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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. |
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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. |
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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. |
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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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Comment | Illy and Willy feast on Lumley treats - Report
at 23:10:04
It was certainly fast, frenetic, fraught, and sprinkled with a couple of outstanding moments with Chair's goal and a bit of flair for their second -in short, classic-to-a cut-above Champ fare, but also a goalkeeping howler, an o.g. from us, and some shaky moments from start to finish. Overall, I didn't think we played particularly well, rode our luck as often as Warburton conceded, and lacked quality, both in midfield and up front. The point was probably deserved, nonetheless, but we conceded so much ground, possession and chances, especially in the 2nd half, it was worrying. Middlesbro looked nailed-on playoff contenders and a better team than Bournemouth for me. I think if we'd not been fortunate enough to have our goalkeeper and not theirs, we'd have lost the game by at least a couple of goals.
So, grateful for the draw, impressed with the industry, but feel more than ever we're a couple of pistons short of the finished article. In many ways, if we could keep the squad together and add a striker/more creativity, we could have a massive shout next season if we fall short this. |
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Comment | Too many bloody repeats - Report
at 21:58:41
Interestingly equivocal report, Clive, which seems not so much to sit on the fence as come down on both sides of it! I think Warburton's destructive subs, pulling Jojo and Chair, our main creative/goal threat, for Dozzell and Thomas, amounted to throwing the game. It wasn't a bad selection, but Willock's exclusion really hurt us, and the changes to our defensive line didn't help us.
Personally, I will still be thinking about this tawdry and depressing latest cup exit, irrespective of the outcomes of the next two league games - if that means I need to 'get out more', so be it. I love my club and want to see it paying the fans the respect of competing properly in all our games. If that makes me a romantic, a nostalgic, or whatnot, I'm glad to be both, rather than a cynic. |
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Comment | QPR hit top gear, slaughtering woeful Reading - Report
at 22:26:30
As to the allegation of us not being 'prolific' scorers, I'd just point out we're joint 3rd top scorers in the division with Bournemouth, and just one behind Blackburn in 2nd spot. Wonderfully entertaining piece, though. Happy days! |
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Comment | Keep in touch - Preview
at 14:18:03
Don't really feel injuries have been a big issue/reason for limitations to our performances this season. The absences of Field and Wallace haven't helped us, but otherwise we haven't been badly affected relative to anyone else. Johansen (at times) and Charlie (more often than not) have under-performed, though Chair has stepped up to the plate at one or two key moments, and Dickie, Albert (who was not given enough minutes initially by Warburton, but is now clearing the best wing back at the club) and Willock (despite blowing a little cold of late) have been mostly excellent. We've also had some bad luck, lacked a clinical edge against the top teams, and been architects of our own downfall rather than seeing games out. That said, we've had a clutch of really good results and (often second-half) performances both home and, earlier in the season, away, though this still feels like this is a team that has to find its full cohesion, clarity, concentration and penetration. Both the Fulham and Peterborough games were very disappointing, which did take the wind out of our sails, and certainly mine - of Sunderland, I shall not speak further. However, if we can stay within touching distance at least of the top six until the turn of the year, with perhaps one or two judicious loans in January we could surely really have a tilt at the playoffs. |
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Comment | Don't get mad, get even - Preview
at 13:17:14
Good preview - let's hope the players are listening. After Fulham, Peterborough and that shhootout fiasco, they and the manager got a lot of work to do to win me back over. |
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Comment | Take your time lads - Preview
at 14:28:13
I strongly suspect referees are being instructed by the EFL/FA not to clamp down on time-wasting - as it's clearly a systemic problem, my conclusion is only logical. Equally clearly, it's got a lot worse this season. Basically, pros playing the game don't want to play the game a lot of the time. An even more fiendish turn of the screw is everyone from Clive Whittingham to Andy Sinton acknowledging the malaise while also insisting QPR's manipulation of the dark arts must also get darker - a clearer case of having one's footballing cake and eating it one could not wish to find! I don't know what the answer is, as even ballboys (cf. that Swansea kid lying on the ball vs Chelsea, and getting kicked by Eden Hazard for his trouble) and fans play their part by not returning the ball from the stand. The world and his dog jumping on Chair for having the temerity to try to use his skill in the middle of the pitch to keep the ball vs West Brom also tells its own dreary story to an extent. It's one of a number of things that turns me off late modern football - watch The Big Match from the 1970s and you never see this kind of horseshit. Sadly, we live in an age of cynicism with wide-spread buy-in. |
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Comment | Glaring errors cost QPR third straight 2-1 loss - Report
at 04:56:54
Last sentence is not on rather than spot on, and actually a bit snide, in my view, as well as somewhat ironic, as the tone of the report is actually quite critical of the team (though I agree with the main thrust of it) in a way that one or two dotorgers expressed surprise at.
Do you sometimes want to have your cake and eat it, Clive (which we all do at times, of course)?
Living overseas as I do, it's rather difficult for me to get to games these days as I normally would, given the rather large body of water between me and the UK. However, I watched the game from start to finish on a Sky stream and don't think my view is somehow tainted or any more unbalanced than those who were there because I was doing so on a screen - in fact, if anything, I might argue it was more informed, with the benefits of replays, different camera angles and so forth. But if some need to feel certain fans are more real than others, I'll just permit myself a weary chuckle after 40+ years of fandom under multiple descriptions. I just don't think this type of virtue signalling, nor the generalisation that undergirds it, is very classy or necessary, that's all. Fans are individuals, not part of some hierarchy, and, a few lunatics aside, ANYONE's view of ANY game is always contestable. |
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Comment | Mark Warburton — Patreon
at 00:43:02
Top-notch read, and very, very encouraging, I was majorly critical of WB at the start of 2021, but I've eaten a lot - if not all - of my grossly premature words now. A real manager for our special, special club. |
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Comment | Strictly business — Preview
at 16:57:56
As the great Samuel Beckett put it, the essentials don't change, in football or anything else. Sad to say, as I've made clear elsewhere, the 'rinse and repeat' orthodoxy now awash on these boards - leaving aside how it privileges a 'business model' over all else like, uh, actually building a football team (as if the 'footballing side' only existed for the sake of the business, not, as Jim Gregory understood, vice-versa) - is not one that is likely to become a formula for the club's upward mobility, just because a few fans have swallowed it hook, line and sinker. As Gerry Francis has made clear - which is hardly reachign back into the misdts of footballing time - if you asset-strip your best players after theyv'e only been around for five minutes, you're likely at best to stagnate, and more likely to decline. We saw it most egregiously at QPR in 1977/78 and 1994/95, with the difference now that it's become a hardwired disease - even Les stayed for 8 years! If we get a decent season or two from any one now, we're supposed to be grateful. Essentially, the Hoos & Les -underwritten model we're infected with now makes Richard Thompson look like the personification of building a footballing empire.
The acceleration of modern football, and the conformity of thinking that surrounds it, has really turned it into a kind of farce. And then people wonder why there are no kids wearing Rangers shirts in their necks of the woods! It's utterly amazing how people still don't seem to get it. This isn't a club that, in recent years, has managed to generate competitive fees for its players, nor has it recruited particularly well, and it's unlikely to become a monument to progressive excellence now. We might have the odd success with youth prodigies like Eze or flourishing flowers like Freeman, but if they're then sold for younger/rawer/ unfinished/unfinishable new recruits before they bed into a stable sqaud that grows together, we'll never get anywhere. Nothing good in life is built without time, stability and resilience. If some others want to be patronisingly wrong about this, good luck to them.
In the meantime, much as I'd love to join the party surrounding one above average young player signing a 'bumper contract' to allow the club to get, in theory, a decent fee for him that's probably already been arranged with his agent for 6-12 months down the line, it makes me laugh when I read about his love for the badge and then compare it with exactly the same kind of meretricious propaganda that surrounded Freeman's deal. Call me old-fashioned, but it's mainly because I prefer to be treated like an intelligent fan, not a mug.
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Comment | Fulham profit from familiar QPR failings - Report
at 23:03:36
Clearly, some significant improvements mingled with misfortune, and a sprinkling of quality moments, but we still manage to pull defeat from the (early) jaws of victory against our local rivals deprived of their top goalscorer while conceding two stoppable goals, so for me he glass is half empty again. The comms remarked that we've beaten Fulham twice in 15 attempts now, I think - a desolate record!
For me, both goalkeepers are our weak links, to which I'd add Kane (who may or may not improve) and Amos, while the likes of Ball, Manning and Oteh (see Kane) are meh at best. I didn't rate Hall especially highly, but the side losing its captain the way it did will probably have had effects of some kind. I do feel Chair should be a starter, and his role will need to be enhanced if/when we lose Eze - assuming we don't sell him too, which of course we might too, to implement Hoos' and Les's 'business model'.
Next season does worry me. Wells is no more, Hugill (whatever his faults) will presumably follow, and Bright is another who will be difficult to retain, especially as he's stalling on a new contract, which doesn't bode well. To lose one of BOS and Ebs will hit us hard, but losing both would be seriously damaging.
What are the positives again? |
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Comment | From Eze street to fright fest — Report
at 23:21:52
Sadly, I couldn't be there in person again, and the 10 minutes or so of highlights on the Offish seem oddly and disappointingly to leave out lots of 2nd half Rangers chances and saves - I look forward to with lip-smacking relish to seeing the full 90 mins. when they're up. Incidentally, any idea who that new match commentator is/was, and where Andy Sinton and that other nice man (who perplexingly popped for the Warburton post-match intervieew) might be? The substitute comm. was rank - consistently failing to identify Rs' players, inaccurately correlating Eze's first with 'the top corner', and deploying other strange and infelicitous phrases throughout.
Think it's a bit harsh, Clive, to say their keeper should have saved the opener - he got a hand to it, but it was just a bloody good shot for my money. If Lumley had kept his concentration and Hugill had shown some composure, it could have been another 6-1. We obviously had a fab purple patch for 30 minutes, and I'm not diluting it for one minute, but, by god, Luton really stood off and made it easier for us by the looks of things. More brilliant than brittle, but work to do. A-/B+. |
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Comment | Keeper Kelly becomes Warburton’s first addition — Signing
at 23:32:48
The idea that a young(ish) keeper like Lumley is 'universally popular' and that this transfer could 'damage morale throughout the club and fanbase' strikes me as ludicrously outlandish. He had a mixed season last season at best, and so I welcome this move for a keeper who has apparently done very well in the SPL. Ingram has been shockingly bad every time I've seen him, and I agree he needs a fresh start. No real idea/view of Dieng, but any competitive squad needs at least two, and preferably three, competent goalkeepers, so in Warburton I trust. |
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Comment | Warburton the latest to try and halt QPR's sad decline - Column
at 21:23:09
I liked his interview for the most part, and the fact that he has a connection to Dave Sexton and 1975/76 is a nice bonus - and share the general consensus that he's realistically the best we could bring in from who's out there right now. How long is his contract (not that our club respects them)?
As Clive's piece makes clear, the issues at the club have more to do with the incompetence and goalpost-shifting by the upper echelons of the management team (yes, that's you, Les, Hoos and the board), whom I don't trust or rate. MW's fate probably hangs as much on their unstable performance as his own coaching skills. My breath I shall not be holding. |
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