QPR, without an away goal in eight road matches, travel down to Plymouth Argyle on Saturday hoping to bring their away form up to the same level as their performances at Loftus Road. Former R's Chris Barker and Simon Walton lie in wait.

Plymouth Argyle (12th) v Queens Park Rangers (9th)
Coca Cola Championship
Saturday December 13, Kick Off 3pm
Home Park, Plymouth

My younger brother posed the question “why do we bother” after Tuesday night’s game at Hillsborough. QPR dominated, missed a penalty, missed a virtually open goal and eventually lost to a goal scored by the fattest, slowest, poorest excuse for a footballer in the league.

If the poor lad is wondering whether it was worth bothering after a game that took place a mile and a half away from our front door he is in for a rude awakening this weekend. Yes, that’s right, maps out and supplies packed it’s our regular December visit to Plymouth Argyle this weekend. Joy of joys.

Thankfully it’s not on Boxing Day this year, but a 500 mile round trip to watch a team that has not scored in eight away games would not be that welcome at the height of summer when the pre-match could be spent sunbathing with the bikini clad ladies of Plymouth and watching the ships come in from the harbour side. I can certainly think of trips I’d rather be making in the weather we are having at the moment that makes putting the bin out seem like an expedition to the Arctic.

It’s slightly further for the Northern R’s of course, a 23 hour day with a half four departure time from home, 12 hours on three trains, a replacement bus service right at the very end and then a two mile hike back up the hill in Sheffield to finish with. Probably in driving rain. Estimated time of arrival home half past three. Come and say hello if you see us, we’ll be the ones asleep.

We are doing this not only because we are clinically insane but because QPR cannot and will not continue to fire blanks away from home. We will score at some point, we have to. Let’s be reasonable here there is no imminent danger of the club folding and going out of existence so somewhere at some point something will happen, a moment of inspiration or good fortune perhaps, and a ball will fly triumphantly or roll pathetically into the net off a QPR boot/head/arse and we will have scored away from home. It might be a winning goal, it might be a consolation goal in a 4-1 defeat, but it will be a goal and we will be there to see it. Even if it kills us. Which this Saturday it might.

Five minutes on Plymouth
The rivalry between QPR and Plymouth is certainly a strange one. A combination of the good natured banter between the two sets of fans on the old Rivals network and the spontaneous gesture of sportsmanship at Home Park on the day Argyle won the title at our expense and were applauded for their efforts by some of the travelling QPR fans means this has always been viewed as a fixture between two sides that ‘get on’. Then when you get there you still find the usual collection of meatheads looking for a fight and standing next to the away end giving it the big I am.

The familiarity between the two sides and sets of supporters has come about over the last six seasons or so when the clubs have been inseparable. While Ian Holloway was rebuilding the QPR team following relegation and administration in 2001/02 former Dundee United manager Paul Sturrock was doing a similar job down in Devon. Plymouth when Sturrock took over were a shadow of the club they are now, fighting off relegation from the Football League in a ramshackle stadium in front of low crowds. As Holloway’s new look Rangers side finished mid table in the third tier in 2001/02 Sturrock’s Argyle walked away with the bottom division, picking up 102 points and winning 19 home games from 23 played.

That meant a first meeting between the sides since the 1970s in 2002/03. Coming into the game on the last day in August Plymouth had won four of their first five matches and surged into a two goal lead at Loftus Road before being pegged back by Jerome Thomas and, right at the death, Richard Pacquette. The young striker scored in the return fixture as well to give the R’s a 1-0 win as they regained some form post Christmas and started a run to the play off final. That was QPR’s last win in these parts.

Plymouth’s marvellous start to the season soon subsided and ultimately they were left to reflect on a consolidation job well done after finishing eighth. That sounds closer to the play offs than it actually was, an unusually high points total for the top six meant that Cardiff only just made the end of season knock out with a total of 80 which would normally be good enough for the top two. Despite only being two places away, Plymouth were some 16 points away. They would come back stronger the following season.

Sturrock’s astonishing transformation of the south coast club, by now playing with three new sides to the ground, continued apace in 2003/04 as the overhauled our good selves at the top of the table and went on to lift the title with two games to spare, beating Rangers at Home Park three games before the end of the season to seal it. QPR would of course recover from that set back to beat Swindon and Sheff Wed in their final two games and seal promotion with Plymouth leaving the two clubs to laugh at Bristol City’s seemingly endless, at that time, misfortune in the play offs. City’s astonishing 13 game winning run had both teams worried mid season, but once Brian Tinnion had declared we were both running scared and it was all over bar the shouting there was only ever going to be two winners and neither of them were wearing red.

Sadly for Plymouth Sturrock’s achievements had not gone unnoticed higher up the ladder and he left the club to join Southampton in the Premiership just before promotion was confirmed. His replacement was another Scot, Bobby Williamson once of Kilmarnock. It was a tough act to follow and Williamson did not do it particularly well. His Argyle team struggled to adapt to the Championship while QPR excelled and they were lucky to stay in the division in his first season in charge – finishing five places but just three points above the drop zone.

Williamson was unpopular among the Argyle fans, harshly referred to as ‘Blobby’ Williamson by many, and a dire start to the 2005/06 season saw him sacked and replaced by an equally hated figure Tony Pulis. You either hate Tony Pulis or you’re a Stoke fan and Plymouth, who had played such nice football under Sturrock, narrowly survived once again and then saw Pulis decamp back to the Briatnnia Stadium following a takeover. Few tears were shed.

By that time of course, 2006/07, QPR had got rid of their promotion manager Ian Holloway as well – or rather put him in the garden – and he was an ideal candidate to bring some passion back to Home Park. Holloway did a thoroughly fantastic job – transforming Pulis’ dull and uninspiring side into a vibrant and hard working outfit with real class at its heart. Barry Hayles and Sylvan Ebanks Blake formed an uncompromising and prolific forward in in front of a midfield that contained grit and class in equal measure with David Norris (now Ipswich), Lilian Nalis (now Swindon), Peter Halmosi (now Hull) and Akos Buzsaky (now a legend) and a back four that had Holloway’s stamp all over it with Seip and Timar flattening all before them. It was only because this starting eleven played for Plymouth that pundits ignored them as potential play off candidates last season. Sadly it all went wrong this time last year.

With Milan Mandaric sacking or losing managers on a weekly basis at Leicester it was always likely that Holloway’s name would end up in the Walkers Stadium frame. He had wanted to speak to them about their vacant job when at QPR, a desire that ended with him on gardening leave at Loftus Road and eventually out of a job. “There’s no truth in it,” said Holloway when asked, “anybody that thinks I would leave Plymouth to go there is an idiot.” Days later he was gone. He apologised, but few will ever forgive him for it in these parts.

Holloway had, in typical style, moaned about the low crowds at Home Park and lack of potential to build the grossly over inflated squads he seems to always desire. At Leicester he said he would be King Lear after years of being an extra in Eastenders. If only he’d known how King Lear ends. Leicester were relegated to the third tier under Holloway, who still found time to do his “hilarious” BBC website column once a week as the defeats mounted. For a manager with a super CV at three of his four clubs it says something for just how badly he messed up in six mad months last season that he is now not even certain of getting the Swindon Town job despite applying for it.

Plymouth, hurt and betrayed, returned to Paul Sturrock and he has done remarkably well to guide them to 12th in the table. Holloway left behind a talented squad, but a squad with a remarkable number of players coming to the end of contracts. Buzsaky was the first departure as we know but of the eleven players and two subs that featured in this fixture last season only the centre backs and goalkeepers remain. Sturrock has taken a team shorn of the division’s best striker, three of the league’s outstanding midfielders and both its first choice full backs, not to mention a disgraced jailed goalkeeper, and kept it afloat.

An outside tip for the drop at the start of the season they look pretty comfortable in mid table and when I saw them against Cardiff recently they were superb in the first half and looked capable of bettering their current position. It is testament to the job that Sturrock did in his first spell here, and his talent as a tactician and worker of the transfer market second time round, that this will be just as tough an assignment for QPR as it ever was.

Men to watch
Plymouth have had an incredible turnover of players in the last 12 months but when I saw them against Cardiff five games ago they were very, very impressive. They went at that game with a three pronged attack of Emile Mpenza, Rory Fallon and Paul Gallagher.

Mpenza, said to be the highest paid player in the club’s history, is the obvious headline act after his summer move from Manchester City. The Belgian international, capped 52 times, has impressed in his own country and Germany before moving to this country but didn’t really cut the mustard at Eastlands and has so far only managed three starts for Plymouth this season, scoring against Cardiff and Charlton in the process. He played superbly against the Bluebirds but has only played once since in a 2-1 home defeat by Blackpool.

Paul Gallagher has proved to be a more effective signing on loan from Blackburn Rovers. The spindly Scottish striker has so far forged a career out of temporary moves to this division excelling with Stoke and Preston in previous years before joining Plymouth. It does not look like he is quite going to make it at the top level but QPR have shown an interest in signing him before and with seven goals in 17 starts for the Pilgrims he will have to be watched closely on Saturday. With Mpenza providing the pace and power, when fit, and Gallagher the finishing touches the striking trio is completed with a target man – former Swansea striker Rory Fallon.

The New Zealander was a £300,000 signing by Ian Holloway but has only just started to enjoy a run in the team and some form, scoring four goals this season and leading the line well. Still, I’d fancy Kaspars Gorkss to be able to cope with him reasonably comfortably. Former Sheff Wed and Cardiff man Steve MacLean provides back up, he scored against Rangers for Cardiff at the start of last season.

At the back the uncompromising presence of Krisztian Timar remains, he is a massive brute of a centre half and a threat in the air from set pieces although he is yet to score this season. Timar is partnered by Marcel Seip who is slightly more refined than his partner, but they form a great partnership together. Seip won the Plymouth Herald’s Player of the Month award for November. To the left of those two is Chris Barker who struggled for form and fitness at QPR last season and had his lack of pace cruelly exposed by a number of Championship wingers, notably Southampton’s Nathan Dyer. With QPR currently playing a diamond formation, and lacking a pacy right winger even if they play 4-4-2, it’s unlikely we will be able to expose this weakness.

In midfield former Colchester stalwart Karl Duguid is a reliable presence but most QPR eyes will be on our old boy Simon Walton if he is selected. Walton signed for Rangers at the same time as Lee Camp for £250k from Charlton which looked a real coup considering the Addicks had paid £1m for him a year before. He impressed in early pre-season games before breaking his leg at Loftus Road against Fulham. That kept him out of action until Christmas where he turned in a man of the match performance at centre half against Plymouth on Boxing Day. Just as QPR fans were finally looking forward to seeing him get a run in the team he was bizarrely loaned out to Hull City for the rest of the season and then left Loftus Road in the summer for £700k to join Plymouth.

His time at Home Park has not started well, and he turned down a loan move to Crewe last month when Paul Sturrock seemed happy to let him leave despite investing such a sizeable chunk of money in him just three months ago. However he was recalled to the side in midweek and played well so could well start again in this match. Walton, while always being a bit one paced, is a player I like and will watch with interest tomorrow.

Previous Meetings
On Boxing Day last year it was another one of those last minute heartbreakers for QPR as Sylvan Ebanks-Blake finished off a goal mouth scramble with the very last kick of the match to seal a 2-1 win for the home side. Rangers had taken an early lead when Rowan Vine diverted Gareth Ainsworth’s shot in from close range but conceded immediately after half time when Ebanks-Blake converted a penalty after a soft handball decision against Martin Rowlands. Referee Steve Bratt, a new name on the list last season, completely lost the plot in the second half showing ten yellow cards and a red after the whistle to Mikele Leigertwood for dissent. His rating of one was the lowest any match official was awarded by LFW all season.

Plymouth: Larrieu 6, Connolly 6, Timar 7, Seip 6, Hodges 6, Norris 7, Abdou 6 (Martin 74, 6), Nalis 8, Halmosi 8, Hayles 7 (Easter 73, 6), Ebanks-Blake 8
Subs Not Used: Fallon, Sawyer, Gosling
Booked: Ebanks-Blake (nothing very much), Nalis (God only knows), Easter (foul)
Goals: Ebanks-Blake 50 pen (assisted Halmosi), 90 (assisted Halmosi)

QPR: Camp 6, Malcolm 6, Walton 7, Rehman 6, Barker 3, Rowlands 5 (Nygaard 68, 6), Leigertwood 6, Bolder 5, Buzsaky 6 (Blackstock 78, 6), Vine 6, Ainsworth 5
Subs Not Used: Cole, Moore, Kanyuka
Booked: Buzsaky (repetitive fouling apparantly), Rowlands (foul), Ainsworth (foul), Walton (nothing very much), Bolder (foul), Nygaard (God only knows) Leigertwood (foul)
Sent off Leigertwood (saying what we all thought)
Goals: Vine 20 (assisted Rowlands)

Match Report

In the game at Loftus Road QPR were still under the guidance of John Gregory and the rebuilding job under the new owners had yet to begin. Plymouth won easily, and when you look at the starting elevens it’s not hard to see why. Nardiello hit the bar for QPR but Halmosi opened the scoring for the visitors after half time capitalising on a sip by Zesh Rehman and then when he was withdrawn to a hostile reception from his own supporters Marcus Bignot came on and was immediately beaten to a header at the back post by David Norris who made it 2-0. Only four of the QPR starting eleven are still with the club, only two of the Plymouth players are still at Home Park.

QPR: Camp 6, Rehman 5 (Bignot 59, 4), Cullip 6, Stewart 5, Barker 4, Rowlands 5, Nardiello 7 (Sahar 81, 6), Bolder 4, Leigertwood 4, Moore 4 (Ephraim 59, 6), Blackstock 5
Subs Not Used: Cole, Curtis

Plymouth: McCormick 7, Connolly 7, Seip 6, Timar 7, Sawyer 7, Norris 8, Buzsaky 8, Nalis 7, Halmosi 8, Hayles 8 (Hodges 90, -), Ebanks-Blake 7
Subs Not Used: Larrieu, Chadwick, Doumbe, Fallon
Booked: Seip (foul), Timar (foul)
Goals: Halmosi 50, Norris 62

Head to Head
Plymouth wins – 24
Draws – 4
QPR wins – 17

Previous Plymouth v QPR scores and scorers:
2007/08 Plymouth 2 QPR 1 (Vine)
2007/08 QPR 0 Plymouth 2
2006/07 QPR 1 Plymouth 1 (Cook)
2006/07 Plymouth 1 QPR 1 (Blackstock)
2005/06 Plymouth 3 QPR 1 (Baidoo)
2005/06 QPR 1 Plymouth 1 (Gallen)
2004/05 Plymouth 2 QPR 1 (Furlong)
2004/05 QPR 3 Plymouth 2 (Furlong 2, Gallen)
2003/04 Plymouth 2 QPR 0
2003/04 QPR 3 Plymouth 0 (Gallen 2, Thorpe)
2002/03 Plymouth 0 QPR 1 (Pacquette)
2002/03 QPR 2 Plymouth 2 (Pacquette, Thomas)
1973/74 QPR 0 Plymouth 3 (League Cup)

Team News
Akos Buzsaky and Rowan Vine are long term absentees but QPR are free of suspension for the first time in five matches. Dexter Blackstock and Matthew Connolly will train on Friday and their back injuries will be assessed by the medical team before a decision is taken on their fitness for the game. Gary Borrowdale awaits his QPR debut.

Emile Mpenza and Karl Duguid are definitely out with hamstring and calf complaints respectively but Simon Walton is likely to keep his place after a midweek recall and Krisztian Timar has recovered from a facial injury sufficiently to take his place at centre half.
Injury List

Referee
It’s not great news on the officials front I’m afraid – Kevin Friend is one of those referees that we keep a special eye out for at LFW because he has been so poor with us in the past. Has a well earned reputation as a very home orientated referee and that is not what we need at Home Park on Saturday.
Details

Elsewhere
There are two televised clashes this weekend involving teams with concerns at opposite ends of the table. On Saturday evening Preston, who slipped out of the play off places at the weekend, face high flying Birmingham at Deepdale then on Monday bottom of the table Charlton face out of form Derby. There has been more dressing room unrest at Pride Park this week with goalkeeper Roy Carroll suspended by the club for two weeks after a row with Paul Jewell following a home defeat to the division’s form team Crystal Palace. Warnock’s men can move into the top six for the first time this season with a win at home to lowly Doncaster on Saturday. Swansea v Sheff Utd looks like the pick of the other games.
Tony’s Championship Preview

Form
The story of QPR’s season away from home centres on the lack of goals. The R’s have just two on their travels in the league and none in their last eight games. For comparison bottom of the table Charlton have eight. Last season Ipswich Town lost only twice at home all season but only won a couple of away games and Rangers look set for something similar this term. The only away win QPR have managed in the league is a 1-0 win at Norwich in the middle of September, the last time the R’s scored away from home in the league.

Plymouth lost 1-0 at home to Birmingham on Tuesday night, the fifth time they have been beaten at home this season. With two draws in the mix as well that means Sturrock’s men have won just four of their 12 home matches this season. Wolves, Swansea, Norwich, Ipswich, Charlton, Blackpool and Birmingham have all left Home Park with at least a point this season and they have conceded 14 goals on their own patch already, more than anybody else in the top half of the table. This certainly isn’t the fortress it has been in previous seasons, the Pilgrims are being kept reasonably high in the table by an away record that shows four wins – as many as Reading (third) and Burnley (fourth). The Pilgrims have not won in their last four games since beating Cardiff and have lost their last three.

QPR have failed to win on their last five visits here, drawing just once and conceding ten goals in the process. The last win was in 2002/03, 1-0 thanks to a volley from Richard Pacquette.
Form Guide

Prediction
It’s very hard to back a side for wins away from home when it cannot score. Not only can QPR not score at the moment, but the players seemed to lack the belief to end the run of goalless games once Rowlands had missed his penalty on Tuesday night at Sheff Wed. When I saw Plymouth against Cardiff at the end of November they were very impressive and have surprised many this season although they are on a poor run at the moment. Bearing all that in mind I’m afraid I’m going to have to tip us to lose – yeh I know, sorry.
Plymouth 1 QPR 0

Photo: Action Images

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