Shrewd tactical moves from head coach Julien Stéphan and a high-impact appearance off the bench by Paul Smyth was enough for QPR to take all three points from Wednesday night’s long trek to Blackburn.
If you’re in need of a laugh - and let’s face it who isn’t in this day and age, particularly when you’re waking up in the Blackburn Premier Inn with a head like an undying set of roadworks and a mouth like you’ve spent the night fellating Saddam Hussein – may I suggest adding @onthisGTFCday to your social media portfolio.
Not because I suspect you’ll have any interest at all in Grimsby Town, nor because their propensity to lurch violently between second tier and fifth over remarkably short periods of time makes QPR look like a bastion of sane, rational calmness, but for the commentary.
Nick London once told our Patreon Podcast that the role of the club commentator was to be the fans’ eyes and ears at a game they couldn’t attend, to provide a partisan commentary certainly, but not to spill over into bias. I’m not sure whether that covered him leaning out of the gantry at Elland Road to call Patrick Bamford a "diving cheat” or not but either way the memo didn’t ever make it as far as the Lincolnshire coast and John and Roly (first name) who have been the voice of Town, in John’s case, for more than 40 years.
Approaching treasure status in the town, theirs is a commentary that can often give the impression everyone involved is unaware a microphone has been turned on and a broadcast is taking place. Opposition player names are piddling inconveniences, to be largely ignored. The listener at home is invited to paint their own picture of many of the goals Town concede, described simply as "NASTY” as the cross goes in, followed by a period of reverential silence with some distant away end cheering. Some of the club’s greatest ever moments have been described simply as "crikey almighty” and referees are roundly harangued. Colour pieces on lower league grounds of the early 90s mingle seamlessly with the action – "it’s only a narrow gantry here at Springfield Park as Gallimore comes forward”.
My memory of this as a kid is if you’d been to a bit of a Blundell Park thriller you could hang around in McMenemy's for a while afterwards while grandad had a couple of pints of Best Bitter and then purchase a VHS copy of the whole game from the club shop within an hour of the match ending. That feels sort of unlikely to me now given the technology of the time, though we should expect nothing less of the media team that brought you the comedy stylings of Mandy Mariner, but what makes me think it was a thing is Roly’s occasional "we won’t be shifting many videos of this, John” assessments of 0-0 home draws with Rotherham United.
Which brings me rather belatedly and clumsily through that word count padding to the matter in hand - last night’s stone-cold classic between Blackburn Rovers and Queens Park Rangers.
The recipe did not look promising to start with. Valerian Ismael football is like the sun, without the warmth. Best viewed for only very short periods of time with serious protection. Two teams that are quite direct. Two teams that don’t really want possession, nor know what to do with it when the situation does arise. Two teams in game two of a three-game week. Think all of the bloody nonsense we’ve sat through with Oxford United over the last 18 months, then move it 250 miles to a particularly dark and windy corner of the north and play it in a stadium with two empty seats for every warm body with a stench of death we recognise from our recent trips to Cardiff and Sheffield Wednesday.
The game it produced trundled around somewhere between "attritional” and "liquified human shit sprayed through the sprinkler system”. An absolute Belgian motorway of an evening. Both teams spent so much of the first half belting the ball into the main stand I started to think that was the aim of the game. Add 300 sheets to my entrance price and whack a pair of pink chinos on me I could have been at Twickenham. Come on Jeffers, you and me back to the Premier Inn we’ll light each other’s farts.
Corners, often given away by accident under no pressure at all, were whipped across and cleared. Recalled Koki Saito was picked up and thrown to the ground, which is against the rules apparently. QPR spent two passes returning that promising free kick to their goalkeeper. Twice Rangers reached the byline and cut a ball back to nobody, with Rumarn Burrell this time playing alone up front and Richard Kone benched. George Pratt attempted 51 passes with a completion rate of 60%, Ryan Hedges tried 25 with a completion rate of 56%, Ryoya Morishita (apt) completed at 65% with 26 attempts while Yuki Ohashi had pass completion of 44% from 18 attempts. That means four of the Blackburn outfielders, including three of their supposed attacking ball players, gave the ball away essentially every other time they had it. When Rovers did finally put five passes together Lewis Miller was so flushed with the confidence the mood imbued that he backheeled the ball straight back into touch again. Wallop.
Julien Stephan said it was a "strange game”. I think he may have missed the translation. Michi Frey warmed up by doing press ups on the touchline.
Eldorado. The TV show, not the paradise. Events in the first half numbered two.
The home team’s Icelandic striker Andri Gudjohnsen, who had scored in a big win at Preston on Friday, missed the first of his two sitters when Ohashi got in behind Rangers and squared the perfect ball for what seemed like a simple tap in right in front of the away end but was somehow skewed horribly wide.
And on the theme of self-destruction, 20 minutes in Steve Cook made his own personal contribution to QPR’s farcical goalkeeping situation by killing Ben Hamer to death. Hamer, a career number two who retired from that career 18 months ago, is already the third person to be entrusted with the gloves at Loftus Road this season just 16 matches in. The coastguard is still looking for Joe Walsh after the idea of teaching him to swim by dropping him in the mid-Atlantic went awry, and the flawed and demoralised Paul Nardi was dropped to the bench two games ago. Now here was Cook accidentally putting a knee straight through Hamer’s skull. Despite the best efforts of the medical team, the keeper was clearly in no condition to continue, and presumably with the concussion protocols won’t be available at Norwich on Saturday either. Which meant, dah dah dah dah, La Marseillaise, the third coming of Nardi. Unkillable. Unbreakable. More comebacks than Kat Slater. Sorry about all those things we said and did Paul, can you keep goal for us again?
Yes, it turns out, he can. Thankfully the second half did come with both incident, and positives from a QPR point of view. The first of those was Gudjohnsen’s second sitter of the night, failing to score from 12 yards out with the defence split and time to think, missed this time thanks to a wonderful one-on-one save by Nardi against the odds. That the Frenchman can do, as we know – Blackburn away last season was only kept to 2-0 thanks to his extraordinary shot stopping performance – but I still think it shows tremendous attitude and application to come back into the team he’s been dropped from twice in three months and keep a clean sheet in these circumstances. He was unorthodox, flappy under crosses and corners, and needed a big Sam Field header at the back post to get him out of one hole, but fair play for standing up and playing like that when called upon. Julien Stéphan graciously praised his stand in stopper in post match.
Field was another positive. Not with the ball, because never with the ball, but a strong and committed defensive performance with plenty to contribute in the air. It’s now four clean sheets in four games for the defence with him at left back. Another much maligned figure rising above the noise to do a job for his teammates.
The back four has kept two clean sheets in three games now. The switch of Amadou Mbengue to right back, where he is more often the one getting fouled rather than penetrating opponents with his studs in a matter of fact way, and Jimmy Dunne back into the middle, seems to have benefited not only both players concerned but also Karamoko Dembele and others in front of them.
Several big ticks in the manager column there.
Ismael said it felt like a 0-0 draw in waiting, which is correct. He also said Blackburn were the better team and on top in the second half, which is not. His use of the bench was prolific and ineffective – Rovers wilted from a low starting point. Stéphan's subs were curious – again, only three despite another awayer at Norwich looming large in a matter of hours – but much more effective.
There’s been much debate about Richard Kone, who’s gone from four goals in his first seven QPR appearances to none in eight, but for me he’s crucial to us even when we’re not playing well. He gets us up the field, he occupies defenders, he provides a physical presence. His cameo here was stumbling and fumbling, but it was effective. Rumarn Burrell has run red hot of late – five goals in nine – but was less involved here and cut a largely frustrated figure until Kone came on. The Jamaican may well be scoring as freely as he is in part because we’ve got two up front occupying defenders and creating space. QPR are third in the league for touches in the opposition box.
Chances had been fleeting but increasing before the change – Saito’s powerful shot from an awkward angle well saved by Pears, Dembele’s cut back from a purposeful run cleared post goal mouth scramble. After the subs Rangers came home with a wet sail.
Ilias Chair, who followed up a strong weekend showing by arguably being the best player on the pitch again here putting paid to any chatter about where exactly he fits into this team, delivered a perfect back post cross 12 minutes from time for Kone’s fellow sub Paul Smyth to nod home unmarked. Extra striker in the box, back three fully occupied, Dion De Neve far too slow to clock that and cover at the back post, Smyth unattended to score. Rangers have two headed goals so far this season and, bizarrely, tiny Smyth has them both.
QPR didn’t need a second goal, Blackburn had been poor enough without that sucker punch to cope with, but who reall needs anything? We were in want territory now and I wanted it. Smyth did too, really in the mood and tearing into Rovers’ left side. He’d have had an altogether more spectacular goal than his first but for a bizarre sequence of events sparked by him meeting a deep cross with a full on a powerful - and seemingly unstoppable - volley only for the ball to hit a bemused Pears on his hand, deflect onto the base of the post, come back into play past the goalkeeper, and implausibly not end up in the net. I’d have cum oil.
Smyth was terrific as an impact sub running at tired bodies here on what turned out to be a really good night for Stéphan’s decision making. He’s had a glint in his eye and a smile on his face this week for the first time since he arrived – it feels like he, and we, might be getting somewhere. I’m not sure I wouldn’t have had Kieran Morgan, or his non-union Mexican equivalent, on late in midfield, where Nicolas Madsen was sweating life Vegas Elvis by the end, but a 1-0 win was duly seen out and whatever happens at Norwich on Saturday (we all know what’s going to happen at Norwich on Saturday) six points in a three-game week is a good return for this team.
You wouldn’t want to watch it back, but on a ground where Rangers had won twice in 25 years and lost seven of their last eight visits we’ll take it all night long and twice again this morning.
Links >>> Ratings and Reports >>> Message Board Match Thread
Blackburn: Pears 6; Miller 4, McLoughin 5, Pratt 5; Alebiosu 5, Gardner-Hickman 5 (Forshaw 73, 5), Montgomery 5 (Tavares 82, -), Hedges 5 (De Neve 73, 4); Ohashi 5, Morishita 5 (Baradji 82, -), Gudjohnsen 4 (Gueye 73, 5)
Subs not used: Litherland, Michalski, Ribeiro, Ronnie Pickering
Yellow Cards: McLoughlin 22 (foul), Hedges 37 (foul), Ohashi 90+1 (foul)
QPR: Hamer 6 (Nardi 19, 7); Mbengue 7, Dunne 6, Cook 6, Field 6; Varane 6, Madsen 6; Dembele 6 (Smyth 71, 7), Saito 6 (Kone 71, 6), Chair 7; Burrell 6
Subs not used: Frey, Hayden, Kolli, Morgan, Morrison, Norrington-Davies
Goals: Smyth 78 (assisted Chair)
QPR Star Man – Paul Smyth 7 Impact sub.
Referee – Werner Herczeg (Durham) 7 Probably the best game I’ve seen him have.
Attendance – Not currently published There are some, frankly, fanciful figures for this doing the rounds today. QPR sold 454. Blackburn not many more than that. Attendance and atmosphere of a paedo's funeral.
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