QPR suffered an embarrassing defeat at the hands of Stoke on Wednesday night.

With our season already crawling along at a snail's pace - a midweek fixture against another team languishing around in mid table was hardly going to get pulses racing. In fact, both teams were pretty dire all night really - in fact, I wish I could just finish this report at that.

But…the show must go on and all that. Being unfortunate enough, like many others, to see performances like that before, we will just carry on. I'm sure, in the very near future we may have a few more disasters. Whether they are on or off the pitch I don't know. Could they be both? Quite possibly.

All in all it was a drab evening and a drab game - Loftus Road looked ever-so-sorry for itself. Despite the official attendance being just under 11,000, there appeared to be far less inside and the hardened few that came from the Potteries will be grateful for a second half turnaround from their side.

The same team started and the opening encounters looked to be positive. We pressed the Stoke goal and had a couple of attempts on goal. We forced an early corner and both Bircham and Nygaard had efforts wide of goal.

After just seven minutes we opened the scoring after a shambolic bit of defending from the visitors. They spectacularly failed to deal with a simple ball into the box from a Lomas throw in. There was a bit of a scramble and the ball fell to Nygaard and he hit a weak shot past Simonsen and it just dribbled into the back of the net.

A bizarre goal, but when they've been so hard to come by lately we certainly weren't complaining. We continued from there and pressed for a second, Youssouf had made an encouraging start to the game and it was disappointing not to have seen more of him as he limped off after 14 minutes. The signs don't look good though that a fellow Dane appears to be just as injury prone as his striking partner.

Moore came on and initially impressed after a neat turn and burst down our left hand side. Unfortunately, that was his only real contribution to the game. Other than that, his nice-to-look-at flicks and touches don't actually do very much at all.

Just minutes after the substitution we were awarded a penalty at the School End. After a short corner from Ainsworth, Cook was dragged down right by the touchline. It was a needless, silly challenge as he wasn't going anywhere. There appeared to be a bit of a discussion about who would have it but Ainsworth took charge and placed the ball on the spot. His run up was all wrong though and his weak shot was easily saved much to the delight of the Stokies in the upper tier.

It was such a shame for Ainsworth as once again he gave his typical 'All Action' performance, jumping and running at any ball that came near him. The second half then petered out really - the miss appeared to dent our confidence and we went backwards as a team from then onwards.

The team did give the fans a few heart-stopping moments, unfortunately they came at our end and were our own doing. The defence tried on more than one occasion to pass the ball around and build from the back. Absolutely brilliant - nice football that. Unfortunately you need the players to deliver and our lads just cannot do that. They are too likely to give the ball away and they were nearly caught out. If the opposition hadn't been so bad then maybe they would have got a few goals before the break.

At the start of the second, Stoke looked slightly brighter and slowly started to take a more effective approach to the second half. All the damage was done though in a mad 10 minute spell really.

After 73 minutes, and with that oh so familiar sinking feeling that you get as a QPR fan, their equaliser came. Stoke played a quick one-two on the edge of the box and as their man danced into the box Shittu stuck out a leg and he went down.

We looked shell-shocked - although quite why I don't know as the writing had been on the wall for a while. Hoefkens stepped up and tucked the penalty neatly away past poor old Paul Jones.

Waddock then made a change and took Bircham off (much to the delight of the bitter few in the School End) and replaced him with Langley. In truth, the change should have been made earlier and I'm sure Waddock is learning fast. If his predecessor had done that messageboards would have been going into overdrive about a lack of tactical know-how.

Within four minutes or so a second had hit the back of our net. This time it was just down to poor defending. Jones made an excellent save and after some comedy efforts and defending respectively, the ball was hit into the net by Sigurdson. Shittu had made a right hash of a clearance and had completely missed the ball.

Another change then took place as Waddock took Ainsworth off and put Furlong on up front. Lee Cook then saw more of the ball in 5 minutes than he had in the previous half an hour. He made some superb runs, combining quick feet with an excellent turn of pace. His efforts came to nothing though as the best we could come to scoring was a long range Langley effort and a weak effort by Furlong.

It was another disastrous night at LR, right up there with the Leicester game, which I didn't think was possible this season. We were so poor it was unbelievable. Again, its ever so frustrating that the opposition were there for the taking, Stoke were poor it's just that we were even worse in the second half.

After a commanding first half our centre backs fell apart after the break with Shittu especially having a few lapses in concentration. What was so unbelievable was that he was so commanding in the first half. Bignot, again had a poor game, oh what a contrast with last season. He has been a major disappointment this time round. Milanese didn't have the best of evenings, which is concerning as judging by reports he was poor at Sheff Wed as well. The midfield pairing didn't work; Birch and Lomas didn't complement each other at all. Perhaps it's the right thing to do away from home but there was no spark in the middle tonight.

Again our wingers were our best attacking avenues. When he had the ball Cook was very effective - it's just that he didn't get enough of the ball. Ainsworth worked hard as always and gave it his all (unlike some others - shame on you).

Moore was appalling. Nothing more to say really. He may well be a confidence player but he's got to show the desire and I couldn't see any out there tonight.

Nygaard, well there's a frustrating player we have. He now has seven goals to his name this season and I think that if he gets a decent pre season he could be a good option up front next season. However, he does frustrate. He concedes far too many free kicks, his arms are always all over the place and the ref has not option. He does link play surprisingly well though, but sometimes we just wished he would work that bit harder or run that bit faster.

You can't really fault Jones tonight, he saved us on more than one occasion again and he must be pulling his hair out sometimes with what he sees in front of him.

The atmosphere was also poor tonight and that is disheartening. The only noise came after the stewards were being busy in R block and that brought about some chanting. Other than that, LR was quiet. Everyone was taking in what they were watching, which on reflection was a very very poor evening.

Gary Waddock has I'm sure learnt plenty and perhaps tonight would have showed him what's it's really like in the hot seat under pressure at Loftus Road. He didn't have a response tonight and did what I think IH would have done. Inexperience? Perhaps so, but he will learn.

That same question can be said for the players. Many of them are experienced but they just don't seem to be enjoying their football at the Rangers at the moment. It's not fun, it's not exciting, and it sadly lacks passion and desire in places.

Overall the standard in team has been pretty poor this season, apart from the top few. You can get into the play-offs with a 20 goal a season striker really, which is what we sadly lack. We lack firepower and we never look convincing sitting on a one goal lead. In truth, QPR never really have but you get my point!

Having that cutting edge can really make or break a season and ours is shuffling to a stand still. I don't quite know what the players who are out of contracts this summer are thinking? Perhaps they're fed up? What I do know is that plenty have not been giving their all.

Whoever gets the job on a permanent basis has a lot of hard work to do and it should start as soon as possible.

It's a strange old time at QPR at the moment, we should all be used to it by now. Roll on the summer please, because if we play like that again on Saturday it's not doing anyone any good.

QPR: Jones 7*, Bignot 4, Shittu 6, Evatt 6, Milanese 5, Ainsworth 7 (Furlong 80, 6), Bircham 5 (Langley 78, 6), Lomas 6, Cook 7, Youssouf 6 (Moore 15, 2), Nygaard 6.
Subs Not Used: Cole, Santos.
Goals: Nygaard 7

Stoke: Simonsen, Hoefkens, Duberry, Wilkinson, Broomes, Chadwick (Buxton 88), Brammer, Russell, Sweeney (Gallagher 71), Bangoura (Sidibe 71), Sigurdsson.
Subs Not Used: de Goey, Mbuyi.
Booked: Bangoura, Wilkinson.
Goals: Hoefkens 73 pen, Sigurdsson 79.

Att: 10,918

QPR Man of the Match: Paul Jones - Made some more tremendous saves, couldn't be faulted for either goal. Must be frustrated at what he sees in front of him at times. If he hadn't of been making wonder saves recently god knows where we would be.

Ref: P Walton (Northamptonshire). 7 - Decent showing from the referee. Played the advantage enough times and we can't complain about the pen. Perhaps slightly favoured us in the first half, not that it done us any good!! The crowd seemed to enjoy his comedy routine with his top during the second half. What was that about?!

Photo: Action Images

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