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Comment | A different ball game - Preview
at 07:31:13
'It’s funny isn’t it, I’ve said this a few times but it’s often the fans who tell you in July and August that they’d “snatch your hand off for 16th now” who complain most vociferously when the 15 draws and 16 defeats that take you to that position play out. At Middlesbrough and Norwich it felt like the general consensus was we’d been far too open, far too easy to play through, and an Isaac Hayden-type was required to stodge things up a bit. Then at Bramall Lane and whatever we’re calling that monstrosity Stoke play in these days when we do go deep, narrow and defend a point, it’s a disgrace and an insult to the memory of Stan Bowles and all this stuff. In the end, us football fans just like a moan.'
The point is, Clive, as I said in one of my post-match posts and you yourself wrote in your report on the Stoke game, there are lots of stopping points between the two extremes of cynical pragmatism and soft-bellied openness you evoke here. It isn't a matter of 'having a moan' either way but of holding a plausible tension between the polarities of footballing suicide and abject shithousery, so we're both decently resilient and plausibly creative. After seeing what this team is up to these past couple of games, and listening to the manager post-match, I don't think we're capable of doing the decent thing, however. |
| News
Comment | QPR give West Brom both Burrells – Report
at 22:23:13
We're still very much a work on progress, but the 2nd half was certainly encouraging again - harum scarum stuff at times, and we had Nardi to thank for keeping us in it, but Burrell got us over the line, with a bit of help from the improving Kone (who needs to improve).
I think this season is likely to be steps forward and back, and both team and manager have work to do to convince me they can achieve any kind of consistency, but that's also the Champ, which I'd say JS still has plenty to learn about. (We need to become faster learners.) |
| News
Comment | Norwich out for revenge, QPR looking for a response - Preview
at 09:50:13
Quite right to point out that Swansea are no world beaters, not least to counter the manager's disingenuousness in claiming they're one of the best in the league at what they do. I hope things won't turn ugly now, but fear the worst today. |
| News
Comment | Dunne delivers QPR's perfect present - Report
at 23:57:38
The question of Preston's goal was dealt with in a separate thread - I don't think it was a 'travesty', or even that morally questionable. In the end, though, worrying through Cook's injury is, it happily didn't matter for the result. |
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Comment | The Coventry Conference – Report
at 21:40:31
As I'm not with the Begovic haters, and wasn't part of the 'crescendo' of attacks on his credibility, I'd also be more than happy for him to go again next season as our No. 1 with Walsh as, it appears, a more than able understudy. |
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Comment | The Coventry Conference – Report
at 21:37:00
Job done, and a whole six-point gap to take pleasure in as the curtain comes down. My word! Post-Jan, and post-Marti, we could hardly have hoped for more
The Chair goal was pleasing eye candy, of course, but I wouldn't put it up there as a potential GOTS just because of how easy they made it for him - standing off, standing off, and then their keeper obligingly disdaining to move a la Palace's non-shotstopper for Kulcsar's surreal first in the 6-0 game. It felt like a goal from a pre-season game. If he goes (to jail or another club), it'll be a tough, tough ask to replace our most committed and talented player, as well as, to remind everyone, our joint top goalscorer this season. Let's all hope we won't be/feel forced to try. |
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Comment | Dykes' long awaited goal secures crucial QPR win - Report
at 18:06:47
I think your opening sections, Clive, mainly make it clear that football teams aren't forged on balance sheets, but out of spirit, skill and teamwork. Money certainly helps, and gives unfair advantages at times, but it can equally be used to assemble sides that are duds. |
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Comment | QPR lather, rinse and repeat with Cook capture – Signing
at 20:08:09
Yeah, it looks to me like a solid signing, and if it's a choice between getting him in the building on a two-year deal or offering him one year and him going somewhere else, it's clear we have to cut our cloth accordingly. He's 'not in his mid-30s' either, he's 32 so hardly a 'veteran', though we have to hope he's not too ring-rusty. Frank McLintock was 35 when he was part of the spine of the great 75/76 side that should have won the title, and so was Richard Dunne with a promotion-winning squad. As another poster has remarked, if Belk, Ramsey and Hall were doing their jobs and actually bringing through promising young players that can be blooded, but they're not, so we are where we are. On that basis, welcome, Steve, and please hit the ground running! |
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Comment | Beale elects to take his ‘loyalty and integrity’ elsewhere after all — Column
at 22:16:30
As I've pointed out, for Hoos to call him a 'gem of a manager' only shows that he's a prick of a CEO whose judgment is about as sound as Mystic Meg's, while Les's indisposition to call out that 'honest talks with Les' comment for what it was makes him look like a man-weasel. Beale is breathtakingly corrupt, but those two are, for me, ignorant and incompetent and emphatically in need of purging if we're to start to reclaim any credibility. |
| News
Comment | Runners and riders — Column
at 18:38:53
Some good, detailed comment here, though I'm perplexed as to how the 'disintegration' of managment communication between academy/DoF/first team lines, Warbs and Ferdinand and Ramsay etc, is now being 'reported' as if it were fact, in the absence of meaningful sources and attributed quotes. No one has any real clue what's gone on behind the scenes, so let's not try to pretend otherwise. If we'd finished in the top six, or just not collapsed as badly as we did, it's likely Warburton would still be with us, and if the problems were as entrenched as that, Eustance would have had his cards too, not having his takeover prospects being assessed.
It would be nice if, just for once, the club showed fans some respect and came out and explained the rationale for the change and the strategic planning going forward, but probaly Les's mealy-mouthed words after a round of golf are as close as we'll get. |
| News
Comment | Sad, sad situation - Preview
at 19:54:57
It's a bad run, but to say 'it happens' after that dreadful pile-up of stats is risible. Generally speaking, it doesn't happen - except to us, apparently! To call it the 'tide' makes it sound like some kind of unalterable thalassic destiny. It isn't. |
| News
Comment | But she just smiled and turned away — Report
at 00:17:34
While I agree with the basic tenor of the report, in terms of what more we could have done - well, a shot or two on goal would have been a start. The one or two we imagined was embarrassing. It's quite hard to score goals without them, however much 'on the front foot' you aspire to be. The truth is, in that 2nd half, we played like a beaten side and were chasing shadows. Warburton knows it, but can't say it - but I/we can. |
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