QPR’s season looks set to end in a whimper as they follow Saturday’s surrender at Millwall with a similar flop against Swansea on Steve Cook’s big Loftus Road farewell.

When Queens Park Rangers get it right, they really do get it right.

Steve Cook was rightly identified as exactly the signing the club needed in January 2022 when sitting fourth in the league on a terrific run of Christmas form and apparently on the hunt for Bournemouth’s spot in second. Nottingham Forest gazumped Rangers at the last minute and ended up getting promoted instead. Sliding doors, so often slamming shut in our face.

When Cook did belatedly sign on in W12, a year and a half later, he was precisely the right man again, albeit for an altogether different mission. Warbs Warburton’s third-year promotion push went awry so alarmingly the team ended up missing the play-offs altogether. They not only changed manager in May but also ditched his assistant John Eustace who’d long been groomed for the role. Eustace has gone onto prove himself at the level, while QPR's adventures through Mick Beale, Neil Critchley and Gareth Ainsworth drove the team, the club, its balance sheet, and its fanbase close to the edge. We’re insanely fortunate we haven’t played League One football in the very recent past.

Ainsworth didn’t do much good in the dream role he’d spent ten years pining for, but he knew old heads were required for 2023/24. The disastrous nature of the first 45 minutes of that season at Watford, before the dogs of war were signed and up to speed, only confirmed his suspicions. Ainsworth didn’t survive the season, and QPR wouldn’t have either without Cook at centre back. His goals in both Easter fixtures to put the final, crucial, six points on the board crowned a terrific campaign in which he was streets and streets ahead in the voting for player of the year.

Cook, and his influence, have been rather underrated ever since in my opinion. The club’s announcement of his contract extension felt the need to make clear twice in the first four paragraphs this had been triggered not through choice, but a clause in his original deal. Whether that was due to the club’s target of lowering the average age of the squad, or because Cook was one of the players who came for a low wage in year one in return for a chunkier wedge in year two to escape a tight FFP situation, is irrelevant really – they’re you problems, not him problems. The disrespect on social media got to the stage where Cook offered one critic the chance to come down the training ground for a race if he really thought his pace was such a drawback.

The people that go to the matches, and the managers who manage the team, knew the real truth. Cook, and people like him, are important to this side. Right up to and including his penultimate game at Millwall, where he was summoned at half time as footballing coagulant to stem the bleed – a wound that might never have opened in the first place had he been picked from the start. Announcing his departure in advance, telling supporters this would be his last home game, showed great awareness from the club of his standing among the home and away support, and gave us a chance to thank him for his considerable efforts. Excellent, proactive coms and improvement on the cackhanded, botched jobs that saw Clint Hill, Ale Faurlin, Yoann Barbet and others mooch off into the distance without so much as a round of applause. The news he’s been offered a coaching role, should he not want to play again next season, a lovely cherry on top of that cake. When you do good, I use the green pen.

Sadly, his farewell tour of Loftus Road on Tuesday night was conducted in front of a tiny crowd in a funereal atmosphere. It also started with a Swansea City goal after two minutes that owed much to Cook and Rhys Norrington-Davis sliding in towards each other after the same through ball. When they both missed it, and took each other out of the picture in the process, Ronald was in for a second minute opener every bit as easy and pathetic as the second minute goal this team had shipped at The Den at the weekend. Mediterranean Sea gently lapping at the shores of Mykonos as a bare chested local fetches you another beer from the fridge.

It was a sad way for Cook – subbed after an hour – to bow out. The tube strike, and Rangers’ league status, left the game played out in near silence. Community open day at the town morgue. It looked and felt like they’d rebadged an unattractive pre-season friendly as Cook’s testimonial. Is it possible to have pre- pre-season friendlies? This may be the first of its genre.

QPR had Kealey Adamson at right back, playing much like I’d have done if somebody had turned up in the Crown & Sceptre a little after six with a shirt for me - no risk, no show, keep close to the people who know what they're doing, keep out of the way, as soon as you get it pass it as quickly as possible backwards to one of the footballers. Rumarn Burrell was given a first start since his injury up front alongside Rayan Kolli. Isaac Hayden started midfield alongside Kieran Morgan. There was another go from the beginning for Kwame Poku.

It was, and is, absolutely the time to be trying stuff out. Despite the congested nature of the Championship, Rangers have long since been out of contention for anything interesting at all this season and are now, rightly, planning ahead. If you’re not here next season there’s little point you getting minutes in these remaining games ahead of somebody who is. It used to kill me when Harry Redknapp would pick Luke Young-types in these games. We’ve spent good money on an eclectic mix of ‘project’ players who, in the apparent absence of anybody willing to loan them (not a good sign in itself), need to be tested in some sort of football over and above the mostly nonsense level the junior and development squads play at.

It’s just a shame, first of all, that it produced such a half-arsed and disinterested performance. If you’re looking for a chance to prove yourself, well, here it is.

Rayan Kolli and Isaac Hayden both warmed Vigouroux’s palms with early shots, but most of the QPR players involved did more to play themselves out of contention than into it. Kolli, given a chance to fill his boots against a lower midtable opponent with nothing to play for, was pretty hopeless apart from that. Nothing worked for Kieran Morgan, though he wasn’t helped by playing next to a senior professional in Hayden who had a dreadful game. As we bleed leaders like Cook out of our dressing room, the need for wily old gits grows stronger and it’s really disappointing to see somebody who was brought here, presumably, primarily for that leadership tossing one in like this.

And second of all, Swansea hadn’t got the memo. None of it seemed to matter very much to QPR – the performance, the aesthetics, the outcome – but the Welsh side cared. They cared quite a bit, actually. In Jay Fulton they had the obviously outstanding player on the pitch. A low drive from Sam Parker on 37 minutes brought a fumble from Joe Walsh and a late, fortunate rescue job by the error-prone keeper on the rebound. Lucky, lucky, lucky he, he’s a lucky son of a gun.

QPR had spent the afternoon releasing a typically well-done season ticket promotional video with Louis Theroux under the marketing tagline “the next chapter”. Contained within the small print were significant, meaty price rises for U8s and the early 20s who are exactly the demographics you’d think key to precisely that message. Raises blamed on us for abusing concessionary tickets, pesky kiosk staff for earning an increased minimum wage, good luck they were ever offered in the first place, but of course not the wages and transfer fees spent on this squad, its litany of staff, or £1.8m in agent fees.

When QPR get it wrong, the really do get it wrong. When Cook went to Forest, they signed Dion Sanderson instead.

The decision to start Poku for the second game in four days, after a season blighted by hamstring injuries, not entirely unpredictably blew up in their face after half an hour when he pulled out of the obvious pass to the open side, tried to twist his body back in the opposite direction, collapsed to the ground and left the field in tears. Again. A significant investment, a player in need of a good pre-season more than any other, chanced needlessly in a nonsense game for minimal gain and maximum damage, and now not likely to even be training until the end of July if that injury is like all his prior ones. You can try and bury us in availability statistics all you like, you can try and 'move the narrative on', but everybody knows what they've seen this season in this regard, and losing Poku once again in circumstances like this is dire news.

At times it felt like the team had gone out in solidarity with the tube staff. They certainly didn’t play like people facing the same journey home those that bothered to come and support them would suffer.

Having conceded nearly a quarter of their goals in the first ten minutes of second halves I again looked for obvious, tangible evidence of improvement and player development in that regard. Again, the opposition came out from the break more energised, focused and forceful in their work. Walsh had to parry a shot away from Franco within two minutes of the restart as the Swans got onto the front foot and QPR looked surprised the game had restarted. Not listening, not learning, Morgan, and then Norrington-Davies, both contrived to give the ball away in the same move on 50 minutes – Walta, this time, the one to draw a save from Walsh. You’re not going very far next season if you start every second half conceding a goal.

Nor will you trouble even the extended Championship play-off picture while getting repeatedly outnumbered and beaten in midfield. I feel like a broken record but this is a team that hasn’t won a game while holding more possession than the opponent for nearly 15 months now, never once this season, and this was another night where I sat in F Block in some astonishment at the sheer amounts of space and time afforded to the opposition centre mids. Fulton in the deep central role, Franco in the mode advanced position, and the blond-haired Widell off the left, just in acres and acres and acres of yardage all the time. Available for the pass, immediately on the turn unchallenged and playing forwards.

Middlesbrough at home, with Hayden Hackney and co, was the most egregious example this season, but at so many QPR games you can pass the time of day pointing at the opposition central midfielders and adding up the free yardage around them. You could solve the London housing crisis building maisonettes in those gaps. Fulton’s bound to look good if the nearest QPR player is two business days away. Central midfield is the spot in need of the most recruitment surgery this summer. Still, Julien Stéphan could help by not being so tightly wedded to his 4-4-2, and occasionally showing the willing to add a third midfield man in there. No point in having two strikers when they’re as isolated and uninvolved as this. His willingness to allow his team to be outnumbered in the centre of the park is bewildering.

The post-match narrative and spin needed a useful idiot. Referee Leigh Doughty stepped right up. As the substitutes started to flow some degree of control in midfield was wrestled back by Nicolas Madsen and Ilias Chair, but the introduction of Tylon Smith at centre back brought the same quick, rangy, over-keen and underdone presence he’d added to that recent Middlesbrough encounter. There, he gave away a penalty within minutes of coming on. Here, he again lunged into a fool’s errand in his own penalty box. Having escaped that, he then went to ground a second time on Ji-Sung and, look, it’s very, very obviously outside the penalty area. Referee Doughty pointed to the spot regardless.

I would have expected the linesman at the other end to have had a say on that one. From my seat it looked a penalty, but you could tell everybody in Q, P and safe standing were upset with it and the lino on the Ellerslie Road side has that view so should have voiced it. Championship top scorer Zan Vipotnik (“You’ve signed the wrong Zan, Gromit. The wrong Zan.) padded his stats from the spot to end the game as a contest.

It proved a useful distraction - I’d be more concerned coaching Smith to stay on his feet - because when Paul Smyth went through on goal and Vigouroux tipped his shot onto the bar Rhys Norrington-Davies followed in on the rebound for his first goal for the club. It meant Rangers were one lousy refereeing decision away from a point. Stéphan spent a good chunk of post-match on talking about the official. He said he'd never seen a penalty like it in his entire career.

Come now. If you thought the referee was the problem last night I think you're kidding yourself. The amount of times we turned our possession, or our free kick, into a pass back to Joe Walsh was more of an issue. The amount of times we got a throw in, I looked down to make a note, then looked back to find Swansea in possession and on the attack, likewise. We cannot keep, and progress, the football. We cannot keep it and progress it for fuck. If we were held hostage and had to keep and progress the ball to escape, there’d be a hefty body count.

Swansea, in the same league state as us, leaving out the league’s top goalscorer from the start, played the better football, dominated midfield, looked superior throughout, looked like it mattered to them, and deserved their win. They wanted this more than we did, for my money.

To be fair Stéphan did also bemoan his side’s slow start, their unwillingness to play forward, and the problem this team has when it drops 5/10% below its mark. One of the problems we have, one of the reasons the team is so knackered all the time, is we have to play at 100% at all times to get a result at this level. No team can. He looked, and sounded, fed up. He’s not alone. It mattered to me, this result, and I'm sure a few of you too. I want to win.

Instagram ‘influencers’ fucking around on the pitch at half time in front of a half empty stadium during another QPR home defeat, hyped on the club socials today despite the the fact we've lost the bloody game. I’d love to do another rant about the standards at this club. But that stuff is not done for me, is it? So much of QPR these days isn’t for me. And it’s late, in the evening, and the season.

When you’re losing to Swansea City by the same scoreline, in the same circumstances, on exactly the same date as the previous year, you’ve been in this league too long. You’re boring the hole off me. I’m boring myself trying to put it into words.

Two to go.

Links >>> Ratings and Reports >>> Message Board Match Thread

QPR: Walsh 6; Adamson 5, Cook 5 (Smith 61, 5), Edwards 6, Norrington-Davies 6; Vale 5, Hayden 4 (Madsen 61, 6), Morgan 5, Poku 5 (Smyth 29, 5); Kolli 4 (Chair 60, 6), Burrell 5 (Kone 62, 5)

Subs not used: Varane, Hamer, Esquerdinha, Mbengue

Goals: Norrington-Davies 90 (unassisted)

Yellow Cards: Morgan 23 (foul), Adamson 55 (foul), Norrington-Davies 60 (foul)

Swansea: Vigouroux 7; Parker 7 (Ward 73, 6), Cabango 6, Burgess 7, Tymon 6; Fulton 8, Walta 7 (Yalcouye 67, 6); Ronald 7, Franco 7 (Ji-Sung 66, 6), Widell 7 (Cullen 76, 6); Idah 6 (Vipotnik 66, 7)

Subs not used: Fisher, Nunes, Stamenic, Woodward

Goals: Ronald 2 (assisted Fulton), Vipotnik pen 80 (won Ji-Sung)

Yellow Cards: Ronald 90+2 (off the ball incident)

QPR Star Man – Ronnie Edwards 6 I don’t know, maybe? Cheekbones etc.

Referee – Leigh Doughty (Blackpool) 5 Got the only key decision in a wholly uncompetitive game wrong. The fact he was given this dead rubber appointment in the first place doesn’t speak well to his chances of further progression, the fact he did this with it probably means he’ll be lucky to even be at this level come August.

Attendance – 13,835 (700 Swansea approx.) Wouldn’t want whoever’s come to that figure measuring me up for a carpet.

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Pictures - Ian Randall Photography

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