A chaotic, swashbuckling 3-2 weekend win against Hull City enjoyed only as long as it took the club to part ways with Paul Furlong.
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"Chaos. Goals. Fun.” Jamie was singing my favourite song in his match report at the weekend, and by all accounts it sounds like QPR were playing my favourite tune to go alongside it.
Almost as if they’d read my "it’s meant to be fun this” match preview, Rangers twice fell behind to defensively shambolic goals against Hull City, but rallied to win 3-2 with 26 shots on the goal and eight on target – two shy of Jackett’s Law which is if you get ten shots on target you’ve definitely won that game.
Per Jack Supple, it was the first time in 19 years Rangers had trailed twice and come back to win and funnily enough that previous occasion - a 4-2 at home to Crystal Palace under John Gregory – is also one of my underrated favourite QPR games. Lee Cook roasting Danny Butterfield on such a high heat Palace had to hire a priest in to scatter what was left of him around a garden of remembrance.
I said on the message board I’d rather see us approach a game like that and lose it, than spend the last half an hour protecting a 0-0 draw against a poor Sheff Utd side to maintain sixteenth position in the Championship. Life is for living.
Now, I got called up on that statement, and of course it’s probably not true. If we did indeed lose because we were too busy piling players forwards and chucking bits of old boat at the opposition in the name of "goals, chaos, fun” I’m sure I’d be writing a match report about tactical numbskullery and lack of game smarts and the cold pragmatism required to compete in this dog league. You’d never "rather lose”. But I will stand by it to a certain extent.
We’ve been in the Championship for ten straight years now, seven of those ending in bottom half finishes. By far and away the most likely scenario is we spend the next ten years here as well. I still feel that we’re more likely to exit this division into the one below than the one above, should one of our regular doom loops go awry, but if you nailed me to the wall and asked me to bet where QPR are in 2035/36 I’d be putting what money I have on it being somewhere close to 16th in the Championship – exactly where we are now, and where we’ve mostly been for the previous decade.
In that circumstance of 20 consecutive years of trips to Preston North End, how you play, how you carry yourself, how you approach it does start to matter a lot more. Fans can, and indeed did, get a bit aggy if you surrender your ambition and sit back on a 0-0 draw against a side that looks there for the taking and then come out afterwards and talk about what a good result it is because it maintains a nine-point gap to them. Who cares? You’re 16th. May as well have had a bit of a go and risk ending up 18th.
I appreciate not every game will look like Saturday’s, not every game can look like Saturday’s, but I want to support a team that has a go like that, not some limp-dicked outfit mumbling high-pitched "thank you Mrs Patterson" for a 0-0 draw at Sheffield United. We’re QPR, we’re not Burton Albion just lucky to be in this league at all, have a bloody go at it. I was encouraged by Julien Stéphan’s post match this weekend – he seemed genuinely delighted, happy really for the first time this season, which tells me that’s much more how he wants it to look as well. Park your Richard Kone debate, I’m loving that he picks two up front, and I think Rumarn Burrell is scoring as freely as he is precisely because we’ve got bodies up there occupying defenders.
That was much more like it at the weekend and played out like one of those chaotic afternoons when Ian Holloway’s first QPR team was at the peak of its powers. Two nil down at home to Leicester? Don’t worry about it. We’re going to take all of this stuff here, and we’re going heave it that way right into their face. And when we’ve done that, we’re going to pick it all up and do it all over again. We’re going to play Jamie Cureton, Kevin Gallen and Paul Furlong, all up front, all at once. We’re going to have Lee Cook, Kevin McLeod and Martin Rowlands on the pitch with them too, all at the same time. Danny Shittu’s going to go up front. Crosses. Long throws. Corners. Set pieces. Aerial bombardment. Pedal to the metal. Richmond Oiler ball. And, look, maybe it won’t work. Many, many times it didn’t. Maybe you’ll cope with it. But you’ll know you’ve been in a game. And maybe, just maybe, Lee might get one of those crosses plum right in the last minute of stoppage time, and Furs might angle his body just so at the back post, and Loftus Road gets to erupt and shake the commentary gantry up and down as that two-goal deficit becomes a 3-2 win.
Of course, this being QPR, we can’t have nice things for long. I was allowed to enjoy that victory against Hull until Monday when the phone started ringing its ominous what-have-they-done-now ring and news seeped through that Paul Furlong has been fired from his role leading the club’s development squad.
Rangers are known for their tens, and their wingers. Bowles, Marsh, Wegerle, Taarabt and Eze, Thomas, Sinton, Sinclair and Cook, but for me it’s often players and people like Paul Furlong that make following this club such a joy. Someone that’s got something a bit wrong with them – too old, too injury prone, walks a bit funny – coming good in the face of that adversity. An unheralded signing that doesn’t make a lot of sense, but somehow just works here. Someone that’s failed elsewhere, or been cast aside, getting that second (third, fourth) chance in hoops and taking it. Loftus Road, the island of misfit toys. Paul Furlong epitomises that, to me.
It certainly didn’t look like it with Furs when he first arrived here. Chronically unfit and constantly unavailable, he was written off as the worst kind of mercenary big name here to pick up a final pay cheque and top that pension up at our expense. After a 3-0 away defeat at Notts County he appeared to sarcastically applaud the away end which sent me spilling down over several rows of seats to give him the full Leon Balogun. That lousy start made the story what it was. His redemption arc was steep and glorious. In the two years that followed he scored a late winning goal in the Oldham play-off semi-final which shook the ground to its core and made the supporters feel that, finally, their Rangers were back. A year on he bagged at Sheffield Wednesday to seal promotion for real. Aged 37 he then tore the Championship a new bum, scoring 18 times in the second tier. Magnificent in full flight and misty blue boots, he was a Rolls Royce centre forward for this club, and his relationship and respect with the QPR supporters ran incredibly deep and meaningful precisely because of the animosity it had been enveloped by to start with. To turn that around, as a former Chelsea man no less, you’ve got to be a very good footballer certainly, but also an incredibly strong character and decent person as well.
Paul Furlong is certainly that. There’s never been a bad word said about him. An absolute gentleman. His son the same. Terrific people. He’s had some difficult times health wise since he retired, and it’s been a source of enormous pride in the club, for me, to see him come back from that and be down there on the touchline coaching our next generation of talent. Who better? Who better than somebody who was that good a player, who carries himself and behaves as Paul Furlong does, and who understands intimately and intrinsically what is and isn’t acceptable at QPR, what values the fans hold most dear, and what it takes to succeed and fail here? Doing a very good job too, it seemed. QPR’s development squad is one of the plus points of the club at the moment. Its victory against all odds against Brentford and their proprietary data models at the end of last season was a shining light in a bleak moment. The thing the people who watch that side say most to me is how well coached it is, how much better the football is than the first team, how easily they slip between shapes, systems and styles. Well, yeh, thanks for that Furs but fuckety bye.
I’m too miserable and cynical to get romantic and sentimental really. It’s football. This club, like every club, has shit on its legends before and will do so again in the name of progress. I’ve stood on away terraces and seen Gerry Francis copping abuse. I was at West Brom when people started signing "fuck off Les Ferdinand”. Kevin Gallen got bombed out twice. Ian Holloway got the sack twice. It’s an unpleasant business at times, and nobody is owed a living. You can’t just keep people hanging around because they scored a few times against Colchester United. But, at the risk of repeating myself, on top of everything else Paul Furlong means to this club, he was universally seen to be doing a good job.
If you are going to go in a different direction, and that’s an ‘if’ written in ten-mile-high thick black letters, there are ways of doing things and there are ways of doing things and it’s something this regime fails on.
I do feel for the club to a certain extent that this has leaked out before a settlement has been agreed, which means legally they feel obligated to stay silent while people who have been upset by this decision leak out their side and the message boards and rumour mill go into overdrive. I’ve absolutely no doubt that in time there will be a tribute on the official website, a soft soapy interview about Furlong’s time with the club, and they’ll present this as mutual. Furlong, ever the gent, will look into the camera and say he’s loved every minute. But it should have been obvious that letting Paul Furlong go mid-season wouldn’t afford you time to agree a settlement and put that together. Somebody was always going to leak this out because it was always going to piss people off – rightly so, too. I’m amazed it stayed under wraps for the week that it has.
IF you’re letting Paul Furlong go, you do it at the end of the season. You agree it with him months in advance, with said settlement. You let him see out the year with his team. You get the tit wank interview recorded. You induct him into the Forever R’s on the last home game of the season. He comes on the pitch and speaks to us. We get all emotional and have a big drunk cry. He goes off into the sunset in a dignified way, with his head held high. He goes on his terms. You don’t call him into the office for a quiet word and bin him off in the last week of November, then have the news of that leak out onto West London Sport with the killer line "it has now been decided that Furlong will move on”. Has it now? By who? Why?
The people skills are one of the ways Christian Nourry’s regime betrays his and its inexperience the most. Our club is led by somebody who has never managed a company or a team of people of any size before in his life, and on occasions like this it really shows. There isn’t that compassion there, that understanding, that feel for our club. Just a desperation to get another "methodology lead” in because nobody invites you to keynote at ”Training Ground Guru Live” to talk about Paul Furlong, do they?
He’s learning on the job. How they deal with situations like this, like the departure of Marti Cifuentes, is poor. You've had the Rayan Kolli situation, the Paul Nardi situation, the Kenneth Paal situation. You've had that "captain refuses to leave" announcement on Steve Cook's contract extension. You've had Charlie Kelman quoted in the official Charlton programme saying he'd love to talk about how he was treated at QPR on a podcast one day. You've had Schalke taking the highly unusual step of issuing a public statement criticising QPR for the way they fucked around Pape Meïssa Ba for most of the summer.
It’s how you deal with people in a business like this that makes you the club you are. Ethics are what you do when nobody’s watching. QPR seem to think it’s a place east of London.
How they talk to and deal with you is equally bad, in my opinion. Lots of you are fine with it, I look forward to being told what a "cancer” I am for this article, as I was in August when I suggested drawing with Preston, losing to Plymouth and getting bummed in the gob at Coventry was less than ideal. But I’m still staggered at the arrogance of addressing really perfectly reasonable and polite questions from you guys at the fans forum about the club’s injury record with stats about the U13s and "I’m sorry your favourite player wasn’t available”, as if those people are infatuated 11-year-olds with "can I have your shirt Jimmy” banners, as if those people hadn’t been to Stoke and watched Karamoko Dembele play lone striker, as if they hadn’t been to West Brom and watched Paul Smyth have to do the same.
You don’t need to have clocked how many match reports Jamie Perry is writing for us this season to know that I’m finding QPR an increasingly difficult thing to love under this regime, and am more often than ever before now doing other things with my life. Maybe they’ll succeed, maybe they’ll get promoted, maybe the player trading model will kick in and we’ll become a new Brighton, and, look, if all that happens, I’ll be there, delighted, in tears probably, hugging my best mates, thinking about my dad, writing flowery prose and graphic sexual imagery about how it was all worth it in the end. Articles like this will get called up to show how wrong and out of touch the "old farts” and "dinosaurs” were.
But I don’t want to be the club that thinks it’s lucky to get a 0-0 draw at Sheffield United, and I certainly don’t want to be the club that "decides that Paul Furlong will move on”.
Links >>> Magical mystery tour – Oppo Profile >>> Ready avenges Ferdinand assault – History >>> Herczeg in charge – Referee >>> Rovers official website >>> Official website >>> Lancashire Telegraph — Local Paper >>> BRFCS message board and podcast >>> Rovers Chat — Blog
Elsewhere: If you were in any doubt about how Saturday’s trip to Norwich City is going to play out, Oxford United’s 95th minute equaliser at Carrow Road denying Philippe Clement a win on opening night surely dispels any of that. Now five points adrift of safety the Canaries come into our game nursing a home record of seven defeats, one draw and zero wins. Still, I guess if you are feeling disconnected from QPR a nice defeat there in those circumstances should certainly restore that warm, fuzzy nostalgic glow.
The big winners on Tuesday night were Coventry. Two goals up, pegged back to 2-2, the Sky Blues should really have gone behind when Tommy Conway missed a stone-cold sitter for second-placed Middlesbrough. Frank Lampard’s men scored twice late on to win 4-2. They’re now ten points clear and have scored a ridiculous 47 times in 17 games.
As Boro, sans-Rob Edwards, start to falter from their surprise start, a couple of the pre-season favourites are starting to motor up behind them having initially been quite poor through the opening weeks. Ipswich are now up to fourth and three points off second after their 2-0 victory at Hull, while Southampton have cut loose with wins and goals since dismissing Will Still and hammered Leicester 3-0 to move to within two points of the play-offs. Caretaker manager Tonda Eckert must be a shoo-in for the St Mary’s hot seat now after four straight wins and 13 goals scored. Marti Cifuentes, meanwhile, will be lucky to see that reunion at Loftus Road a month from now.
Southampton were five up before half time at the weekend against Charlton, who previously had the best home defence in the league. Nathan Jones’ side took another beating on Tuesday at his former club Stoke, who are staying the course at the top and currently sit second. Derby, meanwhile, climbed to seventh with an away win at Swanselona, who really are going to have to be careful with their latest leftfield managerial appointment – two places and four points above the drop zone on a run of four straight losses.
Preston Knob End, still somehow fifth, drew 1-1 at Watford with a goal from former Hornets flop Daniel Jebbison. Isn’t that always the way.
Four other games tonight including our own, led by West Brom, where Ryan Mason is coming under pressure, at home to Birmingham City, who are also starting to find their scoring and winning touch.
Sheffield United look to follow a 3-0 win in the Steel City derby with another at home to struggling Portsmouth, while Sheff Wed try and recover from that humbling with a very difficult trip to Millwall where a win will put Alex Neil’s side back in the top six.
Disney FC v Bristol City rounds out the midweek.
Referee: After enjoying the weekend in the hands of the Championship’s most experienced, and in our opinion best, official, James Linington, we’re back in the rather more shaky control of newbie Adam Herczeg tonight. Details.
- QPR beat Hull City 3-2 at the weekend for a first win in five games. They have lost only one of their last six away games (at Derby) with three wins and a draw in that time, but come into this without a win in the last two road trips (D1 L1).
- Blackburn won just two of their first 11 league and cup games but have rallied of late with four wins from the last five including a 2-1 away at Preston in a Lancashire derby on Friday night.
- Three of those four victories for Valerian Ismael’s side have come away from home. Blackburn have won only once at Ewood this season, against Will Still’s Southampton, and only bottom two Sheff Wed and Norwich have lost more home games than Rovers’ five so far. Birmingha, Norwich, Swansea, Sheff Utd and Derby have all won here already.
- That weekend victory was the first time QPR have trailed twice in a game and come back to win in 19 years, since John Gregory’s Rangers beat Crystal Palace 4-2 at Loftus Road in November 2006.
- Having conceded nine goals in their first two away league games this season, QPR have conceded just four in their subsequent six on the road.
- Ilias Chair had already scored more goals against Hull City than any other club even before the weekend, and now has five career goals against the Tigers.
- QPR have a notoriously dreadful recent record at Ewood Park. A 2-1 win here there season before last, with goals from Joe Hodge and Ilias Chair, is their only success in 14 visits going back to October 1999 when Stuart Wardley and Kevin Gallen scored in a 2-0 victory which cost Brian Kidd his job here. The R’s have lost 11 of the 14 games since then, including seven of the last eight, and have failed to score in nine of those games. They were comfortably beaten here last season 2-0 when Jonathan Varane was sent off in the first half.
- There hasn’t been a draw between these sides in 15 meetings going back to September 2016 when Tjaronn Chery scored a brilliant free kick in a 1-1 at Loftus Road. Blackburn have won ten of the meetings since then but did lose the last one, 2-1 at Loftus Road in February when Michi Frey and Jack Colback scored for QPR.
- Blackburn manager Valerien Ismael has won five of his six league games against QPR (L1) with West Brom and Barnsley, including all three at home by an aggregate score of 9-1.
- Jack Supple tells us only three players have scored more league goals (excluding play-offs) in the EFL in 2025 than Rumarn Burrell (17 goals). Burrell has six goals for QPR and 11 for Burton since the turn of the year. He is the first player to score in four consecutive league appearances at Loftus Road since Tjaronn Chery in April 2016 (five in a row). Ilias Chair and Jimmy Dunne chipping in at the weekend was welcome though – prior to Saturday only Burrell had scored for Rangers in six games.
- Tonight will be QPR’s fourth league midweek fixture of the season. Each time, we’ve played on a Wednesday on the following Saturday we’ve faced an opponent who played Tuesday.
In our Prediction League for 2025/26 we’ll once again be handing out prizes for being top at Christmas and overall winner from The Art of Football - sample the merch from our sponsor’s newly extended QPR collection here. QPR_Hibs won last season’s Prediction League at a canter and is lending his thoughts to this year’s previews –it’s JB007007 had his lead at the top of this year’s table cut to three points last weekend...
"Back in the early 2000s, a journalist friend of mine was lucky enough to get an interview to potentially become a writer for one of the big music magazines of the day – I forget which one exactly – but it seemed like a massive deal to me at the time. A few days before the meeting I asked him if he’d done all the necessary preparation, but he told me not to worry as he was just going to ‘wing it.’ ‘So, what will you say if they ask you what your favourite Beatles album is?’ I enquired. ‘The Beatles?’ he replied, ‘how can they expect me to know about The Beatles when ALL of them died before I was born?’ Needless to say he didn’t get the job.
"If I’m being honest, the fact that QPR are playing away at Blackburn this midweek had somewhat passed me by until now, but don’t worry, as I think I can ‘wing’ this prediction piece without anybody noticing.
"Saturday’s game against Hull at Loftus Road was hugely enjoyable and was helped, I thought, by a decent performance from the referee and his assistants. I was also pleased to see both teams trying to win the game rather than feign injury or waste time. The return of JCS at centre back for an hour was a welcome bonus, even if he could have been stronger in his defending for the second goal. Surely, he’s not going to play all three games this week, but I would start him on Wednesday, if he is available. RND was excellent again and Mad Ben Mbengue looked slightly less like a walking red card at right back. I thought that I’d read that Jimmy Dunne has been carrying an injury of late and possibly it may be a chance to rest him for this game.
"The last 20 minutes against Hull showed that Kolli and Burrell can play together, and I feel that Kone may be dropped to the bench and used as an impact substitution late on. Madsen, Varane and Chair start, which leaves one place for a tiny winger – choose your favourite from Poku, Smyth, Saito or Dembele.
"Blackburn currently have 19 points, just three fewer than QPR, but only four of these have come from their seven games at Ewood Park. Indeed, their only home victory has been against the Will Still era (a.k.a. very poor) Southampton. This is a totally winnable game for the R’s and I’ll be disappointed with anything less than a victory.”
QPR_Hibs Prediction: Blackburn 1-2 QPR. Scorer – Rumarn Burrell
LFW’s Prediction: Blackburn 1-1 QPR. Scorer – Rumarn Burrell
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