QPR completed a remarkable comeback with ten men against Preston North End at Loftus Road on Saturday after a nightmare first half left them two goals down and a man light.
Let me tell you something you already know. There aren’t many teams who build you up as often and knock you down as brutally as Queens Park Rangers. Top of the league at the end of October, two wins required from the final three games in April just to stay in the division. Discussing Premier League recruitment at a fan forum one week, losing 6-0 at home to Newcastle the next. Taken over by three billionaires to become effectively the richest club in the world, end up losing at Peterborough with Marcus Bent and Tamas Priskin up front. Go on holiday to The Maldives, fall in the mud, get kicked in the head, with an iron boot.
You think they’ve cracked it, repeatedly. Under Mick Beale and Jim Magilton, under Warbs Warburton and even (briefly) under Jimmy Floyd-Hasselbaink. They go to the Premier League and spend money on players you’ve heard of, you rub your eyes as Jose Bosingwa, Julio Cesar and Shaun Wright-Phillips turn up, they add Junior Hoilett and the hand starts to cover over the ‘break glass in case of European qualification’ emergency credit card. Then it turns out to be the biggest collection of cunts since Chelsea’s last Legends of The Bridge dinner and dance (which half of those twats were probably at). They find Ebere Eze, they pair him with Bright Osayi-Samuel and Ilias Chair, they top it off with Nahki Wells, you look at and think ‘surely that’s going to do some damage?’ Then the defence is Toni Leistner, Grant Hall and Joel Lynch ahead of Joe Lumley, and the only damage done is to your mental health when you’re back at your desk on Monday morning.
For the (dangerously) afflicted, this relationship has become akin to the weary and tearful parent of an errant and delinquent child. You love them, because they’re yours. They’re your whole life, but they steal your sleep and play on your mind. You watch the other boys grow up to be Fulham and Brentford, and all you can do is gently encourage and suggest that it might be nice one day if we could pull our finger out to the extent of winning the occasional cup tie. And every time they drag you to Fleetwood or Plymouth, Vauxhall Motors or Stockport, you tell them off with a bit of a shout and a boo, then put your arms back around them, give them more money, stroke their hair and say, ‘sweetheart, why are you like this?’.
This summer they told you they’d changed. Again. Glen Kamara is here. Tariq Lamptey is here. What’s wrong with him, Billy? Dennis Cirkin is here, all thoughtful and smoky eyes. Jake Clarke-Salter is upright and facing front and the best outfield player in the team is the goalkeeper. Hull scrubbed and crew assembled, HMS Piss The League ready to put to sea. Where better to launch than Portsmouth? A 3-1 win at one of the Championship’s more difficult venues. Another at Blackburn, four unbeaten on the road. A solitary loss at home, but Middlesbrough were lucky escapees and, besides, that’s usually a four-goal deficit. Maybe they’re right. Maybe this it. A new Phoenix. Handing the baton to you. Run wild, and run free. Knock over managerless Preston North End, six defeats from their first seven games, then we’ve got three weeks to sell out that away end at West Ham and get over there for a proper sort out as a genuine promotion contender. These are the good old days etc.
QPR went 1-0 down after 20 seconds in a game they kicked off (maybe we should just belt these straight into touch after all). Jimmy Dunne’s early return from an ankle injury not the sparkling good news it seemed at the forum during the week and Johnny Kenny the beneficiary. By half time Kenny had scored again, Jonathan Varane had been withdrawn having only himself started the game because Harvey Vale pulled up in the warmup, and Dennis Cirkin had been sent off. One of those late follow-through tackles nobody would have batted an eyelid about 20 years ago but referees don’t really like these days and can be persuaded upon if the opposition players all run around with their hands on their heads screaming as if their friend has been killed to death (he was fine, by the way, keep the flowers on hold for now).
I have seen QPR. I have seen a lot of them for a very long time now. More than 30 years I’ve sat on that same piece of plastic watching this. I have rarely seen anything more QPR than this. The steps we take to avoid our destiny are the ones that lead us to it.
Full house, optimism soaring, 134 entries to our prediction league and only five of them had Preston to win. A crap opponent without a manager, a team that’s been around since the 1860’s and never once started a season as poorly as this, absolutely there for the taking. And within 45 minutes you’re two goals down and a man light. Carrot and stick, and they're both going straight up your arse. Preston North End, the Championship’s visit to the dentist – once every six months you pay money for somebody to poke you in the face with something unpleasant. Wrong team selection, wrong approach, wrong attitude. A messy midfield - too many bodies, all in the wrong positions. Charles’ distribution, such a blessing until now, such a curse here, hanging onto the ball waiting for movement that never came, running the clock down for a delighted opposition. God my balls ache.
Cirkin’s challenge rather summed it up; poor first touch then takes a short cut to try and retrieve the situation. Sloppy, slapdash, careless. Probably be alright, it’s only Preston innit? As much as things change they stay the same. Rodney Marsh, immaculate in suit and sunglasses, reassuring the crowd he was coming on for the second half. Why are you like this?
But it’s not about how hard you hit, it’s about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forwards.
If you want to believe in a new QPR, there was plenty here for you between four and five o’clock. Numerical disadvantages of scoreboard and line-up to cope with and only 45 minutes to do that, there was nothing left for it but to sing. And sing they did. In P, Q and R of course. In X and Y, naturally. But also in HU. Also in the family stand. Also the grumpy old bastards in F. Also the friends and family in A. Toot that horn and rattle that rattle, this ain’t over by a long chalk. And into this wall of noise emerged a team with renewed purpose and vigour. On the other side of le bóllocking, and with Varane and young Leon Scarlett removed for Kealey Adamson and Koki Saito, the team was in a better frame of mind and configuration than it had been to start with, even with ten. That improved again when Paul Smyth replaced Amadou Mbengue. Having botched the selection to start with, Stéphan got the changes bob on. The team started to purr, the ground started to hum, and a come on you R’s carried genuine, throaty belief down the Westway. This ain’t over at all. Hello. Hello.
Saito’s positivity down the left made an immediate difference. He won’t want to see his dive back, but the Japanese winger gave the Mills and Clarke combination down that side a good going over. Twisting, turning, cutting inside, going outside, reaching the byline – Happy Koki is back. So, so happy. One into the side netting which half the ground thought was in. One saved by goalkeeper Daniel Iversen, and the crowd is into it now. One run beyond the last man, but not quick enough, and offside regardless. Preston want a stoppage for a non-existent injury, but they’re not getting one. Iversen wants more time with his kicks, but he’s not getting that either. That’s a corner mate, sorry about that. Youuuuuu R’s.
Rumarn Burrell on the ball. Tight to the touchline, whites of the posts and the goalkeeper’s eyes in sight. Dribbling through a crowd scene, searching for an angle, wait for the gap, get the shot away, Clarke to the ground, arm outstretched, bats the ball away with his hand. Handball. HANDBALL. Hand-fucking-ball. An appeal they heard on the International Space Station (ISS). Has to be a penalty. Has to be. Thomas Parsons looked right at it and moved on with his day. Stéphan let him know all about it and was booked. Sacrebleu. What a bell end. Come. On. You. R’s.
Anything Saito could do, Kwame Poku could do better. He wrought plague and pestilence upon the left side of the Preston defence. Peterborough promise finally realised some 14 months later than hoped. Probing and prodding, a persistent pest. If something was going to happen here you felt one of these two form wingers would be the source. PNE were bending and bowed, but yet to break. There was creaking but no crack. Time was standing still for the visitors, but the numbers remained on their side. Could QPR tilt that their way? Poku’s beautiful reverse finish, going for the opposite corner you’d expect, unsighting the goalkeeper with a screen of defenders, was the matchstick moment. Now it really was lit. And the noise was incredible.
Caretaker boss Jason Euell went into scramble mode with his team. A double substitution immediately, and to be fair Pierce Charles was quickly improvising a save from Mills with help from the frame of his goal without which the game was all over again. Their approach though was based almost entirely on staring at the clock and willing it to tick. Captain, captain, I know we usually time waste and shithouse these situations but why not, this time, try and score a third goal, you know, and win the game? Hope is not a strategy.
Amidst a now febrile atmosphere there ensued 25 minutes of exhausting footballing chaos.
You’d never have guessed which side had ten – in fact when Saito, Madsen and Mbengue started trying to walk the fucking thing in from four yards out you’d be forgiven for thinking QPR had too many players rather than too few. Saito ran clear on goal but got caught. A corner dropped absolutely plum for Ronnie Edwards on the edge of the six-yard box, he took a large metal driver out of the bag and gave it the full works, it would have torn the net from the posts if it had got there and somehow, implausibly, it didn’t. Kealey Adamson did get one past Iversen with a beautiful lobbed cross to the back post which dropped down virtually onto the goalline and probably could have been blown in at this point with a plastic straw only for fellow sub Alfie Lloyd to complete the not insignificant physical achievement of getting it up, onto the bar, and back out into play again. Fuck me dead. If Lloyd thought that was his chance gone he was wrong - within 30 seconds things were falling his way in the six-yard box again. This time he didn’t mess about with the finish, and Iversen’s save to deny him was simply extraordinary. Sound the Danny Coyne klaxon, we’ve got a live one.
Bang the tin shell off this place and scream until your lungs bleed into your mouth. Deafening now, and short of pulling the seats out of their moorings and throwing them there was nothing else for Rangers to chuck at this. Thrilling and frustrating. Engrossing and grotesque. You couldn’t look at it, but you daren’t look away. Please, Rangers. Please.
PNE staring into the teeth of the gale, battered with rivets and bits of old boat. There would be 33 shots on Iversen's goal in the end. Time, though, starting to be more of a friend to the visitors. Baggage they may have been, but departure time drew near, and despite a second half spent almost entirely trying to run the clock they were only to be punished with four extra minutes to survive. For the first time in the second half the belief perhaps just seemed to wane at that news. The Iversen save was as good as you’ll ever see, and felt like a match winner for his team. Bastard. That was the chance, wasn’t it? Who are we kidding, the boathouse was the time. Bah. They catch you again, they reel you back in, they build you back up and in the end all you’ve got is a steel hook in the roof of your mouth. Fucking sport. Fucking team.
There was, though, to be one more moment. Perhaps through guilt, perhaps feeling sorry for a team that had just botched their last-minute free kick from the edge of the box, Parsons had a parting gift. The referee awarded a corner for a ball dropping over the head of Clarke, almost certainly without receiving a touch. Apoplectic, Clarke became a second recipient of a yellow card for dissent on the day. He wouldn’t have been so worried had he watched QPR try 12 of these at Charlton recently and end up only with a 0-0 draw to show for it, but he, and we, knew this was it now. Balls out of the bath, bodies on the line, the whole thing hung on this, and the fans held their breath a final time. Out of a crowd scene at the near post the ball broke loose and bounced invitingly to the yawning chasm left on the edge of the Preston North End penalty box. Into that space strode Paul Smyth, with a check in the stride to steady his step, and a left footed laces finish of immaculate execution, arcing away beautifully… One day this will all be 20 years ago.
PAUL FUCKING SMITH #qpr #pne #EFL #Shithouse pic.twitter.com/HVwjuBdReo— Freddie (@fredstarbarton) September 19, 2026
Stupid bloody football club. A 2-2 draw at home to Preston North End and Sunday morning you find yourself crying in the cereal aisle. Note, as well, the players wanted the ball back to push for a third. The flesh may have been spongy and bruised, but the spirit was more than willing. Had Nicolas Madsen’s late free kick produced a winner rather than a great save I think we might all still be in there now, in a roofless stadium, howling Silver Lining into the sky. Loftus Road may be a grot fest, but there’s nowhere you’d rather be on days like this, for moments like that. Tumbling down concrete steps in the embrace of perfect strangers.
These people are desperate for success. This team, with this spirit, might be the one that can deliver it.
That’s how winning is done. Or, in this case, drawing.
Links >>> Ratings and Reports >>> Message Board Match Thread
QPR: Charles 6; Mbengue 6 (Smyth 65, 8), Dunne 5, Edwards 6, Cirkin 5; Poku 8, Madsen 6, Kamara 6, Varane 5 (Adamson 19, 7), Scarlett 6 (Saito 46, 8); Burrell 6 (Lloyd 82, -)
Subs not used: Alemayehu, Clarke-Salter, Morrison, Vale, Ward
Goals: Poku 66 (unassisted), Smyth 90 (Unassisted)
Red Cards: Cirkin 15 (serious foul play)
Yellow Cards: Scarlett 22 (foul), Saito 55 (dive)
Preston: Iversen 8; Mills 7 (Offiah 89, -), Clarke 6, Storey 6, Hughes 6, Vukcevic 6 (Valentin 89, -); Leroy 5 (Gibbs 67, 5), Thompson 5, Devine 5; Lang 5, Kenny 7 (Erabi 67, 5)
Subs not used: Burgzorg, Lindsay, Moran, Nicholls, Small
Goals: Kenny 1 (assisted Mills), 26 (unassisted)
Yellow Cards: Hughes 24 (foul), Clarke 90 (dissent)
QPR Star Man – Kwame Poku 8 First goal for the club to kickstart the comeback, rich reward for an action-packed display of wingmanship.
Referee – Thomas Parsons (Rochdale) 4 A fourth Championship game of his career, and his inexperience showed. I didn’t have as much of a problem with the Cirkin red card as some (if you want an indication of why VAR is never going to work then observe 50 football fans all seeing the same incident from the same replays and reaching no consensus at all on it after five pages of message board arguments), as Roy Keane says he ‘gave the referee a decision to make’. I think a more experienced official charges in there with a yellow card straight out to end debate - by not doing that you leave yourself open to the pathetic histrionics modern footballers perform in these situations. Rather clung to the game with his finger nails after that, missing what felt like a pretty obvious handball penalty to me and then awarding a corner for QPR’s equaliser that was in all likelihood a goal kick. Probably shouldn’t be at this level at this stage of his career but that’s the situation we’re in with refereeing in this country.
Attendance – 16,582 (846 Preston) When you’ve got a crowd like this behind you, going down to ten men isn’t such an issue.
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