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Sousa points finger at Warnock on eve of first return - full match preview
Sousa points finger at Warnock on eve of first return - full match preview
Friday, 19th Mar 2010 17:55

A year after being sent from the touchline for complaining about the treatment his QPR players were getting from Neil Warnock’s Crystal Palace side, Paulo Sousa has had harsh words for his adversary ahead of a very different meeting between the two this Saturday.

Queens Park Rangers (16th) v Swansea City (5th)
Coca Cola Championship
Saturday March 20, Kick Off 3pm
Loftus Road, London


When you change managers as frequently as QPR have done it’s always tempting to spend match previews reflecting on just how different things were such a short amount of time ago. It’s a temptation I take up frequently and will do so again briefly now. A year ago, give or take a week or two, Paulo Sousa was the QPR manager, Neil Warnock was the Crystal Palace manager and the pair met at Loftus Road for a dour 0-0 draw – one of eleven QPR managed last season.

Sousa was sent to the stands that day for objecting too strongly to Claude Davis kicking Sam Di Carmine in the head tight to the touchline. The Portuguese, it’s fair to say, has little time for Warnock and his style of play and has made that known in the press this week in the build up to his first ever return to Loftus Road since his controversial dismissal from Rangers at the end of last season.

I’m always wary of articles like this. Attending one football press conference after another while managers trot out the same tired lines must make coming up with new and interesting lines for a daily newspaper something of a chore, and consequently reporters are prone to leaping on the slightest quote of interest. However Paulo Sousa’s comments about Neil Warnock’s style of play seem unequivocal and comprehensive. It’s clear the pair don’t get on, and I would hazard a guess and say that after coming out of recent games against Forest and West Brom on the wrong end of poor penalty decisions Sousa may well be trying to influence the match officials this weekend when he says: “He's the type of manager who will always encourage the players to tackle the opponents to intimidate the players and I don't like it. It's not something I encourage my players to do because it's not the type of football I like.”

Personally I haven’t seen anything in Neil Warnock’s first few games as QPR manager that backs up what Sousa says. Warnock has remained surprisingly calm on the touchline, and in after match press conferences, even when faced with serious provocation from biased match officials as he was at Reading on Tuesday. QPR are working harder but certainly don’t appear to be any more physical than they were when the Swansea manager was in charge of them.

To be honest I’m disappointed that a guy I have a lot of admiration for, and somebody I thought was shit on from a great height by various people at QPR, has lowered himself to this sort of nonsense that is normally reserved for the Premiership where fake tanned Sky Sports presenters beam pearly white smiles and call it ‘mind games’ when in fact it’s just childish, play ground antics.

With any luck it will merely stoke our own team up and help us go on to secure another valuable three points.

Five minutes on Swansea
The story so far: In my column in A Kick Up The R’s at the start of the season I reflected on a unique opportunity Paulo Sousa had given us this season by taking the job at Swansea City. Usually when a manager or a player leaves a club there is much speculation about how he would have done had he stayed, been given more money to spend, not been fired and so on. Usually that’s all it could ever be – speculation.

However having left a midtable Championship side with no strikers to join a mid table Championship side with no strikers Sousa provided us with an opportunity to get a more than reasonable idea how we might have fared with him this season had we left him to it. Of course it’s all irrelevant, because Sousa was removed by Flavio Briatore like Dowie before him ad Magilton after him – any manager from Arsene Wenger down probably would have gone the same way under sports biggest ego driven control freek – whereas at Swansea Sousa seems to have the universal support of a more football and manager friendly board and a gang of passionate supporters, neither of which he ever had in W12 where the attempts to undermine him by his own sporting director and influential members of the fan base were sad and deeply troubling at best, outrageous and despicable at worst.

But let’s say he had stayed, and Saksena and Bhatia had taken over in the summer with their rhetoric of stability and manager having complete control – what could we have expected? Well, by the evidence of Swansea’s season, we’d have been successful but bored. The Swans are fifth, and we are 16th and have been through five managers since his departure, so on the face of it he has had the last laugh and we were idiots. He has and we were in my opinion, Sousa clearly knows how to build a successful team in this division, but having scored less than the bottom club in the league this season are we perhaps fortunate that we went another way. We now have a manager that, while preaching rather more of football’s dark arts than we would perhaps like, does at least like to attack with flair players.

At QPR Sousa’s supporters made excuses for some of the dire, toothless displays produced under him last season by saying that if he had the strikers to attack with he would, or maybe he was simply sorting the defence out first before moving onto the attack. Both of which have proved to be false this season. Swansea are ridiculously defensive. Sousa would point to 22 clean sheets and the league table as justification, the Swansea fans probably agree, but in my next column for A Kick Up The R’s (no I’m not on a plug commission) I reflect upon whether there is more to football than simply scraping a 1-0 win every week. Would we rather be fifth in the league and boring or tenth and Keegan like? The answer should be obvious but with the Premiership – high ticket prices, odd kick off times, Richard Keys, fourth bottom being a successful season – never less appetising to me as a fan I’m tempted to say I’d take the latter option.

It remains to be seen whether Swansea, recently beaten by both Forest and West Brom, can not only maintain their results long enough to keep a play off place but then bore their way through the knockouts into the Premiership. You certainly wouldn’t want to draw them over two legs with their ability to frustrate and counter attack. If Sousa achieves it he will make us look even more stupid than we already do for treating him the way we did. Here’s what you could have won, as Jim Bowen used to say.

The Manager: Paulo Sousa won the European Cup in consecutive seasons with Juventus and Borussia Dortmund and won league titles in Italy, Germany and his homeland Portugal as a player. He was part of a golden generation of Portuguese footballers who just could not deliver a major trophy but both entertained and frustrated in equal measure with excellent attacking play mixed in with blatant play acting and cheating. Sousa was the classy holding midfield player for both clubs and country and always looked likely coaching material, joining the youth ranks of the Portuguese national set up after his retirement from playing.

His first job in club management came, somewhat bizarrely, in the Championship with QPR. The R’s had been taken over by Flavio Briatore, Bernie Ecclestone and Lakshmi Mittal and enjoyed decent success in 2007/08 by appointing Italian manager Luigi De Canio. The club and De Canio parted company at the end of the season and in a complete departure from previous policy replaced him with Iain Dowie, no doubt attracted by his previous good performance in the division with Crystal Palace. Dowie and Briatore never looked like a good match and sure enough after 15 matches, eight of which Dowie won, he was sacked following a goalless draw at Swansea where the hosts played without a goalkeeper for the majority of the match.

Sousa was much more like the sort of glamorous appointment the football world expected of QPR but there was nothing glamorous about the second half of the 2008/09 season under Sousa at Loftus Road. I felt you could see what he was trying to achieve and still believe that given time he would have done a very good job for us. It is undeniable though that QPR were particularly negative during Sousa’s reign, clocking up 11 scoreless draws and 23 games without scoring during the season. Sousa looked to be on dodgy ground with his bosses after playing one up front (always a big no no with Briatore and some of our more moronic fans even when it’s the right thing to do) and lost heavily at home to Ipswich live on Sky. That triggered a run of nine games without a win and although the R’s did turn it around with consecutive wins against Swansea and Bristol City Sousa had his contract terminated after the next game with Crystal Palace.

The club said the decision was for revealing confidential information and the press took this to mean Sousa’s post match comments following another 0-0 against Palace about Dexter Blackstock being loaned out without his knowledge. What actually transpired was that Sousa had allegedly spoken to supporters on South Africa Road after the match calling into question the way the club was being run and stating that two players had long term injuries not picked up on their medicals. Of course, this is QPR, these allegations went straight onto a message board and were not removed by a vast moderation team that is usually never shy of deleting and locking threads for a variety of trivial reasons but, on that occasion, left it where it was.

Sousa pitched up at Swansea, faced with a seemingly impossible job of following Roberto Martinez who took top scorer Jason Scotland and best player Jordi Gomez with him. When Ferrie Bodde again injured his knee early in the season the task became even harder but with the league’s meanest defence Sousa has carried Swansea to new heights, they look a shoo-in for the play off places ten games out from the end of the campaign. He remains, however, a very defensively minded coach.

Three to Watch: The QPR fans love a good pantomime villain, and they have a great one who has entertained them in the past in town on Saturday with Swansea winger Nathan Dyer in town. QPR fans have a long running battle with Bradley Wright Phillips after the striker chose to move to Southampton instead of Loftus Road when he left Manchester City. Luckily Wright Phillips insists on consistently doing ridiculous things off the pitch which gives the Rangers fans plenty of ammunition to go at him with. When Wright Phillips and Dyer allegedly went riffling through the handbags of minimum wage nightclub bar maids and were caught on CCTV it was all too easy. Wright Phillips copped fearful abuse from the QPR fans at St Mary’s last season and then lo and behold three days later Dyer pitched up with Swansea and wilted under a barrage of abuse.

Wright-Phillips is, essentially, useless so you can abuse him all you like safe in the knowledge that he probably won’t do anything in return, other than prance up and down the touchline in his tracksuit with a big grin on his face. Dyer, as well as being an odious little git, is clearly a good and talented player at this level. QPR are terribly weak at full back and Dyer will provide a pacy, tricky threat to Matt Hill this weekend. One of his early Southampton performances saw him absolutely rip Chris Barker apart at Loftus Road in a 3-0 win for the visitors so he has it in him and had enjoyed decent times against QPR before clearly letting the crowd get to him last season. In a defensively orientated team Dyer is a rare attacking threat to be minded closely.

One of the biggest criticisms of Sousa at QPR was his preference for a single striker formation. Of course with people like Cook, Buzsaky, Ephraim and Ledesma to support your strikers one up front makes sense – but try telling that to football fans and Flavio Briatore. After using Lee Trundle, Craig Beattie and Stephen Dobbie in the role this season Sousa has recently turned to Shefki Kuqi. Kuqi was playing in the lower leagues in Germany after leaving Ipswich but is now back in the Championship where he seemed to either be brilliant and a fans favourite or awful and a boo boy target at Stockport, Sheff Wed, Ipswich, Palace, Fulham and Blackburn. He has three goals in seven games so far for the Swans and will provide a physical challenge for a defence missing Damion Stewart if selected.

It is defence where Swansea’s strengths obviously lie though and once you get through the meanest backline in the league you have to then beat Dutch keeper Dorus De Vries who I would think is an absolute odds on bet for the division’s team of the season. Rangers fans may remember him having his cheekbone fractured in a nasty challenge with Martin Rowlands at Swansea last season – this year he has kept 22 clean sheets. Paulo Sousa helped Radek Cerny win the division’s golden glove award last season and looks like doing the same with De Vries this year.

Links >>> Swansea Official Website >>> Swansea Message Board

History
Recent Meetings:
When these sides met at the Liberty Stadium in October QPR were 11th and Swansea 16th. Rangers were coming into form after thrashing Barnsley and playing well in a 1-1 draw at Newcastle during the week but their chances of winning in South Wales were dented first by a poor first half display, and then by two quick fire sendings off. Martin Rowlands went for two lunging tackles, the second after Jay Simpson really should have scored, while Ben Watson was booked for a mistimed tackle and then a foolish handball offence and sent off as well. Swansea took full advantage as first Gower and then Trundle struck in the final quarter of an hour to comfortably defeat the nine men.

Swansea: De Vries 8, Williams 7, Tate 7, Monk 7, Rangel 7, Britton 8,Pratley 8 (Lopez 86, -), Dyer 8, Gower 7, Butler 7 (Trundle 60, 7),Dobbie 6 (Beattie 72, 6)
Subs Not Used: Cornell, Richards, Orlandi, Van der Gun
Booked: Gower (foul)
Goals: Gower 74 (assisted Rangel), Trundle 85 (assisted Dyer)

QPR: Cerny 7, Leigertwood 7, Gorkss 6, Stewart 7, Borrowdale 5, Rowlands 6,Watson 6, Routledge 7, Buzsaky 6 (Taarabt 76, 6), Vine 6 (Faurlin 60, 6),Simpson 6 (Pellicori 77, 5)
Subs Not Used: Heaton, Ramage, Mahon, Ephraim
Sent Off:> Rowlands 53 (two bookings), Watson 78 (two bookings)
Booked: Rowlands (foul), Rowlands (foul), Gorkss (foul), Watson (foul), Watson (handball)

The last meeting between these two sides at Loftus Road was in March last year as both faltered in their quest for the play off places. Swansea were in patchy form when they arrived, QPR hadn’t won in nine attempts, and in front of a sparse crowd the game was settled by a flying Mikele Leigertwood header in the first half. The highlight of the fixture from a Rangers point of view though was the sight of Hogan Ephraim and Adel Taarabt teaming up to such great effect and tormenting the visiting defence – at a time when the team was playing with no confidence or direction the effervescing sight of those two young players on top of their games really brought a smile to the faces around Loftus Road. A late Jason Scotland free kick that QPR blocked and scrambled away was as good as it got for the Swans.

QPR: Cerny 7, Ramage 7, Gorkss 6, Hall 5 (Delaney 88 -), Connolly 6, Lopez 6 (Miller 86, -), Alberti 5, Leigertwood 6, Ephraim 8, Taraabt 8, Di Carmine 6 (Helguson 73, 6)
Subs Not Used: Vine, German
Booked: Leigertwood (foul)
Goals: Liegertwood 30 (assisted Lopez)

Swansea: De Vries 6, Williams 5, Monk 6, Serran 5, Rangel 6, Pratley 7, Gomez 6 (Dyer 62, 6), Allen 6 (Britton 87, -), Butler 6, Pintado 6 (Scotland 69, 7), Bauza 6
Subs Not Used: Orlandi, Collins
Booked: Pratley (foul)

Head to Head:
QPR wins -16
Draws -9
Swansea wins – 10

Previous Results:
2009/10 Swansea 2 QPR 0
2008/09 QPR 1 Swansea 0 (Leigertwood)
2008/09 Swansea 0 QPR 0
2004/05 QPR 3 Swansea 0
2001/02 Swansea 4 QPR 0
1980/81 Swansea 1 QPR 2
1980/81 QPR 0 Swansea 0
1979/80 QPR 3 Swansea 2
1979/80 Swansea 1 QPR 2
1978/79 QPR 2 Swansea 0
1966/67 Swansea 1 QPR 3
1966/67 QPR 4 Swansea 2
1966/67 Swansea 1 QPR 2

Played for both clubs:
Robbie James
Swansea 1973-83 & 1988-90
QPR 1984-87

Swansea born and bred, Robert Mark James graduated from Swansea City’s schoolboys to play for his hometown club-making his debut in April 1973 aged just sixteen. Over the next decade, James would go on to play almost 500 times for the Swans and became known as ‘the darling of the North Bank’. He was a pivotal part of the side that rose from the fourth to first division in just three seasons, helping the club to sixth place in the first season back in the top flight. His utility was seen as a vital commodity and could play as effectively in defence or midfield. James earned international recognition whilst at the Vetch Field and would go on to win 47 caps for his country. In 1983 and after ten seasons with Swansea, James looked for a fresh challenge in England and signed for Stoke City and despite being an ever-present in his season there moved on a year later to Queens Park Rangers. He made his debut from the subs bench against Arsenal in November 1984 and went on to be an important part of the R’s squad over the next four seasons.

Mainly playing as full-back for Rangers, Robbie’s enthusiasm and pace led him to playing out from the back and prompting the attack. James played his part in the team that went all the way to the League Cup Final in 1986 and although he played in the final, he couldn’t prevent Rangers from a disappointing 3-0 defeat to Oxford. A year later James left Loftus Road and signed for Leicester before appearing once again for his beloved Swansea and winding down his career with Bradford and Cardiff. He then had a brief spell in the Welsh Leagues and managed both Merthyr and Llanelli before his untimely death from a heart disease in 1998. Still seen as a true Swansea legend and a bust of James has recently been erected by the ticket offices at the Liberty Stadium. -AR

Links >>> Swansea 2 QPR 0 Match Report >>> QPR 1 Swansea 0 Match Report >>> Match Report Archive >>> Connections and Memories >>> Big Weekend >>> Betting Preview

This Saturday
Team News:
After four consecutive unchanged starting elevens Neil Warnock must shuffle his QPR pack for the first time this Saturday with Damion Stewart serving a one game suspension for his sending off at Reading on Tuesday. With Gary Borrowdale now out on loan at Charlton Rangers are a little short of cover at the back - the likely change will see Peter Ramage come in at right back and Matthew Connolly move into the centre. Elsewhere it could well be as you were although Lee Cook and Akos Buzsaky are pushing for recalls. Gavin Mahon and Marting Rowlands are the long term absentees.

Andrea Orlandi is back in the Swansea squad after a month out with a hamstring injury but is only likely to make the bench. Joe Allen and Albert Serran are almost ready to return to training but this game is likely to come too soon for them.

Elsewhere: Coventry's unlikely push for the play offs faltered a little on Tuesday with some late heartbreak against Cardiff at the Ricoh Arena - cardiff opened up a five point gap in sixth as a result. Still, the M69 derby between the Sky Blues and Leicester on Sunday looks like the game of the weekend in the Championship. Life without Gary Johnson starts for Bristol City with the toughest possible fixture, Newcastle at home, on Saturday. West Brom will hope to keep up their current run of results, and dodgy penalties in their favour, at home to Preston as they look to keep pace on the Geordies. Down the bottom Sheff Wed v Derby has the look of a six pointer - a win for the Rams and they're almost safe, a defeat and they're right back in it.

Referee: Kevin Wright, a man who has refereed two memorable QPR wins at Derby in his last two appointments with us, is the man in the middle on Saturday. His ratings on LoftforWords have been very poor in the past but he topped the referee league last season for his performance in our 2-0 win at Pride Park in January. Click the link below for more information.

Links >>> Dean Sturridge Memorial Injury List >>> Arthur Gnohere Discipline Counter Referee Preview >>> Referee League

Form
QPR: After a worrying run of one win from nine home games over the winter QPR seem to have got back on track at Loftus Road with three wins from their last three games against Doncaster (2-1), West Brom (3-1) and Plymouth (2-0). That clean sheet against the Pilgrims was the R's first in 25 attempts, in case I haven't mentioned that before, which is in stark contrast to last season when, under Paulo Sousa for half the campaign, Rangers drew 0-0 on eleven occasions. After a bright start with two wins from his first two matches Neil Warnock has only taken one point from the last six although he can count himself unlucky with only poor finishing at Sheff Utd and poor refereeing at Reading robbing him of four or possible even six points from the two away games last week. It's generall accepted that 50-52 points is the Championship safety mark - Rangers can reach it with a win on Saturday and another success against Derby on Tuesday.



Swansea: It's the lack of goals making headlines at Swansea this season - at both ends. The Swans have scored just 31 times this season, 15 home goals, which is the lowest in the league by some distance. Bottom of the table Peterborough have scored nearly twice as many at home. Yet despite that the Swans lie fifth in the table, well placed for an assault on the play offs despite recent set backs against promotion rivals Nottingham Forest and West Brom which both involved very dodgy penalty decisions. Swansea won five of their eight games through February, all without conceding a goal, all but one by a one nil scoreline. They have kept 22 clean sheets so far this season but have failed to score in 14 matches themselves - including three of the last four games. Away from home they have won seven of their eighteen fixtures and drawn a further seven, a better record than table topping Newcastle and any of the other sides around them in the play off picture - the victories came at Watford, Derby, Sheff Wed, Scunthorpe, West Brom, Coventry and Neil Warnock's Crystal Palace.

Prediction: We know what we're going to get from Swansea - we saw it with Paulo Sousa at Loftus Road last season and we've seen it with his Swans team this year - not many goals at either end. Swansea have never won a league game at Loftus Road and I don't expect that to change on Saturday, although whether Rangers will have the patience to break them down at the other end with Jay Simpson suddenly in dodgy form in front of goal remains to be seen. sadly, I think we could be in for a snooze-a-thon.
Goalless draw

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