Luigi De Canio takes his free scoring QPR side to Ipswich on Saturday looking to throw another spanner in the works of a team chasing promotion.

Ipswich Town (7th) v Queens Park Rangers (14th)
Coca Cola Championship
Saturday March 29 2008
Portman Road, Kick Off 3pm

On another day we could have been looking forward to a string of debuts in this match – Martin Cranie and Lee Cook in Hoops, David Healy, David Nugent, Abdoulaye Meite, Shola Ameobi and seemingly every other out favour player in the country for Ipswich. In the end QPR missed out/gave up/were frustrated by the players’ lack of fitness depending on who you believe. Ipswich on the other hand are having some serious questions asked of them by supporters who have been told for several weeks that the club had “irons in the fire” with regards to signings only to end up with nobody.

Right up until the 5pm deadline yesterday the impression coming from Portman Road was that David Healy was merely waiting for them to find a shirt in his size in the club shop for the publicity photographs and then the signing would be announced. In the end it didn’t happen and that means, as we’ll explore in more detail in a moment, that Ipswich are approaching a crucial final seven matches of the season in play off contention but showing all the signs of a side set to just miss out on the end of season festivities. The “Healy to sign by Thursday” headlines have now been replaced by “Healy to sign in the summer” – Town fans are all too aware that this would be far too late for a team with just one fit striker with first team experience.

QPR on the other hand are safe. That’s right guys, 52 points in the bag, and it’s not even the end of March yet. For those unfamiliar with this scenario what basically happens now is that with no pressure on the team whatsoever we play with a bit more freedom and pick up a couple of very good results against teams with things to play for before winding down for the summer about a month before we should and dropping silly points in the final three or four matches. The fierce competition for places that another foray into the transfer market is likely to create during the next window may keep our players on their toes enough to get us up past the 60 point barrier, and that would be some achievement for a side that didn’t win a match at all until the middle of October.

We may well look back on this campaign when it’s done and reflect on missed opportunities, the ridiculous amount of times we’ve taken the lead only to go on and lose or draw the game (11 matches at the last count), how easily we could have made the six had we not conceded last minute goals that cost us points (six goals equating to a nine point loss at the last count) and all the rest of it but that would ignore the very real achievement of staying in this league at all this season, and turn a blind eye to just how far the club has come.

We started it with the worst team in the league, a bank statement that screamed administration, and no wins from our first nine matches. We end it comfortably in mid table, with a new competitive team, rich owners, a £20m kit sponsorship deal, work about to start on our ground and the future of the club secure. On the first Saturday in August, a year to the day after we went out against Bristol City with the following side:

Camp, Rehman, Stewart, Mancienne, Curtis, Rowlands, Bolder, Bailey, Moore, Nardiello and Blackstock

we will retake the field in the Championship with sponsorship deals on our shirt of greater value than the debt that nearly killed us this time last year and as favourites to win the league with the bookies. We may not win at Ipswich on Saturday, and we may have only ourselves to blame for not making the six this season, but we’ve come a hell of a long way and I reckon the best thing for us to do is enjoy this unusually stress free end to the season before gearing up for some serious straightening of records next year.

Five minutes on Ipswich
Ipswich Town stretched themselves too far too soon and paid the price. As a founder member of the Premier League it was a surprise that promising young manager George Burley took quite so long to get them back into the top flight after their relegation in 1994/95 but a pathological fear of play offs kept their excellent young side in the First Division (as was) a couple of years longer than they probably should have. At the fourth time of asking they made it through the end of season knock outs and into the promised land, winning the last ever play off final at the old Wembley 4-2 against Barnsley in 2000.

After wasting so much time getting there Ipswich weren’t in the mood to hang around and set about demolishing the Premiership in their first season. It looked for a while like they might even claim a Champions League spot but they settled for fifth in the end, taking some big scalps along the way, and started the following season as not only an established Premiership team, but also as a British entry into the UEFA Cup. Then the problems started. Ipswich went away from what they’d been doing so well – bringing together good, young English players keen to prove themselves and allowing them to express themselves in an attractive footballing side. In came Nigerian Finidi George and Italian Matteo Sereni for big money and on big wages. Tommy Miller, Marcus Bent, Ulrich Le Pen (even some Ipswich fans may be saying ‘who?’ at this point) Thomas Gaardsoe and Sixto Peralta all arrived with big reputations, big transfer fees and large wages to boot. With Portman Road being redeveloped behind both goals the Tractor Boys were effectively trying to compete on four fronts on the pitch while sustaining a massive overhaul of their stadium.

They came up well short – 18 months later I watched a relegated and financially destitute Ipswich side lose 3-0 at Blundell Park against Grimsby Town. Finidi George warmed up on a typical Cleethorpes evening (those that have been to Blundell Park will know) in a hat, scarf, gloves, polo neck and leggings. He looked like, and played like, everything that was wrong about Ipswich Town at that time. George Burley was sacked after that game and Joe Royle charged with the rebuilding. The debt accrued in that disastrous second season is only now being paid off/transferred after some big investment from new owner Marcus Evans earlier this season. Ipswich, so often held up as a shining example of how to run a football club, got their fingers burnt at the top table.

That didn’t stop them making a big effort to return with Royle at the helm and I still to this day don’t quite know how they didn’t win the league in the 2004/05 season when they were clearly the best side in the division by a country mile. In the end the week where they lost to ourselves and Watford forced them into the play offs again and, well, Ipswich don’t like play offs. That team broke up with the best five or six players all going into the Premier League without Ipswich and Royle never quite managed to put together a team that good again. In the end he quietly moved aside before the start of last season, effectively admitting that he’d done all he could and failed.

In came Jim Magilton, seemingly as a last resort after Phil Parkinson and others had turned the job down. He’s done a reasonable job so far, steadying the ship last season and moving them into play off contention this year on the back of an excellent home record. Ipswich have won only three times on the road but lost only once at home hence their lofty position in the table as the league draws to a close.

There’s a problem though. Does Magilton have what it takes to get Ipswich to the next level? That doesn’t necessarily mean taking them into the Premiership, does he even have what it takes to get them into the play offs and lose like Royle and Burley did? I have to say as an outsider I’m starting to have my doubts. Magilton seems to talk a very good game, and their home form is imperious, but they’ve won only twice away from home all year and when I saw them at Hull before Christmas they were toothless, and Magilton’s substitutions only made a bad situation worse. So far this season Ipswich have been linked with all manner of players and signed next to nobody – the one impressive capture they did manage, David Norris, took them the thick end of two months to nail despite the player wanting to come and requesting a transfer at his end.

If Magilton’s inexperience is being shown up anywhere it’s in the transfer market and his failure to land somebody, anybody, this week with the loan deadline approaching and numerous first team players out of form, lacking fitness or carrying an injury could not only cost Ipswich their play off place but Magilton the confidence of the fans and ultimately his job. We used to joke that Ian Holloway was always two players away from the side he wanted, and every time he made a signing that number of players required never seemed to alter. Magilton is always two days away from a signing – he talks about irons in the fire and bids for all manner of players but in the end, more often than not, comes up with nothing.

In a mediocre league Ipswich are one of the better sides and it only would have needed one or two of the thousands of players Magilton has said they’ve chased over the past fortnight to have signed and they would have been a good bet for promotion. Magilton couldn’t nail down one of them, and must now wait for the consequences of this during the closing games of the season.

Who to watch out for
Ipswich are suffering an injury and suspension crisis at the worst possible time, particularly in attack. I would, under normal circumstances, be starting this section with a look at Pablo Counago, Shefki Kuqi and Jonathan Walters who carry Town’s chief goal scoring threat. Sadly for the home side Counago emptied his mouth on a Scunthorpe player last week and is suspended while Kuqi and Walters are injured. I said in the last preview for a game with the Tractor Boys that I didn’t rate Walters and that his arse was clearly too big for a professional footballer – he hasn’t stopped scoring since and I was going to eat humble pie at this juncture but then his knee fell apart and he was ruled out so we’ll leave my reassessment for next season – assuming we’re still in the same division as Ipswich which I have to say I think we will be.

That leaves Ipswich somewhat light on attackers for this game. Alan Lee will no doubt start, and he’ll need no introduction to QPR fans. Who can ever forget him trying to get the better of Danny Shittu while playing for Cardiff at Loftus Road? After elbowing Danny in the head for the third time Lee was treated to the sight of the big man standing over him and telling him exactly what was coming next before leaving the field to have his wounds dressed. Within 30 seconds of coming back onto the field Danny had gone up for a corner and scored and there followed 30 minutes of the most brutal treatment I’ve ever seen a centre half hand down to a striker. As a result Lee fled, tail between his legs, with 25 minutes still to play.

I’d always thought of Lee as a lower league striker, all elbows and attitude and not a lot else, but at Ipswich he’s excelled and scored a lot of goals. The goals and form have dried up a little of late with just two in 20 appearances but he has 11 for the season and got 17 last term so he does still carry a threat.

The name that does worry me a little this weekend is that of Jordan Rhodes. Son of the Town goalkeeping coach and scorer of a ridiculous amount of goals at reserve team level, 40 has been quoted by my prone-to-exaggeration-Ipswich-supporting-girlfriend, he sounds like just the kind of talented youngster that would enjoy scoring on his debut against QPR – we usually oblige in these situations. Luckily for us it seems that Magilton prefers Gary Roberts, a right winger who is harshly treated by the Ipswich fans but still not up to a great deal, as an emergency striker after failing to capture Healy, Nugent or anybody else. The infuriatingly inconsistent Danny Haynes is likely to be given the nod – he scored a last minute equaliser against us at Portman Road the season before last but normally only turns up to play when Norwich are in town so fingers crossed that this continues. Kuqi still has half a chance of playing himself, he’s on loan from Crystal Palace.

Further back all the stand out names are again missing through injury. Gavin Williams impressed at Loftus Road last season but hasn’t featured since January, nor has Sylvain Legwinski who was the best player on the pitch in W12 earlier this year. Alan Quinn was a January signing from Sheff Utd but hasn’t pulled up any trees yet, nor would anybody who’d seen him at Bramall Lane expect him to – strange signing that one. David Norris has come up through the divisions alongside our team with Plymouth and is an excellent midfielder but he is also injured. Sumulikoski, a Macedonian international, is a classy midfielder and will pull the strings for Town on Saturday.

I’m struggling to find people to talk about here so let’s focus on the people that are still moving about. Owen Garvan is showing all the signs of being a terrific midfielder, although his goal against Charlton last week was clearly a fluke, and in Danny Simpson (on loan from Man Utd), David Wright and Sito Castro Ipswich have managed to cover up Dan Harding’s short comings by replacing him with three quality full backs for either side of the defence.

In goal expect Stephen Bywater to start. He was booed by his own fans after a dire display in a 4-1 defeat at Barnsley earlier this month and is somebody I really don’t rate at all. An error prone goalkeeper incapable of commanding those in front of him – Ipswich have definitely come off worse in a three way goalkeeper exchange that has seen Neil Alexander go from Ipswich to Rangers, Roy Carroll go from Rangers to Derby, Bywater go from Derby to Ipswich and Lewis Price move from Ipswich to Derby over the last six months. To be honest they’d have been much better keeping and playing Shane Supple, who they’ve loaned to Falkirk, in goal and Billy Clarke, who they’ve loaned to Falkirk, up front. It’s these decisions in the transfer market that are undermining Magilton at the moment.

Past Meetings
At Loftus This is of course the second meeting between these two sides this season – the spoils were shared at Loftus Road earlier in the season. Ipswich took the lead against Mick Harford’s men just after half time when Frenchman Sylvain Legwinski fired an unstoppable 25 yard dipping volley into the net down at the School End – the only goal QPR conceded with Martin Cranie on the pitch during his loan spell. With everybody round the club very low on confidence at this stage that looked like being that but Ipswich haven’t been much of an away side this year and they allowed the R’s back into the match when marc Nygaard slid home his final QPR goal with 20 minutes left for play. A fabulous save by Lee Camp in stoppage point secured the point.

QPR: Camp 7, Mancienne 6 (Nygaard 55, 7), Stewart 7, Cranie 8, Barker 5, Ainsworth 6 (Moore 67, N/A), Bolder 6, Leigertwood 8, Rowlands 6, Ephraim 6, Vine 7
Subs Not Used: Cole, Bignot, Jarrett
Booked: Vine (foul)
Goals: Nygaard 73 (assisted Vine)

Ipswich: Alexander 7, Wright 7, Wilnis 8, De Vos 7, Harding 6, Walters 5, Garvan 6, Legwinski 8, Miller 7 (Roberts 32, 7), Clarke 7 (Haynes 80, 7) Lee 7 (Counago 85, -)
Subs Not Used: Supple, Bruce
Goals: Legwinski 53 (assisted Garvan)

Match Report

Our last visit to Portman Road was one of the few occasions when the QPR support started to lose patience with John Gregory and Gianni Paladini. Both were heckled by the travelling support as Rangers, playing with just one striker, fell two behind with goals either side of half time from Alan Lee and Jonathan Walters. Gregory caved in to the increasingly ugly mood amongst the travelling fans and introduced a second striker to his line up just after the hour – Paul Furlong scored within seven minutes of coming on and was denied a late chance to equalise from the penalty spot when referee Rob Lewis bottled the decision and waved play on.

Ipswich Town: Price 7, De Vos 6, Bruce 5, Garvan 7, Legwinski 7, Peters 8 (Haynes 84, -), Lee 6, Walters 8 (Jeffers 71, 6), Wright 6, Harding 6, Roberts 8
Subs not used: Supple, Richards, O'Callaghan
Goals: Lee 25, Walters 53
Bookings: Harding 90 (foul)

QPR: Camp 8, Mancienne 6, Cullip 5, Stewart 4, Timoska 4, Ainsworth 4 (Furlong 63, 8), Bolder 6, Lomas 4 (Smith 82, -), Cook 6, Rowlands 6, R Jones 7
Subs not used: Cole, Moore, Kanyuka
Goals: Furlong 70
Bookings: Ainsworth 23 (foul), Jones 89 (foul)

Match Report

Head to Head
Ipswich wins – 24
Draws – 17
QPR wins – 21

Previous Ipswich v QPR results:
2007/08 QPR 1 Ipswich 1 (Nygaard)
2006/07 Ipswich 2 QPR 1 (Furlong)
2006/07 QPR 1 Ipswich 3 (Gallen)
2005/06 Ipswich 2 QPR 2 (Moore, Furlong)
2005/06 QPR 2 Ipswich 1 (Gallen, Rowlands)
2004/05 Ipswich 0 QPR 2 (Furlong, Shittu)
2004/05 QPR 2 Ipswich 4 (Furlong 2)
1999/00 QPR 3 Ipswich 1 (Peacock, Koejoe, Kiwomya)
1999/00 Ipswich 1 QPR 4 (Steiner 2, Wardley, Peacock)*
1998/99 Ipswich 3 QPR 1 (Kiwomya)
1998/99 QPR 1 Ipswich 1 (Gallen)
1997/98 Ipswich 0 QPR 0
1997/98 QPR 0 Ipswich 0
1996/97 Ipswich 2 QPR 0
1996/97 QPR 0 Ipswich 1
1994/95 Ipswich 0 QPR 1 (Ferdinand)
1994/95 QPR 1 Ipswich 2 (Ferdinand)
1993/94 Ipswich 1 QPR 3 (Impey 2, Ferdinand)
1993/94 QPR 3 Ipswich 0 (White 2, Barker)
1992/93 Ipswich 1 QPR 1 (White)
1992/93 QPR 0 Ipswich 0

QPR’s 4-1 win at Portman Road in 1999/00 is the featured match in this week’s ‘Memories’ section. Click here for a match report, details of player connections and fans’ memories of past meetings between the two sides.

Team News
As you’d expect for this time of the season the team news is just about as long as the rest of the preview put together. For QPR it’s a case of one in and one out with Hogan Ephraim back in contention following his three match ban for his Sheffield Wednesday hissy fit and Damien Delaney out for two matches for collecting ten bookings, six of them for Hull. Delaney’s absence, you would think, will either mean a recall for Chris Barker or a rare start for Keiran Lee and a bit of a reshuffle – Barker looks the favourite for me. Matt Connolly limped out of the Wolves game early and if he doesn’t make it Damion Stewart faces a race against time to be fit otherwise Zesh Rehman will get the nod. Martin Rowlands also left the Wolves game early and should he not make it Gavin Mahon will probably start alongside Mikele Leigertwood, although De Canio could move Buzsaky into the centre and select Ephraim on the wing – that would be a seriously attacking line up for an away game though.

Pablo Counago was sent off for spitting at an opponent at Scunthorpe last week and starts a three match suspension on Saturday. That leaves Ipswich short of attacking options with top scorer and shoe in for player of the year Jon Walters out after having a knee operation and Shefki Kuqi struggling with a hamstring injury picked up in the last home game against Charlton. Dean Bowditch scored a hat trick for the reserves in the week but has since strained his groin. Expect Alan Lee and Danny Haynes to get the nod if Kuqi doesn’t make it. Richard Naylor, David Norris and Sylvain Legwinski are all out as well.
Injury List

Referee
Paul Armstrong is in charge this Saturday, just his 13th match of the season, and he’s been a fairly regular man in the middle for QPR in recent years. If you fancy a good omen then he was in charge for our last second win at Cardiff City in the play off season. More recently seen sending Bristol City manager Gary Johnson to the stands at Cardiff last week for arguing over the returning of the match ball to the field of play with Cardiff in front.
Details

What’s happening elsewhere?
How nice it is to be safely ensconced in the middle of the table while all around us teams have calculators in hand and panic etched across their faces. A clash of two sides with concerns at opposite ends of the table sees lowly Sheff Wed hosting high flying Stoke while Hull and Watford face off at the KC Stadium in what looks to be the game of the day. When Sky picked Charlton v Wolves for the evening match they probably though at least one of them would be in the top six, as it is they’re both fighting over whose round it is in the Last Chance Saloon. At the other end Leicester v Scunthorpe has carnage written all over it – see if you can get a decent price on the Iron.
Tony’s Championship Round Up

Form
Rangers have consistently been in the top six of the form table since Christmas and they remain there this week with the draw at Wolves. That means we’ve won three and drawn two of our last six matches and have lost only one of the last eight. Wolves was the third consecutive game where we’ve scored three goals and the sixth time in eleven matches – only Man Utd have scored more than QPR in the Football League since Christmas. Away from home the R’s are without a win in five matches. Since the 3-2 win at Southampton we have drawn at Barnsley, Coventry and Wolves and lost at Sheffield Wednesday.

Ipswich have won their last two games, at home to Charlton and at Scunthorpe, but were without a win in four matches prior to that and consistency is clearly not a strong point with two wins, two draws and two defeats from the last six matches. Town have lost only once at home this season, Watford the only one of 19 sides to take maximum league points from Portman Road, but have only won three times away from home all season, at Sheff Wed and Scunthorpe last week. That home form may look daunting but that defeat against Watford was fairly recently and Ipswich have actually only won two of their last seven matches at home in all competitions. Sheff Utd, Watford, Plymouth, Stoke and Portsmouth have all left here with a win or a draw in that time so there’s some hope for us yet.
Form Table

Prediction
Not like me I know but I do quite fancy us here. The Ipswich fans are unsettled by their club’s inability to land anybody in the run up to the loan deadline despite a lengthening injury list and Ipswich have few threats to offer us in attack as a result of not signing Healy or Nugent. I’d say beware Jordan Rhodes, we’ve read the ‘QPR v promising young debutant’ script a thousand times before and it’s really old now. If we have Rowlands and Connolly in the team I think we can give this a really good go. I’ll predict a draw and hope for more.
Ipswich 2 QPR 2
Prediction League

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