games, even the very good ones, did not fair very well at the weekend. Reading made three changes between matches and won neither, Birmingham made two and won once, Cardiff made no changes and won once, Burnley kept the same team for both matches and lost both to poor teams from the bottom end of the table. Whether tiredness had anything to do with that who knows but to say QPR magically would have won both games had they kept the same team is not really backed up by the experiences of other, better, teams.

I don’t know really, like I said at the start I would have preferred us to select our strongest team in both games and gone for it. Whatever anybody says about long term planning all most fans are bothered about is the last result and the next game. Personally I would have played our strongest team that turned out against Preston and then changed people if and when they felt tired. I would never drop a striker that had three goals in two games and I would rarely change a winning side. But then I sit here and write this nonsense for you lot and Paulo Sousa gets paid thousands to manage our football team and with just one defeat so far, and that should have been at least a draw, it is hard to argue with his record so far or the way he has gone about his job.

I would be interested to hear your thoughts as always because, as you can probably tell, after three days of thinking I still cannot decide myself whether we did the right thing.

A demanding lot
Lee Cook said recently in interview that QPR fans can be “a demanding lot” and on the evidence of Sunday’s match with Watford he was not wrong. After a surge of good will and atmosphere against Wolves and Preston Loftus Road was back to its moaning and groaning self.

I can understand some of it, I spend most of every match in a state of apocalyptic rage which five or six times a game results in an angry rant at some unfortunate player or official, but I think it is all going a bit far this season. We all know why, we have been through the ticket price debate a thousand times on here so there is little point in rehashing it again now. It has increased expectations and damaged the atmosphere at home games horribly.

It is hard to feel sorry for a player earning several thousand pounds a week despite not being able to pass or cross the ball but Damien Delaney and Peter Ramage were on the receiving end of some unmerciful grief against Watford. I thought Delaney actually had a reasonable game apart from his usual plethora of mis-hit passes and crosses but he was abused by his own supporters all the same. Ramage was fairly dire again and got the same treatment – he was not very good when he first arrived but now looks like a player bereft of all confidence and frantically looking around for scapegoats, regularly blaming team mates for his own failings. I was not sure what he brought to the team in the first place but now I am more worried about what being left out there, playing like that, getting the stick he is will do to his long term prospects with us or elsewhere.

I get the impression that some fans are just waiting for Ramage and Delaney to make mistakes so they can abuse them - against Watford many did not even wait that long. There was a bizarre incident in the first half where Lee Cook lost the ball just inside his own half and put us under a lot of pressure. Watford played a ball in behind Delaney as a result looking for McAnuff and the Irishman was forced to clear the ball into the Ellerslie Road stand. Delaney was then abused by supporters for not taking a risk and passing it back to Cerny and once that had died down there was a big chorus of “there’s only one Lee Cook”. Like I say, bizarre. I also cannot understand the angst and impatience created when we play a square or backwards pass. If we keep the ball what is the problem? We moaned when the team humped balls up to the strikers and now we’re moaning when we build up steadily. Maybe we just like to moan.

The team was booed off on Sunday as well – after a draw. I am tempted to ask just who we think we are!?

However do we, and I include myself in this because I am more loud and miserable than most, really want, expect and demand that much from our team? If I asked what game at Loftus Road had the best atmosphere this season the answer would probably be Birmingham, Wolves or Preston. So much contributed to the Birmingham match – the weather, the sending off, the spectacular goal, the backs to the wall defensive effort and so on. But I do not remember QPR, either with eleven or ten men on the pitch, playing a lot of spectacular free flowing football in that match. Sure we kept two up front after a sending off and showed some ambition to win the game but there were no flowing moves, no mesmeric dribbles, nothing to get a crowd excited in a conventional way at all really apart from the goal.

The same could be said of the Wolves and Preston performances. QPR played very well in both but it was not a ‘very well’ in the Arsenal sense of the word where we carved our opponents apart time and again with silky, sexy football. It was just high tempo, good, honest Championship football. Against Wolves we battered their tippy tappy, footballing centre halves into submission with the physical presence of Helguson and Agyemang and against Preston we scored from a free kick, a corner and a header from a cross. It was more Ian Holloway football at its best than anything Arsene Wenger might encourage. Yet the fans loved it, we won all three games and the crowd was rocking.

Ramage and Delaney are not getting stick from the fans because of the way they look or dress, it is because this season they have been very poor and have been paid a lot of money to do it. I found myself out of my seat and screaming at Delaney on Sunday not because he has tried to sleep with my girlfriend but because I do not think it is acceptable for a full back at one of the top 30 clubs in the country being paid many thousands of pounds to be incapable of not only crossing a half decent ball in when it is touched back to him under no pressure but of keeping the bloody thing on the pitch at all. These players are not getting abused for no reason, it is because at the moment they are damaging the team’s prospects of winning matches. Now I recognise that abusing the player will probably not do him a great deal of good but I find it hard to sit there with a grin on my face and clap along merrily for fear of upsetting the poor footballers when they are that incompetent.

Expectations are higher this season and some fans seem to be over keen to jump on the team’s back for every little thing however I actually think we are quite easy to please. It has been proven on three occasions this season that all we really want is a committed and honest performance played at a high tempo. On Sunday Watford looked more committed than us and the pace of our performance was laboured which, considering six of the players had a rest on Boxing Day as I have already discussed, is not good enough really. Even a poor footballer, and we have a few of those, should be able to give 110% and play the game at a high pace – that really is all we did against Preston and Wolves and it is mystifying why we suddenly could not do that against Watford, or in any of our away games this season for that matter.

On days like Sunday the fans at Loftus Road come across as some of the worst in the league – spoilt, nasty and offering no support to their own team. However it really does not take much on the pitch to turn that atmosphere around completely and I do not think the Rangers fans are asking for too much.

Best Wishes
So after the usual load of old nonsense above all that remains for me to do is wish every LoftforWords reader a very happy new year. The site in its current form is one year old today, although of course we were around on the Rivals network for the best part of a decade under various names prior to that. 2009 will see the start of my fifth season running this site, assuming Mrs Clive does not beat me to death with my own lap top before August, and while I would like to say I have enjoyed every second of it that would not be quite true.

For instance this time last year Sky had just re-launched the entire Rivals network, giving publishers who had previously unanimously said “there is no way you can launch with that design” 36 hours notice that it was going to happen. To make matters worse they did it on a midweek match day and flicked the switch at 11am so you lot had a 28 hour start on me to look at it, decide rightly that it was bloody terrible and ditch it.

That meant that last Christmas our message board was a temporary pro-board design while I negotiated with networks to take us (my dreadful technical skills prohibit us from ‘going solo’) and then thankfully by January we all pitched up here. It may only be a website but it caused me a lot of sleepless nights and heartache last year and I think it is that feeling of having fought for something that keeps me going through the moments where I think ‘wouldn’t it be nice to go to a QPR game and then not having to go home and write about it?’

The community has slowly built back up since that Sky enforced disaster, needless to say I did not take up my invitation to join them for their Christmas get together last year where “guests will include Richard Keys”, and the message board is reasonably busy once again. To everybody that has stuck with us, to all new comers, and to those of you good enough to leave kind, and not so kind, comments and e-mails on the articles we publish thank you and Happy New Year.

It would also be remiss of me not to mention Tony Gibson who has proved to be a fantastic addition to the site over the last two years – always at the end of the phone, always hard working, and always spot on with what he writes. A real asset to the site. Happy New Year Tony and thanks. Same to Ashleigh Rose for his superb column which always arrives to time even when we are playing teams like Doncaster and the memorable match does not really exist. Thanks also to Tracy Stent, David Price, Brian Power, Sam Hill, Barry Munnelly and Nathan McAllister for their superb copy during the year and Bosh for keeping everybody entertained. I reserve the right to add more names here when it suddenly occurs to me that I have forgotten something.

If you have never registered, posted on the message board or commented on an article before make it your resolution to do so in 2009. The users make the site and the more the merrier – it keeps me going as well to know there is somebody other than my future Mother in Law and my mate Colin reading this nonsense.

Here’s to 2009 and who knows, this time next year Rodney we may have climbed to eighth. You R’s.

Photo: Action Images

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