QPR head back to Manchester City on Saturday, scene of the epic conclusion to last season and also the first ever Premier League Monday Night Football.

Recent Meetings

Man City 3 QPR 2, Sunday May 13, 2012, Premiership

The last meeting of these two sides will go down as one of the all time classic games of football. City needed to match Manchester United’s result at Sunderland to win a first league title in 44 years, Rangers meanwhile had to match Bolton’s result at Stoke to remain in the top flight. Things seemed to be going according to script at half time with Paddy Kenny allowing Pablo Zabaleta’s weak shot to squirm in for a single goal lead that the home team was thoroughly good value for. Bolton led at half time and QPR were staring relegation in the face. The second half was an astonishing 45 minutes of drama. QPR equalised immediately after half time when Djibril Cisse seized on a Joleon lescott mistake and fired home but the Londoners’ chances of hanging on were dealt a massive blow when Joey Barton was sent off for striking Carlos Tevez off the ball – Barton kicked Sergio Aguero and headbutted Vincent Kompany on the way off for good measure. But miraculously the visitors then took the lead for the first time when Armand Traore crossed for Jamie Mackie to head home spectacularly. Despite City averaging a shot every other minute and QPR only completing 82 passes in the entire game the scoreline remained the same until injury time when substitute Edin Dzeko headed in a corner. With the news from Stoke through, and positive from a QPR point of view, there weren’t too many disappointed faces in the away end when Aguero stormed through to win the game, and the title, with the final kick.

Man City: Hart 6, Zabaleta 7, Kompany 8, Lescott 6, Clichy 6, Nasri 7, Yaya Toure 8 (De Jong 44, 6), Barry 6 (Dzeko 69, 7), Silva 8, Tevez 6 (Balotelli 75, 7), Aguero 7

Subs Not Used: Pantilimon, Richards, Milner, Kolarov

Booked: Aguero (over celebrating)

Goals: Zabaleta 39 (assisted Toure), Dzeko 90 (assisted Silva), Aguero 90 (assisted Balotelli)

QPR: Kenny 7, Onuoha 7, Ferdinand 8, Hill 9, Taiwo 8, Wright-Phillips 6, Barton 3, Derry 7, Mackie 7, Cisse 7 (Traore 59, 7), Zamora 6 (Bothroyd 76, 6)

Subs Not Used: Cerny, Gabbidon, Taarabt, Campbell, Buzsaky

Sent Off: Barton 55 (being a knob)

Booked: Bothroyd (kicking ball away)

Goals: Cisse 48 (unassisted), Mackie 66 (assisted Traore)

QPR 2 Manchester City 3, Saturday November 5, 2011, Premiership

QPR came closer than most to toppling Manchester City during the Sky Blues’ formidable start to the Premiership campaign last season. The absence of Vincent Kompany from the heart of the City defence and a no-fear attitude from Neil Warnock’s side seemed to catch Roberto Mancini’s team cold and Rangers were desperately unfortunate not to take something from the game. Rangers took a deserved first half lead when Jay Bothroyd planted a firm header past Joe Hart and the former Cardiff man clipped the outside of the post with a similar chance moments later when he should have made it two. That profligacy was punished either side of half time when first Edin Dzeko and then David Silva clinically put the visitors in front for the first time but Rangers roared back and equalised when another Bothroyd header was deflected into the net by Heidar Helguson. Sadly there was to be no fairytale as City overpowered their hosts once and for all with 15 minutes left to play and Yaya Toure buried a winning header at the School End. A fantastic game played out in a raucous Saturday night atmosphere.

QPR: Kenny 7, Young 6, Gabbidon 6, Ferdinand 7, Traore 7 (Hill 90, -), Mackie 7 (Smith 84, -), Barton 7, Faurlin 9, Wright-Phillips 7, Bothroyd 8 (Puncheon 76, 5), Helguson 9

Subs Not Used: Murphy, Orr, Derry, Andrade

Booked: Barton (foul)

Goals: Bothroyd 28 (assisted Barton), Helguson 69 (assisted Traore/Bothroyd)

Man City: Hart 8, Richards 7, Savic 5, Lescott 6, Kolarov 8, Barry 6 (Balotelli 75, 6), Y Toure 8, Milner 7, Silva 8, Aguero 6 (Johnson 68, 6), Dzeko 8 (Toure 88, -)

Subs Not Used: Pantilimon, Zabaleta, Nasri, Clichy

Booked: Balotelli (diving)

Goals: Dzeko 43 (unassisted), Silva 52 (assisted Dzeko), Y Toure 74 (assisted Kolarov)

Man City 1 QPR 3, Wednesday March 8, 2000, First Division

QPR secured a surprise win on their final visit to Maine Road in 2000. Joe Royle’s City were on their way back to the Premiership but had only drawn at Loftus Road earlier in the season and slipped to a shock First Division defeat against Gerry Francis’ team. Rangers were comfortably in midtable at this stage but put on a real show for the faithful travelling fans who were positioned high in the corner of Maine Road on a rather rickety temporary stand that seemed to sway in the Wednesday night wind. Chris Kiwomya, who had scored in the first match, opened the scoring eight minutes before half time and an own goal from Wiekens before half time doubled the lead. A late penalty from loaned Derby striker Mikkel Beck sealed the win before Jeff Whitley bagged a consolation.

Man City: N Weaver, R Edghill, G Wiekens, R Jobson, D Granville (I Bishop, 46), D Tiatto (K Horlock, 69), J Whitley, J Pollock (P Dickov, 60), M Kennedy, L Peacock, S Goater

Subs not used: S Wright-Phillips, T Wright

Goals: Whitley 84

QPR: L Harper, J Darlington, C Plummer, K Ready , D Ward, I Baraclough (M Rose, 62), P Murray, G Peacock (S Wardley, 27), R Langley, C Kiwomya, M Beck

Subs not used: S Slade, K Rowland, L Miklosko

Goals: Kiwomya 37, Wiekens og 45, Beck pen 73

Booked: Ready, Baraclough

Previous Results

2011/12 Man City 3 QPR 2 (Cisse, Mackie)

2011/12 QPR 2 Man City 3 (Bothroyd, Helguson)

2003/04 QPR 0 Man City 3*

1999/00 Man City 1 QPR 3 (Kiwomya, Wiekens og, Beck)

1999/00 QPR 1 Man City 1 (Kiwomya)

1997/98 Man City 2 QPR 2 (Sheron, Pollock og)

1997/98 QPR 2 Man City 0 (Ready, Peacock)

1996/97 Man City 0 QPR 3 (Spencer 2, Slade)

1996/97 QPR 2 Man City 2 (Sinclair, Murray)

1995/96 Man City 2 QPR 0

1995/96 QPR 1 Man City 0 (Barker)

1994/95 Man City 2 QPR 3 (Ferdinand 2, Dichio)

1994/95 QPR 3 Man City 4* (Gallen, Sinclair, Penrice)

1994/95 QPR 1 Man City 2 (Wilson)

1993/94 QPR 1 Man City 1 (Penrice)

1993/94 Man City 3 QPR 0

1992/93 QPR 1 Man City 1 (Wilson)

1992/93 QPR 1 Man City 2** (Holloway)

1992/93 Man City 1 QPR 1 (Sinton)

1991/92 QPR 4 Man City 0 (Ferdinand 2, Wilson, Barker)

1991/92 Man City 2 QPR 2 (Wegerle, Bailey)

1991/92 QPR 1 Man City 3* (Penrice)

1991/92 Man City 0 QPR 0*

1990/91 QPR 1 Man City 0 (Ferdinand)

1990/91 Man City 2 QPR 1 (Sinton)

1989/90 QPR 1 Man City 3 (Wegerle)

1989/90 Man City 1 QPR 0

1986/87 QPR 1 Man City 0 (M Allen)

1986/87 Man City 0 QPR 0

1985/86 Man City 2 QPR 0

1985/86 QPR 0 Man City 0

1978/79 Man City 3 QPR 1 (Busby)

1978/79 QPR 2 Man City 1 (Hamilton 2)

1977/78 Man City 2 QPR 1 (Abbot)

1977/78 QPR 1 Man City 1 (G Francis)

1976/77 QPR 0 Man City 0

1976/77 Man City 0 QPR 0

1975/76 QPR 1 Man City 0 (Webb)

1975/76 Man City 0 QPR 0

1974/75 QPR 2 Man City 0 (Rogers 2)

1974/75 Man City 1 QPR 0

1973/74 QPR 3 Man City 0 (Leach 2, Bowles)

1973/74 Man City 1 QPR 0

1969/70 Man City 3 QPR 0*

1968/69 Man City 3 QPR 1 (Leach)

1968/69 QPR 1 Man City 1 (Bridges)

1950/51 Man City 5 QPR 2 (Hatton, Smith)

1950/51 QPR 1 Man City 2 (Hatton)

* - League Cup

** - FA Cup

Connections

Trevor Sinclair >>> QPR 1993-1998 >>> Man City 2003-2007

I was actually fortunate enough to see Trevor Sinclair before he arrived at QPR to replace Andy Sinton in the summer of 1993. A year prior to that he'd been a second half substitute for Division Four side Blackpool at Wembley as they beat my home town Scunthorpe United in the play off final on penalties. Sinclair was eye catching – a black lad in an almost entirely white team, bouncing and tricking his way up and down the wing with his mop of a dreadlocks and enormous backside trailing behind him – and had attracted the attention of plenty of higher division clubs by the time Gerry Francis moved in with Richard Thompson's moth-eaten cheque book.

Sinclair was very different to Sinton. He'd go around the houses and trick full backs to get past them, whereas Sinton was far more direct and reliant on pace. A fabulous goal in a Sunday clash with West ham in 1995 when Sinclair picked the ball up on halfway and drove straight towards goal before lashing in from the edge of the box showed he did have some of Sinton's strengths in his locker, but goals at Leeds the following season and two at Spurs the previous year were far more typical of him.

At the time he represented exactly what QPR needed to do in the transfer market. They'd bought Sinton from nearby Brentford for a few hundred thousand and sold him onto big spending Sheffield Wednesday for £2.5m, then replaced him with Sinclair for £600,000. Sadly the model went awry soon after he'd arrived when Darren Peacock, initially a well scouted bargain basement purchase from Hereford, was sold on to Newcastle at a big profit but only replaced by Karl Ready, a wholly inadequate waste of space from our youth team who miraculously, and infuriatingly, went on to clock up a decade of, most dreadful, service at Loftus Road.

Sinclair quickly forced his way into the England Under 21 reckoning, making his debut against Denmark at Griffin Park in 1994, and became a real hit at Loftus Road . Sadly, at that time, becoming a hit at Loftus Road meant QPR fans would have to read rather a lot about your impending move to Arsenal/Spurs/Man Utd/Blackburn in the gutter press and Sinclair certainly wasn't short of admirers by the time Rangers dropped out of the top flight in 1996. That relegation was the direct result of the sale, and failure to replace, talismanic striker Les Ferdinand the summer before and in fact Sinclair found himself pressed into action as a central striker that season as Kevin Gallen and Danny Dichio's inexperienced partnership, supplemented unsuccessfully and only very occasionally by Mark Hateley, failed to fire. Sinclair won the club's Player of the Year award as the club dropped down a level but stayed with the R's in Division One.

That paved the way for him to score arguably the club's greatest ever goal in an FA Cup Third Round tie with Barnsley . QPR have beaten Barnsley at Loftus Road since dinosaurs roamed the earth and did so twice in 1996/97 despite the Tykes ascension to the Premier League at the end of that season. They were struggling somewhat in the cup game – reduced to ten men by one of Andy Impey's trademark Floyd Mayweather impressions and a goal down early on thanks to a vintage piece of Tony Roberstsgoalkeeping – but Sinclair settled nerves and wowed the nation with a 20 yard, airborne bicycle kick into the roof of the net down at the School End. It won the BBC's Goal of the Season that year, the third time a QPR player had taken the award.

His relationship with the W12 faithful was testy by this stage though. He was booed prior to a league game with Man City the following season after apparently requesting a transfer – boos turned to cheers when he instinctively lobbed in the opening goal from fully 40 yards. His time at Loftus Road was coming to an end, and Harry Redknapp was waiting to pounce. The deal that took Sinclair from Loftus Road to Upton Park went down in the QPR annuls as just about the worst piece of business the club has ever done. The Hammers were able to secure QPR's best player, previously linked with a £6m Premiership move and later called up by England for four appearances at the 2002 World Cup, for little over £1m with the truly dreadful trio of Iain Dowie, Keith Rowland and Tim Breaker to sour the deal. It was the sort of deal you'd do on Championship Manager having taken over a club with the clear intention of destroying it for sport.

Sinclair didn't make the same mistake he had at QPR when West Ham were relegated in 2003 – he jumped ship immediately and made a £3m move to Manchester City, the club he'd supported as a boy. He'd become more versatile during his time in East London and played both left and right wing for City, scoring the club's first ever goal at Eastlands in a UEFA Cup game against Welsh side TNS. He was released to join Cardiff City alongside fellow veterans Robbie Fowler and Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink in 2007 but injuries restricted his impact. He appeared for the final four minutes of the club's 2008 FA Cup final defeat against Portsmouth but never appeared against QPR after leaving.

He retired to a television presenting job on the Abu Dhabi Sports channel where he fronts Final Score, a weekly Premier League highlights programme.

Others >>> Nedum Onuoha, QPR 2012-present, Man City 2004-2012 >>> Shaun Wright Phillips, Man City 1998-2005, 2008-2011, QPR 2011-present >>> Joey Barton, Man City 2002-2007, QPR 2011-present >>> Ishmael Miller, Man City 2005-2008, QPR (loan) 2011 >>> Keith Curle, Man City 1991-1996, QPR (coach) 2010-present >>> Tim Flowers, Man City (loan) 2002, QPR (coach) 2008 >>> Steve Lomas, Man City 1991-1997, QPR 2005-2007 >>> Richard Edghill, Man City 1993-2002, QPR 2003-2005 >>> Robert Taylor, Man City 1999-2000, QPR (loan) 2001 >>> Gareth Taylor, Man City 1998-2001, QPR (loan) 2000 >>> Tony Scully, Man City 1997-1998, QPR 1998-2001 >>> Trevor Sinclair, QPR 1993-1998, Man City 2003-2007 >>> Mike Sheron, Man City 1990-1994, QPR 1997-1999 >>> Mark Kennedy, QPR (loan) 1998, Man City 1999-2001 >>> Paul Walsh, QPR (loan) 1991, Man City 1994-1995 >>> Clive Wilson, Man City 1979-1989, QPR 1990-1995 >>> David Seaman, QPR 1986-1990, Man City 2003-2004 >>> Peter Reid QPR 1989-1990, Man City (player manager) 1990-1993 >>> Trevor Francis, Man City 1981-1982, QPR (player manager) 1988-1990 >>> Clive Allen, QPR 1978-1980, 1981-1984, Man City 1989-1991 >>> John Burridge, QPR 1980-1982, Man City 1994-1995 >>> Barry Silkman Man City 1979-1980, QPR 1980-1981 >>> Stan Bowles, Man City 1967-1970, QPR 1972-1979 >>> Rodney Marsh, QPR 1966-1972, Man City 1972-1975

Memorable Match

Man City 1 QPR 1, Monday August 17, 1992, Premiership

The Rugby League commentary team employed by Sky Sports is prone to exaggeration. Eddie, 'Stevo' and the boys will, on occasions, trot out, without a hint of irony, a statement about League being the "greatest game of all", often while covering a match between Castleford and Huddersfield being played out in front of less than 6,000 people in a prehistoric stadium at the end of an access road to an industrial incinerator.

Mike 'Stevo' Stephenson is particularly prone to spewing forth nonsense in a verbal form, frequently engaging his mouth long before a brain mushed up by 12 years of hooking for Dewsbury and Penrith has kicked into gear. Earlier this season, as Hull FC's Tom Briscoe broke three tackles on the way to a match winning try against the Leeds Rhinos, Stevo told viewers that Briscoe's coach Peter Gentle wouldn't "be Gentle tonight, he'll be rough." Well, yes.

So it was with a small mound of salt that I took Eddie's assertion that the Monday Night Football slot is the most prestigious in global sports broadcasting when Sky decided to experiment by screening League games there following the end of the football season. Really Eddie? Really?

Monday Night Football was pioneered in the US by ABC from 1970 to 2005 and has more recently been the domain of ESPN who recently paid $15bn to keep hold of the slot and one prestigious NFL game for it each week for the next eight years. Sky had experimented with it before the launch of the Premier League in 1992, even showing a QPR cup tie with Manchester United, but it started in earnest in the UK with a meeting between the R's and the sky blue half of Manchester.

QPR's first match in the inaugural Premier League was played on a Monday night at Maine Road, against a backdrop of an outrageous Richard Keys suit and a gang of American style cheerleaders who looked ridiculous that night, and only became more so as the season wore on, the weather got colder, and the outside broadcast unit moved on to Oldham Athletic, Wimbledon, and other unlikely founder members of the new top division of English football.

City took the lead in the first half through their top scorer from the previous season David White. Jan Stejskal was tempted from his line by a low cross from Holden but spilled the ball to Niall Quinn under pressure and although the Czech keeper regained his feet in time to save Quinn’s shot the ball rolled perfectly for White to slam in from close range despite the best efforts of former City man Clive Wilson on the goal line.

But Rangers roared back after half time and opened their account for the season with one of the goals of the campaign. A half clearance from Keith Curle was fed to Andy Sinton by Ian Holloway and the England international winger struck a sizzling 25 yard shot past Tony Coton and into the top corner of the City net.

It's worth remembering that at this time strict Sunday licensing laws were still in place in the UK forcing pubs to close after their lunch service, 90 minutes before the Super Sunday fixture kicked off at 4pm. When that was relaxed Sky turned Monday evenings into a dumping ground for what I'd call their "quota games" – that is games that feature two teams nobody very much wants to watch screened solely to tick a box on the agreement of showing every side a set number of times. One of Monday Night Football's most famous episodes on these shores came when Keys – before branching out into analysing the girls Jamie Redknapp had "hung out the back of" – became embroiled in an on air row with Ron Atkinson following a defeat for his Coventry team at Southampton. Southampton v Coventry live on Monday night – never has Mitchell and Webb's football send up seemed so appropriate.

Sky even lost the rights to it for a while, taking them back when Setanta's back-of-a-fag-packet business plan went up in smoke, but more recently, after the stunning discovery that Gary Neville is actually a tolerable human being when you take him out of his Man Utd kit and put him into a television studio, it's become a key part of the Sky schedule once more. Last season the title decider between Manchesters City and United was screened by Sky on a Monday evening rather than Sunday afternoon, bringing the concept full circle back to the Sky Blues shirts that started it all in the first place.

Man City: Coton, Hill, Brightwell, Simpson, Curle, Vonk, White, Sheron, Quinn, Holden, McMahon

QPR: Stejskal, Bardsley, McDonald, Peacock, Wilson, Impey, Holloway, Wilkins, Sinton, Ferdinand (Thompson), Bailey

Attendance: 24,471

Highlights >>> Pollock own goal >>> QPR 1 Man City 2, FA Cup 1993 >>> QPR 4 Man City 0 91/92 >>> QPR 1 Man City 3 91/92 >>> QPR 1 Man City 0 1990/91 Highlights >>> QPR 2 Man City 1 78/79

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Pictures – Action Images

Photo: Action Images

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