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It doesn't require footballing knowledge to realise that zero points from seven games means there's something fundamentally wrong with our approach to away games. Surely he realises that we can't keep playing the same way?
At 70 minutes that goal was coming. This isn't the 1960s, substitutes are no longer just for injuries. Thanks to Rob Green playing the best game of his career, we'd somehow worked ourselves into a decent position. Why didn't we give them something to think about BEFORE their goal... Zamora can manage 15 minutes?
No doubt Redknapp will go on about an unreal finish for their first goal – which it was – but if you give a Premiership team 90 minutes without putting them under pressure they will probably come up with a moment of world-class brilliance. I actually think our defence is pretty decent, but when we don't even try to attack we will continue to concede.
There's no way Swansea have so much more quality in their XI as today's game would suggest. On a one-off basis you could say we were unlucky not to hold on but our away performances throughout the season are nothing short of a disgrace so really it can no longer be just bad luck.
I hate to see managers sacked in general to be honest but Redknapp just isn't clever enough to be a football manager these days. If he was he'd have reprimanded Barton for his disgusting "bonus point" comments in the press... ah but Redknapp thinks the same way. The momentum of the crowd can win us points at home but unless we change something away from home we're going down, no doubt about it.
With even a semi-decent manager we'd be a lower mid-table side at worse. Enough now. F*ck off Harry.
And on a different note, how the hell did we let Routledge go?!
Just thought I'd invite you to read this story I wrote just before the World Cup on George Saunders, a Brit who bizarrely has ended up playing for a tiny club in Colombia.
The editor somehow decided to remove the second and third paragraphs so the start is a little incoherent but anyway thought it may be of interest to some anoraks.
11pm. El Correo De La Noche - or the night mail as they call it - brings me 12 cans of Club Colombia. All praise Colombia's chronic laziness and consequent ability to order takeaway alcohol. Impromptu Monday drinking session in flat. They look down on that kind of thing on a weekday in Colombia. (nb Colombia, not Columbia… subject for another day)
Salsa on loud. Bass p*ssing off the neighbours. Me legs moving like a maniac's (at a pace Legs 'o' wood ne'er manag'd). Several beers in. Several more now. U RRRS. Time for the outpouring.
(Clears throat)
11.45am (17.45 in Shepherd's Bush). Colombian girlfriends are definitely worth keeping: so accept quick (it'd better be) lunch invitation and help with weekly shop on condition of uninterrupted to access to her high-speed internet. Charge into taxi at 1.40pm (five minutes before kick-off) and am turning on laptop as game starts. Stream fantastic, best of the season. Surely a good sign? Work? Sorta put that aside for the afternoon. What's the point of being a freelance journalist if you can't "work" by sending emails while jumping up and down in your girlfriend's living room.
Am not in block EL, didn't get the tube from Hanger Lane, didn't miss kick-off, but no matter, whatsapp is doing the job for now. Fellow Ranger, school friend, is in Boston in my situation. We're both living the atmosphere via fellow school friend, our best mate, in EL with all his family. All three of us were there at Vauxhall Motors. All three p*ssed away a December bank holiday to watch Clive Platt sh*t all over us at Notts County. Fill the Loftus Road void by uploading a video onto Facebook of a tuneful chorus of EEEEERIC SAAAABIN, I'll never forget when he hit the net that time at Grimsby (WE WAS THERE), taken on my work trip to Boston which included a heartfelt Rangers reunion with other above-mentioned expat.
0-1. FFS Rangers. Standard. Pisspoor defending. Where's Ravel? Should be in England squad and can't get in our team. This season's Taarabt, agrees Whatsapp, people forget how good he is.
Clattenburg MOTM so far. I can't look as McClean goes over Green. Clattenburg, the guardian angel of Loftus Road 2003 and 2011 and Hillsborough 2004, spots the dive just after I've sunk my head into hands, convinced the game is over. Greatest referee ever.
But what's this? Niko's playing like he's not had McDonalds for dinner, Junior Hoilett must think he's wearing a Blackburn shirt again, "Gaz" O'Neill (does anyone call him Gaz outside of Twitter ffs?) is the new Gennaro Gattuso. it appears we are actually trying to break down the opposition. Anger, real anger. Where on earth has this tempo been all season? Awoken from this apathy. How in the name of God (popular as He is, here in Colombia) have Hoillett, Austin, Krancjar (Niko Krancjar for crying out loud), Barton, Morisson, Traore, Benayoun, Doyle, Assou-Ekotto (even him) not cr*pped all over this division and taken the time afforded them by wrapping up the championship in March to take a victory lap through the streets of Bogotá? Why are we being taken for mugs yet again?
Still, electric atmosphere at LR. Stay positive. Reassure each other via the internet. Got to keep saying we're going to do this. Not going to be the one to admit to the group chat that he's sh*tting it, that we've left it too late, that I'm just annoyed we didn't play with this urgency this all season. Breaks my heart: so much potential for success, Ollie would have married that bird he got in the taxi and had breakfast with (am I remembering his analogy correctly?) for the chance to work with this budget at Rangers.
No. We're the favourites. We're better than them. We're Rangers, we're under the lights, we allow ourselves these rare pleasures. We are QPR.
Clattenburg returns to the fray. Clear penalty. Massive penalty. Definite. Stonewall.
It's impossible for a QPR fan to really believe we're gonna score here. Even King Kev was useless at penalties. Brave losers, us. But this is a new era, we can't buy spirit or blue and white hair but we can buy Charlie Austin. And he's the best striker in the division. Real quality. Really cares. 1-1. No worries.
Want to complain. Force of habit. Why are we letting up the intensity now? Why let Wigan back into the game? But I can't find the will. Just got to submit to the monster that is supporting a football team, that ruins your life and your ability for rational thought, but brings out your ability to find beauty in your fellow human's emotion, in any kind of sense of community and shared experience. I love you blue and white hoops. I love you girlfriend who can't even pronounce QPR but paints her nails blue and white hoops as a gesture of solidarity. Sometimes the sun will shine on us, and my atheist mind will say God's a superhoop, like we used to claim at North Ealing primary. Sky's blue and white you see.
Coffee offered to me around 85 minutes: if my heart wasn't exploding already, it's just beaten itself into smithereens with the caffeine boost.
Extra time. Can't remember much about the game any more. Charlie scored, cos he's a Ranger. Bobby Zamora, in Matt Rose's pocket since circa 2002, escapes to put himself about and all of a sudden we're good. 2-1. Blur of images as 24 further minutes go on and on but I don't remember a single chance. We only bloody did it.
Hug and kiss my girlfriend. Scream and shout. Girlfriend's daughter looks scared.
Yes, we're really a shambles of a club in many ways. Yes we've probably underachieved for our budget. And yes, I probably chose the right time - the second half of the Mark Hughes era - to leave the country. But still it hurts not to be there. Another but: it would have hurt more to lose. Whether in Latin America or down the road from the BBC, from White City Station, from the abomination of a pub that is the Walkabout, Shepherd's Bush. We did it. We are QPR. We won a huge game. This is why football beats us up - in spite of B league proposals from ex-BBC directors, in spite of Steve Claridge, in spite of Jose Bosingwa, in spite of tripling ticket prices as the average wage stalls - and this is why we love it. Morons, but happy, fulfilled, united morons. And let in on a secret beauty unknown to those who've never had a six hour coach journey to let a shoddy 3-0 away defeat to Tranmere sink in.
I love you Harry, you crook, still calling us "them", Niko you mercenary, Barton's ego, Zamora's dislike of football how does that even work, and I love you Junior aren't you ashamed of how little you've achieved with your talent you should have been ripping up the Premiership by now?. I love all of you. You're Rangers tonight. You've seen what we are. Now you know us. Even Tony, I won't call you Uncle but I'll say well done, you've chosen our little club, you've chosen to make it something it's not, but I'll forgive you, you're a Ranger tonight. United. Chairman, manager, players, Kevin Bond and Joe Jordan what do these boys even do on training pitch, as the refrain goes, a little less politely… you'll all come and go but we supporters are Rangers, we always will be. And you are tonight. That's good enough for us.
Oldham at home. QPR circa 2001 are better than Arsenal because we beat Stockport County who beat York City who beat Man U 3-0 in the 1995/96 League Cup, and Man U beat Arsenal to the league. Definitive proof. You heard me, armchair Gunner from my year 9 history class. He believed us, the hilarious bastard.
This sensation. Love, only love. The world, a better place.
There's only one Rob Wilson (& family). He sat through last season when one of us was in Boston, the other in Colombia. He deserves this somehow probably more than us. My distress at missing tonight assuages my guilt at not having been there week-in, week-out, as I envisaged I would be as a 16-year old, without another life. Is it just that his passion, running, let him stay in London? Whereas ours - speaking and living in Spanish, and having a go at actually football at a higher level - led us away from this great island, referred to by Pete Doherty as Albion. (I hope Pete's happy tonight, teenage years hero). We're now Rangers through Rob. There's only one Dan Highfield, of Ealing, there's only one Michael Beeson of Boston, Massachusetts. There's only one Darryl 'Dave' Shave of Drayton Manor High School, Hanwell and Langley, Berkshire, who drew us terrible diagrams of the USA in history lessons but came with us to Notts Forest away while we were in Year 12. And who left all of us for good in 2009, tragically, just before he got to see Adel tear up Preston from the sideline on halfway. Before he saw the year of Clint, Shaun Derry My Lord, and Ale Faurlin - the Ranger I love even more irrationally than everyone else because in an imaginary world I could meet him one day and speak his language, even put on a porteño (Buenos Aires) accent.
There's only one Clive Wittingham, greatest sports journalist on the planet, with a obsessive following that would probably make him feel a little uncomfortable if they manifested it in person. This is for him and his ability to have to write and think about how fundamentally f*cked up so much about QPR is without it damaging his loyalty.
A strange part of me thinks Adel smiled for us tonight. He probably didn't but I don't blame him. Become the best player in the world, lad, you owe us nothing. Still love you.
I think, for the first time, that my girlfriend, from a supposed football-loving but in reality twisted nation where even league-deciding matches can't fill stadiums but gangs will happily begin knife fights in a provincial town over El Puto Clásico between Real Madrid and Barcelona (a real derby would be Atleti-Real, Barca-Espanyol, you tw*ts) in the country on the other side of the ocean that bloody colonialised them, finally understands what I say when I say I'm a Rangers fan (way above what I feel for her beloved Once Caldas, always will be, though I love the fact this small mountain village in Colombia won the Libertadores in 2004).
AND NOW THE DILEMMA. Can I afford to change my trip back home to May 23rd. Probably not, to be fair. Quick calculations of airline charges at such a late date. Possibly could but should I? That's without mentioning girlfriend's cousin's wedding, which we've been looking forward to for months. Either decision would feel like a betrayal. Scrambling for a way round all this… A question for another day.
I love you, Queens Park Rangers.
Funny thing about football, we could lose at Wembley, and I'll be more heartbroken than I would've been today. Derby should beat us, probably will, but I know I'll think we're favourites, somehow. I just have to. However, nothing (not even Andy Campbell), nothing will take away Furlong v Oldham 2003, and nothing will take away Austin v Wigan 2014.
Hull fans being forced to travel on official club transport in order to go to match in Huddersfield. Thanks to the nasty bastards of the West Yorkshire Police.
Fair play to Hull for reducing travel prices, but this is absolutely unacceptable. People suggesting a boycott, but unfortunately that's probably exactly what the police want.
Any history of trouble between Hull and Huddersfield?
People I'd be happy to wake up to find as manager of QPR tomorrow: Gerry Francis, Ian Holloway, Gareth Ainsworth, Marc Bircham, Kevin Gallen, John Gregory, Les Ferdinand, Stan Bowles, Gino Padula, Heidar Helguson, Lee Cook, Peter Crouch, Clive Wittingham, Terry Venables, Ryan Nelsen, Danny Shittu.
All RANGERS in my book. Nelsen must be one of us to be able to put in an 8/10 performance when all those around him were between 0-3 (Taarabt and Samba excepted).
I'm going to bed more upset by QPR than I've ever been before. Heart well and truly broken.
Just read the West Ham history thing... Clive, please appease my curiosity. Having briefly had the pleasure of chatting to you at a couple of away days, I'm pretty sure you're not of an age to remember games like the 1988 cup tie too clearly. Yet time and time again you come out with brilliantly evocative and detailed descriptions of games (and even better, the importance of each game in the context of a season/rivalry/player's career or whatever) from the 70s and 80s. As someone who was only old enough to start going Rangers in the mid-90s, the 'Memorable matches' are fascinating. Just curious as to where on earth your information comes from?! As far as I know, with some exceptions, there are not recordings freely available on youtube of every game we've ever played. Do you have an elder friend who's an endless fountain of all Rangers knowledge? Do you have a notebook in which you've assiduously recored every "When I was a boy..." conversation you've ever had with a Ranger? Or is your living room just stacked with VHSs of every season review for the last 50 years? Whichever it is, very much enjoy the features! Just intrigued...
Hardly the most unforgettable of players... seems he remembers his career with affection however. Starts off vaguely amusing, ends up frankly disturbing. Here he is Leon Knight commentating on his own goals. Apologies if already posted.
Would rather sell at face value - £28 I believe (not £33 as I originally posted). PM if you're interested and I'll meet you outside the ground before the game. Can't remember if this is my first post, but have not revealed cheese preferences previously: a stinky stilton never goes amiss. Cheers
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