 Friday, 15th Oct 2010 00:20 by Clive Whittingham Top of the table Queens Park Rangers return to action at Loftus Road this Saturday following the international break with third placed Norwich City the latest side to try and end their long unbeaten record. QPR (1st) v Norwich City (3rd)Npower Championship >>> Saturday, October 16 >>> Kick Off 3pm >>> Loftus Road, London, W12 My dad used to say, usually after provoking a towering rage from my mum by extending the joint account overdraft facility still further to take in a midweek cup match with Carlisle, “life’s a serious business with Helen.” I could tell you at this point a wonderful tale about him being locked in a pub in Grimsby by the landlord when animal rights activists released two lions from their pens at a travelling circus onto the high street forcing the entire town into lockdown while a couple of stun guns and a pair of police officers mad enough to fire them were located. Life was a serious business that night I can tell you, when he rolled in steaming drunk at gone one in the morning babbling some incomprehensible nonsense about “High Street lions”. So serious we had to go and live with my Gran until his account was corroborated by the following night’s Look North. But I shall press on, because life’s about to get pretty damn serious for QPR as well. It’s all been sunshine and happiness so far. An early League Cup exit means that, by and large, we’ve been playing once a week and stacking up the comprehensive victories and clean sheets with embarrassing ease. Neil Warnock has been talking about how wonderful Portman Road is, and how great all the youngsters at Palace are, and what a cheeky little monkey Adel Taarabt is and so on. Heidar Helguson hasn’t missed a game with injury yet, Shaun Derry is playing like Edgar Davids and vice versa, some kid from Plymouth has been banging the goals in and pretending to be Scottish - it’s almost felt like an extended pre-season campaign with one inferior opponent after another shrugged aside in nice weather and an almost casual atmosphere. No more. Having struggled to even try and look like it was giving us a summer the British Isles has seized an opportunity provided by the calendar to quickly plunge us back into a cold, damp and dank winter that is sure to last until May at the absolute earliest. It’s dark in the morning when you get up, it’s dark in the evening when you go home from work, and in the meantime it goes a funny shade of grey and the temperature change is already noticeable enough to nibble the ends of your fingers. The parcel tape has been stripped from the cardboard box of chunky knitwear and the gas fire kicked into life at LoftforWords towers this week. It’s not quite time to don the milkman gloves while typing the match previews, but I can tell it’s not far away. And that means the Championship is about to get very difficult indeed. Those kindly folks at the Guardian (people who know a thing or two about chunky knitwear) were quite happy a fortnight ago to declare the league as good as over as QPR moved six points clear and maintained that lead into the international break. But their rationale that last season at this point Newcastle were top and ran away with it, and the season before Wolves were top and ran away with it, ignores the numerous disasters from this position down the years that precedent built up over decades at Loftus Road suggests QPR would be much more inclined to get involved with rather than enjoy some glorious procession to the Premiership with a crowning sometime around the end of March. If Rangers win against Norwich on Saturday and then again against Swansea on Tuesday it is the best start we have made to a season of all time. At the moment it’s bettered only by the 1947/48 campaign. I’m sorry to break it to the Guardian but you don’t accumulate statistics like this if you’re in the habit of taking a position at the summit of the league table at the first possible opportunity and then calmly seeing it right through the winter into a glorious Spring. In 2007/08 Watford sat six points clear at the top of the league after 13 matches of which they won ten and drew two. They won only four of their next 16, and one of their last 14, before surrendering meekly to Hull City in the play offs. In 2006/07 after 12 games Cardiff were six points clear at the top of the table and went on to finish 13th. And who can forget Millwall in 1996, top going into Christmas and ultimately relegated on goal difference after Mick McCarthy’s departure. Last year at this exact point Newcastle lost consecutive games at Forest and Scunthorpe. They then went onto register 15 matches unbeaten by the end of which they’d left the chasing pack well behind. QPR could probably manage the hiccup well enough, but it wouldn’t be very typical of us to respond like that would it? QPR now play Saturday, Tuesday, Friday, Saturday, Saturday, Tuesday, Saturday – seven games in three weeks starting with the visit of third placed Norwich to Loftus Road this Saturday. Like I said, serious business.
Five minutes on NorwichRecent History: Norwich appear to have been hauled back from the brink of tumbling into a very deep hole by the sort of swift, early managerial change that pundits love to criticise as “knee jerk” and “short sighted.” League One is certainly not the footballing equivalent of a day at the beach. It’s a dirty, grimy sort of a league where teams who knocked around in non-league circles on little more than park pitches suddenly find themselves thrust into action against top flight mainstays who have fallen on hard times. Southampton, Norwich, Oldham, Leeds, Nottingham Forest, Sheffield Wednesday, QPR – founder members of the Premier League each one of them - have all suddenly found themselves plunged into a level of hell they had previously read about only in books. Did Dante ever visit Layer Road in Colchester? I very much doubt it. Even he would have struggled to comprehend the horror. And the thing they have all found is that while it may seem funny and somehow quaint to have a league game at Yeovil or Exeter or Cheltenham when they get there the bastards want to beat them - and if they cannot beat them they want to kick them as high into the air as they possibly can. They want to be that team that beats Leeds of Sheffield Wednesday, or dumps that bloke that’s on four times as much as them onto the gravel track. Christ even QPR, with average gates of 12-15,000 were seen as a big scalp to the likes of Hartlepool and Mansfield when we were in that league. Never an away game went by when we weren’t being chased back to railway stations by baying crowds of angry mobs. God only knows what they were like when Leeds and Forest turned up in the subsequent years. These big clubs consequently find it quite difficult to escape. Forest, Leeds and QPR took three years to win back their place in the second tier – and all three went right down to the wire when they eventually did it, securing promotion in dramatic final matches of tense and nerve jangling campaigns. Sheffield Wednesday bounced back in two but have since returned. Southampton remain for a second year, Oldham have been stuck for more than a decade now. And this seemed to be the fate awaiting Norwich. A club with a much publicised huge support (owing to the lack of anything else to do for 50 miles in any direction a cynic may suggest) that just could not lay its hands on the right manager following its relegation from the Premiership in 2005. First they kept faith with Nigel Worthington for the thick end of 18 months after the drop, when really it was clear to everybody that he’d gone stale and should have been gently moved aside when they didn’t win promotion back at the first attempt. These parachute payments are valuable commodities and not to be wasted on sentiment. He was replaced by Peter Grant and having been present for the Scot’s horrific leg breaking tackle that turned Paul Murray from an England B international into somebody that struggled to get into Oldham’s team I can’t say I shed too many tears when he clogged the Canaries up with SPL players (see previous rants on the shambolic quality of Scottish football) and dragged them deeper and deeper into trouble. Incidentally, in all his bitter rants about what a “shoddy little club” QPR are and how he couldn’t get a cup of tea at Loftus Road in 1996 and how that in turn points to a much wider picture of a club that treats real people with contempt and should therefore be cast aside to burn in Layer Road forever, you never once find Express journalist, Norwich fan and QPR hater Mick Dennis recalling that Peter Grant tackle that ruined Paul Murray’s leg. Strange that. A year after his appointment a 1-0 defeat at QPR took Norwich to the bottom of the Championship and got Grant the sack. Glenn Roeder came, kept the Canaries up with a team borrowed from the Premiership (did somebody say shoddy?) and then when the likes of Ryan Bertrand and Ched Evans returned home in the off season could only leave Norwich exactly where he found them – wallowing in the sludge at the bottom of a Championship barrel ripe for the scraping. You’ll never find anybody in football with a bad word to say about Bryan Gunn. Northern the Elder used to tell me a story every so often about the QPR fans standing to a man in the away end at Carrow Road and applauding Gunn out onto the field of play for his first match after his daughter had died of leukaemia. Something else Dennis neglects to mention when he whinges on about his fucking cup of tea. Undoubtedly a nice man, a fine footballer, and Norwich City to his absolute core – he was really the only man they could have turned to as a caretaker manager in 2009 with the wood creaking beneath their feet and Carlisle United on a cold Tuesday night stoking the flames beneath. He made a reasonable fist of trying to keep them up, winning at Loftus Road one rain sodden evening you may recall, but the team had declined beyond repair – an ageing Dion Dublin standing as its one beacon of quality at the heart of the defence, exciting signings like Wes Hoolahan sadly failing to meet expectations. City could have done with Dublin up front that season, but by then Gary Doherty was so unbelievably slow he needed somebody next to him capable of doing the job of two men. That Doherty is still earning a wage from football, at Charlton, two seasons later is one of the great miracles of history. He’s slower than my foot stool now. As they had done with Worthington Norwich kept faith more through sentiment than sense and Gunn was allowed to approach a full season in the third tier, spending the playing budget and soaking up the valuable months of summer transfer window as he went, in full charge of the team. It’s not often a 7-1 home defeat on the opening day of the season can be described as the best thing that has ever happened to a club but as an outsider looking in I genuinely believe it was. That opening day hammering by Colchester saw Gunn immediately replaced by the man who inflicted it, Paul Lambert, who swept into Carrow Road, tore up Gunn’s plans for a “season of consolidation” and immediately set about promoting the Canaries as impressive 95 point champions. Had Norwich lost that game 2-1 or 1-0 Gunn may have stayed – they won their next game 4-0 at Yeovil with him still in charge after all. Had he done so I very much doubt we’d be facing Norwich at all this season, never mind meeting them in a top of the table clash with both sides now possessing genuine hopes of a return to the top flight for next season. Manager: Paul Lambert should be a good manager. He’s Scottish (like all good managers and awful footballers are), he’s won everything there is to win in the game as a player including the European Cup, he’s played both at home and abroad and he has educated himself as a boss by starting at the bottom with the likes of Wycombe and Livingston. If you had to draw a managerial career blueprint his would be absolutely ideal to this point. As a player Lambert was a strong, combative and yet classy central midfielder who won the European Cup with Dortmund after emerging through the ranks at St Mirren and making his name with Motherwell. He left Fir Park in 1996 and by the time he returned 12 months and the biggest prize in the club game later he was so vastly superior to anything else the SPL had to offer it was almost embarrassing. Lambert helped to turn around nine years of Rangers dominance north of the border and re-assert Celtic as the top dogs with Martin O’Neil’s hand on the tiller. He reached the UEFA Cup final with Celtic too – no mean feat considering the day to day fixtures for Celtic bring them up against the likes of Bob Malcolm and Michael Duberry and their European run pitted them against Boavista, Stuttgart and Liverpool when Liverpool weren’t such a shambolic laughing stock. That glittering club career seemed to weigh a little heavy on his shoulders when he moved into management. He won just twice as Livingston manager between August and February in his first season and resigned. Then at Wycombe he twice rebuilt the side, and went on a couple of memorable cup runs that saw them reach the semi final of the League Cup against Chelsea in 2007, but he couldn’t get them out of League One and the frustration of that saw him resign after a failed play off attempt in 2008. His next job was at Colchester in League One – another club that stuck with a manager after relegation only to then sack him a couple of months into the season. Lambert steadied the ship after Geraint Williams had left, and seemed to have built a side capable of winning promotion back to the Championship last year as Norwich found out to their cost on day one. His appointment at Carrow Road has seen the club rescued from the precipice and has really seen him cement his reputation as a manager. Pundits always criticise clubs for making an early change in manager – but mainly with people like Chris Kamara this is because they’re friends with the people who have been sacked, and are bitter about being sacked in the past themselves. For Norwich, it turned out to be one of the best decisions they ever made. With a midfield diamond system in operation Norwich swept to the title in Lambert’s first season and have stormed to third in the Championship already this year. By contrast, and perversely this sort of adds to his reputation, the Colchester side he left behind flying high in League One has remained steadfastly in the middle of that division, lamenting the one that got away and threatening legal action. After a slow start it seems that Lambert may well be that perfect manager after all. Three to Watch: My original three for this were Zak Whitbread, Simeon Jackson and Wes Hoolahan because QPR have been linked with two of them in the past and Whitbread really, really impressed me when I saw him playing for Millwall the season before last. However as the big American centre half has been injured pretty much ever since he moved to Carrow Road in January I’ll be somewhat lazy and say watch out for Grant Holt who is, in case you’ve been on the moon, Norwich’s goal scorer extraordinaire. Now it’s worth saying that Holt has tried at this level before and failed. He’s built like a lower league target man, with a mop of unkempt hair and a pair of shorts with the Neil Ruddock patented expandable waist band, and that’s where he made his name – throwing his ample weight around on the muddy fields of Workington, Halifax, Barrow and, after a brief and unsuccessful spell with Sheffield Wednesday, Rochdale. Big, northern, angry, aggressive, agricultural – unpleasant basically. Like Geoff Horsfield, only uglier. The kind of player that bullies kids finding out what football is really about in non-league and makes veterans who have dropped down that far for the love of the game wish they’d retired years ago. Rochdale has become a bit of a hot spot for lower league talent in recent years though and Holt started the trend – catching the attention of Nottingham Forest with 42 goals for Dale in two seasons. He moved to the City Ground for £300,000 and although he scored 20 goals in his time there, few of them came in the Championship and nobody really cared very much when he was allowed to join lowly Shrewsbury for half the money Forest bought him for in 2008. Unsurprisingly, back in League Two, goals started to flow again. Holt crawled, barged and battered his way to a 28 goal campaign in 2008/09 and although Shrewsbury lost in the play offs that year he was promoted anyway with League One Norwich taking a risk. Holt was the outstanding name in League One last season – 30 goals a staggering total for a player who had previously looked like any other big lump you might find knocking around in the attack of any other Conference side. He’s got four already this season as well and Paul Lambert really seems to be able to get the best out of him. Bad news for Kaspars Gorkss and Matt Connolly who have struggled as a pairing against the more physical strikers in this division – Jon Parkin springs immediately to mind. While Holt was firing Norwich to promotion Jackson was trying his hardest to keep Gillingham in the league. He scored 18 goals for a relegated Gills side last season, although only four of those came after December 19, and that was enough for Norwich to spend a significant six figure sum on him during the summer. Plenty of teams had looked, including QPR under several different managers, but only Lambert was willing to gamble. Jackson has taken time to settle in, but an eye catching double in a 3-0 win at Bristol City last time out hints at more to come during the winter. On paper Jackson and Holt look like an ideal big man little man combination for the Championship. Hoolahan was the big disappointment in 2008/09. He, along with Kaspars Gorkss, had been part of a big Blackpool success story the season before and really caught the eye. Clauses in both players’ contracts allowing cheap departures brought several clubs to the table and while QPR made a right pig’s ear of the Gorkss deal (smoothing over an illegal approach by sending some players in part exchange) Norwich got the Hoolahan deal and it was seen as something of a coup at the time. Not so. Hoolahan, like everybody at Norwich that season, was dreadful. From making the Republic of Ireland squad at the start of the campaign he found himself in and out of a team heading for League One. His reputation rebuilt in League One Hoolahan has a point to prove this season, and has more pressure on his shoulders now that Andrew Surman (a fine signing and shoo in for this bit of the preview were he not injured) unavailable. Links >>> Norwich Official Website >>> Norwich Message Board
HistoryRecent Meetings: Norwich gave their survival hopes a timely, but ultimately fruitless, boost with a 1-0 win against Paulo Sousa’s QPR side on their last visit to Loftus Road in 2009. The Canaries were struggling against the drop and had recently sacked manager Glenn Roeder in favour of caretaker manager Bryan Gunn but QPR weren’t in particularly decent touch themselves – without a win in five going into the game. On a foul night weather wise Rangers escaped a scare in the first half when Jordi Lopez felled Lee Croft in the penalty area and referee Graham Scott awarded a spot kick only to change his mind after consultation with his linesman. Rangers didn’t make the most of the reprieve though and when Radek Cerny’s glaring error in the second half presented Russell with a simple tap in that was enough to send the points back to Norfolk. QPR: Cerny 3, Connolly 5, Stewart 5, Gorkss 4 (Hall 87, -), Delaney 4, Leigertwood 6, Routledge 6, Miller 5 (Ephraim 69, 6), Lopez 7, Helguson 4 (Di Carmine 74, 6), Blackstock 4 Subs Not Used: Mahon, Alberti Norwich: Marshall 5, Otsemobor 5, Shackell 6, Doherty 6, Grounds 7, Croft 6, Clingan 6, Russell 6, Bertrand 6, Hoolahan 6 (Gow 70, 5) Cort 6 Subs Not Used: Nelson, Carney, Lappin, McDonald Booked: Bertrand (kicking the ball away), Croft (foul) Goals: Russell 68 (assisted Hoolahan) That was all a far cry away from the first meeting between the sides that season when Rangers continued their assault on the top of the table with a fine 1-0 win at Carrow Road under the management of Iain Dowie. Things did not start well when Matt Connolly was sent off in the first half for two bookings – the first one was harsh, the second could have been a red on its own. Despite the numerical disadvantage Rangers went in at half time in front thanks to Martin Rowlands’ thrice taken free kick. On the first two occasions and Norwich player rushed out of the wall to block the ball despite it being a direct free kick and the QPR captain was therefore given a second and third chance to find the back of the net which he duly did. It could have been so much better had Ledesma and Blackstock finished gilt edged chances before halftime. The second half was inevitably a backs to the wall effort but Kaspars Gorkss really ‘arrived’ as a QPR player and only a very late header from Antoine Sibierski really had Rangers fans worried. Norwich: Marshall 6, Omozusi 6, Kennedy 5 (Grounds 62, 6), Stefanovic 5, Pattison 7, Fotheringham 7, Russell 6, Bertrand 7, Hoolahan 6 (Cureton 66, 5), Sibierski 7, Lupoli 6 (Croft 46, 6) Subs Not Used: Nelson, Koroma Booked: Fotheringham (encroaching at a free kick), Lupoli (nobody seemed quite sure) QPR: Cerny 7, Ramage 7, Stewart 9, Connolly 5, Delaney 8, Rowlands 8, Mahon 8, Leigertwood 8, Cook 5 (Gorkss 30, 9), Blackstock 7 (Agyemang 77, 7), Ledesma 7 (Buzsaky 82, -) Subs Not Used: Camp, Parejo Sent Off: Connolly (two bookings) Booked: Connolly (foul), Connolly (foul), Blackstock (repetitive fouling) Goals: Rowlands 33 (unassisted)
Head to Head: QPR wins 38, draws 32, Norwich wins 42
Previous Results: 2008/09 QPR 0 Norwich 1 2008/09 Norwich 0 QPR 1 (Rowlands) 2007/08 Norwich 3 QPR 0 2007/08 QPR 1 Norwich 0 (Rowlands) 2006/07 Norwich 1 QPR 0 2006/07 QPR 3 Norwich 3 (Rowlands 2, Smith) 2005/06 Norwich 3 QPR 2 (Ainsworth, Cook) 2005/06 QPR 3 Norwich 0 (Furlong, Santos, Nygaard) 2000/01 Norwich 1 QPR 0 2000/01 QPR 2 Norwich 3 (Carlisle, Wardley) 1999/00 QPR 2 Norwich 2 (Kiwomya 2) 1999/00 Norwich 2 QPR 1 (Wardley) 1998/99 QPR 2 Norwich 0 (Murray, Peacock) 1998/99 Norwich 4 QPR 2 (Sheron, Peacock) 1997/98 Norwich 0 QPR 0 1997/98 QPR 1 Norwich 1 (Peacock) 1996/97 QPR 3 Norwich 2 (Peacock, Dichio, McDermott) 1996/97 Norwich 1 QPR 1 (Impey) 1994/95 QPR 2 Norwich 0 (Ferdinand, Gallen) 1994/95 Norwich 4 QPR 2 (Barker, Gallen) 1993/94 Norwich 3 QPR 4 (Barker, Penrice, Peacock, White) 1993/94 QPR 2 Norwich 2 (Sinclair, Ferdinand) 1992/93 QPR 3 Norwich 1 (Ferdinand 2, Wilson) 1992/93 Norwich 2 QPR 1 (Allen) 1991/92 Norwich 0 QPR 1 (Bailey) 1991/92 QPR 0 Norwich 2 Played for Both Clubs: Jamie Cureton Norwich 1993-96 >>> 2007-2010 >>> QPR 2004-05 Although born a West Country boy of Bristol, Cureton actually started his footballing career over in the east county with Norwich City. He made his debut for the Canaries in their last Premier League season before relegation and scored an impressive eight goals in just 17 games for City. However Cureton struggled to get into the team the following season and despite becoming a cult-hero at Carrow Road for dying his hair green and yellow for a match against rivals Ipswich in 1996, Cureton moved onto Second Division Bristol Rovers under manager Ian Holloway. It was at The Memorial Stadium that Cureton really showed his goal-scoring prowess, twice scoring more than twenty goals in one season to finish as Rovers top scorer. A move to promotion hopefuls Reading followed and he continued his goal-scoring feats with the Royals and helped them gain promotion to the First Division in 2002. A year later though Cureton decided to try his luck abroad and signed for South Korean club Buscan Icons, turning down a summer move to Loftus Road in the process. The gamble never really paid off for Jamie though and a year on with just four goals to his name in Asia, Cureton decided to come back to England. It look as though it would be with Peterborough until former gaffer Ian Holloway got his man at the second attempt with the help of the ‘Our QPR’ fund. This was somewhat controversial at the time as the fund had initially been started to pay bills and keep the threat of administration away from a potentially promotion winning QPR side – chief executive David Davies had said earlier in the season that players may have to be sold to meet costs. QPR had also bought Tony Thorpe after being rejected by Cureton that summer so the move was a strange one all round. He struggled to get into the side that won promotion back to the Championship that season with a last day win over Sheffield Wednesday, but did contribute two vital goals, including one with the last kick of the game, to a 3-2 win against Port Vale at Loftus Road without which Bristol City would have beaten us to second place. The goals never quite came for him, mainly due to Holloway repeatedly playing him out of a position on the right-wing to accommodate Tony Thorpe along with Kevin Gallen and Paul Furlong. His only goals in the Championship the following season strangely came against Coventry, with a memorable hat-trick that included a Van Basten like volley at Loftus Road and another at Highfield Road but he soon found himself surplus to requirement and was farmed out first on loan to Swindon then Colchester before landing a permanent moved to Layer Road in 2006. It was here he rediscovered his shooting boots winning the Championship Golden Boot award with 24 in the 2006/07 season and securing a move back to his first club Norwich City. Cureton has been very hit and miss for his entire career – enjoying great spells with Bristol Rovers and Reading, and poor ones with QPR and then Norwich second time around. Cureton managed just 48 starts, and a further 28 substitute appearances across three years in his second spell with the club – a time that saw Norwich quickly rattle through four managers and sink down into League One. He spent time on loan with Barnsley and then Shrewsbury looking for first team football before joining Exeter City this summer at the end of his contract. Links >>> QPR 0 Norwich 1 Match Report >>> Norwich 0 QPR 1 Match Report >>> Connections and Memories
This SaturdayTeam News: QPR have players flooding back from injury following the international break but may be without full back Clint Hill for the first time this season if he fails to shake off a stomach complaint. Should Hill not make it expect Kyle Walker to fill in at left back as he begins his extended loan spell from Tottenham, if he does Neil Warnock must select between Walker and fit again Bradley Orr at right back. Alejandro Faurlin (groin), Fitz Hall (hamstring) and Leon Clarke (ankle) have all returned to training but may have to make do with bench spots with Warnock happy to keep faith with Matt Connolly, Akos Buzsaky and Heidar Helguson in their positions. Rob Hulse may finally be ready to make his debut this week almost two months after signing from Derby – his Achilles injury has calmed sufficiently for him to resume full training. Of the long term absentees Peter Ramage is out for the season, Martin Rowlands has suffered a calf niggle setting his recovery from knee surgery back a little and Lee Cook has disappeared from the face of the earth. Warnock told the Fulham Chronicle: ““The team will be the same team. You don't change things that don't need changing and I won't rotate for the sake of rotating. The lads who are actually in the team at the moment deserve to be in the team. Everybody's training now apart from Peter Ramage, although Bradley and Ali are further on in their training now. There may be players on the bench that I know can't do a full game, but might give me half an hour. But I won't put them on the bench if I think the injury might flare.” Norwich news to follow. Elsewhere: Annoyingly there is no televised lunch time action to enjoy in the pre-match build up this week from the Premiership or Football League. Sky are focussing their attention on the Saturday tea-time clash between Middlesbrough and Leeds at the Riverside. There are early kick offs in our league, but they are on police advice. By the time we kick off against Norwich we’ll know exactly what Cardiff have done because they face bottom of the table Bristol City at home at noon. Scunthorpe against Doncaster at Glanford Park has also been shifted to noon. With a clash between Palace and Millwall at Selhurst Park to cope with as well it could be a feisty afternoon in the Championship. The surprise package so far Watford travel to Portsmouth aiming to further their unlikely play-off bid. Referee: Andy Penn from the West Midlands is the man in the middle on Saturday, and that’s not terrific news from a QPR point of view. He has refereed us four times in his nine seasons on the league list and sent a QPR player off in three of those games. Two of them were against Cheltenham, two of them against Watford, only one of them was won by Rangers and none of them were at Loftus Road. Click here for a full run down of his history with the R’s.
FormQPR: Rangers are now just two victories away from their best ever start to a league campaign. In 1947/48 QPR won ten and drew two of their first 12 matches, a record QPR will equal with victories against Norwich and Swansea this week. In the 13th game that season the R’s were beaten 2-0 at Swindon. Norwich’s impressive goal scoring record away from home (see below) will be sternly tested at Loftus Road where Rangers are yet to concede a goal in the league this season – Millwall, Doncaster, Middlesbrough, Barnsley and Scunthorpe have all been shut out here by Paddy Kenny. Since losing to Newcastle here on the last day of last season QPR have won four and drawn one scoring 12 and conceding none in the process. Port Vale beat a scratchy mix of youth and reserves in the League Cup in August to provide the only blemish so far. QPR are currently six points clear of Craig Bellemy’s Cardiff City in second place, although that could be cut to three before we even kick off on Saturday with the Blue Birds facing bottom of the league Bristol City at noon. Norwich: The Canaries have met QPR more than any other Football League side in history, and have come out on top so far with 42 wins to QPR’s 38. Although Neil Warnock has said he expects both teams to score this Saturday, the history books don’t really suggest that as being likely with five of the last six meetings finishing with a ‘nil’ one way or the other. That said QPR have scored in all but one of their games this season while Norwich have only been shut out once and have scored at least one goal in their last 32 away matches stretching back to their relegation season 2008/09 when just a couple of days after winning 1-0 at Loftus Road they were beaten 2-0 at Blackpool. Last season they scored 41 goals away from home, more than anybody else in League One, winning 12 and losing six of their 23 road matches. So far this season they have won at Scunthorpe, Preston and Bristol City without conceding, but lost at Doncaster and were held to a draw at Nottingham Forest. Prediction: I think we'll win. It's against my nature and initially I wrote this bit with a 2-2 prediction in mind but unlike Neil Warnock I do think Norwich's league position flatters them somewhat - although I'm basing that on little evidence other than highlights and watching them lose to Watford on day one. I've just got a feeling that their impressive away record this season is skewed slightly by victories against Bristol City, Scunthorpe and Preston who could quite easily be the bottom three teams in the league come May and have between them showed little to suggest they're a threat to anybody this season. QPR will be refreshed and have numerous game changing players on the bench after a mass recovery from injury. So, yeh, a win, why not? Stop looking at me like that. 2-0 QPR, 15/2 with William Hill Photo: Action Images Please report offensive, libellous or inappropriate posts by using the links provided.
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