With two 4-0 defeats and a League Cup exit at Burton already under their belt away from home this season, and no goals scored, what price another QPR win on a ground where they’ve never lost before?
The Facebook always was a pretty vacuous place to spend your time online. Rambling, passive aggressive status updates from somebody you used to hate at school about not being allowed to see the kid he accidentally consummated round the back of the Der Schnapps Bar on Scunthorpe’s Frodingham Road with that other person you used to hate at school, intermingled with dreadfully funny jokes about Muslims and veiled threats to any police officer who dares to try and interrupt or direct the next entirely peaceful, ski-mask-clad, EDL march through Luton and Dunstable. Basically all of society’s lowest common denominators coming together in one online home to spoonfeed warm diarrhoea into your eyes.
It’s hard to know whether the platform's steady shift to a source of viral video is a good thing or a bad thing really. It’s created a situation where somebody with no interest in Star Wars, or dogs, or the people on their Facebook friends list, will nevertheless spend time clicking on a countdown of 19 dogs that look like Yoda posted by a high-pitched, neurotic, freak they met once in a bar in Sheffield, thought they might shag because they'd had 14 bottles of Peroni, didn’t quite get the chance because they were too busy being sick over the pool table, and have thanked their lucky stars about ever since. "You won’t believe what this sheep/baby/Muslim did next…”
"Why don’t you get off the Facebook then?” cry the few remaining reasonable, intelligent people in the city. Three reasons. One, those holiday pictures of the girl you wish you’d pushed the boat out with a bit more a decade ago aren’t going to perv on themselves. Two, a man’s got to make a living, and the Facebook drives traffic back to LFW, which funds the lavish lifestyle of fast cars, fast women, and fast trips home from midweek cup defeats at Burton Albion to which I’ve become accustomed. And three, it’s where I go to find out the kick off time for my Tuesday night six-a-side team.
Very occasionally, the Facebook still delivers something worthwhile. Like, very occasionally Joey Barton’s corners miss the defender at the near post. Very occasionally you’ll find an edition of the London Evening Standard without an article on either Cara Delevigne or Manchester United. Very occasionally Martin Atkinson awards penalties when attackers are aggressively wrestled to the ground by Neanderthal thugs in Stoke shirts as corners are being taken. Not often, but it happens.
There was a moment during the summer when a distant cousin of mine — weddings, funerals, that sort of relationship — posted on her Facebook a summary of what it is like for the non-football fan to be alive during the time of a World Cup. The summary she posted sought to enlighten us with a comparison to architecture. Or geology. I forget which. Something to do with bricks and rocks and stuff like that anyway.
"Imagine,” this post went, "getting woken in the morning by a radio alarm immediately offering a news bulletin about architecture/geology. Stumble to the door, pick up your newspaper, more architecture/geology on the front and back pages. Into the kitchen for breakfast, family members sitting around and discussing last night’s architecture/geology. Waiting for the tube into work, latest news from the architecture/geology world now scrolls along the bottom of the platform display boards, obstructing the actual information you need about when the next tube is coming and how long it’s delayed for and what piffly excuse about leaves/electricity/coked-up-Shoreditch-wankers-falling-onto-the-tracks TFL is using today. People on the tube; talking about architecture/geology. People in the lift up to your office; talking about architecture/geology. People in your office; talking about architecture/geology. And it’s still only ten past eight.”
A compelling case, and of course unlike the Facebook and the London Evening Standard and its blanket coverage of Manchester United and that utterly pointless waif with the giant eyebrows, football isn’t difficult to avoid. And so sometimes the non-believers try and feign an interest, especially during a World Cup year. Suddenly you’ll find all manner of people who previously never had a clue about the sport, and didn’t care to either, hencing forth with opinions on three man defensive set ups and Angel Di Maria — girlfriends, mums, postmen, the gay lad who keeps a muffin back for you when you’re late to Starbucks, the office Chelsea fan. But soon the complexities of the sport bore them and they go back to their more worthy interests, often saying things like "£55? For one ticket? In the worst bit of the ground? At a game you know you’re going to lose? Against a team you hate? And you’re still doing it?” or "Twelve of you? To Southampton? Tomorrow? At eight in the morning? On the stopping train? For a game you know you’re going to lose? And you’re still doing it?”
Often these people will find things that the football fan considers to be utterly normal, completely incomprehensible. Like, in my mum’s case, the pre-match press conference, or "presser” as insufferable arseholes like to refer to it. "Ooh Harry’s on the TV Clive,” she yelled through to the kitchen last time I was at home. "Don’t worry, it’s only the pre-match press conference,” I replied. There followed a prolonged explanation and debate that centred around the one stumbling block my mother couldn’t cope with: that Harry Redknapp was being filmed by the national broadcasters talking about something which hadn’t yet happened. "Well, what’s he going to say?” she asked, aghast. "You might win 4-0. Or lose 4-0. And then this will all be to shit.” Indeed.
Managers take different approaches to these weekly ball aches. Nigel Pearson and Paul Lambert, for example, pride themselves on re-enacting the first ever episode of The Thick Of It each week, where the downtrodden MP has his policy pulled at the last minute and therefore has to turn the press conference he’s called to announce it into something so drab, dull and un-newsworthy that it gets no coverage whatsoever from anywhere. Jose Mourinho, on the other hand, likes to say rude and obnoxious things about other managers, clubs and players which, in this country, in this day and age, we should simply write off as somebody being rude and obnoxious, but instead dedicate miles of column inches and days of coverage to under the premise that this is in fact a tremendously intelligent, tactical, thoughtful, well-placed, effective "war of words” that everybody in the country — football fan or otherwise — is frightfully interested in and wants to read lots about.
And then there are Harry Redknapp’s pre-match press conferences.
About a year ago, for want of some more work to do, we decided to start covering these things on LFW with a live feed on the message board, ostensibly because some other people have proper jobs that don’t allow them to sit in the office with headphones on listening to Harry Redknapp prattle on but might like to know what he said. Sadly, Harry Redknapp was about as interested in the Championship as my distant cousin was with the World Cup, and so he would regularly turn up 15, 20, 25 minutes late and sit there for six, seven or sometimes even eight minutes trotting out "fantastic fella” this, "triffic player” that in amongst openly courting aggressive, penetrative sex from Gareth Bale and making out that Huddersfield Town were going to be difficult opponents for a QPR team assembled on ten times their annual budget because they have a nice stadium and they won the Football League in 1926.
This got rather dull to write about rather quickly and so we started to throw in the odd embellishment to liven things up — introducing well known funny-man Kevin ‘Bondy’ Bond as a sideshow who would play old East End songs on a badly tuned piano at the end of it all, for example. Anything to get us through the drudgery of what these "pressers” are actually for, which is of course to provide whichever drooling, chinless mess Sky Sports News had sent along for the day with his "banter” that would make it look like Harry is in fact his best mate, and a quote about whatever Sky believe is the issue of the day — Gareth Bale, Alex Ferguson, Louis Van Gaal, the Ryder Cup, Cara Delevigne, and so on. This makes it look like the Sky reporters ae incredibly well connected when in fact, as Gary Cotterill failing to get Harry Redknapp to stop and wind his window down on transfer deadline day (all the fish, such a small barrel) showed, they’re as well connected as the deepest, darkest corner of south east London.
Anyway - sorry this is dragging on a bit this week isn’t it? — this week something interesting happened. Somebody actually asked a question. A proper question. In the "presser”. Yeh, I know, I couldn’t believe it either. Where were you when JFK was shot? Where were you when somebody actually asked a proper question of Harry Redknapp in the pre-match press conference? Scenes.
The question went something like this: "Harry, given that Swansea City went to Manchester United and won, and MK Dons beat Manchester United 4-0, and Sunderland and Burnley both got a draw against Manchester United, and Leicester (promoted along with QPR during the summer) beat Manchester United five (5) three last weekend, do you regret going to Old Trafford, sitting back, trying to soak up pressure, attempting to get a 0-0, playing to their strengths, and getting done 4-0 before describing it as a ‘bonus game’?”
Well you could cut the atmosphere with a butter knife. Redknapp, who’d only just finished talking about how much time he’s got for European Ryder Cup captain Paul McGinley, seemed a bit stunned, and muttered some bits and pieces about hindsight being a wonderful thing.
Redknapp previously described the match at United as a "bonus game”. United finished seventh last season, losing on eight occasions at home, and have won only once this season in all competition. As sales pitches go, with QPR putting tickets on sale for the away game at Chelsea for £55 each from Monday, that was up there with Lidl’s offer on meat. Essentially, away from home, against the top teams, QPR aren’t going to bother. Bonus games.
Which rather begs the question of what, exactly, QPR are going to do this Saturday at Southampton. A ground the R’s have never lost on, a game they usually win, an opponent they’d have perhaps been eyeing as a relegation rival prior to the start of the season, but as it turns out Southampton are quite good this season as well. So, go there with everybody behind the ball, sit deep and play for a 0-0 again?
You see the problem with this "bonus game” thing is it’s much like Harry Redknapp’s claim on TalkSport that Sandro’s knee had fallen apart while sliding on the ground to celebrate a goal in a training match i.e. a total crock of shit. There are 38 matches this season, QPR need 40 points. You can’t afford to write off seven of those — presumably last season’s top seven away from home will all be treated the same, pay your £55 and we’ll lube up in advance — as "bonus games”. Not least because writing off Spurs away and Man Utd away because Southampton away and West Ham away look more winnable can blow up in your face when Leicester and West Brom subsequently make Man Utd and Spurs look eminently beatable while Southampton and West Ham slip cleanly into fifth gear and lie in wait, meat tenderisers in hand.
This pathetic, defeatist attitude to away matches, which has seen QPR lose nine of their 15 road trips since Boxing Day, failing to score in 11 of them, is starting to have damaging effects — we’re actually not setting off until 09.32 for this one.
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Danny Shittu wheels away celebrating his equalising goal in QPR’s first ever visit to St Mary’s in 2005. Ian Holloway’s side fought back from a first-minute Danny Higginbotham goal to secure a 1-1 draw.
James Ward-Prowse — one of the class of 2013 that Liverpool mistakenly left behind — has been ruled out for two months with a broken foot, which given the way he takes set pieces and QPR defend them is a blessing for the R’s this weekend, but a terrible shame for a fine young player. The Saints do have a headache at centre back though with Maya Yoshida nursing an ankle problem after spending last weekend stuck on the end of Wilfried Bony’s angry side, and Toby Alderweireld doubtful with hamstring problems.
Elsewhere: Purely by quirk of the randomly generated fixtures — we’re assured they’re randomly generated when we point out that having Tuesday night away matches at Swansea and Sunderland seems like a bit of a bum deal — we have a clutch of derby games all falling together on the same weekend, just as they did last year. And the year before that.
Martin Atkinson’s farcical handling of QPR v Stoke has seen him deemed fit to referee Liverpool v Everton at Anfield, so presumably both teams will be able to do as they please shy of taking up arms when defending corners in that one. Arsenal v Spurs kicks off at 17.35 at the behest of the television companies, but the away fans — who must pay £63 each to attend — will be prevented from drinking alcohol in and around the ground in the many, many, many long hours before the game in case trouble erupts.
The approach of West Ham — who’ve started the season reasonably well with Big Fat Sam’s Big Fat Brand of Entertaining Football — to an away trip to Louis Van Gaal, with their world class attack and Unibond League standard defence, may make for another interesting question in the "presser” next week. Likewise Aston Villa’s inevitable capitulation against Big Racist John and the Boys. Manchester City go to Hull.
So those are what Sky would tell us are the "games that matter” out of the way, what else is going on? Palace v Leicester an Sunderland v Swansea is what. The latter a battle to discover which is the best Premier League team beginning with S, that isn’t Southampton, until they meet again at least. High stakes.
West Brom and Burnley is the least super Super Sunday since John Major and Edwina Currie’s post-roast fireside romp was interrupted by a parliamentary aid bearing the bad news that the Downing Street cat had been struck by a tipper truck on the Strand and had to be put down.
Alan ‘Pards’ Pardew’s quest to dodge the Goals on Sunday sofa for another week visits Meticulous Mark and the Taffia for a Monday Night Football that’s sure to have the nation shoving pensioners out of the way on escalators and ignoring all warnings about obstructing the train doors to get home in time for.
Referee: Mark Clattenburg takes charge of this one, his first QPR appointment since — in a fit of drunken euphoria — LFW gave him an unprecedented ten out of ten for his handling of Rangers’ play off semi-final win against Wigan at Loftus Road. That added to his back catalogue of attendance at those rare days of QPR achievement — he was in charge for the club’s only other previous play-off win against Oldham in W12, the 3-1 away win at Sheffield Wednesday which sealed promotion a year later and the 2-1 home defeat to Leeds on the day the Championship trophy was presented to the R’s. He’s also sent a fair few of our players off in recent times, while Southampton accused him of abusing their players on the pitch last season during a defeat at Everton. Colourful character, always a story around, extensive QPR case file and recent stats available here.
QPR: So far this season QPR have played three games on the road in all competitions, losing three, conceding nine and scoring none. In the league they’ve lost both their road games 4-0, albeit against Spurs and Man Utd. Since the turn of the year they’ve lost nine of 15 away games and failed to score in 11 of them. But St Mary’s is a better ground than any to snap that record — QPR have come here with some pretty poor sides in desperate situations since the stadium was opened but are yet to lose in five attempts (three wins) and even succeeded in taking all three points from their last visit in 2013 with a team that won only four league games in the entire season. Rangers are yet to score in open play — their three goals so far have come from two corners and a direct free kick.
Betting: Professional odds compiler Owen Goulding says…
"QPR travel to Southampton this week to take on the surprise package of the season so far. During the close season, when the Saints embarked on a summer sale to rival DFS, the price on them to suffer relegation dropped faster than Neil Ruddock's bank balance. Calum Chambers, Rickie Lambert, Adam Lallana, Luke Shaw and Dejan Lovren all departed the south coast for pastures new. To say the spine of their team was ripped apart would be a massive understatement - yet here we are, a few months into the season and they sit pretty in second place, with only an undeserved defeat at Anfield blotting the copybook.
"New manager Ronald Koeman deserves a lot of credit. He hasn’t bought in a host of players but has supplemented an already well run club with a few choice additions. Graziano Pelle has been brought in from Feyernoord and looks like he's played in the Premier League all his life. Fraser Forster has performed admirably between the sticks since moving south from Celtic but the true jewel in the crown of the Saints transfer business has been the signing of Dusan Tadic from FC Twente. The Serbian has simply been the player of the season so far in the Premier League. His delivery is second to none, his work rate makes Jamie Mackie look lazy, and he scores goals too. An absolute bargain at the reported £10.9m transfer fee.
"QPR on the other hand have been truly woeful away from home. Harry persists in sending his teams to watch the opposition play keep ball while trying to nick a 0-0. No pressure on the ball, no high line, no passion, no desire. They did it at Spurs, they did it at Old Trafford, hell they even played negatively at Burton Albion. This has gone on for months in truth. The away following, which has always been exceptional in relation to club of QPR’s size, are starting to get fed up of it.
"Throw in the injury problems QPR have with Jordon Mutch, Joey Barton and Sandro all doubtful for this one at time of writing and I can’t see QPR getting anything here. I've been optimistic regarding Harry's away set up one too many times. I, like many others, think he must wake up to the fact his tactics are killing us on the road - yet every post match press conference he trots out the same old excuses. It’s not like QPR haven't got the players to go to St Marys and give them a game, but with head ruling heart, we all know they won’t. I suspect Harry will have as much luck in the opposing dugout as he did in the home team one in his previous tenure at St Marys. I predict a comfortable win for Southampton.”
Recommended Bet: Southampton v QPR - Southampton (-1 H'cap) - 13/10 Paddy Power
Prediction: Last season’s Prediction league winner WestonSuperR tells us…
"QPR have never lost at St Mary’s and I have very fond memories of seeing Dexter Blackstock and Ray Jones helping us to a surprise 2-1 win. For us to continue this unbeaten run we need a huge improvement in form; the three away games we have played this season (including Burton) have been nothing short of dreadful. So bad in fact that I personally can’t remember a worse ‘away start’ to any season - play anything like that again and we have no chance. It would be great to see us make a fast start and actually press Southampton, rather than sit back and appear to be desperately trying to hold out for a 0-0 but when did we last do this?
"The main positives that I’m clinging to are our home form being reasonable, and surely we will start to see a general improvement as the new players get used to each other and Harry settles on a regular formation. Another positive (I am struggling for many!) is that Southampton were supposedly pretty average last time out in the Premier League against a Swansea side reduced to ten men before half-time.
"I actually expected Southampton to struggle this season and had them down as possible relegation candidates mainly due to the key players they lost during the summer but this clearly hasn’t been the case and we now travel to St Mary’s with them having won five matches in a row in, including the 4-0 demolition of Newcastle in their last home match and a good win at Arsenal on Tuesday night. The Saints are also second in the table and are yet to concede at home so this will be tough and although surely we can’t be as bad as against Spurs and United I expect a comfortable home win.”
John’s Prediction: Southampton 2-0 QPR. No scorer
LFW’s Prediction: Southampton 2-0 QPR. No scorer.
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