QPR travel to Fulham on Sunday with two away wins under their belt already this season. The hosts, meanwhile, are still searching for a first league win amongst a hectic fixture schedule.
Barclays Premier League >>> Sunday October 1, 2011 >>> Kick Off 3pm >>> Craven Cottage, London, SW6
You only have to embark on a couple of awaydays to places like Wolverhampton and Hull to know there are many, many great things about living in London and supporting a London football club. The pubs, the restaurants, the transport, the amenities, the people, the civilisation – it’s all here. Hell, there are parts of the world around Derby where the shops still shut early on a Wednesday afternoon.
But one thing most London clubs lack is a real, genuine, fierce rivalry. Only really Arsenal and Tottenham have a passionate mutual dislike of each other in the capital, and coincidentally they’re facing off on the other side of town on Sunday afternoon while we battle Fulham. Our game is a geographical derby game, you can walk from one ground to the other in no time at all, but in all other aspects this is just another match. Games here have been, as Danny Dyer might say, “a bit nawty” when they’ve been played in recent times but then we’ve had games at Stoke, Hull and even Hartlepool since then that have been “pwopah nawty” and you wouldn’t count any of them as derby matches.
This lack of a Portsmouth v Southampton style hatred is partly due to the lack of meetings between these sides through history. Football tends to go in cycles and by some strange quirk whenever QPR have been on the up Fulham have been going the other way and vice versa. So occasionally these sides meet as they pass each other, but they’ve only managed 27 meetings in more than 100 years of playing the game three miles away from each other, and four of those were in cup competitions. There have been four matches in the last 20 years or so, all bunched around the turn of the Millennium when Al Fayed was throwing good money after bad in the quest to promote Fulham from the bottom division to the top while QPR were busy having one of their collapses on and off the field. Rangers failed to score once in those four matches.
But then there is also this weird West London food chain to consider that just doesn’t happen in other cities. One night during the summer I was at a loose end so dragged myself off to Griffin Park to watch a very tidy Brentford side comprehensively outplay Premiership Stoke and win 1-0. There was a good crowd there that night, and the boisterous lot on the Ealing Road terrace took great delight in singing anti-QPR songs all evening. This seemed bizarre to me, but then I dare say Chelsea fans will find it a bit off coming to Loftus Road later this season and hearing us slagging them off. Brentford don’t even register on the QPR radar, and however much you may try and kid yourself differently we’re not much more than a blip on Chelsea’s screen either. There’s a similar situation over in the East where West Ham hate Spurs who hate Arsenal, Millwall hate everybody and Leyton Orient wished they mattered enough for anybody to give much of a toss.
The last time QPR played in the Premiership Fulham were getting crowds of 4,000 in the Third Division. Now they get 20,000. I don’t say that to make a point about lack of a hardcore support and glory hunting, but to show that the vast majority of Fulham fans at least, and a fair few QPR fans I dare say, know nothing of matches between QPR and Fulham other than four dire games ten years ago.
Maybe a rivalry will fester again in these parts if we can stay together in the top flight for any length of time.
Sadly I shall not be joining you all in the away (or the neutral) end of Craven Cottage on Sunday. Much to my dismay my day job is sending me to Cannes for the next seven days. I leave you in the capable match reporting hands of Colin Speller on Sunday.
Team News: Neil Warnock just cannot get a settled back four together at the moment and the suspension of Armand Traore for one match necessitates another reshuffle for this game and, in all likelihood, another one for the visit of Blackburn in a fortnight. Danny Gabbidon is still injured so Fitz Hall clings to life at the heart of the defence again. The question will be whether Luke Young is joined by Matt Connolly or Bradley Orr in the full back positions. Connolly would mean less changing, as he could slot straight in at left back, but he looked nervous coming on against Newcastle. Elsewhere nothing new to report, Jay Bothroyd is still likely to be preferred to DJ Campbell in attack despite a lack of goals so far this season.
Fulham left striking duo Bobby Zamora and Moussa Dembele in London this week while the rest of the team went to Denmark for a Europa League game with Odense – the pair of them had slight stomach bugs so were rested, but now find themselves facing competition from Andy Johnson who scored twice on Thursday in a 2-0 away win. Zamora seems to be developing a little bit of travel sickness this season – he’s played in all three league games at home, and none of the three away matches so far.
Elsewhere: A week of European action means this weekend’s fixtures are once again split over two days, with our game at Fulham one of four taking place on the Sunday. It’s also a derby day weekend, with Spurs v Arsenal in North London on Sunday afternoon and Everton v Liverpool on Sky at lunchtime on Saturday. The league leaders all have games that would be considered walkovers had they not been travelling and disgracing themselves during the week – Man Utd should still make simple work of a home game against Norwich but Chelsea heading to a Bolton side desperate for a win might not be straightforward and after Man City’s unhappy trip to Munich they now go to Blackburn. Another crisis club, Sunderland, are at home to West Brom at the end of a week where they lost badly at Norwich and had their main centre half arrested for sexual assault and drug possession. Villa v Wigan, Wolves v Newcastle and Swansea v Stoke all seem rather mundane on paper.
Referee: Andre Marriner is the man in the middle for this West London derby, his fourth match of the season so far. He’s done very well for himself in recent years, winning promotion to the Premiership and becoming one of its better rated officials. However his previous history with QPR is less than impressive. We’ve not met for several seasons now, you can see his QPR case file by clicking here, so hopefully we’ll notice the improvement this Sunday.
Fulham: Martin Jol’s men have made their worst ever start to a Premiership campaign with no wins from their first six matches – four draws, two defeats. That may have something to do with the extraordinary number of matches they have played so far. Qualifying for the Europa League through the Fair Play League last season meant they had to start from the very beginning of the competition’s qualifying rounds in June and they have already played 18 competitive matches this season in all competitions – QPR have played just seven. QPR can take heart from the fact that both Fulham’s defeats so far this season have come on the Sunday straight after one of their European adventures, at Wolves and Newcastle. They have however been pretty good on this ground – coming from two down to draw with Man City last time out made it eight home games without defeat this season and they have kept clean sheets in five of those. Striker Bryan Ruiz scored five goals in Europe for Twente before arriving at Fulham, who then drew the Dutch side in their Europa League group. Ruiz is therefore cup tied and that means that both he and Bobby Zamora will be fit and fresh for this game.
QPR: Richard Dunne’s dramatic own goal at the Loft End last week brought to an end a worrying run of three home games without a QPR goal. Given that Heidar Helguson scored in the first minute against Leeds at the end of last season and Dunne scored in the last minute last Sunday that was the thick end of five games without a goal in W12. QPR are still searching for a first home win in eight attempts though. Things are better on the road, where QPR have already won twice at Everton and Wolves – that’s more away wins than Norwich and Burnley managed in their entire seasons the last time they were both promoted into this division. One of the main problems in the Villa game was the dreadful quality of QPR’s direct free kicks on the edge of the box – five different players tried and failed with them, and you have to go back to October 2009 at Derby for the last QPR goal from such a set piece.
Betting: Professional odds compiler Owen Goulding has been right two times out of two since joining the LoftforWords team, so the pressure is on for him to maintain it going into this derby game.
Another solid performance from QPR against Aston Villa, and but for some extremely 'dubious' refereeing decisions, they could of been taking their first maximum haul at home this season. But alas, it was not to be, so it’s back on the road in search of three points in the first of many London derbies for the Hoops this season. From an odds compiler’s point of view, these games are a minefield. What sort of team will Fulham play? How many of their players will pick up injuries on their trip to Denmark? In Fulham's favour, it isn't the longest trip they could be making- and as such, I can’t see it having a massive bearing on team selection. I would expect Fulham to be near on full strength barring any injuries come Sunday. QPR on the other hand will have to have a little shuffle at the back following Traore's sending off with Connolly the likely replacement. This will have an impact on the counter attacking abilities of the R's - especially considering how potent Traore was in the win at Wolves. It’s incredibly hard to call this one. Fulham are currently a shade of odds-on with QPR around the 3/1 mark. However, I am finding it hard to separate these teams for this match and am advising a very small bet on the draw at 13/5 (Stan James).
Prediction: The sensible thing to do, given his form, would be to just follow whatever Owen is betting on and on this occasion that’s exactly what I’m going to do. Were QPR at full strength I’d be tempted to back the R’s for a win but the suspension for Traore means another defensive reshuffle and that back four moves another player closer to the porous line up we fielded at Wigan with Matt Connolly and Fitz Hall now both likely starters. Fulham have been abroad but rested Bobby Zamora and their strike force is the most potent we have faced for some time. Fulham have drawn all three games on this ground so far so a fourth straight tie would be unusual but I fancy this to finish 1-1.
1-1, 6/1 available with William Hill.
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