QPR finally released the handbrake at Hull on Saturday morning and were rewarded with a first win in nine games on their travels, and the first three goal haul away from Loftus Road since Wrexham in September.
"Fuck it, why not?” The club beeped it out of Daniel Bennie’s post-match interview. I’d have stuck it to the dressing room wall.
The Australian’s spectacular first league goal for Queens Park Rangers was, first and foremost, the decisive moment in this 3-1 away win at Hull City. A much-needed victory if you’re still holding onto play-off hopes for the Rangers this season after the draining home losses to Wrexham and Blackburn. But the manner of it, the style of it, the distance on it and the reason he took it on in the first place was not only manna for the 700+ faithful behind the goal at the far end who have endured 11 away games with just one victory going back into October, but everybody who is subjected to the tedium of modern football.
If you want to quickly farm yourself some social media engagement, stick a Match of the Day Goal of the Month montage on from 15-20 years ago. Sit back and watch the clicks roll in as the Lightning Seeds play Life of Riley and Paul Scholes volleys in off the underside of the Villa Park crossbar from 35 yards, or Michael Essien walks onto a right footer from somewhere out in the Stamford Bridge car park, Dennis Bergkamp nutmegs two defenders and chips the goalkeeper or Matt Le Tissier humiliates some poor sod into the top corner. Smile at the empty sky and wait for the moment a million chances may all collide - often all in the same month. Des’ moustache would twitch knowingly as he tells you there’s "one or two to pick from” before offering you some Premium Bonds if you match 1, 2 and 3 with Alan Hansen.
You don’t see goals like that any more because football has become an over-coached, robotic snoozefest. Coaching staffs and back offices are packed with data scientists, economics graduates and mathematicians. Dugouts populated by mechanical bores like Thomas Frank. And they say that, actually, Paul Scholes’ volley only had an xG of 0.013 and had he played another pass or two and had somebody taken a shot from five yards out instead he’d have had an xG of 0.28 and why don’t you just shoot me in the head with a massive sawn off? Data says corners, data says long throws, data says "penalty area penetration” and we sit there bored out of our minds remembering when we used to come here for a good time while the television companies flash up a graphic telling you how many "touches in the opposition box” each side has had. Data does not say shoot from 30 yards, and so no fucker does – it’s actively, aggressively coached out of them. These people think that Trevor Sinclair goal was a bad thing.
Daniel Bennie has clearly had about as much of enough with all that guff as I have. Daniel Bennie thought "fuck it, why not?” Why not? Why, not? Got it out of his feet in a timely fashion, lots of space in and around the area of interest, Hull goalkeeper playing all afternoon like he had an away win on his coupon, put a boot through the back of the ball and let’s see. Let’s see it fly like a mortar shell. Let’s see the logo on that ball stay perfectly still as it flies through the air. Let’s stand at the back of that away end and see it arc away from us. Let’s see it whizz towards that top corner with such purpose and precision we knew it was there hours before it arrived. Let’s see. There is still joy to be found in this miserable world if you look hard enough, and there was plenty of joy in this. A ground emptier, a barnburner, a winner, and an old school bit of brilliance. That’s not a shot, that’s a shot.
It rather summed up my feelings about QPR in the round, both on the day and for the last few weeks. Since December 20 we’ve played the bottom eight in the division and beaten two of them. We’ve drawn the last three away games 0-0, against some really poor sides. We’ve been just three points shy of the play-off places for what feels like an age, but we’ve looked scared to go out there and grab it. The gap hasn’t widened, but other teams have pinched our place in the queue. Have a go. What have we got to lose? We are 14 points from the relegation zone, there’s 14 games left in the season, give it a red hot crack mate. Be more Daniel Bennie.
Hull City are a classic example of Championship 2025/26. Two decent strikers for the level, two good wingers, and absolutely bugger all else. Fifth in the league.
Ivor Pandur the goalkeeper has played well against QPR in the past but here he may as well have put on a hooped shirt and played for us for real. The amount of times he scuffed clearances straight to visiting players went all the way through farcical into suspicious. They have the fourth worst defence in the league (second bottom Oxford have conceded fewer goals than the Tigers) and, like their goalkeeper, they spent most of this game passing the ball to QPR strikers on the edge of their own penalty area. Regan Slater played midfield by himself – their best player in the middle of the park, with a 6/10. Fifth.
Fifth, because that’s all it takes.
Liam Millar, a persistent scourge of QPR down the years, was a pest for the brunch part of the morning. He cut in from the left for that three-point jump shot he loves so much after three minutes and flashed it wide of the basket with Joe Walsh well beaten, then went the other way at the start of the second half and sent in a cross which sparked panic and fierce, blocked shots from first Roddy McScotsman and then Regan Slater. Hull then very sportingly took the Canadian winger off, presumably because he was too good and it was against the general spirit of things.
Yuri Hirakawa, on the opposite flank, was also decent. He put Rhys Norrington-Davies in what Delia Smith might describe as a "cool oven” nice and early and left him there to roast. Hull’s goal, scored five before half time from close range by Joe Gelhardt after Ronnie Edwards had swung and missed at the cross, is not one the QPR left back will want to see again having allowed Hirakawa to run from the halfway line to the penalty box and deliver the ball without ever once going close to him and engaging. (Official assist stats are a crock of shite no:482 in the series – Hirakawa doesn’t get one for a 40-yard dribble and cross because Edwards touched the ball before Gelhardt. Reclaim the game.)
QPR’s chances of winning improved exponentially for the Japanese international leaving the field injured. Without him and Millar, service dried up to goalscorer Gelhardt and Tartan McPartick who was left with his backing in routine and one first half bicycle kick which was more rusty frame from the bottom of the canal than some carbon chassis you’d find Chris Hoy pedalling about on.
Rangers, backed by a fantastic travelling support given the Sky-inflicted kick off time and travel disruption (Trains? To London? At the weekend? Are you mad?), had been much the better side before Gelhardt’s scrambled opener against the run of play.
The R’s took a deserved lead when Harvey Vale’s beautifully flighted delivery from a corner took Ivor the Engine completely out of the game and almost flew all the way into the net by itself. (Official assist stats are a crock of shite no:483 in the series – Vale doesn’t get one for the best corner you’ve seen QPR take in ten years because Paddy McNair touched it over the line fractionally ahead of Jimmy Dunne so it’s technically an own goal and therefore automatically unassisted. Seriously, into the sea with all of this.)
For so much of the afternoon it looked like that that’s how it would stay.
Walsh saved well down by his post from an improvised effort by Slater, but it was the confident claims of crosses out at the edge of his area through crowded pictures that impressed me most about our improving stopper here. Pandur was out bravely to save at Saito’s feet as Kone tried to play the Japanese winger in on goal early on.
Hirakawa’s replacement Kieran Dowell joined his teammates in mostly passing the ball to blue and white shirts rather than amber and black, and QPR were more often than not happy to do the same in reverse. The second half just ambled along. Sideways, sideways, backwards. Nothing you couldn’t turn into a pass back to the goalkeeper. Remember that time we left three people up at corners and it worked and everybody loved it and then we never did that ever again?
Something seemed to click in Rangers with about 20-25 minutes left. A bench that was supposed to include a real live Ilias Chair but, in the end, didn’t even have a Paul Smyth to offer did not immediately suggest Rangers had a big finish in them, but they came home with a wet sail regardless. Sans Millar and Hirakawa, Hull became just too unbelievably dogshit for Rangers to ignore any longer and in the last half an hour of the game it’s not inconceivable that QPR could have scored four goals or more.
Pandur bollocksed one clearance straight to Rayan Kolli who had time and space to do as he pleased on the edge of the box but panicked and tried to play in Richard Kone who was offside rather than taking on a shot himself. Kolli was then just about crowded out by two defenders when trying to get on the end of another sumptuous Harvey Vale delivery from wide. And the hirsute youngster drew a nasty tackle, foul and yellow card from Paddy McNair when Hull were again caught pisballing about in a dangerous area – Nicolas Madsen beat the wall but not the keeper with a firm free kick.
The arrival of Jonathan Varane, who now appears to have his head on upside down, cemented existing QPR dominance in midfield – Nicolas Madsen producing one of those lesser spotted away performances we’ve talked about needing more of from him. Daniel Bennie added impetus and legs to the strike force – great character from him to come back and play like this after a couple of difficult personal times at Loftus Road of late and the usual associated internet noise. I do feel sorry for Julien Stéphan a little bit that we’re blessed with several players (Saito, Bennie, Smyth, Kolli) who frequently look good off the bench and then pretty lousy when rewarded with a start, but with Bennie it could simply be he’s a striker and not a wide midfielder where we had been using him. He was excellent here, and his gorgeous goal smashed the deadlock into a million pieces.
After that it really was fill your boots time. Got your big plate, Alan? Eight minutes were added on at the end and Richard Kone could have had a hat trick in that time.
First Hull, yet again, passed the ball straight to him in the penalty area but the acres of space and hours of time were all too much for his brain to compute and he chipped the ball straight into the arms of Pandur. If we’d gone onto draw or lose this game from here he’d have been walking home, and Joe Walsh made a good late save from John Egan. The Ivorian would have been much better off unloading the shot he chose for his next chance a minute later, but sadly he was wider of the target this time and Pandur was able to save. Third’s the charm, and when Kieran Dowell kindly played him clean through into a totally vacated half of the field from halfway this time the former Wycombe man used the hours and hours at his disposal to compose, draw the keeper, and slip a nice finish around his opponent and into the bottom corner for 3-1, a much deserved victory and a terrific reward for the delirious hoards climbing all over each other to bid the locals a farewell as they beat their hasty retreats en masse. Set cocks to wank.
There was still time for Bennie to streak away again and get Nicolas Madsen clean through on goal. The call of play on rather than free kick and red card as Ryan Giles wiped the Dane out felt more to me like ‘there’s ten seconds left and I can’t be arsed with this’ from Premier League referee Andy Madley than any conviction the Hull man had got the challenge right. He absolutely hadn’t. Madsen and Stéphan both had words for the official at full time.
I guess, as ever in 52:48 Britain, it’ll depend which side you’re on here. We were wide open at Norwich before Christmas and were 3-1 down by half time, we were similarly set up at Middlesbrough and got torn a new bum – the match reports talked about stodging it up and packing the midfield. We went sensible and stodgy and got five draws from six away games including a trip to West Ham. In three of those we had gilt edged chances to win the games in the closing moments: Bennie might have scored from Vale’s great cross at Oxford; Kealey Adamson and Richard Kone both should have done better in injury time at Stoke; Steve Cook, Jimmy Dunne and Rayan Kolli all could have won it in added time at Charlton. We’ve got a lot of absentees, stay in the game, don’t lose it in the first half, stay disciplined and in shape, let them tire and frustrate, and then we’ll come on strong at the end. I get it. I do. I’m often the first one talking about bloody pragmatism.
And then, sometimes, I don’t. Oxford are shit. Charlton are rubbish. They are. The division is so tightly boxed through its midriff because everybody is about as good as everybody else, and that is not very good at all. It’s all here for us, even with the injuries we’ve got, when you’ve got players like Kone up front, Vale out wide, Madsen in midfield, and a strong core in defence – Ronnie Edwards clearly much happier back at centre back here despite his role in their goal. It does feel that with a modicum more ambition, a basic ability to keep the ball and pass it progressively, we could be doing better away from home. Better than one win in 11 anyway. You’d never have guessed that was our record watching us here, particularly in the final half hour.
After about 60 minutes one of our group turned and said this "might be one of those match reports where you lead in with the interview quotes”. He turned out to be right, just not for the reason we thought at the time. "Fuck it, why not” indeed.
Links >>> Ratings and Reports >>> Message Board Match Thread
Hull: Pandur 4; Coyle 5 (Drameh 78, 5), McNair 5, Egan 5, Giles 6; Slater 6 (Joseph 79, 5), Hadziahmetovic 5 (Koumas 68, 5); Hirakawa 7 (Dowell 57, 4), Gelhardt 6, Millar 7 (Lundstram 68, 5); McBurnie 6
Subs not used: Famewo, Hughes, McCarthy, Phillips
Goals: Gelhardt 39 (assisted Hirakawa)
Yellow Cards: Slater 37 (foul), Millar 44 (foul), McNair 74 (foul)
QPR: Walsh 7; Mbengue 6 (Clarke-Salter 85, -), Dunne 6, Edwards 6, Norrington-Davies 5; Vale 7, Madsen 7, Hayden 6 (Varane 80, 6), Saito 5 (Morgan 90+3, -); Kone 7, Kolli 5 (Bennie 80, 7)
Subs not used: Alemayehu, Hamer, Esquerdinha, Pearman, Smith
Goals: McNair og 21 (assisted Vale), Bennie 84 (unassisted), Kone 90+3 (unassisted)
Yellow Cards: Edwards 45+1 (foul)
QPR Star Man – Harvey Vale 7 Lots of love for Richard Kone despite his late miss but I thought Vale was really good here. Wicked delivery for the first goal, and a similarly brilliant cross Rayan Kolli might have done more with after half time. Seven balls into the box here in total, next best for QPR was Nicolas Madsen with two. Vale wants to get on the ball, he wants to pass it forwards, and all our best stuff came down his side. I won’t do the land of the bald joke for obvious reasons, but we could do with a few more like that.
Referee – Andy Madley (West Yorkshire) 6 Premier League referee Madley hasn’t had a QPR game of any sort since 2019 and when the official is warning your goalkeeper about time wasting after three minutes and 20 seconds with the score at 0-0 it’s clear he’s not overly thrilled to see you again. Blue and white perspective of course but it felt like we got very little out of him all afternoon, culminating in the last kick of the game where Madsen is taken out while clean through on goal and he didn’t even award a free kick against Ryan Giles when really he was lucky to stay on the pitch at all. Not egregiously bad, and nothing horrendously wrong, but plenty of Marge Simpson grumbly noises from the away end.
Attendance 21,928 (711 QPR) That certainly wasn’t the gate by full time. For QPR to bring that many for a 12.30 kick off here on a weekend where no trains of any sort were running from London to Hull is very creditable, and they got their reward in the end.
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