Following a fine weekend win against table topping Wolves, Rangers are back in action on Tuesday with a trip to the frozen north to face Sheffield Wednesday.

Sheffield Wednesday (12th) v Queens Park Rangers (7th)
Coca Cola Championship
Tuesday December 9, Kick Off 7.45pm
Hillsborough, Sheffield

A Luigi De Canio that can coach a defence is what we asked for when the Italian left in the summer. It is only early days yet but in Paulo Sousa we seem to have belatedly found that man.

De Canio’s QPR side, while good to watch, had a soft centre and in this fixture last season went from dominating and leading with five minutes to go until half time to falling apart and losing simply because Brain Laws made two changes before the break and De Canio couldn’t get across his instructions on what we should do about that. Sousa is certainly having no trouble getting his message across, extra training sessions have been scheduled and to a man the players talk of a stricter regime, a my way or the highway attitude, and he has two wins and a draw from three games so far.

The fear when appointing a foreign coach, particularly an inexperienced one, is that they just don’t understand the English game. De Canio tried to bring an Italian mentality to QPR which saw us shut up shop with half an hour remaining whenever we were winning or drawing a game, a policy that saw us surrender a lead 14 times and concede seven last minute goals last season.

Sousa on Saturday showed not only a good knowledge of an English style of play, QPR played a physical game at a high tempo against Wolves, but also an impressive ability to scout opponents at this level and spot weaknesses something which De Canio always lacked. The tactics against Wolves were absolutely spot on, exposing Stearman and Mancienne as classy but ultimately lightweight centre halves and battering them into submission using the power and pace of Helguson and Agyemang.

Adapting to the Championship means coping with fixtures coming thick and fast and Rangers play six times in the next three weeks. It also means coping with cold and uninviting trips to the north and as somebody who played football in Sheffield last night in monsoon like conditions and sub zero temperatures I can assure our players that there are few colder and more uninviting places than the Steel City just at the moment.

This is a difficult game against a team with decent home form on a ground where we have a pretty poor record. Sousa may have impressed so far but De Canio did a decent job over a longer period of time and the real test for our new coach will come when results take a bit of a turn for the worse and players regress into their bad old habits - how will a man that was such a talented player cope with the frustration of that, and will he continue to be left alone by his own bosses to do the job? Only time will tell but all the signs are good so far.

A win may be too much to ask for but Sousa’ QPR side has shown enough promise so far to suggest that maybe, just maybe, we may manage a goal away from home for the first time in eight matches at some point tonight. You never know.

Five minutes on Sheff Wed
The voice of laziness inside me is currently screaming “do it, do it” as I contemplate just copying and pasting what I wrote in this section of our last Sheffield Wednesday preview because literally nothing has changed. Sheffield Wednesday still have the same manager, are in the same position in the league, have largely the same group of players and none of this is likely to change any time soon while the state of flux in the boardroom continues.

Any trip to Hillsborough brings back fond memories for QPR fans who travelled here in their thousands at the end of the 2003/04 season to see the R’s seal promotion from the third tier. Hillsborough had never been a happy hunting ground for Rangers in the Premiership days, in fact Wednesday seemed to have a real bogey on us at one point knocking us out of cup competitions and taking league points from us with alarming frequency.

However with Ian Holloway at the helm Rangers had a talented and spirited side at the lower level while Wednesday was a club in crisis under Chris Turner. One of the many memories I have of that day was at the final whistle, as the QPR fans spilled onto the pitch from one end to celebrate the Sheffield Wednesday fans came on from the other to protest against their own board and chairman Dave Allen. Ken Bates was at that match in one of the boxes and he looked all set to buy the club from Allen before being rebuffed and decamping up to Leeds. Even though Allen isn’t popular in these parts, I’d imagine most Wednesday fans think they had a lucky escape there.

Anyway while Rangers enjoyed their promotion and consolidated at the new level in 2004/05 Wednesday started the season poorly and sacked Chris Turner in the Autumn. That paved the way for Paul Sturrock to return to football – he had taken Plymouth up with QPR the previous season but then took the chance to manage in the Premiership with Southampton only to be sacked ridiculously early into his spell at St Marys. I still maintain that Southampton would have survived that season had Sturrock been left in charge but then Rupert Lowe always knows best and he thought pissing away a quarter of the season with Steve Wigley in charge was a better idea – the damage done by the inexperienced Wigley was such that even Harry Redknapp couldn’t save them.

Anyway Southampton’s loss was Sheff Wed’s gain and Sturrock immediately got to work at his new club, taking them from a disappointing lower mid table position into the play offs and up courtesy of a thrilling final win against Hartlepool. This was quite some achievement as Wednesday looked anything but promotion candidates when he arrived.

There is a feeling among the QPR fans I know that had we won our play off final after only two seasons in the third tier it would have been short term gain for long term pain. Rangers would not have been ready to re-tackle the First Division at that stage in Holloway’s rebuilding programme and for a long time after promotion it looked like Wednesday, who had only been out of the division for two seasons, may struggle to adapt. Ultimately Sturrock kept them up by some ten points but they started the following season very poorly as well. Without a win in their first ten games and out of the League Cup with a 4-1 home defeat by Wrexham rumours started circulating that Allen, still unpopular with the fans, was about to sack Sturrock who still enjoyed the support of the majority.

What followed was a farce worthy of our own club. Sturrock was given a new four year contract at Hillsborough just before a 1-0 defeat at Sunderland and the team responded by winning its first match of the campaign 2-1 against Barnsley at Hillsborough. In their next away game they were hammered 4-0 at Colchester and Sturrock was promptly sacked, no doubt taking a pay off far greater than he would have been due had he not signed a massive contract just before getting the chop. Wednesday were bottom of the league when he signed that deal, fourth bottom when he was sacked.

The fans expressed fury at the decision at their next game, against QPR, but the team rallied to win 3-2 despite blowing a two goal lead early in the second half. Wednesday tried to bring Steve Cotterill from Burnley in to replace Sturrock but in the end had to go with their second choice – Scunthorpe manager Brian Laws. Now Laws is an easy man to dislike but he built two excellent sides at Scunthorpe having initially joined them following a controversial spell at Grimsby Town. Despite taking charge of a wonderfully attractive Town side that included the likes of Ivano Bonetti, Clive Mendonca, Gary Croft and others he is best remembered there for fracturing Bonetti’s cheek bone with a plate of chicken drumsticks after a defeat at Luton Town. At Scunthorpe he built a promotion side with Jamie Forrester and John Eyre in attack but both players left at the end of the season after a play off final win against Leyton Orient and that left the Iron woefully short in attack at the higher level and they made an immediate return.

Laws seemed to lose the plot a little bit thereafter, actually being sacked and then re-appointed a month later as the club went through a spot of boardroom turmoil, and Scunthorpe came within two places and three points of dropping into the Conference in the 2003/04 season. The following campaign though Laws began to work his magic again and his handy knack of spotting a good striker meant that Scunthorpe, with the likes of Paul Hayes, Steve MacLean, Billy Sharp, Andy Keogh and others in attack moved up through League’s Two and One to the Championship for the first time, although as Laws decamped to Hilsborough his old physio Nigel Adkins was left to finish the job.

The fans at Wednesday were somewhat uninspired by the appointment, despite Laws’ Scunthorpe side knocking them out of the FA Cup the previous season, but he kept them up in his first season and more besides. Wednesday won nine of their last 13 matches and drew two of the others to go within a whisker of actually making the play offs. Had the season been a week longer they may well have made it and they went into the 2007/08 season as one of the hottest outside tips for the top six. Laws spent £1m on Francis Jeffers after he’d impressed on loan at Ipswich the previous year but he immediately reverted to his injury prone self and after another dire start to the campaign, six defeats in their first six matches, Wednesday eventually laboured to a lower mid table finish.

Just before an entertaining 0-0 draw at Loftus Road Dave Allen announced that he would at last relinquish control of the club much to the fans’ delight. However no buyer has yet been found more than a year later and so with limited transfer spending power and a drawn out contract situation with Laws only just resolved Wednesday seem to be a club in a state of flux. Bobbing around in mid table waiting for a new owner to come in and drive them forwards. With that in mind Laws is doing well to have them as high in the league as 12th and it would be even better if they could stop shipping goals at such an alarming rate on their travels. Like QPR their home form is of play off standard, their away the stuff of a team threatened by relegation.

Personally I expect them to finish about where they are now in the league this season, and every other season until the boardroom uncertainty is brought to an end.

Men to watch
Strangely for a team with such an appalling defensive record some of Sheff Wed’s most promising young players are actually part of the back four. Centre half Mark Beevers is a local boy of Dutch parentage who has come through the youth set up at Hillsborough to make his debut in 2007. A strong centre half, Beevers won the club’s player of the year award last season and has allegedly been watched by Everton and other Premiership clubs since breaking through into the first team.

To Beevers’ left Tommy Spurr, another academy graduate, plays at full back and was QPR’s first choice signing last January. Wednesday rebuffed three bids and in the end we went for Damien Delaney. Spurr doesn’t seem to be that highly rated speaking to the Wednesday fans I know, and having come through the set up as a centre half there is a feeling that he is perhaps playing out of position much like our own full backs, but he always looks quality whenever I see him – strong in defence and dangerous on the overlap. Tuesday night will be his one hundredth appearance for the Owls if he plays although he only made the bench at Southampton on Saturday with Lewis Buxton on loan from Portsmouth currently getting the nod ahead of him.

The back four is made up by Richard Wood who has made 150-odd appearances since graduating from the youth team in 2003 and Frankie Simek a barrel chested former Arsenal trainee who spent three months on loan with QPR in 2004. That’s all in front of Lee Grant who competed with lee Camp for the number one jersey at Derby County for many years before they both dropped out of favo0ur completely and made moves searching for first team football.

In midfield we could well have been facing Adam Bolder for the first time this Tuesday. He impressed on loan at Hillsborough at the back end of last season and looked set to make the move permanent in the summer until QPR suddenly decided at the last minute that they wanted a fee for the former Derby man. That scuppered the move and therefore it’s former Burnley man James O’Connor, a no nonsense and unspectacular central midfield player very much in the Bolder mould, that will play against us – he was available for nothing in the summer and therefore preferred to our man. Crusty old Steve Watson lobbed home a super goal against Shef Utd in the big derby match earlier this season and adds experience and steel to the midfield when he plays. We know all about Jimmy Smith who is on loan from Chelsea for the season, prone to the odd spectacular long range striker but often disappears from games for weeks at a time and seems very lightweight for this level. He has only made three starts so far and was sent off in a game at Birmingham earlier this season.

Wednesday provide decent threat from wide areas. Saturday’s goalscorer Marcus Tudgay, normally a striker, has been used there and former MK Dons star Wade Small offers plenty of pace when he is involved. The new face this year is 24 year old Dutch winger Etienne Esajas who signed from Vitesse Arnham in the summer and offers a direct style of forward play. He’s very similar in playing style and looks to his fellow countryman Regi Blinker who was an eccentric presence in the Wednesday team that played in the top flight in the mid 1990s. Jermaine Johnson, a Jamaican formerly with Bradford City, was outstanding against Sheffield United recently and will trouble any full back in this league on his day.

As well as Tudgay Wednesday have mediocre looking striking options in Akpo Sodje, Bartosz Slusarski, Leon Clarke and Francis Jeffers. Sodje is one of five footballing brothers and joined Wednesday from Port Vale last season, when he gets fit and plays he looks threatening but his career in this part of the world can be summed up nicely by the opening day victory against Burnley – Wednesday won 4-1, Sodje scored twice but he was then taken off injured and missed six weeks of action. Too injury prone at the moment. Jeffers is the stand out name of course, but he is another who regularly suffers with injury and although poor spells with Arsenal and Blackburn were followed by an impressive loan spell at Ipswich he quickly reverted to type when Wednesday spent £1m to sign him last summer – injuries and poor form since then.

Slusarski is on loan from West Brom while Clarke was Laws’ first permanent signing as manager but has found himself out on loan to Southend as he struggles with his form and his weight – he’s a big lad!

Previous Meetings
If you’d told the QPR fans at Hillsborough last season after 40 minutes that they would go on to lose you would have been laughed out of the ground. Rarely have the R’s been so on top in an away game and Damien Delaney’s first goal for the club gave them the lead after a flowing move down the left. Wednesday weren’t at the races but manager Brian Laws made a double substitution before half time replacing the dire Wallwork and ineffective Showumni with Burton and McAllister and on the stroke of half time they equalised when Graham Kavanagh lobbed the ball over Lee Camp. The changes had thrown Rangers who were unable to regain their supremacy after half time and within seven minutes of the restart a needless foul by Camp presented the home team with a penalty that Burton converted. Things didn’t get a great deal better for QPR who were awful in the second half, Hogan Ephraim was sent off in stoppage time for a senseless forearm smash on Frank Songo’o.

Sheff Wed: Grant 7, Hinds 5, Beevers 7, Wood 7, Spurr 5, Kavanagh 8, Small 6 (O'Brien 90, -), Wallwork 3 (McAllister 40, 6), Songo'o 7, Tudgay 7, Showumni 4 (Burton 40, 8)
Subs Not Used: Burch, Boden
Booked: Tudgay (foul)
Goals: Kavanagh 45 (assisted Songo’o), Burton 52 pen (assisted McAllister)

QPR: Camp 5, Delaney 6, Stewart 6, Mancienne 6, Connolly 6, Rowlands 6, Leigertwood 5 (Mahon 66, 7), Buzsaky 5 (Balanta 75, 6), Blackstock 6, Agyemang 5, Vine 7 (Ephraim 63, 4)
Subs Not Used: Pickens, Rehman
Sent Off: Ephraim (90) (violent conduct)
Booked: Stewart (foul), Delaney (foul)
Goals: Delaney 15 (assisted Vine)

Match Report

At Loftus Road in the corresponding fixture the two sides fought out one of the most attractive nil nil draws there has ever been. Both teams hit the bar twice and Lee Camp and Lee Grant were both in flying form in goal at either end of the pitch. In the end the scoreline didn’t do the game justice.

QPR: Camp 7, Malcolm 4 (Timoska 65, 7), Mancienne 8, Stewart 9, Barker 8, Rowlands 6, Leigertwood 9, Buzsaky 7, Vine 7, Blackstock 7 (Nygaard 82, -),Sinclair 8
Subs Not Used: Cole, Bolder, Ainsworth
Booked: Malcolm (foul)

Sheff Wed: Grant 9, Simek 7, Hinds 7, Michael Johnson 7, Spurr 8,Jermaine Johnson 7 (Small 80, -), Watson 7, Folly 7, O'Brien 7,Sodje 7 (Burton 57, 7), Tudgay 7
Subs Not Used: Lunt, Esajas, Beevers
Booked: Michael Johnson (shirt pulling)

Match Report

Head to Head:
Sheff Wed wins – 26
Draws – 13
QPR wins – 17

Previous Sheff Wed v QPR scores:
2007/08 Sheff Wed 2 QPR 1 (Delaney)
2007/08 QPR 0 Sheff Wed 0
2006/07 QPR 1 Sheff Wed 1 (Rowlands)
2006/07 Sheff Wed 3 QPR 2 (Blackstock 2)
2005/06 Sheff Wed 1 QPR 1 (Bircham)
2005/06 QPR 0 Sheff Wed 0
2003/04 Sheff Wed 1 QPR 3 (Gallen, Furlong, Carr og)
2003/04 QPR 3 Sheff Wed 0 (Palmer, Thorpe, McLeod)
2000/01 Sheff Wed 5 QPR 2 (Crouch 2)
2000/01 QPR 1 Sheff Wed 2 (Peacock)
1995/96 Sheff Wed 1 QPR 3 (Barker 2, Goodridge)
1995/96 QPR 0 Sheff Wed 3
1994/95 Sheff Wed 0 QPR 2 (Maddix, Ferdinand)
1994/95 QPR 3 Sheff Wed 2 (Ferdinand, Sinclair, Gallen)
1993/94 Sheff Wed 3 QPR 1 (White)
1993/94 QPR 1 Sheff Wed 2 (Meaker)
1993/94 QPR 1 Sheff Wed 2 (Ferdinand)
1992/93 QPR 3 Seff Wed 1 (Allen 2, Ferdinand)
1992/93 Sheff Wed 1 QPR 0
1992/93 Sheff Wed 4 QPR 0
1991/92 QPR 1 Sheff Wed 1 (Wilkins)
1991/92 Sheff Wed 4 QPR 1 (Bailey)

Team News
Two players return from bans – Fitz Hall has sat out three games and Mikele Leigertwood one – but it remains to be seen whether Paulo Sousa will change the team that beat Wolves remains to be seen. Dexter Blackstock left the field early on Saturday night with a back injury and is a doubt for this one, Lee Cook stands by to replace him at the tip of the diamond if he doesn’t make it. Parejo and Ledesma were both left out at the weekend and I cannot imagine a freezing night in Sheffield would be the ideal location for their return. Akos Buzsaky and Rowan Vine are long term injury absences while Matt Connolly continues to struggle with a back injury.

Wednesday have midfielder Steve Watson available and Tommy Spurr may start after recovering from a dead leg to take his place on the bench at the weekend.
Details

Referee
A former LFW referee of the year is in charge of this. Nigel Miller took our award in 2005/06 for a good performance in a defeat at Wolves, however since then he has turned in a number of shocking performances in QPR games and is not in particularly good form coming into this game – he made an absolute pig’s ear of Barnsley v Burnley last Monday night.
Details

Elsewhere
After winning a fourth v fifth battle at Sheffield United on Saturday Burnley have another this Tuesday night as Cardiff travel north to Turf Moor. Burnley are the form team in the division at the moment and will face Spurs in the League Cup semi final after Christmas. Elsewhere there are few games that catch the eye – Wolves will look to get back to winning ways at home to Derby and Ipswich v Bristol City on Wednesday night looks like it has the potential to be an attractive tie. Charlton slipped to the bottom of the table for the first time at the weekend and face Coventry at The Valley.
Tony's Championship Preview

Form
QPR are unbeaten in three games under new manager Paulo Sousa but their statistics away from home are abysmal at the moment. The goalless draw at Palace made it seven away games in all competitions without a goal. The last time Rangers scored away from home in the league was September 17 at Norwich when Martin Rowlands’ free kick gave Iain Dowie’s men a 1-0 win, Damion Stewart has since scored at Aston Villa but that was a cup game. With just two goals scored on the road all season and only one win just imagine where we’d be in the league if we had even mediocre away form.

Sheff Wed as well are a Jekyll and Hyde team when it comes to home and away games. At Hillsborough they have won six and drawn two of their ten matches, scoring 13 and conceding only six – even we have conceded nine at Loftus Road so it’s a fine defensive record that Laws’ men have on their own patch. How strange therefore that they have the division’s worst defensive record away from home where they have conceded 26 goals, ten more than bottom of the table Charlton, and lost six times. They have picked up two wins on the road though which is one more than us. Sadly this game is not at Loftus Road but their form in Sheffield has slipped slightly of late with defeats against Coventry and Plymouth in the last four games their first set backs at home this season, although Rotherham did win here on penalties in the League Cup in August.

QPR have conceded 37 goals in their last 15 matches here.
Form Guide

Prediction
QPR’s defence looks very strong at the moment, and the return of Fitz Hall from suspension only increases the competition for places back there for this game. Sadly the attack continues to miss chances and should have had Wolves buried out of sight by half time on Saturday. With leading scorer Dexter Blackstock also doubtful with injury that is not going to help Sousa’s men end their unenviable goal scoring record on the road. I’d back us to keep the home side at bay, but maybe not trouble them unduly ourselves.
Sheff Wed 0 QPR 0

Photo: Action Images

Macclesfield Town Polls