QPR concluded an unbeaten pre-season with a pair of wins in South London over the weekend, cruising to a 7-0 victory against a scratchy Bromley side before eking out a 3-2 at Wimbledon.

In many ways the best part of the football season when it’s not part of the football season at all.

You get to watch QPR play without the usual existential dread associated with watching QPR play. Will Alfie Lloyd convert this penalty? Who cares.

You get to go to exciting new places – Vienna, for instance, or Bromley South, where the 21.57 goes in four different directions to four different destinations from four different platforms all at once. After ten years of Deepdale who doesn’t want to traipse through some urban woodland looking for Hayes Lane, chuckling at the thought of Sheff Wed and Leicester playing league games here as you go?

Drinks by the river, drinks in Tooting Market, drinks in the back garden at The Bricklayers, with only the faint smell of sewage wafting off the Thames (remember, they only dump it in times of super high rainfall) to distract and worry you. Generic lager, flat as a witch’s tit, ferments in its plastic glass under a fervent sun as you peer through shades and ask whether Jonathan Varane spent the summer eating steroids and small children, or have they just given his number to Philip Sanyaolu for the night?

QPR are good at this stuff. Geeky ground tickers with their spotter’s badge, pressure off the team, let’s pop it around and have a nice time. Pierce Charles played a pass at Bromley on Friday night filthier than a woodland porn stash. Optimism abounds as HMS Piss The League gets ready to put to sea once more. Every youth teamer becomes a new Clive Allen in waiting (remember Dennis Oli? Or Kieron St Aimie?) and each goal and win against teams from the Austrian fourth division induces some sort of collective amnesia in the support base. This, lest we forget, a QPR side that won only six of its final 25 games last year, two of its final 15 on the road, none of its last six and defeats in its final four, to which has been added a new goalkeeper, a like-for-like swap at left back, and an injured right back.

Unfortunately, it was also against no kind of opposition on Friday. If the decision to play two friendlies in two days back-to-back seemed a little odd for us, it was downright foolish for the League One new boys who were at Barnet on Saturday and by manager Andy Woodman’s own admission had erred with their scheduling. Star striker Michael Cheek was among the missing, our former charge Deon Woodman (recently signed from Wealdstone) one of several injuries, and without being too cruel the goalkeeper gave the very strong impression of someone roped in at the last minute from a non-footballing background.

QPR were two up in no time at all with Chair finishing Sanyaolu ‘s approach work and Lloyd then doing likewise for the Moroccan. Lloyd, in fairly typical fashion, then followed his immaculate first touch and finish with a headed miss from a yard out that you’d have scored yourself, but did end the night with a hat trick from the penalty spot which perhaps told you all you needed to know about this one. Terrace rumours of League One interest in Lloyd this summer after spells with Orient and Lincoln last year, Luton allegedly among the interested parties and possibly with some actual pound sterling on the table as well. However, with Daniel Bennie (sensibly) sent to Dundee United for a make-or-break season long loan while Rayan Kolli (less so) spends some more time in the padded room we probably can’t do that without some more cover.

Kolli did at least make it as far as the development squad on Saturday, scoring at Dulwich Hamlet before hot footing it to Plough Lane to watch the firsts at Wimbledon from the away end. As ever, bizarre goings on in this interminable saga.

Although he’d been caught on the ball early in an area you’d likely be punished for at Championship level, I guess the other big winner from Friday night in deepest South London was Isak Alemayehu. The Swede, who rattled the crossbar in the first half, has had something of a breakout summer to the point you wonder whether he might have nudged above Kieran Morgan in the pecking order. As if to underline that point he improvised an outstanding overhead kick into the top corner for goal number four. Sofa-in-a-bathroom levels of out of place in a game like this, and warm applause from all sides for the artistic merit.

There’s less finesse, but no less purpose, in Big Phil Sanyaolu. He got the fifth and, given his physicality, may be of more interest in the loan market than a youth teamer of that age usually would be. London Broncos, perhaps?

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There was a sterner test against a stronger League One side waiting for us at Wimbledon on Saturday. You invite disappointment into your life by relying on Jake Clarke-Salter, but he’d got through 90 minutes on Friday with Jimmy Dunne which meant Liam Morrison got a crack alongside Captain Cheekbones at Plough Lane.

I’d like to think the Scot would have cleaned Aron Sasu out into the front row of the stand in a competitive situation but having drifted out into some deep water he was comprehensively drowned by his pace for the first of the hosts’ two goals. For the second, new keeper Calum Ward came searching for a cross that I think he’s still out there looking for now. Items of concern for a team that conceded more goals than anybody bar hapless Sheff Wed last season.

Once again, when opening up into a 4-4-2 sans Madsen, with Burrell and Kone the wrong way round at the top, that midfield becomes too easy to play through without the ball and too pedestrian progressing with it (it has looked slightly more solid this pre-season when we’ve gone 4-3-3 or 4-1-4-1). We await news on Glen Kamara’s apparent imminent arrival today.

On the positive side, Koki Saito’s first touch for the opening goal kicking towards the Soviet-era Turbine Hall end of the ground in the first half was borderline homo-erotic, and while I doubt he’d be allowed to dribble around and finish into the top corner like that in a proper game it was nice to see him smiling after a tough 25/26.

His withdrawal after half an hour looked, and has since been confirmed as, managing minutes rather than another injury. The reasons I think a few of us are more optimistic about QPR this year is the two strikers obviously, the amount of Harvey Vale/Nicolas Madsen/Koki Saito-types who have shown promise now coming into years two and three of Championship football, but also this idea that we surely, can’t possibly be as afflicted by injuries this year as we were for the last two. Can we? The biggest improvement QPR can make is getting this team out on the pitch more consistently.

Richard Kone being back on his feet after last week’s scare against Fiorentina was good news, but Nicolas Madsen’s absence (and the ever-tiresome silence around it) is not. If another season gets derailed in this manner there’ll be no hiding behind nonsense ‘90% availability’ gaslighting this time. Justin Obikwu seems to have vanished again.

What might also help during the pinch points is if the development squad’s cup triumphs could translate into some players capable of doing half a dozen first team games this year. To that end there was a break away and slick finish for 16-year-old Leon Scarlett which raised a big cheer, and a goal on the rebound for the highly regarded Jaylan Pearman to get Rangers home with a 3-2 win. Scarlett’s not even old enough to wear our sponsor on his shirt yet and certainly looks his age, I’m not sure I’d risk him in a stiff breeze, but he doesn’t play it – absolutely not out of place in this game.

Of course, it likely all counts for nought next week when Millwall come to town in the League Cup. Something of a nightmare draw really – a big, physical London derby against a Championship rival when we’d probably have been counting on a trip to Cambridge United or its equivalent to continue easing us in. As ever, the team selection will likely be as interesting as the game. Given the criticism they rightly received for that debacle at Plymouth a year ago and the presence of Steve Gallen on the other side of the director’s box you’d expect Rangers to go strong.

How much we can take from this weekend into next probably summed up by this headline from our last trip to Wimbledon under Gareth Ainsworth which I stumbled upon while searching for the starting 11 from that match – “QPR renamed ‘Queen’s Park Rangacticos’ by stunned fans after sublime tiki-taka move goes viral in pre-season”.

Let’s hope there’s no repeat of that side’s opening day fucktastrophe when the quiz gets underway for real in a week’s time.

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Photo: Action Images via Reuters

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