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Reply | Cat 1. Academy Plans
at 13:56 14 Jan 2026
Yeah, I think the WLS article is key here as it suggests the facilities are fit for purpose, it's all the jobs you need that we don't currently have.
I wonder if a big part of it was that we were already employing a lot of people in academy roles which didn't map to the cat 1 requirements, and couldn't/didn't want to bring in further people who did? Would then make some further sense of the big clear-out a while back. |
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Reply | Rest of the Championship thread 25/26
at 14:33 13 Jan 2026
On the other hand, maybe Spurs aren't happy with the minutes he's getting down in Portsmouth and think Coventry's a better prospect? |
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Reply | Morrison going out on loan
at 14:31 13 Jan 2026
When Jimmy was talking about re-signing I think the talk was that the challenge was he wanted 4 years and we were only offering 3. Given he ended up staying, presumably that means we've basically got him until retirement, plus he's club captain. As long as he's fit (and to date he's very rarely injured) he's going to be starting every game for the foreseeable. The club is clearly very high on Edwards so he'll be first choice in the other slot.
Normally that's fine because you want a good third-choice CB for cover, but we already have Cook in that role, plus youth prospects, plus the ghost of JCS. Morrison's chances of playing regularly are pretty low. Why not send him out for the next few months, which keeps him happy, gives him competitive minutes we need him to be getting, and then re-evaluate in the summer when at least one player above him in the depth chart will be gone and he'll have hopefully played 15-20 more games of men's football than he has today? |
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Reply | West hams ground....
at 15:53 12 Jan 2026
Yeah, I should have done that - I didn't want to stand for four hours, but I'd rather have been able to see! |
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Reply | West hams ground....
at 15:09 12 Jan 2026
Been there twice now (not for football). Once in the conference facilities where they refused to let people in before 9am for an event that was meant to start at 9.30, and ended up being delayed until gone 11 because they weren't remotely equipped for bag checking that many people that quickly. Second time for the Iron Maiden gig last year which ran more smoothly, but unbelievable what a poor experience it was - from where I was sat I could basically make out that there was a band on stage, but no more than that, and even the jumbo screens didn't help much. Then I looked to my left and realised there were people 500m further back and 100m higher up, who presumably could just about tell that there was a stage somewhere off in the distance. The side angle of our fans celebrating yesterday says it all. If I were a West Ham fan I'd never go to a game again, it must be completely miserable. |
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Reply | Fourth Round Here We Come Match Thread
at 17:41 11 Jan 2026
Think we can be proud of that. Effort and commitment across the team and a superb captain's performance from Jimmy. More importantly our players looked like they wanted it and felt like they deserved to be there, and absolutely refused to be bullied - loved Kone flooring Castellanos in some of the pre-corner grappling. A far cry from completely wilting against Leicester last season and if only we weren't wracked with injuries we could have gotten over the line. |
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Reply | Dunne rescues QPR from more Boxing Day blues – Report
at 16:53 28 Dec 2025
Some perspective - last season Leeds and Burnley set record points totals in this division winning 29 and 28 games respectively, or 63% and 60% win rates. Sheffield United set the record for points without automatic promotion and still lost nearly a quarter of their games. Even the very best teams in a season when they absolutely dominated the divison didn't win all the time.
More relevant for us, Bristol City made the playoffs with just 17 wins, or a shade under a 39% win rate - they drew 17 and lost 12. Coventry lost 17 last year and won 20 to place 5th. We've played half our games now and are on 35pts - if we replicated our exact form over again we'd finish on 70, more than either of them got last season.
2024/25 was historically poor from 4th downwards, so that likely wouldn't be enough this time around, but we'd still be very close. I think most of us would have taken 70pts and a 7th or 8th place finish before the season started. Of course we should be trying to do better, but to get where we want to be we're talking about a couple of losses turned into draws or a single draw turned into a win - let's say we won 11, drew 6, and lost 6 in the back half of this season, we'd finish on 74pts.
The problem for this team for years and years now has been that every setback has started a death spiral - 1 win in 17, no wins in 14, 5 home wins in a calendar year etc. etc. What we're starting to see instead is that we don't just collapse at the first misfortune; we lose games and come back and win next week, we concede late goals and go up the other end and equalise or take the lead back, we play like sh*t in the first half and come back out and go again and battle back into it. It's easy to talk about it being unacceptable to have a "bad day at the office" or having "standards" but to be honest it's ignoring reality. Very few football teams - very few competitors in any kind of elite sport - are perfect for every minute of every game. Players who deliver at that level aren't down here in the Championship slogging it out, they're playing in the PL for more money than our whole squad put together. What you have to be in this league is good enough for more games than not, and win and draw slightly more often than you lose, and that's exactly where we are at the halfway mark. |
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Reply | Chair
at 22:28 22 Dec 2025
Would have really liked to see Poku come on 10-20 minutes earlier on Saturday. He's looked exciting when he's on the pitch but he's not yet getting much of a run-out, it'd be good to see him get some real minutes and see what he can do. |
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Reply | A miserable return for Marti as white hot QPR incinerate Leicester – Report
at 09:55 22 Dec 2025
Agree with that. You're 4-0 up at home against a team that looks absolutely uninterested in the game, you've got a player with a poor history of injuries who you're managing back to fitness and a capable replacement on the bench, why not gi d him a break with an eye towards a busy run of games over the next 10 days?
One moment I noticed when Ayew got booked - in the handbags thaf preceded it Mbengue started trying to get involved. I've never seen Dunne move so fast as he did to grab him and steer him in the opposite direction. After a shaky start this season Jimmy seems to be really growing into his role as captain and he was excellent on Saturday both in his individual play but also taking charge of his team. |
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Reply | Could we go up.
at 07:09 21 Dec 2025
I think we can make the top 6. I doubt we'd go up though. |
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Reply | Most despised Rs players
at 22:42 16 Dec 2025
Barton by a country mile. There's been players who were crap and players who were bad characters and players who thought we were beneath them but Barton is the only one I'm embarrassed by every time I remember we signed him (and as was mentioned earlier, treated him like a superstar as well). A c^nt all his life. |
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Reply | Tyler Morris v Brum...
at 14:41 10 Dec 2025
Yeah, he's very much someone making a career in commentary and his CV reflects that - as well as us he's worked for Brighton and Leicester, plus apparently doing audio description for Southampton women's games (and I think you can hear that experience come through in his commentary - he gives a very clear description of what's happening in the game like an old-school radio commentary, which a lot of TV commentators don't do). At some point he'll likely get an offer somewhere else and move on. While he's here though he seems to be enjoying himself immensely. |
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Reply | Not that Swindon Town match preview again - Preview
at 21:55 28 Nov 2025
"But Oxford to Ipswich is The City Ground to QPR. Oxford have never lost this fixture, winning five and drawing seven of 12 meetings. It’s their longest unbeaten home run against any side, and simultaneously the longest Ipswich have gone away from home without beating a team."
Read this bit just in time to see Oxford 2 Ipswich 1 confirmed. |
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Reply | Loveliest Town in England Match Thread
at 12:29 27 Nov 2025
Varane is frustrating because he seems to have regressed a bit from last season. He keeps showing flashes of the player he could be, it just never seems to come together across a full game.
I think Madsen at the moment is basically undroppable both because he's personally in good form but also because we don't have another equivalent player. We've tried combinations of Field/Hayden/Varane a couple of times and it immediately kills our ability to get the ball out of defence. In one game when Madsen was subbed off in the second half Chair ended up playing there, and while he's got a lot of good attributes for it the guy isn't a central midfielder and is a bit wasted there. I agree on Vale, or possibly Morgan, as the players best-suited to understudy, but Stephan doesn't seem to agree. My guess would be that he thinks it's too risky to try one of them with Varane at the moment if he's off the boil, but he also doesn't want to change both midfielders at once when the partnership is basically working. I'd like to see either Hayden or Field in for Varane and see if that works and whether it's robust enough for Madsen to have a break, but there's also something to be said for a player in good form getting to play as much as possible. |
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Reply | Loveliest Town in England Match Thread
at 11:40 27 Nov 2025
The thing is Madsen at this point does play that dominant role. He's everywhere and involved in everything. Look at the stats from last night and compare Madsen and Varane: https://www.sofascore.com/foot
Madsen's doing more both attacking and defending, and look how much of the pitch he covers on the heat map. Beyond the stats just watch him on the pitch - from a player who used to be very quiet and withdrawn he's now talking all the time. I agree some of his passing didn't come off last night, but he almost always tries to move the ball forwards which is going to carry that risk.
I think he's really not helped by being so bloody tall and a bit languid; he never looks like he's working that hard, but from the stats he must be. I would like more goal involvements out of him, but some of that is explained by playing very deep and he's often putting in the pass that gets us up the pitch before one of the attacking players makes the actual assist. And he's only 25, plenty of time to develop yet.
One supplementary thought: the bloke's played in every one of our league games this season and averaged 80 minutes on the pitch. There's always lots of discussion about fitness and availability in key positions, who's being rotated in 3 game weeks etc. Madsen leads the team in league appearances and plays most or all of the games he's in. |
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