Back on the horse - Preview Tuesday, 8th Mar 2016 15:33 by Clive Whittingham After the weekend set-back at Milton Keyenes, QPR start all over again tonight against Derby Country on International Bobby Zamora Day. Queens Park Rangers (12th) v Derby County (5th)Championship >>> Tuesday March 8, 2016 >>> Kick Off 19.45 >>> Weather — Overcast >>> Loftus Road, London, W12 Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink has already admitted he's finding the QPR job difficult, but that it has come as no surprise to him. Nor should it. Whatever we think of Iain Dowie, Paolo Sousa, Jim Magilton, Paul Hart, Mark Hughes and Harry Redknapp in hindsight, they're a pretty eclectic group of managers from a variety of backgrounds and varying degrees of success elsewhere to all come to Loftus Road and fail. For the latest man to try, steps forward have been hard won and steps back have been sudden and sharp. Steady improvement after a dire Christmas period saw decent results achieved against Blackburn, Rotherham and Forest before a good performance and win against Ipswich at home sparked what could easily have been mistaken for optimism around the place. Then Fulham happened. Back on the horse, Rangers didn't lose either a Bolton away game played in a hurricane or one at Sheff Wed against a very good team. They then beat play-off chasing Birmingham with plenty to spare, once more sending the best part of 4,000 Rangers fans up to Milton Keynes on Saturday in good heart. Then MK Dons happened. So presumably we’re about to gingerly dust ourselves down, nurse our bruised pride and start the process of climbing back on the horse tonight against Derby. If it follows the pattern then we'll tighten right up and probably draw here, then steadily open ourselves up over the next few before falling into a massive hole in embarrassing circumstances — Charlton at home perhaps. This can be quite frustrating — having your hopes built up every couple of weeks only for them to be dashed so comprehensively in the next match. It's also quite dull when we subsequently retreat into our shells to ensure it doesn't happen again. But that is all it should be, quite frustrating, dull... This is merely preparation for next season, and learning what doesn't work is every bit as valuable as finding out what does in that context. We are not capable of staging any kind of late burst for the play-offs, and anybody talking as if we are is not only seriously deluded but also causing a problem because defeats at the moment don't really matter but often provoke a reaction akin to the end of civilisation as we know it. A reaction now enraged still further by Neil Warnock getting a couple of good results up at Rotherham — a stick some are presumably now going to beat the club with until the end of Neil Warnock's career/life. We did a bit of research after the weekend loss and found that this site's page impressions jumped by 10,000 per day after the team had lost to Fulham compared to when it played well and beat Ipswich and Birmingham. I use page impressions, as opposed to comments or message board posts, because it shows that not only do people not want to come to the site and talk on the message board about a good performance and result, they don't even want to visit it to read what other people are saying about it. Lose, however, and it's a different story. Even allowing for the idea that angry people with a complaint are far more likely to speak up than satisfied people without one, 10,000 clicks per day seems excessive. It's as if there are some who have taken against Hasselbaink, Les Ferdinand and/or Lee Hoos and actually, in a perverse way, dislike or ignore QPR winning because it means they can't hammer them for another week at least, before then wading in swinging when a defeat comes along. Rangers have actually only lost two of their last ten games, by the way. It's a product of the way the club has been run that people expect QPR to be a Premier League club, or at least competing to become one, despite the infrastructure and club history suggesting the opposite. Whenever that hasn't looked like happening, or come under threat, the manager has been sacked and big money has been spent on players. That can't keep happening, and if the end of this season is useful to Hasselbaink to prepare for next season then hopefully it will also serve to gently bring the majority around to that way of thinking as well. Let's enjoy taking the piss out of Richard Keogh all night for goodness sake. Links >>>A little trip down Wembley Way — History>>>The Derby Way — Interview>>>LFW interview for Derby blog>>>Wayne Rooney’s glove puppet — Referee And over, and over, and over, and over again… TuesdayTeam News: The curse of MK struck QPR again on Saturday, with Player of the Season-elect Grant Hall limping off on the stroke of half time with what looked like a nasty foot injury. Expect Paul Konchesky, despite his abysmal performance in the second half at the weekend, to come in down the left, James Perch to move to the right and Nedum Onuoha to line up in the centre if he, as expected, misses out. Or will we see the seventy eighth coming of Clint Hill? Alejandro Faurlin, a previous victim of QPR's trips to Milton Keynes, should be pushing for a return from his thigh injury given the performance of the midfield in his absence. Bradley Johnson missed Derby's weekend win against Huddersfield with a bad case of the twats but could return tonight despite continuing to be plagued by the condition. Johnny Russell and Craig Bryson played well off the bench and may start but Stephen Warnock has been taken up to the woods during the night and released into the wild. Elsewhere: Tuesday night in the Championship means another opportunity to torture the fans for whom their club means so much they can't bear to miss a game. One would have thought the Sheffield Owls and Big Spending Burnley could have happily faced each other tonight, leaving Brighton to host Tarquin and Rupert for an evening soireee. Instead, it's the Sheffield side on the South Coast, and Burnley at Craven Cottage. You wouldn't want to go from Ipswich to Bolton for a bag of chips either, nor Huddersfield from Reading. It's a full programme though, so plenty of places to go and have the mediocrity spooned into your eyes like warm diarrhoea. The Mad Chicken Farmers at home to Brum, for instance, reeks of pure averageness while Cardiff v The Champions of Europe is so lame these days I'm not sure the fans can even be bothered to beat each other up any more. The Trees are drawing with Preston, and Wolves likely the same against the Wurzels. That just leaves The Franchise visiting Belgium's Finest in a relegation six-pointer and Boro going to Warnock's Roherham in a top v bottom clash with Tigers Tigers Rah Rah Rah v Brentford — another nice local trip for a midweek night — falling victim to Hull's cup commitments. Referee: Neil Swarbrick is back at Loftus Road this evening having just returned from a year-long missionary gig setting up a sustainable community for spineless referees in Wayne Rooney’s lower colon. Read about his many shaftings of QPR by clicking here. FormQPR: The MK Dons defeat at the weekend continued a recent pattern of steady improvement across two draws and a win, followed by a limp loss. Rangers had solidified after the Fulham defeat with draws at Bolton and Sheff Wed before a fine win against Birmimgham preceded the MK disaster. That was only the second defeat in ten games for the R’s, but they’ve drawn five of the others to restrict movement either up or down the Championship table and currently sit twelfth. Only Fulham, Forest and Hull have won on this ground this season but eight of the other 14 fixtures have finished level. Rangers have hosted eight of the current top ten so far this season, losing only once to Hull and more recently beating Birmingham and Ipswich. Derby: The Rams lost only one of 19 matches up to the end of 2015 but have rather fallen in a hole since, the weekend home win against Huddersfield not withstanding. That was their third win from four matches coming into this, but those are their only league wins in a dozen outings and they’ve slipped from first to fifth with five defeats in that time. Only Ipswich, Hull and Boro (eight) have won more away matches than Derby’s seven in the Championship this season but their recent road record of three defeats, two draws and a win from the last six is less impressive. This is their third London away match in four trips away from Pride Park — they drew at Fulham and beat Brentford in the previous two. Prediction:Reigning Prediction League champion isawqpratwhitecity tells us… "We never seem to catch teams when they're weak. Derby have got nine points out of their last twelve. But prior to that, from the start of this year, they managed just three points, all draws, out of 21. On our side of the equation, a loss under Jimmy has always been followed by a draw in the league. I think that is because he tightens the team up - becomes more risk-averse. But I'm especially worried about this game because I don't think Hall is going to be fit, and a resurgent Derby may run rampant through our back line." Jim’s Prediction: QPR 0-2 Derby. No Scorer. LFW’s Prediction: QPR 1-1 Derby. Scorer — SebPolter The Twitter @loftforwords Pictures — Action Images Photo: Action Images Please report offensive, libellous or inappropriate posts by using the links provided.
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