An off night at Derby on Friday has tempered growing optimism in the QPR ranks ahead of a tough trip to in form Aston Villa this evening.
Mercantile Credit Trophy >>> Tuesday April 4, 2017 >>> Kick Off 19.45 >>> Weather — Nice night >>> Villa Park, Birmingham
We can (and have, repeatedly) joke about how such a meaningless game as Derby County (tenth) against Queens Park Rangers (fifteenth) ended up on the television on Friday night. Rarely has so much effort and expense gone into the coverage of something that mattered so little to so few.
Why, therefore, does it niggle me so much that we lost? I mean, the narrow 1-0 defeat was a fairly predictable outcome (we went for 1-1, full disclosure) given that QPR have lost there by that scoreline on their previous two visits. QPR may have been playing well in the lead up to the game and Derby may be no great shakes this season but Rangers are five places below County in the league and the home club’s squad cost many, many times what ours did to assemble.
Throw in the home advantage, the absence of Massimo Luongo from the QPR midfield, and the fact that Derby have finally appointed a very talented Championship manager and this was his first home game and a home win starts to take shape in the mind. Even allowing for all that, it was only by one goal, and it could easily have been a draw had Idrissa Sylla’s late header been two inches to the right — instead, it came back into play off the base of the post.
Somewhere between 80-90% of QPR’s games this season, and I would contest without looking into it in any depth the rest of the games in this division, could easily have ended up in the other two outcomes with the same players on the pitch and the same game running in the same pattern. There have been defeats (2-1 at home to Huddersfield, 2-1 at Preston, 1-0 at Blackburn) that could have been wins and there have been wins (most notably at Fulham) that could easily have been defeats. It's the nature of a nonsense division where 24 mediocre teams play each other so often there’s rarely time for any meaningful training in between. Derby, a game lost by a defensive error that could easily have been won or drawn on another night despite QPR’s many failings over the 90 minutes, was just another one of those Championship fixtures where you wonder whether everybody would have been better off, happier and richer had we not bothered with it and just tossed a coin for the result.
Despite this, despite the season obviously being over, it is still niggling me a few days on, and not because of the Derby fans’ bizarre decision to sing the "oh Bobby Zamora” song back to us which makes about as much sense as us going to Coventry and singing about Eoin Jess or going to Chelsea and doing songs about the time they beat us 6-1 at Stamford Bridge. Why would you? That was a catastrophic, devastating defeat, what are you singing about it for? Ok, that’s niggling me a bit as well.
But on the pitch I think it’s the Matt Smith thing that’s troubling me. Whichever shameless prick has so little self respect that he earns a living writing a betting column for The S*n previewed Friday’s encounter by saying Smith had gone 17 matches without a goal for QPR (Big Posh Matt has only started eight games since moving here in January and he’s scored in three of those). With research like that, who wouldn’t follow his tips?
@LoftforWords great research! pic.twitter.com/msdP4SBrRY– David Ashfield (@DavidAshfield) March 31, 2017
Anybody who does actually know what they’re talking about would say that Smith has been a very shrewd acquisition for Rangers on initial impressions: a goal threat, a focal point to the attack, a really nice lad, a great signing at a terrific price. But he’s meant to be the out ball, not the ball. Ian Holloway admitted at the recent fans forum that his team were a bit too keen to lazily look up to him rather than try other things and boy was that evident on Friday.
We need that outlet, that physical presence. We need it to deal with the chronic problems we’ve had in midfield. Ian Holloway is never going to be a Dutch total football master, and although he’s certainly come on a lot as a manager since we last had him and the team was a very old fashioned 4-4-2 with a big man little man combination up front, two wingers and two cloggers in the middle of midfield, we can still expect to be quite direct under him at times this second go around.
Derby on Friday wasn’t an easy game, and it’s not a bad idea to try and put pressure on a centre back as accident prone as Richard Keogh, and it’s a game we could easily have got something out of as discussed. Reading things into games at this point of a season that’s obviously over is a fool’s errand embarked upon only by poor shmucks like me who have to find an angle for a match preview three times a week — this time last year we were looking very good in putting Brentford, Birmingham and Ipswich to the sword at Loftus Road which we hoped might mean Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink was setting up for something impressive in 2016/17 and that turned out to be bollocks as well.
But I don’t know, seeing us going to Smith that often, that early, that flagrantly, against a team which, Gary Rowett or no Gary Rowett, is a group of total bottle jobs that has had a dire season relative to the money spent on bringing them together… it niggled, and niggles, like I say.
Is this simply the start of the slow and steady slope off to the beach? Maybe. It’s a long rest of the week (which always looked tough on paper) in store if so because Villa, for all their hilarious cock ups this season, have won six of their last seven arriving into this game and haven’t conceded a goal in the last three. Then it’s soon-to-be-promoted Brighton at home on Friday. It would more than niggle if all the improvements and momentum of March was allowed to simply drift away through April, however much we joke about how little it all matters.
Links >>> Trevor Francis’ perfect hat trick — History >>> Hope for next season — Interview >>> Bankes in charge — Referee
Former Birmingham City teenage protégé and future Brum manager Trevor Francis shrugged off the Villa Park boo boys to score a spectacular hat trick in a 3-1 win on this ground in 1989. The third of a perfect left foot, right foot, headed treble is one of the great QPR goals of all time.
Team News: Massimo Luongo is back in the country and able to return after his latest orbit of the moon during international week. Jack Robinson has also played some reserve football of late and made the bench at the weekend so you never know your luck. Jordan Cousins’ nightmarish first season with QPR is over already — his ongoing injury problems mean he won’t feature in any of the remaining fixtures.
Ravel Morrison, bless him, managed a whole hour for the under 23s on Monday before being withdrawn after starting a confrontation with a poor challenge. Shouldn’t expect we’ll be seeing much of him tonight. No ice cream this week.
Villa are without Gabby Agbonlahor (too fat) and Rushian Hepburn-Murphy (shortage of letters in the club shop). Gentleman Jack Grealish may be in line for a return after a month out awaiting a new delivery of hair gel, but there’s a three bottles for a fiver offer on at Sinderellas strip club in Wolverhampton tonight so he might just go there instead.
Elsewhere: Just the four dozen rounds of this season’s Mercantile Credit Trophy left now, and most things are pretty much sorted already. Newcastle and Brighton are both basically promoted with likely home wins this midweek against Nigel Clough’s Burton Albion and Gianfranco Zola’s Omnishambles furthering their lead at the top. Borussia Huddersfield (home to Norwich tomorrow), Reading (home to the Mad Chicken Farmers) and the Champions of Europe (away at Brentford) will contest the play-offs with either Tarquin and Rupert, who’ve snuck into sixth ahead of their trip to the Derby Sheep, or the Sheffield Owls, who should win their local derby with Relegated Rotherham but haven’t been playing at all well of late.
At the bottom Wigan Warriors (Ipswich away) are almost certain to join the Millers in League One next season leaving one place to be filled by either the Mad Chicken Farmers, The Wurzels (away to Preston Knob End), Nottingham Trees (away to the Wolverhampton Wolves), Nigel Clough’s Burton Albion, Birmingham or Ipswich. It’s that final relegation spot that looks like providing the drama right to the end.
For the rest of us it’s simply a case of playing out time (The Seventh Annual Neil Warnock Farewell Tour is in Barnsley tonight) and coming up with various spurious reasons to have a minute of applause or wiggling mobile phone lights in the air while the bloody match is going on.
Referee: Peter Bankes was in charge of two QPR wins last season but his record this season shows two 2-1 home losses to Sunderland and Huddersfield — a big shout for a late handball penalty at the Loft End rejected in the latter. Mind you, all three of his Villa appointments this season have finished in a 2-0 win to the opposition so let’s hope for more of that. Details here.
Villa: QPR’s defeat at the weekend knocked them off the top of the Championship form table where they’ve been replaced by… Aston Villa. Steve Bruce’s side have won six of their last seven, including their last three without conceding a goal — all 2-0. That’s similar to the run of seven wins and two draws in 11 games Villa went on when Bruce first arrived and a play-off push appeared to be in the offing only for them to embark on a run of nine without a win in the league, including seven defeats, through January and February. They’ve been formidable at home this season, losing only twice (Barnsley and Ipswich) which is the join best total in the division, but they have drawn seven of the other 17.
QPR: The defeat to Derby was only QPR’s second loss in eight matches but it’s three without a win on the road now, including two blanks on the scoresheet, since the 4-1 win at Birmingham last month. The second city is proving a happy hunting ground for QPR of late — they’ve won two of the last three trips to Birmingham, their last three trips to Wolves and a 4-1 win at West Brom last time we were there. At Villa Park QPR have drawn two and won one of the last four visits, 3-3 here last time out in the Premier League. The last QPR win here in the league, however, was seven meetings ago back in 1992 when Les Ferdinand scored the only goal in a 1-0 win.
Prediction: Awkward one to call, Villa win looks likely but Ian Holloway will want a response from Friday and I wouldn’t put it past the R’s to make this an eighth draw at Villa Park this season.
LFW’s Prediction: Villa 1-1 QPR. Scorer — Matt Smith.
The Twitter @loftforwords
Pictures — Action Images