QPR's 4-1 win at West Brom on Saturday has fans heading back to the Midlands on Tuesday with renewed hope of escaping the drop. Will the Easter resurrection continue at Villa Park?
Swines. Absolute swines.
I’d made peace with it all. I’d decided that 2015 wasn’t to be a sporting year for me. Defeat to Everton had ended QPR’s season prematurely, and money could be saved by not embarking on pointless, expensive trips to see them heavily beaten at Manchester City and Liverpool. In fact, that Aston Villa ticket could probably stay on the kitchen table as well. Time to grow up a little bit.
No point running off to the Rugby League either. Hull FC’s season is well ablaze as usual, and relegation seems a more likely outcome than any other. An Easter defeat to bitter rivals Hull KR as good a reason as any to switch off entirely do something else with my time.
And then, from nowhere, QPR win 4-1 at West Brom and Hull FC beat champions St Helens away from home. Not so much of an East resurrection as a cynical marketing ploy in my view — quick, he’s thinking of not spending any more money on this rubbish, reel him back in a bit. Summon the demon hope and inflict it upon him and the other lemmings once more.
QPR find away wins hard to come by every season. They’ve managed only two this campaign in 15 outings, losing the other 13, and that has lifted their Premier League total to just seven in three seasons since promotion was won back in 2011. It was the first time they’d been three goals up at half time of a top flight game since Newcastle at home in February 1995 and the first time they’d scored four on the road in the Premier League since Devon White went running through on Bryan Gunn at Carrow Road the year before that.
If, like me, you loathe these "…in the Premier League stats” you still have to go back to Jim Magilton’s time in charge and a 4-2 success at Derby for the last time they managed that many goals away from Loftus Road. It was, by any measurement, highly unusual.
It’s important, for the good of your future sanity, not to get carried away with it though. West Brom almost scored just before Eduardo Vargas gave QPR the lead. In fact, they should have done. Rangers have fallen behind in 25 of their 32 games this season and recovered to win just once — as our columnist Antti Heinola has previously said, for all this talk of the spirit in the camp that statistic is a damning indictment of the culture within the team. Had they gone behind at The Hawthorns when they should have done, or conceded an equaliser when another Brown Ideye shot beat Rob Green but not the post, who’s to say that away game wouldn’t have gone the way of all the others? It doesn’t sweep away the obvious problems within the team — particularly Mauricio Isla’s tendency to let his winger cross unchallenged, and Steven Caulker’s erratic form. Even at 3-1 it felt like the game could go either way.
Nor does it haul QPR immediately back to safety. They still require wins plural. Certainly at home to Newcastle and West Ham, who are rolling over for all and sundry now their respective seasons are over and both managers are about to leave, but also away from home again, probably at Leicester and here at Aston Villa if they want to be very sure of it. To go from winning seven games all season to winning five of the last eight doesn’t sound very likely to me — nor has there been any sign the team is capable of it prior to Saturday. Stay true to the form of this season and the club’s history and the team will merely build hope with Saturday’s result only to dash it at Villa Park on Tuesday.
But the renewed hope isn’t completely without merit. What Saturday should tell QPR is that away games are winnable, first and foremost. Secondly, there are goals in this team, and not necessarily just from Charlie Austin — going a goal down doesn’t need to be the death knell it has been throughout the season to this point. Thirdly, the Premier League isn’t that good this year — even the teams with the lauded managers will crumble if you tickle them right. Tuesday’s fixture is very similar to Saturday’s in many ways, and QPR should attack it just the same, and continue to do so even if they concede first.
It should also tell everybody — players, fans, website editors — that this thing isn’t decided on paper. I’d written them off after a home defeat to out of form Everton, partly because if we can’t beat Everton at home who on earth can we beat but also because it left us with too few "winnable” games left. A week later, a thumping win is secured in one of the fixtures I didn’t think Rangers would get anything from. And while seven wins from 30 games followed by five from eight isn’t likely, it’s not impossible and it’s not unprecedented.
And so Saturday night was spent rushing home early from the Birmingham curry house to watch Match of the Day and having seen Bobby Zamora’s wonderfully flighted goal for the tenth time the fingers did the rest themselves, logging into the train ticket booking interface and spunking £60 up the wall for a late booking back to the second city on Tuesday night for the Villa game. A game QPR will probably lose, but a game you now simply can’t afford to miss.
Links >>> Villa’s pivotal Tuesday — oppo profile >>> Sherwood battle — interview >>> QPR’s 1968 promotion — history >>> Pawson returns immediately — referee >>> Pre-match press conference
Villa have something of an injury crisis of their own. Alan Hutton, Ashley Westwood and Scott Sinclair are all definitely out while late checks will be taken on Tom Cleverley, Aly Cissokho and Kieran Richardson. Phillippe Senderos is also out while Libor Kozak is a long term absentee. "Slags,” said Tim Sherwood earlier today.
Referee: Craig Pawson has been the go-to man this season for all manner of games in hand, extra midweek fixtures, cupboard cleaning, course chairing, dawn hill runs, and carrying heavy bags back from the supermarket. You may remember him from our recent league game with Spurs, on a day when everybody else was playing in the FA Cup — he turned down a certain Rangers penalty at the Loft End which could have won the R’s a point, and Les Ferdinand was charged by the FA for making some "observations” to the Sheffield official in the tunnel afterwards. Just three days before that game he had, for some reason, been sent all the way up to Carlisle to referee a League One game. Anyway, another day, another match, and QPR are owed big time by this fella — full case history here.
QPR: The win at West Brom was QPR’s second on the road this season, the other coming at Sunderland. They have lost their other 14 away fixtures in all competitions. The victory snapped a run of five straight defeats, just as the Sunderland win had done immediately before that. It was the first time they’d scored more than a single goal in a game since Sunderland, the first time they’ve scored more than two since the December 20 win against West Brom, and the first time they’ve scored four in a match since Boxing Day 2010 at home to Swansea. Bobby Zamora’s last seven Premier League goals have all been away from home. Matt Phillips’ five assists in the league since the turn of the year is the most in the division along with Arsenal’s Santi Cazorla.
Prediction: Reigning Prediction League champion WestonSuperR tells us…
"This is a tough game to call: play anything like we did v WBA and we have every chance, play anything like the general form since Christmas and we have no chance.
"This is a match that we need to win to throw ourselves right back into the relaxation mix so we need to go for it as we did v West Brom. I hope Ramsey can pick the same starting 11 although with Vargas's injury this looks very unlikely but whatever he picks the 4-4-2 option makes sense.
"Villa have been pretty decent since Tim Sherwood arrived and I am sure the crowd will be right behind the team as they will understand the magnitude of this match. Games like this are often tight and cagey but with both teams rather suspect defensively I can see goals and sadly think Villa may just outscore us.”
John’s Prediction: Villa 2-1 QPR. Scorer — Charlie Austin
LFW’s Prediction: Villa 2-1 QPR. Scorer — Niko Kranjcar
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Pictures — Action Images