It’s a relegation six pointer for QPR at Sheffield Wednesday on Saturday, a fixture that’s absolutely transformed from how it would have looked and felt six weeks ago by two bright, young, European coaches.
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Marti Cifuentes;’ fast start to life in the QPR hot seat has already drawn comparisons to Don Howe, whose record of 11 points from the first six games he has just equalled, and even Terry Venables, who influenced so many at Cifuentes’ boyhood club Barcelona. If he gets even halfway close to either of those then we’re in for some ridiculously overdue good times ahead, but there’s still much work to do and distance to be travelled. For now I found myself thinking of a more recent and less heralded QPR manager as I made my frustrated way home from the midweek draw with Plymouth.
John Gregory is far more fondly remembered for his playing days at Loftus Road when he was part of Venables’ West London revolution to such an extent he ended up in the England squad. As manager he brought to an end the QPR careers of players like Marc Bircham, Kevin Gallen and Paul Furlong, and replaced them with a collection of Chelsea loanees and failed signings like Danny Nardiello and Simon Walton. John Curtis was a marquee summer signing and the start to 2007/08 so bad (no wins in the first nine) that his sacking had become inevitable under the new ownership of Flavio Briatore by the time he laughed his way through a 5-1 televised loss at West Brom with Ishmael Miller crawling all over Zesh Rehman. Gallen, in particular, can be scathing about him when asked on social media.
The 2006/07 season before, however, I thought he did a terrific job having inherited a situation remarkably similar to the one Marti Cifuentes has walked into at Loftus Road this time.
Then, like now, a financially constrained summer of transfer activity had left the squad, obviously, woefully under prepared. That was the infamous Paladini-led summer of Armel Tchakounte, Nick Ward, Egutu Oliseh, Adam Czerkas and others. Rehman actually counted as one of the better ones and God only knows what would have happened if Dexter Blackstock hadn’t been tricked into signing late in the window. Like Gareth Ainsworth, manager Gary Waddock was a much-loved former player for the club who was popular among fans and desperate for the job. We all wanted it to work so badly for both of them because we’d admired them so much on the field. However, with a squad already stretched and devoid of quality, both men hamstrung themselves further by ostracising key players – Chris Willock in the present day, Bircham, Steve Lomas and others in Waddock’s case. A farcical pre-season tour of the Amalfi Coast ensued with half QPR’s first team squad left at home. Ainsworth won two of the first 14 games this year, Waddock one of his first eight in the league and got knocked out of the cup at Port Vale.
So, Gregory and Cifuentes both inherited remarkably similar situations: the club had been mismanaged leading to a dreadful summer of transfer activity, the team was woefully short of second tier quality in just about every position, it was particularly weak in both boxes and especially up front, it was in the bottom three, and it felt like just being able to stay in the division would take some sort of miracle.
Gregory then, much like Cifuentes, made an immediate and dramatic impact. There was a palpable feeling that things had got so bad under Waddock, and the dressing room had become so fractured, that it wouldn’t take much to improve things just by being a bit less toxic and bringing a few senior lads back in from the cold. We won Gregory’s first game at home to Hull, and followed that up with a memorable 2-1 at Southampton on the day Ray Jones robbed Kelvin Davis out by the corner flag. The football became fluid and thrilling, in the way Waddock had always said he wanted to play but never managed. There were two separate 3-3 draws, at home to Norwich and away at West Brom where Gallen scored a goal on the end of a 25+ pass move. We won 3-2 at Luton having trailed, 1-0 at previously high-flying Cardiff with a Jones goal in the last minute, and when Crystal Palace came to town Lee Cook’s outright destruction of Danny Butterfield in a 4-2 win was one of the great modern day Loftus Road performances. QPR were good to watch, Gregory was lauded, hopes were high, we climbed clear of the bottom three and fears of relegation were put to one side.
Things then went on a terrifying slide: five straight losses over Christmas, ten defeats from 12 league games played. Only minnows Barnsley and Colchester beaten, both at home. This all culminated in one of the worst QPR performances in living memory when the team lost 5-0 at relegation rivals Southend in a Sky Friday night match. Relegation seemed absolutely certain once more.
The good news, while we’re drawing comparisons, is Rangers did survive that year. Emergency surgery on the team in the form of Lee Camp’s triumphant return, and a loan of Inigo Idiakez, to go with the January additions of Adam Bolder, Danny Cullip and Sampsa Timoska, eventually stemmed the bleeding. A 0-0 draw at Leeds stopped the rot, and some of the victories achieved that spring – Marc Nygaard’s ridiculous volley at Leicester, Dexter Blackstock’s goal of the season in a crucial game in hand against Preston, the last minute Paul Furlong goal against Luton – are still talked about to this day as some of our happiest moments together.
The two points I would take from this case study are this...
Firstly, managers are massively important, and if you’ve got one doing as poor a job as Gary Waddock or Gareth Ainsworth did at QPR, then a new one is what you need and you need it double lively. Even a journeyman like John Gregory should be able to bring about immediate improvements in a squad fed up with the bullshit they were being made to suffer before, and we obviously hope we’ve got a lot more than that in Marti Cifuentes – everything he’s said and done so far suggests so. However, you do not win two of your first 16 league games, one home game in 23 matches over the course of a year, if you’re secretly a good side that’s just being dragged down by a terrible boss. QPR, as we keep saying, had been losing more often than not for nearly two years under four different managers. Ainsworth was embarrassingly out of his depth, but this is not a good team. It’s also a squad that is highly, highly susceptible to crash and burn if it gets a few injuries, and several of the players you’d want to be injured the least at the moment (Willock, Clarke-Salter) have dire records in that regard. Already you’re seeing the new manager having to nurse players through three game weeks. Cifuentes also has high standards, is very demanding, and came out during the week and said his team were mostly "dreadful” in their beginning against Plymouth. That’s all great at the moment, standards desperately need raising at a club that was being gaslit into believing it’s just lucky to be in this league and has next to no chance of competing against the might of West Brom away, but Neil Critchley tried something similar when he was here and the players didn’t have it at all. Again, it’s still largely the same group, let’s see what happens if the memory of Ainsworth drifts and the novelty of the new guy wears off.
Secondly, winning two of your first 16 league matches is a significant handicap. At one point last year Middlesbrough won 15 Championship games out of 19 played, losing twice. They lost five matches in six months from the start of November to mid-April. It was still only enough for a play-off spot, at which point they were tactically schooled out of a two-legged semi-final by Coventry. And that was with four wins and five draws in their first 16 matches. QPR, by comparison, won two out of 26 games, losing 17, and still didn’t get relegated. They say nothing is decided before Christmas, some say before Easter, but it’s not entirely true. There’s a reason everybody remembers Millwall getting relegated after being top, and Iain Dowie getting Palace up after being in the bottom three, and that’s because it happens so seldomly. QPR are living, breathing proof of that last year. They’ll really have to go some to climb completely away from the mess they’ve put themselves in.
I’ve liked every single thing Cifuentes has done and said in this job so far. I didn’t think we’d get 11 more points before May, never mind that from his first half dozen matches. We might have somebody very special indeed here, and I’m optimistic we can avoid relegation now for the first time in months. Imagine this fixture six weeks ago, as a battle of minds and styles between Xisco Munoz and Gareth Ainsworth. However, as I said during the week, the only time QPR are more dangerous to themselves then when they’re playing a team that hasn’t won or a striker that hasn’t scored in yonks, is when they think they’ve got it made and all is fine now. An atmosphere of complete doom around the place has now swung dramatically the other way to one where the whole support base, and the rest of the league for that matter, seem to think we’ll just be absolutely fine. Cifuentes himself has been cautioning against this well, and the way that Plymouth game played out in the week was a helpful reality check – and one we still didn’t lose, or concede in. Three clean sheets in a row for the first time in five years, with the defence that gave us that Blackburn home game, is miracle working coaching.
Our response to Wednesday night, and further clues as to how the second half of the season may pan out, come tomorrow at Sheff Wed, where another bright young European thing is trying his own version of the Championship’s impossible job.
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90s Football Conspiracy Theories No.20 In The Series – Clayton Blackmore refuses to pay for his takeaway by card as he believes Aslan’s Kebabery is part of a drive to a cashless society that will usher in a single world government and obedient, microchipped population.
Team News: Ziyad Larkeche made a positive impact from the bench against Plymouth, as he had done against Stoke and Preston previously, but looked wobbly and punch drunk on his way off the field with a second half concussion. I believe the FA protocol now if you’re removed as a concussion substitution is no return to action for six days so that’s almost certainly him out. Jack Colback missed a second match with the muscle strain he picked up at Preston, but will be checked late before travelling. Obviously the midweek team selection from Cifuentes raised eyebrows, with Jake Clarke-Salter back on the bench despite an outstanding showing against Hull, and Charlie Kelman given a rare start with limited success. We’re going to have to get used to that in these three game weeks with this manager, and it would be a brave man to try and guess his team tomorrow. Last Saturday’s starting 11 is basically as close as we’ve got to our best team now, so hopefully Reggie Cannon et al will be back in for this important match.
Dominic Iorfa – the one that used to play for Wolves, not the offside fetishist – is a long term absentee for Sheff Wed, as is Football Manager regen Juan Delgado. Josh Windass and Michael Smith were both missing from the attack for the midweek loss at Norwich in which Danny Cadamarteri’s 18-year-old son Bailey scored for the second time in three games, but both are expected to return here as Danny Rohl goes all out for a third home win in five games here. Di’Shon Bernard, the bst of a poor crop of summer signings, will likely replace Michael Ihiekwe.
Elsewhere: Well, you knew it was going to happen as soon as he got somebody else "in the room” and it seems that Mick Beale is once again landing on his feet with a plum role replacing Tony Mowbray at a Sunderland side already sitting sixth in the league. The Mackems are up in arms ahead of their weekend trip to Bristol City, with his efforts finishing third a two-horse race in Scotland and all-round cuntishness at QPR weighing heavy on their minds, but with the base all laid out for him and a group of technically good, young, attacking players already in situ, I actually think this could be an annoyingly good fit. If you’re desperate, my bit with Roker Report can be read here.
The Championship weekend starts with what looks like a potentially explosive return of the East Anglia derby between red-hot Ipswich and improving Norwich at Portman Road. Unfortunately QPR eyes are very firmly fixed on the other end of the table where we’re not the only ones with a relegation six-pointer this weekend as Huddersfield are hosting ailing Millwall, while Rotherham look for their first away win all the way down at Plymouth. A chance, perhaps, for Stoke and/or Swansea to put some clear blue water between them and the losing sides from those three games – the Swans host Boro on Saturday, managerless Stoke are at West Brom in that prime Sunday morning Sky slot.
Three of the clubs in prime play-off position get home games. Leeds will surely fancy their chances against Coventry, Hull are hosting Cardiff, and Southampton face Blackburn. Preston v Watford is this weekend’s game for want of something better to do with your time, and there’s Championship Monday Night Football as Wayne Rooney’s Birmingham City host Leicester.
Referee: Veteran Championship referee Andy Davies gave one of the worst penalty decisions I’ve ever seen in this fixture in 2019, but we do have a positive 8-6-4 winnings record with him in charge, including that game. Details.
Sheff Wed: The Owls set a record last season by accumulating 96 points in League One without winning automatic promotion – they finished third behind Plymouth (101) and Ipswich (98) in a remarkable, totally unique season. That included a run of 16 victories and only one defeat at Hillsborough - Barnsley won here in September as part of a league double over their rivals, Wednesday took revenge in the last second of the play-off final.
This season they’ve been setting records the other way. No wins in the first 13 games, and only three draws, is the Championship’s worst ever start. They scored only five goals in those games, and at one point went six and a half games without a goal. At home they began with four defeats and two draws from the first six. Fourteen is easily the worst goals scored record in the division (Rotherham, 18, come next) and only Huddersfield and Rotherham have conceded more than their 34. At home no team has won fewer than their two from ten, and only Millwall (six) have lost more than their five on their own patch. Millwall are also the only team to have scored as few goals as the Owls at home (eight each). Michael Smith is top scorer here with three, two of those in the same game against Rotherham. Bailey Cadamarteri has scored two goals in three games making the 18-year-old second top scorer for the whole campaign.
The appointment of Danny Rohl didn’t initially seem to move the needle that much with defeats to nil at Watford and Plymouth, but he got a 2-0 win against fellow strugglers Rotherham in game three and Wednesday have now won three and drawn one of their last seven matches. They had travelled to Norwich in midweek on the back of consecutive wins for the first time this season following a 3-1 homer against Blackburn and last minute 1-0 that put the final nail in Alex Neil’s coffin at Stoke, but lost at Carrow Road 3-1. With a surprise draw at home to pace setting Leicester, they’re actually not in bad touch at Hillsborough relative to what was going on before with two wins and a draw from four. Struggling Millwall did come here and win 4-0 in amongst that though and they remain seven points behind us and eight adrift of safety.
This might be a good game to score first in – Sheff Wed are winless in 45 Championship fixtures when conceding the first goal.
QPR: While the draw against a Plymouth side playing with ten men for so long was a disappointment, it was a third consecutive clean sheet for QPR for the first time since October 2018 when they beat Ipswich (2-0), Sheff Wed (3-0) and Villa (1-0) under Steve McClaren. Cifuentes’ arrival has seen the team keep four clean sheets in its first seven games after four in its previous 40 – it’s as many as Gareth Ainsworth managed in his whole time here. While the new manager has stressed his preference to commit greater risks in pursuit of victory rather than settle for draws, he has had three ties in his first seven games. That means he’s only lost one so far, at Norwich (1-0). That’s 12 points from seven games, as many as Rangers had picked up in their previous 16 going back into last season.
Hillsborough was a real bogey ground for Rangers during the 1980s (they lost here 7-1 in 1987) and early 1990s (they conceded four here in consecutive trips between 1991 and 1992, including a hat trick to Carlton bloody Palmer). Things have picked up since mind with six wins and four draws from 16 visits, and a promotion celebrated here in 2004. The R’s are unbeaten in four games on this ground, winning two and drawing the others. The last visit was a 1-1 draw early in the Covid lockdown when Macauley Bonne scored his only goal for the club in the last minute.
Prediction: We’re once again indebted to The Art of Football for agreeing to sponsor our Prediction League and provide prizes. You can get involved by lodging your prediction here or sample the merch from our sponsor’s newly extended QPR collection here. Just two games left until our ‘top at Christmas’ prize is handed out, with SilverFoxQPR currently ahead by five points. Let’s see what our reigning champion Aston got for us this week…
"Not much more than a month ago, this had potential to be one of the worst Championship games in history. An 'El Crapico' for the ages. Now both teams look on the up and suddenly people are taking notice of this one. I'm remaining positive though, I think we have enough to do it here as two fancy young coaches go head to head. 2-1 to us, Ilias Chair to score first.”
Aston’s Prediction: Sheff Wed 1-2 QPR. Scorer – Ilias Chair
LFW’s Prediction: Sheff Wed 1-1 QPR. Scorer – Ilias Chair.
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