Poor Steve Hardy is back to survey the wreckage of a month that was supposed to solidify QPR’s Championship status but ended up costing Steve McClaren his job.

So only five games for the month of March which seemed like a relief when February ended but we have still managed to get progressively worse with each passing week — winning zero, drawing two and losing three. I’ll try and rummage for any good points, have a bit of a moan and then see if I can get anything humorous from the whole situation.

The Good

Was there really any good from March other than the fact that it is over? I had to drag myself away from a dark room at the weekend and scribble some stuff on a post-it note that could be deemed relatively positive, here’s what I could come up with:

- Bright Osayi-Samuel looks good when he’s on the ball
- The amount of matches left to play is into single digits
- The days are getting longer
- Josh Scowen played well against Hull
- The weather was nice for a week
- Ilias Chair has scored a few goals for Stevenage
- The month is over
- Not long until the cricket world cup
- After this I only have two more of these to write (how Clive does it each game is worthy of an MBE)

That really is it, it’s all I can think of. How did it get this bad? I don’t even think there is a barrel to scrap through the bottom of anymore, I feel like we’re just scraping at old beer stained concrete with our eyes closed. An absolute tragedy really considering how united and exciting we had looked pre-Christmas, I don’t think even the most negative of pessimists could have predicted this.

The Bad

Let’s get this out of the way nice and early. The highest placed team we played in March was Brentford, who are currently thirteenth in the league. In February the consensus was that we were unlucky in terms of playing well and losing and having the unenviable task of playing all the top teams in the division. This month that hasn’t been the case, each game has been a game that we should have been looking to get something from and we walk away from the month with two points from a possible fifteen including playing 80 minutes at home against a team with ten men. I feel like bar Hull we have found ways to get worse each week, the really bad part about the whole situation is just the level of apathy from the fans — myself included — we’ve just come to this sad conclusion that this is it and we still just go along to the games because it’s ‘what we do’. It’s pretty soul destroying really.

I’m not getting in to this whole has McClaren done better than Holloway discussion as it’s pointless and isn’t going to change anything. What I will say though is that McClaren spoke at length earlier this season about making the distance between our worst performance and best performance narrower and finding a level of consistency. Has this happened? And I ask that as an actual question because I don’t really feel it has. Compare our performance against Rotherham at home to the Sheffield Wednesday at home performance and there is still a vast difference. The only difference between this year and last is that all our good performances and all our bad performances have come at the same time. So I suppose there has been a level of consistency in those blocks of performances.

I was just about to talk about what we should do in regards to McClaren’s future, but then right at the end of the month he got the sack anyway. I will cover this in more detail in the April review (again how Clive keeps up with everything on here is worthy of a bronze plaque at the ground)! For what it’s worth my opinion was that they would wait until the end of the season and I thought McClaren would walk. I was always of the opinion that he thought he was better than QPR and he knew this was his last opportunity to do a good job at a tough club that would springboard him to a better job. Don’t forget this man used to manage the national team and now he is in this situation, his career is, near enough, a perfect reflection of our season.

So where does that leaves us then? I think the general consensus is that we have done enough to survive this season, however it is dangerous to assume that. Do we appoint someone now to try and guarantee our survival or have a caretaker before we inevitably appoint Ainsworth in the summer? Don’t forget though that Alan Pardew is out of work and looks like the type of guy who could charm Fernandes with a couple of magic beans.

In the words of Clive, we shouldn’t let this football club have such an effect on how it makes us feel day to day but it bloody does. Another mess. Sometimes I wish I was one of those blokes who just washes his car every Saturday.

Monthly rating — E minus

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Northolt_Rs added 23:01 - Apr 9 Nice summary Steve. Hopefully April’s write-up will be all about how we got the points required to stay in the Championship.... Please God.
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quickpassrotter added 14:20 - Apr 10 Nice piece Steve. However, I have to disagree - don't think that we have done enough to survive - yet. Just at this moment, I feel that we will get relegated, and probably at Wednesday on the last day - just can't see where another point is coming from. Sorry about the negativity but just trying to be objective about it all.
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