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QPR hail Cesar after escaping West Ham with a draw — full match report
at 18:23:47

I have to say I think 'Arry should be slammed for this one. After a couple forays forward finally culminating in the goal, we were overrun even in the first half. Now West Ham were wasteful, but the complete blow-out in the second half was not exactly a surprise given the buildup to half-time. When have we had a first-half lead and won a game this season? This one was not down to a performance of the players, I thought they played to their abilities but it's the job of the manager to know what those are and then plan accordingly. The only good point the moronic pro-West Ham commentator made in the coverage I was watching was how Cole was struggling in the first half immediately playing crosses from West Ham's right. When he started cutting in instead of staying outside Fabio had a much tougher time. This is one of his big weaknesses in my opinion- he's great at defending with pace against a right winger playing on the touchline but when they cut inside he has more difficulty- not least because his lack of physical presence makes a direct tackle more difficult (consider his crude full body-block to bring down a West Ham player during the game that drew a foul). Lennon didn't cut in the Spurs game and that's why Fabio dealt with him well. Now the trouble is that Traore and SWP have the same defensive issues with Fabio so putting either of them in front wasn't going to solve the issue once Cole started cutting in. I know he hasn't been at all consistent but creating a 3-man skewed midfield with Park basically there to congest the central-right hand side of the pitch and deal with Cole's runs would have been better. Poor sub by Redknapp.

On West Ham's left, Jarvis had a poor first half but he also improved in the second. I agree with some of the earlier comments that the combination of Onuoha and Mackie would have dealt with him reasonably well- and since Mackie didn't look like tiring it was a bad decision to take him off for Remy to move into the RW spot. Remy's defensive positioning looked technically promising in the first half (he had a couple good defensive set-piece headers i recall) but he wasn't at all disciplined.

While Jarvis certainly started to get the better of the West Ham's left, I do think it was the combination of Cole cutting in and Jarvis doing better on the touchline that made the trick. I think I saw on Twitter that QPR let more crosses in than any other team in this game. This had QPR with a real dilemma. It's not like Fabio is totally unaware so when Cole started cutting in he stayed narrower with the CB's. But the trouble was that if Onuoha stayed out with Jarvis wide on the other side, that would give space in between Nelsen and Onuoha for Diame to move in with his terrifying dribbles. This was the more immediate threat so they decided to stay compact and deal with that instead. Not a bad idea in and of itself as I'm sure that Diame would have produced something that way. But this asymmetric form of attack from West Ham merited an asymmetric solution and Redknapp didn't give that. Instead of switching Mackie with the already defensively-suspect Remy, Redknapp should've moved Mackie slightly more central- and just told him to pick up Diame or Jarvis, whoever had the ball.

On another day when Granero was fit or Faurlin was in favor, in form and gelling with the squad, we could've dominated this game by playing narrow with a lot of possession through the middle. None of West Ham's midfielders- Nolan, Diame, or Noble are particularly technical in winning position and some keep-ball after we were up would've frustrated- no doubt leading to some stupid tackles and a consequently more conservative approach. There was a short promising spell of this in the first half which ended with a really silly tackle from Noble on Taarabt. Everyone's always saying how QPR has such a better squad than a lot of bottom-half table teams and one of the most crucial ways is technical ability of some of the midfielders- we should use it!

Finally, my last gripe with the coaching staff is clearances. None of the back four can seem to clear the ball properly for their lives. I get not everyone can do everything but it's been this way for the last two seasons- how has not improved at all on the training ground???

Really frustrating game as I feel Redknapp did not make the right substitutions to deal with the changing threats of the wingers. Without the appropriate technical midfielders we were never going to dominate this game and had to rely on the counter, but with a 1-0 lead he should have dug in instead of making a simple striker switch. It wouldn't have greatly decreased the chances of our counters and shored up the defensive issues. Credit to the players, they did what they could.

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