QPR beat local non-league side Harrow Borough 3-0 on Tuesday night as the build up to the new season continued. Goals from Marc Nygaard, Adam Bolder and Shabazz Baidoo were enough for the Championship side to secure a comfortable win.
This was an extremely comfortable night's work for a strong Rangers side, on a night where we should have been playing Shrewsbury Town. As you may remember, Manchester City became available to play the League Two side this week, so we promptly got the brush off and it left us very thin on the ground as far as pre season preperations were concerned.
However, thanks to the hard work from Harrow Boro Manager, David Howell and our very own message board regular, Craig Holden(Bklyn), this fixture was arranged. This sort of thing just shows what fantastic supporters we have and great to see someone from our message board helping to rescue the situation for our club - Nice one Craig!
Onto the game, and a lovely sunny evening brought out another very healthy Rangers following which from what I could see, made up about 90% of the overall attendance.
As friendlies go, most Rangers fans would have probably enjoyed this one as the gulf in class between the two sides was there for all to see and Rangers were rarely put under any pressure.
Rangers were looking lively with Rowlands and trialist James Simmonds at the heart of Rangers attacking play. But following several wasted chances, Rangers finally broke the deadlock on 35 minutes as Nygaard lashed home Moore's cross from 20 yards.
The second half saw the usual flurry of substitutions in which eventually, every Rangers player was to have to been replaced. The most notable at the start of the second half was Adam Bolder replacing the livewire, Rowlands. Bolder went on to boss things in the middle of the park and was rewarded with a rare goal and wrapped up the game for Rangers on 70 minutes. St Aimie's cross was half cleared and Bolder calmly side footed home from the edge of the box.
Shabazz Baidoo made it 3-0 on 79 minutes following a superb turn from Nardiello on the left hand side. The hosts did have the ball in the net late on but were denied by the linesmans flag. But Rangers were denied a fourth as St Aimie's header rebounded into the keepers arms when most of the crowd thought he had scored.
Like the Wycombe game and with so many changes, it probably is a bit unfair to rate all the players. But performances of note came from Rowlands and Bolder who simply ran the midfield in therr respective halves. James Simmonds looked extremely lively and probably has done enough for a further look at him. Ben Sahar's movement and touch was again a joy to watch and it will be insteresting to see who Gregory will choose for his front two in Friday's final friendly against Fulham.
QPR: Lee Camp (Jake Cole 45), Zesh Rehman (Marcus Bignot 78), Michael Mancienne (Dominic Shimmin 78), Damion Stewart (Chris Barker 68), John Curtis (Sam Timoska 68), Stefan Moore (Kieron St Aimie 55), Simon Walton (Stefan Bailey 71), Martin Rowlands (Adam Bolder 45), James Simmonds (Shabazz Baidoo 60), Marc Nygaard (Dexter Blackstock 62), Ben Sahar (Danny Nardiello 71).
All pictures (c) Action Images