After going four years without having a striker reach double figures in the Championship now QPR have two, and the big successes of this year’s recruitment feature prominently in the final part of our end of term wrap.

If you want to hear the LFW panel of Simmo, Andy, Jack Supple and myself debate the marks for this year’s report you can do so via all three subscription tiers in our Patreon. Part three, strikers, is live now.

16 – Rumarn Burrell A

In this age of rumour and counter rumour, where every other Twitter account is a “registered football agent” or “freelance journalist”, where ‘ITK’ accounts battle to outdo each other and a chancer like Fabrizio Romano is able to become a global megastar, it’s not often QPR sneak a body in through the back door late one night without anybody seeing.

Nine times out of ten we’ve got the write up ready to go. That can leave us nursing pieces on George Cox that never see the light of day, Kieffer Moore all penned and ready to go as he travelled down from stricken Wigan to complete the deal only for Cardiff to get wind of it and blow us out of the water. The Darren Ambrose Memorial Lounge contains the busts of many what might have beens. Where would we have gone, for instance, had Les got his first choice pair of Moore and Lawrence Shankland that summer, instead of Big Lyndon The Amazing Non-Scoring Striker and Macauley Bonne, who spent a very unhappy spell here – much of it offside.

Rumarn Burrell’s unheralded arrival from Burton Albion last summer was one of those occasions to catch us on the hop, and a long night ensued putting it all together. While Greg got to work on the videos, I started delving in for the colour piece and the first attraction was obvious. Burrell was quick, which the previous season’s QPR lacked badly, but for me it was the list of former clubs that stood out – Scunthorpe, Grimsby, Middlesbrough, Bradford, Kilmarnock, Falkirk and Cove Rangers. Now, I’ve lived in some of these places and, let me tell you, it’s pretty damn bleak (the issue with smack is it can be very moreish). Moving into these northern outposts that existed for a thing and then they took the thing away (fish, steel, Henry Afrika’s Nightclub) when you grew up in London, or Birmingham in Burrell’s case, is a significant culture shock. This was a boy desperate to play professional football.

Now, that may seem fairly obvious. The dedication and sacrifice required to become a professional footballer in this country is immense, nobody stumbles into it accidentally without ever really giving a toss. But I don’t, in general, think that the academy system as a whole produces (m)any players that work for clubs like us. They’re often too slight, too light, too technical… they haven’t been challenged in the way they will be immediately when they step out into Championship football in QPR colours where the deck is stacked against them and us in two of every three games we play. It’s why, at the moment, I struggle to get too far out of my chair at the development squad winning cups. Come back to me when four or five of them are starting first team games regularly. Harry Murphy, who captained the cup winning team against Brentford a year ago, has just been released by Bracknell Town to sign for Leatherhead. Only nine players from that squad remain with the club a year later. The gulf is huge.

What I like a lot more is Bright Osayi-Samuel types who were willing to go into the far flung, dark corners of a decaying country to play some proper men’s football, even if it meant spending a winter in Blackpool, Grimsby, or wherever the fuck it is Cove Rangers play. It was one of the things I liked most about Kwame Poku. Jamie Mackie – Milton Keynes, Exeter, Plymouth. I think you see it in these players, and the way they play. You certainly see it in Rumarn – Christ that boy never stops running. He runs and he runs and he runs, and he hassles defenders, and he works the channels. A constant, unrelenting, pain in the arse. I would loathe playing against him. Piss off and leave me alone for two minutes will you please? The work rate and the speed and fitness level make him a permanent pest. He stretches the opposition wonderfully well. Picked up a couple of naughty yellow cards as well, particularly for a nasty tackle in the Derby home game, but I don’t mind that at all. Our strikers have been powderpuff for too long. Get amongst it.

That is what you need to play for QPR. Jim Frayling has said it on our Patreon podcasts – this is not a striker factory. There are not a steady stream of Adam Armstrong, Sammie Szmodcis, Ben Brereton-Diaz types coming out of here like they do at Blackburn, or Billy Sharp, Gary Hooper, Andy Keogh, Steven McLean, Martin Paterson that used to roll out of Scunthorpe every year. It is tough playing up front for Rangers. Only Andre Gray has reached double figures since 2021/22 began, nobody has beaten 15 in the ten years we’ve been in the Championship (the two that got that many, Hugill and Wells, were both on loan). The last person to better that was Charlie Austin in our relegation season 2014/15. The last person to get 20+ regular season goals in our colours is still Andy Thomson in 2001/02. The closest we’ve ever come to replacing Charlie Austin was signing him back again. We’ve signed some ropey stuff trying (Bonne, Dykes, Sylla, Polter, Washington, Smith) but whether you’re any good or not, you have to make it happen for yourself. Rumarn Burrell makes it happen for himself.

The fans respond immediately to this sort. Mackie remains a folk hero here long after he retired to the Sky Sports studio. On the interactive ratings voted for by you guys this year Burrell was one of only two (Ben Hamer the other) to breach the 6.00 average. He was the closest (5.93) to doing so in the LFW marks (these scores are unfortunately skewed downwards this year by the amount of times the team got thrashed and I gave everybody a two or three). In 23 starts we gave star man on eight occasions, and you guys on five. The excitement at seeing a striker, a QPR striker, give a defender a 15-yard head start over the ground, beat him with pitch to spare, and then chip the goalkeeper to seal a 3-1 away win, was the sort of erection you could see from space. That it came away at Disney FC made it all the sweeter. Stick that on your documentary. RIP Conor Coady’s career.

This makes him sound like your standard work horse. Round of applause for closing the goalkeeper down at every clearance. He looks far from that to me. First touch would occasionally make a nice penalty but Burrell was clinical last year with ten goals from 21 shots on target and double figures by Christmas off just 23 starts. He has the best goals contribution per game/minute stats since Ebere Eze was here. It’s a crying shame he got injured when he did, and we’re singularly fortunate that attempts to drag him back in for end of season dead rubbers didn’t rob him of a pre-season (as it seemingly will Poku) because if he gets a good summer and hits the ground running in August with a year at this level already under his belt he can be anything he wants to be. The silver lining to the hamstring injury suffered in The Battle of Sheffield Wednesday is he’s still here. Had he played another couple of months and got to the 15+ goals he surely would have done you’d be struggling to hold onto him already.

Big stuff. Prize from the middle shelf.

In numbers…

Interactive Ratings — 6.00

22 – Richard Kone A/B

And after trawling through that midfield piece earlier in the week with more D’s than the Bonnie Blue Christmas Album, how nice it is to be effusive in praise of not one but two recent QPR recruits. Richard Kone, for me, might be Him.

Matt Bloomfield knew what he had as Wycombe manager. Kone, as a teenager, new to the country, had scored 42 goals in 48 games for Athletic Newham in the Essex Senior League (again, playing some men’s football - tick). By the time he’d clocked the thick end of 90 goals in 110 starts, and with immigration status approved, he set about scoring 28 goals in 46 starts and 28 subs for Wanderers in League One. It’s not often that happens, somebody steps out of that level of non-league into the professional game and hits the ground running like that. I’ve watched a lot of Jaze Kabia this year – Irish lad, picked up by Grimsby from Truro as they were promoted from National League South, bagged 24 in 57 appearances and will either get a move this summer or lead the Mariners to promotion next year, but that’s League Two, and Kabia is 25. He’s also not Richard Kone. Kone’s a bit of a freaky beast.

Bloomfield tried to buy him to help save Luton from relegation in January last year. Fees up to a fairly ridiculous £7m were reported, and if Wycombe turned that down (they surely didn’t) to pursue one flawed play-off push they’re mad. Swansea were linked this summer, which perked my interest as we shop in similar shallow waters these days, but I still couldn’t believe he was in our ballpark. To see QPR pick him up, late in the window, for a fee reported in the region of just £3m, blew my mind. Now, as we’ve said previously when people were creaming their knickers over how much money we’d supposedly received for Sinclair Armstrong and Lyndon Dykes, let’s wait for the accounts. My suspicion is we’ve spent a serious amount of money by our standards on this team. It’s offset by the Eze sell on, but we’ve been waiting for that Eze sell on for a while and this is what we’ve got for it – all through these end of terms we’ve been reporting on Saito, Poku, Clarke-Salter, Santos, Esquerdinha, Dembele… where we’ve spent money and committed wages and at the moment are left holding sand. Richard Kone, I don’t really mind what they paid.

He scored three goals in his first four appearances. His first, late in the 7-1 debacle at Coventry, was described by the club’s Twitter feed as “Kone heads home”, to which the obvious reply was “don’t fucking blame him”. In Julien Stéphan’s game model-ditching, unashamedly direct, four-four-putain-two at home to Charlton, Kone strode through on goal from the halfway line and I have never been so confident since John Spencer stalked these halls that a QPR striker was obviously going to finish that chance. Other side of the international break at Wrexham and he opened a nice warm can of shut the hell up from 25 yards.

I already had a wide on the size of the Blackwall Tunnel by this point but there have, inevitably, been peaks and troughs since. There was a typically muscular goal away at Bristol City, which he’d later replicate at home to Leicester, but that was his only strike in 15 games. He can look leggy, he can look heavy – that is a big arse, my goodness. Like Burrell, occasionally it’s difficult to tell his first touch from a shot. But even when he’s not playing well, he gets you up the pitch. Kevin Gallen talks about this a lot, and did it a fair bit in his career – who is going to get us up the pitch? Who is going to hold the ball, high on the field, away from home, in tough circumstances? Who’s going to make bad balls into good ones? Even when he’s not playing well, Kone does this. Blackburn away he came on as a sub and immediately the team was 20 yards further forward than it had been.

Another who’s come up the hard way and is desperate to succeed, Kone is hyper available. Only Jimmy Dunne (3,482) played more minutes than Kone’s (3,331), despite a period through the spring where he was more Esio tape than man and had his knee strapped to the size of a moon of Jupiter. He’s desperate to play, he’s ambitious, he’s brave, and it shows.

He’s had some lousy games, nobody can deny this. Stoke away was pitiful, every attack floundering on Kone’s heels or a daft foul on a willing recipient. Kone has conceded more fouls than any other player in the Championship this season – 75 in 43 games. It’s no use if you knock it up to your centre forward and it’s immediately coming back at you because he’s given a daft foul away (Charlton away, like Stoke a week or so prior, was equally as painful for this). But I quite like that stat. I want our centre forward to be a big, nasty bastard. Heider Helguson was all elbows and broken cheekbones, and we haven’t had much of that since bar perhaps Matt Smith. Diego Simeone said it of Diego Costa, what’s another scar on a tiger? We’ve been too nice, too easy to play against, to meek, too weak, for too long. I want defenders looking down the fixture list thinking “ah, shit, not him”, I want them waking up the day after in pain. In the Charlton home game…

“At the start of the second half Kone absolutely bodied Lloyd Jones on the edge of the Loft End box. Wallop. Get that into you. No reason for it all, wholly unjustified, totally gratuitous, and wonderful. Jones was sent flying back onto his arse and landed around the penalty spot. Winded and wondering what had hit him, he angrily pointed at Kone, who just laughed at him. Yeh, course. What of it? Get used to it. Don’t make me put you on your arse again.”

His pace may preclude him from going much higher, but there’s big Chris Wood energy here. He scored at West Ham, which won’t do him any harm at all, and his goal against champions Coventry at Loftus Road was a work of outstanding natural beauty. After ten years in this dog league, how nourishing to have a moment like that to get you off your seat in celebration first, and have you retreating immediately to phones and excited F Block chatter about how he’d done it second. How has he done that? And as videos bleed through, it’s better than you even imagined you’d seen with your own eyes. Go through the 11 goals he ended up with (a sitter at Hull we won’t dwell on) and there are all types there – headers, tidy finishes, immense pieces of skill, long range barn burners, happy accidents, poacher’s efforts…

It means we’ll be quite lucky, in my opinion, to hang onto him through this summer. If I was putting together a Championship side next year with a parachute payment or a bit of money to spend I’d be thinking let’s spend that £6-8m now, so we don’t have to fork, over twice that in a year’s time. Maybe I’m wrong, maybe he’ll be Dexter Blackstock/Lyndon Dykes and settle in as a steady 12-goal second tier striker. I don’t see it, though. A better comparison might be Zan Vipotnik, who this time last year had scored seven times in 26 starts and 18 sub appearances for a lower midtable Swansea side and, to my memory, nobody had noticed. With a year of Championship under his belt he burst out this year into 25 goals in 36 starts and 11 sub apps. That’s all there for Richard in 26/27. I can see that.

There is an argument that Rumarn Burrell scored as many as he did because we’re a rare team that plays two up front and having to wrestle with Kone is job enough for most centre back pairings at this level. Burrell perhaps scored his goals because Kone was occupying would-be challengers elsewhere - Kone was second top for chances created among Championship strikers. Burrell’s second at home to West Brom was a prime example – Kone chasing a lost cause, catching George Campbell lazily hoping a ball went out of play, establishing possession for Rangers, beasting the panicking defender out the way, carrying it into the area, and putting the thing on a plate for his partner. For all the problems it creates elsewhere, I do love Stéphan’s bravery in picking an old-fashioned two up front when he’s got an old fashioned two up front to pick. There aren’t many better, more promising, combinations than this at our level, with higher ceilings and shifting on Sinclair Armstrong, Charlie Kelman and Lyndon Dykes to replace them with these two is the best business the club has done in a very, very long time.

It does create a weird situation where Burrell and Kone are often the wrong way round as a nine and ten, and that’s the big debate for next season if they’re still here. But if they are, we’re right in the conversation. Both got into double figures in year one and could easily explode in year two.

In numbers…

Interactive Ratings — 5.54

23 – Daniel Bennie C

“Fuck it, why not?” The club beeped it out of Daniel Bennie’s post-match interview. I’d have stuck it to the dressing room wall.

The Australian’s spectacular first league goal for Queens Park Rangers was, first and foremost, the decisive moment in a 3-1 away win at Hull City. But the manner of it, the style of it, the distance on it and the reason he took it on in the first place was not only manna for the 700+ faithful behind the goal at the far end, but everybody who is subjected to the tedium of modern football.

If you want to quickly farm yourself some social media engagement, stick a Match of the Day Goal of the Month montage on from 15-20 years ago. Sit back and watch the clicks roll in as the Lightning Seeds play Life of Riley and Paul Scholes volleys in off the underside of the Villa Park crossbar from 35 yards, or Michael Essien walks onto a right footer from somewhere out in the Stamford Bridge car park, Dennis Bergkamp nutmegs two defenders and chips the goalkeeper or Matt Le Tissier humiliates some poor sod into the top corner. Smile at the empty sky and wait for the moment a million chances may all collide - often all in the same month. Des’ moustache would twitch knowingly as he tells you there’s “one or two to pick from” before offering you some Premium Bonds if you match 1, 2 and 3 with Alan Hansen.

You don’t see goals like that any more because football has become an over-coached, robotic snoozefest. Coaching staffs and back offices are packed with data scientists, economics graduates and mathematicians. Dugouts populated by mechanical bores like Thomas Frank. And they say that, actually, Paul Scholes’ volley only had an xG of 0.013 and had he played another pass or two and had somebody taken a shot from five yards out instead he’d have had an xG of 0.28 and why don’t you just shoot me in the head with a massive sawn off? Data says corners, data says long throws, data says “penalty area penetration” and we sit there bored out of our minds remembering when we used to come here for a good time while the television companies flash up a graphic telling you how many “touches in the opposition box” each side has had. Data does not say shoot from 30 yards, and so no fucker does – it’s actively, aggressively coached out of them. These people think that Trevor Sinclair goal was a bad thing.

Daniel Bennie’s “fuck it, why not” said a lot about him too. His potential appears in flashes. Blink and you miss it sometimes, but he’ll do something that makes you sit up and think we might have something here, as the A League drains out of him and his Championship tank fills up. In pre-season against Heerenveen he casually lobbed the goalkeeper with a first time shot from 30 yards – because, fuck it, why not. I’m thinking they should get this printed on a t-shirt. Or a hat, with corks. Only really against Derby at Loftus Road, where he was the outstanding QPR player on the pitch and even more unlucky than the rest of his team to finish on the losing side having dominated much of the game, has he put together a full, complete performance across a game – great assist for Harvey Vale, should probably have been more selfish and got a goal for himself in the second half.

It’s fits and starts at the moment though. It’s difficult to know what and where is his best position, and all the ones he wants to play are currently overpopulated. Started up front at Ipswich on the final day he was lousy, but that was to be expected in those circumstances. Given a similar opportunity at Oxford he was also poor, which is less forgivable. Only two goals for the year, one of them against Plymouth, is not good. But he’s only 20, he’s only started seven games of senior football in this country so far. When he misses a late sitter at the Kassam, or two late on at Preston that should have won that game for us, I’m still inclined to think it’s a positive he got himself into that space and that position. That tolerance is finite though, it’s an important year for him next season.

I wouldn’t be adverse to him spending at least the first half of it out on loan. Unlike Esquerdinha and a few others, I think a Wycombe-sort would take a punt on Bennie. He’s physical, and getting more so – bulking out and growing up very quickly. I’d be very keen to see him do the first half of next season in League One if it’s possible, with the idea he comes back for the second half of the season and gets a dozen starts to make it his own. Everyone will be injured by then anyway so he’ll get straight in.

In numbers…

Interactive Ratings — 5.07

26 – Rayan Kolli C

A real enigma.

One would think this is a player, a personality, and a story the club would be hanging its hat on – if you could get one over his barnet. A QPR fan and former ball boy, who came all the way through the academy at a club that wants to present itself as a development ground with clear first team pathways, and already at 21 somebody who has shown himself capable of playing, and scoring goals, at Championship level.

We’ve just spent some time analysing Daniel Bennie, who has played well across a full game for the club once and scored two goals (one of them against a League One side), while missing several gilt-edge chances in other winnable games that we drew. He’s young, there’s potential there, he’s in a new country, he’s finding his way, you give him the benefit of the doubt and look at the positives. Kolli, admittedly a year older but still a kid really, has already scored 11 times for QPR having been afforded just 22 starts. Again, this year, a goal every 175 minutes he plays. Often good goals as well – boot through the back of the ball, piss off out of my way stuff.

He stands out with his haircuts, and he doesn’t care, because he wants to be that guy, he wants to win the game, he’s got that confidence and arrogance and ambition. I don’t think we have enough of that as a club, constantly talking ourselves and what we can achieve down, managing expectations ever further towards “15th is fine as long as we have a nice time and sell some players”. At West Ham in the cup he looked like he belonged. A physical, skilful, combative show of forward play. He was the one the West Ham fans were talking about on the train afterwards. Who’s that lad? He should be on every photograph, every season ticket leaflet, every poster, every promotion. This is who and what we’re supposed to be about, no?

And yet, end of season, nothing to play for, dead rubber games, he spent his time with us over by F Block, stretching and jogging and waiting for a chance that never game. Millwall away, unused sub; Derby home, unused sub; Ipswich away, not even on the bench. Kwame Poku risked and re-injured, Rumarn Burrell risked and re-injured, and Rayan can’t beg 20 minutes? With Burrell out for the second half of the season that should have been his five months to go at, but it hasn’t really happened, or been allowed to happen.

Now, there are plenty of legitimate footballing reasons for this. He was given starts, up front, in that run towards the end, and didn’t take them – poor at home to Bristol City and Swansea. Dreadful away at Hull this year, as he was last when started. Southampton he was hooked by half time. Fives and fours. Against Sheff Wed he stepped off the bench in the first half and dug the team out of growing hole of its own making with two fantastic late goals, but he hadn’t played well that day either and a cynic would say look at who these goals are being scored against – Sheff Wed twice, Portsmouth twice, Watford, Plymouth.

His conditioning does not seem to be where it needs to be. His excellent first half and goal against the Hornets couldn’t continue into the second because of injury. That’s still happening way too often. He’s completed 90 minutes just twice, in the two cup games, and spends weirdly large amounts of games doing elaborate, crab poses and hamstring stretches. Julien Stéphan was very, very blunt after the Watford home game: “When a player deserves it, when a player trains well and trains with intensity, when he is in good form and has talent, no problem – 16, 17, 18, 20 years’ old, he can play. If he didn’t play more before it was because probably he didn’t do enough during the training sessions. Now he plays a lot because during the training sessions he shows a lot of qualities. For me there is always a link between what you do during the week and what you do in the game. Always. If you train well, you have more chances to do some good performances. If you train not very well, not with enough intensity, no chance to perform. So, when they understand that, OK.”

In the end, though, the boy scores goals. Fitness questions, opportunities limited… goals scored regardless. Are QPR really so good that we can be picky about that? Yeh, he scored two against Sheff Wed, but I didn’t like his hold up play? I dunno lads, he looks pretty good to me.

There continues to be too much noise in the background – ridiculous amounts, really, for a player of his age and experience – and while I get you’ll always go out to bat for your kids or your family members or your friends these social media posts with OSC Nice badges or mocked up ‘Algerian Times’ articles do him no favours. That and the rumours that seem to constantly go around only add to the feeling that there’s something more to this behind the scenes that we’re not privy to and don’t see.

Would absolutely love to see him stay here next season and kick on. Not convinced I’ll get my wish.

In numbers…

Interactive Ratings — 5.40

Others >>> Alfie Lloyd’s loan to Leyton Orient was scuppered by a pre-season injury (sounds like an Oakland A already) and a second half of the year spent at Lincoln won him a League One title medal and plenty of plaudits for his infectious personality and outstanding attitude. But… just the one start for each side (19 sub appearances) and a solitary goal for the Imps against Stockport. At 23 now, his future probably lies elsewhere. Great kid though.

That seems an appropriate point to end. Enjoy your summer everybody.

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Pictures - Ian Randall Photography

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