Nicolas Madsen has completed his redemption arc by taking the two main player of the season awards for 2026/27, while manager Julien Stephan is going increasingly public on what the club needs if it’s to build on his first season in charge.

QPR (16-10-18 WWDDLL 13th) v Derby (19-9-16 WLWLWL 8th)

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A club that afforded not one, but two returns to a player called Mark Lazarus is clearly not afraid of a good comeback story. Nor one that tries to recover from 4-0 down at half time quite as often as we do.

I remember hurdling rows of seats in the away end at Notts County after a 3-0 defeat to get to Paul Furlong and offer him my opinions on his ‘performance’. Five months later he had me in floods of tears with a goal against Oldham Athletic that I still rate as pound for pound my best moment following this club. A year later he scored in a game that won us promotion and a year further still he was top scoring in the Championship approaching 40-years-old, cementing him as one of my all-time favourite players. From the worst kind of ‘Chelsea wanker’ mercenary - never fit, picking up a wage at the end of his career - to a QPR club hero. It was quite a ride.

There hasn’t really been a story like it since here. Not on that scale. Nicolas Madsen, however, must run it close.

Our end of term report on him last season was savage. It talked about a lack of bravery, a timid and unhappy player, a person on whom his height was completely wasted given his total aversion to ever heading the ball or going into the box for set pieces, a player actively trying not to get involved in games and withdrawing so far from the action he may as well have paid for a seat in the Paddocks. Talk about the power of patience if you want but he was every bit as bad as fellow big-money import Zan Celar and their trajectories this season felt identical – can we find anybody stupid enough to take them off our hands? It was difficult to see any way back.

To go from that to now, where the team barely functions without him and he’s today been named both the supporters’ and the players’ player of the year is remarkable. You’d have taken a sizeable amount of money off me a year ago if you’d bet on this outcome. There’s still work to do - I’d like more goals, and I’d like to see him impact away games as he has home ones – but to see him come into that game at Millwal last week and seize control of a totally beaten and lost midfield in the way he did was seriously impressive and bodes very well for what third year Nico Madsen could look like at this level.

There’s plenty of credit to go around here…

Julian Stéphan has seemed to understand and ‘get’ Madsen as a player and where he can fit into a team far more than Marti Cifuentes did, or was willing to try. Part of being a ‘development club’ and the role of a manager within it is taking those rough diamonds and polishing them, not giving up because they don’t quite fit the way you want to play.

The media team, and Matt Webb in particular, also deserve a back pat for the sort of interview you don’t usually see from official club channels back in the summer. It recast Madsen from expensive flop and product of a failed recruitment operation to human being desperate to succeed but trapped in his own head. It built empathy, bought time, humanised him, and got the supporters on his side when they weren’t previously. There’s another brilliant bit of content this week with Steve Cook’s pretty hilarious sons (get them their own show) and the club should do much more of this. Billy Rice used to be absolutely brilliant at these little ‘non-conventional' bits with members of Ian Holloway’s team, normalising and humanising the footballers, making us like them, building on the team’s image and feel that we’re all in it together. Again, only 18 months before, the QPR fans hated their players and vice versa. A media team can really help the team on the pitch if it gets creative and thinks outside the box.

With Madsen, even Francis in the club shop has mucked in, spending time with him at the end of last season to offer a different perspective. I love it when QPR do ridiculous things like this. Big money signing cratering? Send in the retail manager. Biggest small club, smallest big club - lean into it. It's a strength.

Ultimately, though, it’s down to the Dane himself. To show the level of character he has to come back from where he was is tremendous on his part. I wouldn’t have touched him with a ten foot barge pole a year ago, but now you look at how he’s been able to not only adapt to a level that seemed totally alien to him, but also recover from the situation he was in 12 months ago, and it shows real stones and courage. It says a lot about a person, to me. A fantastic success story for QPR in 25/26.

There’s also been some heavy lifting from senior players. Jimmy Dunne is clearly very close with Madsen and has helped him through his early struggles.

That’s going to become an important point as we go through this summer into next season. The club had already let Michi Frey go permanently in January, and long serving Sam Field left on loan to Norwich too. Field returns shortly, under contract, but you’d be a brave man to bet on him still being here beyond the end of the transfer window – I could see him playing in this fixture next season, mind. Steve Cook had an emotional farewell this week, Rhys Norrington Davies is (rightly) unlikely to be kept on despite finally getting off the mark in the Swansea defeat, and the two senior goalkeepers on staff are also certain to leave. Given how disappointing Isaac Hayden has been there’s no guarantees he’ll be around either. All of which leaves the average age of the squad heading in exactly the direction the club has said is its stated aim, but leaves the team painfully short of Championship experience, physicality and game smarts. Millwall first half last week versus Millwall second half last week a timely reminder of what that looks like in practice.

Julien Stéphan was careful when speaking to the media today to make clear he was referring to “personality and desire to take responsibility” rather than age, and that people like Madsen, Dunne, Ronnie Edwards and others could easily grow into these roles, but - as West London Sport has reported - the Frenchman is increasingly making noises about what he wants next season, and what he wants next season is more experience and a better injury record. He may be preaching the possibility of Edwards and co filling the breach this afternoon, after the WLS reports got a decent reaction, but Stéphan has been very clear in other recent press conferences…

“First, to keep our best players on the pitch for a longer time. Second, probably to have more maturity in some situations, because we have a very young team,” he said here.

“It’s fantastic to develop young players, but in this league if have only young players it doesn’t work. You need to have some experience. You need some maturity. You need to have some players who know exactly what it means to play against different kinds of teams and different kinds of football. It’s really important for the young players to find consistency, but they need to have some experienced players around them,” here.

Brighton and Brentford are repeatedly held up as the gold standard for clubs like us, which is ridiculous because of the proprietary data models their owners possess and we can never hope to emulate, but if you look at what those two have done you’ll see this in their thinking too: James Milner has 20 appearances for Albion this year at 40; Jordan Henderson has played more than 30 times for the Bees at 35. Brighton have resigned Pascal Gross (34), have Danny Welbeck (35) in attack, previously let Adam Lallana play out his years there, and are captained by Lewis Dunk (34). It’s a mixed ecology. The best teams and squads have balance. Not every player in your team can be a development prospect. The lowest average age in the division is not a trophy to compete for. Sunderland tried the same and ended up in an absolute crater with Mick Beale in charge, before modifying their approach, adding the odd Alan Browne, and winning promotion under a studious French manager. It is there for us if we get the blend right, but a blend is what it has to be. Stéphan is exactly right, for me.

We’ve often said ‘what manager wants manager gets’ doesn’t work at QPR, and that people like Harry Redknapp and Mark Hughes have repeatedly damaged this club by taking short term options designed to keep them in a job for another five games rather than benefit the club for the next five years. But Stéphan is the third manager, after Warbs Warburton and Cifuentes before him, to essentially make the point that this ‘development model’ is all well and good, but the kids have got to be good enough, and they’ve got to be surrounded by a good, experienced, hard-to-beat core of players who know how to compete in a tough league if they’re to flourish. The season is long, and hard. Stéphan has already gone ‘rogue’ once this year, ditching the “game model” after the Coventry disaster and going far more direct with far less possession. It’ll be interesting to see now if his tenure develops the same way his predecessors’ did after going public with their thoughts, and what the reaction of the fans will be if it does.

I’ve been surprised, several times recently, at the QPR support base’s tolerance levels. Cifuentes not appearing at the fans forum, then a much-promised second forum with him involved not materialising, people swallowed. The manner of his departure saw the majority turn on him, not the club. The Paul Furlong thing barely landed.

Last week’s season ticket price rises the same. Thank you for my price rise sir, may I have another?

As a Championship club in a corner of London with three other Premier League sides we have done a fabulous job over the last decade of bringing in hundreds of kids to get them hooked early, and lots of late teens and early 20s who love going to away games in big groups and are precisely the ones creating all the atmosphere home and away and are doing all the content and YouTube videos the club now wants to tap into. We're affordable, when others aren't.

To turn around now and clobber those groups, in some cases with rises into the hundreds of pounds, feels mad to me. The season ticket campaign was titled ‘The Next Chapter’ – well those two groups in particular are the next chapter more than most, and they’re also the ones who can least afford a chunky raise like this. The fact that not many other clubs offer these deals and it ‘brings us in line with the Championship’ entirely misses the point. We’re in a city of 16 professional clubs, some of them are among the biggest in the world, three of them are a division above and walking distance, we’ve got to fight harder and box smarter. Lee Hoos often took it in the neck for things like the family stand, but his pitch that generous concessions and the up close and personal nature of our club – “yeh you can go to Arsenal once a year, but come to QPR and you get to meet the QPR players” – was spot on. The fact no other club offers these concessions is entirely the point, we’ve got to be different. It’s called your USP.

The other reasons given for it didn’t impress much either. Inflated minimum wage, national insurance increases, inflation, London weighting, all absolutely valid and true – ask any business in this city at the moment. But, equally, by moving to digital tickets, QPR have saved many of these salaries on turnstile staff, and greatly reduced the cost of paper ticket stock. Blaming supporters for abusing the concessions when this has never been mentioned as a problem before, there’s been no publicity campaign around it, and then suddenly there’s people checking tickets for Tuesday’s game against Swansea, felt grubby. Basically, you should be grateful you had these concessions at all cos nobody else did, and it's your fault they're gone because you took the piss.

QPR lose £20m a year. You’re not making that up getting rid of U23-25 concessions. The club loses money hand over fist because they pay more than they can afford for footballers, to footballers, to agents, and to an ever-expanding support staff of Jake Humphrey job titles. That’s it. Plain and simple. It's not our fault, it's yours. As Hoos said in an interview with this site once, no club ever went into administration for ordering too much stationary. If you get 1,000 under 8s who were coming in free and get them all to pay £108 now, that’s £108,000 – or, as it’s also known, six months of Hevertton Santos. More likely, you'll lose a chunk of them as hard up parents trying to budget in one of the world's most expensive cities make a tough but necessary call.

I’m intrigued by the Supporters Advisory Board’s role in all of this. We were asked to vote for members of this last summer and a board was confirmed in September. I would have thought jacking up kids ticket prices is exactly the sort of issue this committee is there for and, to be fair, anecdotally, I understand the ‘bag of merchandise’ for kids to compensate for the raise is one of the things they’ve achieved. But the dates of their meetings aren’t published in advance, no agenda is ever made available, and until recently no minutes either.

We asked the club about this at the start of April and were told there had been three meetings so far, including an introduction with the Football Supporters Association (FSA) to begin with. The minutes of November’s meetings had not been published at that point due to an “oversight” and did subsequently appear, albeit in a very far-flung corner of the official website here. The club told us: “Notes will be housed on the Supporter Advisory Board tab on the website, with confidential items removed prior to them becoming public knowledge, and then confidential items added in once public.” Which seems to me to say if items are confidential they’ll stay confidential until they’re in the public domain, but the committee we elected can’t put them in the public domain because they’re confidential.

I understand season ticket prices were discussed at the March meeting, but as of tonight those minutes have not appeared. Isn’t it really difficult for us to lobby the reps we’ve elected on issues that are important to us (and if this isn’t important to you, fair enough, move on) if we don’t know when the meetings are or what’s being discussed in advance? Likewise, it’s going to be tricky to re-elect (or not) reps based on performance, if we don’t know how they performed on issues like this. Let’s put that down to teething problems, for now.

To finish on a positive (hey, I’m a positive person) you won’t find anybody more deserving of the supporter of the year award than Symon 'Sid' Eales. A home and awayer since the 1970s, his work on the QPR LSA, arranging travel for other supporters, fundraising for the club and the community trust, and efforts making sure another legendary fan Richard Ireland can get to the games, is above and beyond. It’s been my pleasure to sit across the aisle from Symon for many years and you will never meet a nicer, more genuine, selfless bloke than him – or a bigger QPR supporter. He is the best of us, and the award is richly deserved. Standing ovation please when he goes to collect.

When QPR get it right, they really do get it right. And vice versa.

Links >>> Rams on the right road – Oppo Profile >>> Match of the 70s – History >>> Busby on the blower – Referee >>> Official Website >>> Derby Telegraph — Local Press >>> Derby County Blog — Contributor’s blog >>> DCFCFans — Forum >>> Ground Guide – Pride Park

Below the fold

Team News: Other than we know Steve Cook is 100 and out, and we’re without Karamoko Dembele and Ziyad Larkeche long term, your guess is probably as good as mine at this point. The decision to start Kwame Poku twice in four days in meaningless games looks to have ended not only his first disastrous season with another hamstring injury but also now likely eaten into his pre-season as well – and few players need a good summer more than him. Jake Clarke-Salter will likely return for Cook and we wait to see which from the eclectic collection of Australians and South Africans get an outing here (hopefully better than the ones they got in the week). Jaylan Pearman has impressed in the development squad and Leon Scarlett has been on the bench of late aged just 16.

Derby are without striker Patrick Agyemang (not that one) who has had an impressive first year in the Championship and was all set for the World Cup in his homeland this summer but has now blown out his Achilles. All club allegiances aside, you hate to see that for a good young player.

Elsewhere: Two rounds of this nonsense to go then and with Coventry confirmed as champions there are three issues still to be settled.

The first is who goes up alongside the Sky Blues in second. In theory, four contenders here, though with an extra game to play and already in possession of second spot on 79 points and +30 goal difference this feels like Ipswich’s to lose. Millwall, in third on the same points but a far inferior +13 goal difference, really have to win tonight at the ongoing car crash that is relegated Leicester to put the pressure on Kieran McKenna’s side ahead of a trip to West Brom tomorrow and game in hand against Southampton on Tuesday. Town haven’t won at West Brom in 26 years, mind.

Southampton are away in FA Cup semi final action this weekend (must be nice) and have already won the game they were meant to be playing here at home to Blackburn last week. They can steal second by winning both their games if Millwall fail to win both of theirs and they overhaul a six-goal deficit against Ipswich – helps, of course, that they’re playing each other in one of the remaining fixtures.

Middlesbrough basically need to hope that all three of the teams above them lose at least once, and at least twice in Ipswich’s case, and they win both of theirs beginning at home to Watford on Saturday lunchtime.

Issue number two is the final play-off spot. Hull were in possession but have timed a winless run of five really badly, allowing Wrexham to sneak in with two to play. They’re both on 66 points with the Welsh side heading to a hungover Coventry on Sunday and Hull playing Charlton on Saturday (on whom more shortly). Derby are out of the picture if either Hull or Wrexham win any of their remaining games, but if they were to drop points across all four of those fixtures then the Rams can gatecrash with two victories.

Down at the bottom there’s a good deal more clarity now that West Brom have become the latest club to receive a late-season points deduction just slim enough not to plunge them into any sort of real danger – two points off, six clear with two to play and a healthy goal difference, that’ll learn em. Leicester’s run of one win in 19 games has condemned them to League One ahead of Millwall’s visit tonight. Oxford are almost certainly going with them, and will definitely be down if they fail to win their home gimme against fellow basement dweller Sheff Wed tomorrow.

After all the sweating at Blackburn (not playing) and Portsmouth (Stoke A) it’s actually Charlton who have come crashing through the pack with a run of two wins from 13 games and no victories in seven at the worst possible time. They’ll be safe with one more point, and can get that at home to Hull tomorrow, but have lost their last four at The Valley and will be vulnerable to an immediate League One return if Oxford can win both their remaining games. Charlton’s 41 goals scored is the division’s worst attack bar Sheff Wed.

Birmingham v Bristol City, Norwich v Swansea and Sheff Utd v Preston Knob End are nice days out in the sun. Bristol City have lost their final away league game in five of the last six seasons, winning the other 2-0 at QPR in 2022-23 – because of course. In 2026, Norwich have won more Championship matches (14) than any other side. It’s two more than they won in the entirety of 2025 (12).

Referee: Again, not to give the impression there’s a shortage of Championship-standard referees, but John Busby did our 6-1 win against Portsmouth and is back again this Saturday. Details.

Form

- QPR finished last season with a 14-14-18 record and 56 points in 15th position. With two games to play they have a 16-10-18 record, 58 points, and sit 13th.

- That total is already QPR’s best for four seasons, since Warbs Warburton’s side got 66 in 2021/22.

- Four straight defeats, three consecutive wins, now four without victory again for QPR coming into this one. They can still finish realistically anywhere between tenth and 17th.

- The insipid showing against Swansea on Tuesday night mean it’s 18 losses for the season, the same as relegated Leicester, and the same number of defeats QPR suffered last season.

- Since Christmas QPR have won six of 23 games, falling from one point off the play-offs on Boxing Day to 12 now with two games to go.

- Derby don’t draw much – only Sheff Utd (six) and Norwich (seven) have fewer ties than their nine. The Rams have won eight and lost seven of their last 15 games, last drawing with West Brom on January 23, their only draw in 23 games in all comps.

- Going further back, Derby have won 11 of 20 Championship games this calendar year – only Norwich, Southampton & Millwall have won more in that time. However, a run of three defeats from five has come at an inopportune moment and leaves them four points off the play-offs with two to play. Still, good improvement from a side that finished 19th and avoided relegation on the final day a year ago.

- That damage has been done recently on the road where Derby have lost six of their last seven games, including each of the last three. Conversely, a total of nine away wins so far is the same as Ipswich, Southampton and Wrexham in the top six.

- Losing to Swansea removed QPR’s final chance of adding a third ‘double’ to their total after winning home and away against Hull and Leicester. They lost 1-0 to Derby at Pride Park in the first meeting between these sides, and 4-1 at home to Ipswich who they face at Portman Road next week.

- Derby are the only Championship team that managed to lose twice to Leicester this season.

- QPR have lost 7-1, 5-0, 4-0 and 4-1 at various points this season, while also recording a 6-1 and a 4-1 win. Last week’s 0-0 bore draw with Bristol City was also their sixth scoreless draw of the season – more than any other club.

- QPR’s last 20 wins have all come with less possession than their opponent – they are yet to win a game this season where they have dominated the ball. The last time it happened was a 2-1 home win against Blackburn in February 2025.

- QPR have kept one clean sheet in their last 14 games (Bristol City H). Only Sheff Wed (84) have conceded more than Rangers’ 67. In the last ten seasons Rangers have conceded 60+ goals in a season on six occasions and 70+ on four.

- Ipswich (21) are the only team to have scored more goals in the final 15 minutes of games than QPR and Coventry (18 each).

- Rumarn Burrell and Richard Kone (ten each) are QPR’s joint top scorers this season, the first R’s players to get into double figures since Andre Gray in 2021/22 (also ten). Behind them Paul Smyth and Own Goals are tied on six. Rangers have never had more own goals scored in their favour in a single season before, and no Championship side has had more in 25/26 – Ipswich are level, also on six.

- Derby lost this fixture comfortably last season -a 4-0 Valentine’s Day massacre at Loftus Road in John Eustace’s first game in charge. The Rams avenged that with a 1-0 win at Pride Park in October when Carlton Morris scored the only goal but the R’s have won three of the last five meetings and five of the last eight.

- Carlton Morris has four goals in nine career appearances against QPR, scoring against the R’s for three different clubs (Derby, Luton, Barnsley).

- QPR have won both of their last two home league games against Derby, only once before winning three in a row (from March 1981 to September 1982). After their 1-0 win in October, the Rams are looking for their first league double over Rangers since the 2016-17 season.

- QPR have lost their final home league game in three of the last four seasons (W1), more than their previous ten beforehand (W7 D1 L2). Derby have won their final away league game in both of the last two seasons,

Prediction

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. JB007007 now surely has an unassailable lead in the race to replace last year’s winner QPR_Hubs with two games remaining despite Anti Heinola’s late run for the crown…

“You may be unfamiliar with the journalistic phrase 'knobbly monster', but you will almost certainly be aware of the concept of it. It is sometimes referred to as a ‘second mention’ and, if you ever have to write an article about anything at all, you will find yourself trying to use different synonyms for the subject matter throughout the piece. You will have noticed that I frequently change between Rangers, QPR, the Superhoops and the R’s when writing these previews. The origin of the phrase derives from a Sun journalist called Paul Hudson, who was writing a story about a fatal attack by a crocodile. Not wanting to keep repeating the same word, he used various alternatives such as dangerous reptile before inventing the brilliant term 'knobbly monster' and the rest, as they say, is history.

“I was pretty fed up with the feeble QPR performance on Tuesday night. Having battled the tube strikes to be there in person, I ventured to the Box Office and actually renewed my season ticket for next year (madness) before heading inside to a half empty stadium. The least that I expected was some routine effort but, sadly, that was only visible from the Swansea players. Unbelievably, we have reverted to that short goal kick routine, trying to pass the ball out from the back and playing ourselves into trouble. This has NEVER worked and I don’t understand why we even attempt it anymore. Some posters on the forum have suggested that Kieran Morgan had a poor game and gave the ball away too often, but I prefer that he is at least attempting to play forwards and try ambitious passes. We all saw what happened when Kealey Adamson received the ball and played a safe pass backwards every single time, which got us absolutely nowhere.

“I was very disappointed when the referee gave that ridiculous penalty decision, which everyone could see was wrong – even the Swansea manager said it was outside the box. My main disappointment was that not one of the Rangers players complained to the ref about it. I was, however, pleased that RND finally got on the scoresheet, even though it has scuppered one of Clive’s favourite stats of the season. No goals. No assists. No more!

“Derby County is the last home game of the season, and I am expecting more apathy from whatever experimental XI Stephan is instructed to play. We are in real danger of slipping down to 16th position again with only a tough fixture away at Ipswich to come in the final week. Derby have a slim chance of making the play offs and I’m certain they will have a point to prove after their midweek slip up against Norwich. This game is only going one way, unfortunately.”

QPR_Hibs Prediction: QPR 0-3 Derby. No scorer.

LFW’s Prediction: QPR 1-1 Derby. Scorer – Ilias Chair

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Pictures - Ian Randall Photography

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