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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/football/match/blackburn-rovers-queens-park-rangers/bs
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 Beyond the stats just watch him on the pitch - from a player who used to be very quiet and withdrawn he's now talking all the time.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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Reply | Paul Smyth
at 09:23 14 Oct 2025
I think I also remember him taking Yang under his wing last season. Seems like a good bloke and one who goes out of his way to help integrate some of the lads who might otherwise struggle for language barrier. |
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Reply | What would be 'success' this season with this squad/manager?
at 16:54 7 Oct 2025
Two things I think. First, the division is much weaker this year than last year, and second we have about 16 players who are genuinely first-rate in the Championship, without even counting Poku/Chair and, possibly but not probably, JCS. In that context you'd like us to be pushing for playoffs, and if you take out the Coventry disaster we're in the kind of form that gets you there. There was a lot of focus in pre-season on the first 12 games as being easier than what comes next, but in reality we've played 1st, 4th, and 5th already.
Like always though it's dependent on injuries. To the surprise of everybody Madsen is absolutely crucial to our central midfield with only really Morgan who can replace him there, and he's barely been on the pitch since the first couple of games. Kone and Burrell are going great, but Kone and Frey wasn't pretty when we tried it. Do ten games with nobody who can progress the ball out of midfield and we'll fall back down the table.
Heart says playoffs and I think we can get there in a world where things go our way. Head says that 12th or higher is more realistic and would still be a good result and demonstrate some progress, especially if we can sell a couple for big money next summer and kick on from it. |
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Reply | Oxford Utd Reflection
at 14:02 2 Oct 2025
I think if we were resting Madsen we really needed to play Morgan in there instead. Throughout the first half we struggled to get the ball out of defence at all and a more technically capable player would have helped.
Down the wings I thought RND did well last night and showed more as an attacker than he has done, and Jimmy was on better form too, but in the middle we were so slow and lumbering. Madsen and Saito coming on had an immediate impact. |
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Reply | Saito
at 08:24 21 Sep 2025
On strength, watch the goal yesterday - just before he puts the cross in, he shoves Seko out of the way to stop the block. He's added that physicality to his obvious skil on the ball and it's paying off nicely. |
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Reply | Taylor Richards gone…thank god.
at 11:20 3 Sep 2025
It's just not helpful to think about football (or more generally professional sports) like any other job - the whole thing exists in a weird world of exemptions. No other industry would be allowed anything like the transfer system; employment lawyers would be dancing in the streets if a company anywhere else tried to enact 1% of the restraint of trade that it involves. Footballers are not normal employees, their contract arrangements aren't like what you or I might have at a job, and they're also (relatively) powerful and wealthy individuals who can and do employ people whose only role is representing their interests plus they have a strong union to back them up. All that for a job where the actual duties are stunningly vague - try and turn up for training regularly if you can, be available for selection even if we never pick you, unless you're injured of course in which case we just carry on paying you and hope you get better at some point.
Based purely on things mentioned online Richards has apparently taken the piss more than most, but the club didn't really have a winning scenario here. Terminating the bloke unilaterally probably means you end up spending more money fighting it than it costs to just keep paying him and try and turn things around, and he's got no incentive to agree to a mutual termination that benefits us when he's got 2 or 3 years left to run. Presumably at this point he's got little enough left on his contract that we could get him down to a number that worked and he's thinking he might manage to get paid off by us and then find a deal somewhere else as a free agent, although god knows who'd take him based on the last few years. |
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Reply | The QPR summer transfer rumours thread
at 17:14 1 Sep 2025
The problem was that whole group tossing it off on the pitch and looking completely disinterested - Laird and the infamous sit down and signal to the bench that he couldn't possibly continue, Roberts and the mysterious 'strains' etc. etc.
If you've got a culture where lots of lads are much more about having a footballer lifestyle than they are about playing any football, you get the kind of standards that lead you to Chris Martin of all people saying how surprised he was at the lack of professionalism. We've got rid of that element at the club and we don't need it back.
Chair didn't commit GBH, which is why he's not in prison, and he gets the forgiveness of the fans because he turns up and runs himself into the ground every week. |
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Reply | Out of the darkness – Report
at 10:06 1 Sep 2025
I've been a QPR fan for going 30 years now. Never lived anywhere near London, it's my dad's team, and my interest and involvement has gone up and down over the years. Since 2022/23 I've had the most sustained engagement with the club in my life, even as the on-pitch goings-on have been mostly rubbish and we've lurched from disaster to disaster, and it's entirely because over summer of 2022 I started reading this site. The quality and insight of what you write was transformative for me in supporting this club. I don't always agree with everything, but I don't need to, that isn't the point. Your ability to get out 48 previews and reports every season plus all the other stuff is remarkable, especially when what you're writing about is so often bloody awful.
I know a thing or two about publishing for an online audience so I'm familiar with the kind of disproportionate hostility and outright weird behaviour you're experiencing. I can't offer any useful advice for dealing with it except rolling your eyes and ignoring it, which is much harder for something like LfW which is a lot more direct and personal than what I do, but I can offer the above as a counterpoint to say how much I value what you do here. Keep fighting on - there's a lot more of us that appreciate you than there are gobby little trolls on Twitter. |
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Reply | Isaac Hayden
at 19:55 26 Aug 2025
e: double post [Post edited 26 Aug 19:55]
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Reply | Isaac Hayden
at 19:52 26 Aug 2025
Fair enough to be cynical about what footballers say in official interviews, he's hardly about to pop up and say well the club's crap and obviously going down but they offered me more than anyone else, but the bloke was very publicly lobbying for a return here last season (when it had no financial impact on him at all) and has kept in touch with players from his time on loan. Being in London can't hurt for someone who was in the Arsenal youth set-up, too. Does he just love QPR that much that he couldn't bear going anywhere else? Probably not, but I can absolutely believe that if he thought there was an offer available from us he was going to see if he could get it rather than rushing to the first club that rang up his agent.
He was committed and interested on loan last time, and god knows we need more heft in the middle. He seems to have a realistic idea of where he is in his career, a desire to play, but also a consciousness that he's partly here to help the younger lads coming through. He's not the most dynamic passer but I remember him as being decent on the ball too - better than Field in that role in front of the defence, and that frees up everyone further forwards. |
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Reply | Saito signs
at 18:14 25 Aug 2025
Can't agree that it's not a position we need. With our fitness team we need to be signing 1.5 wingers a week throughout the season just to field an XI.
Beyond that - we've got a player who already knows most of the team and has a year's experience of the league, who was 100% committed last season as a loan player, was fit and available every game until the last 1.5 of the season where he got bulldozed and dislocated his shoulder, and who actually wants to be here. Yes, we have more pressing needs at CM and LB, but I'll never be upset at signing a player with the attitude and work rate of Saito. |
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Reply | Julien Stephan - Word of warning
at 21:56 17 Aug 2025
Yeah, and even putting aside whether it was a good idea to want Larkeche to be your starting left back for the season, the bloke doing his ACL the week before your first game is horribly unfortunate. |
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Reply | Familiar learnings and fresh frustrations as QPR lose at Watford – Report
at 21:35 17 Aug 2025
I didn't think he was good, but I think it's as much about being put in a role he isn't good at against a team that's a lot better set up than ours is - in that formation we're asking a duck to bark and being surprised he keeps quacking. I guess my point is that we've seen where he can be effective at the back end of last season, and it isn't playing as the deeper one of a two, and he does at least seem to be trying whereas his really rough run in the first half of last season he didn't even seem to want to be on the pitch. |
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