Gareth Ainsworth was without ten first team players at Rotherham last week — short term he needs his “cavalry” to come back and dig him out of a hole, medium and long term the club has plenty of thinking to do around squad building after a full calendar year decimated by injuries.

QPR (10-9-16 DLLLLL 20th) v Watford (13-12-10 DDDWLD 10th)

Lancashire and District Senior League >>> Saturday March 11, 2023 >>> Kick Off 15.00 >>> Weather — a bright start to the day gives way to a living hell after lunch >>> Loftus Road, London, W12

There are only six outfield players in the Championship to start every league game for their club this season, and QPR’s Sam Field is one of them.

Other than Field, starting again at Rotherham last week, QPR were feasibly missing their entire first choice team around him. Ethan Laird, Leon Balogun, Jake Clarke-Salter, Kenneth Paal, Luke Amos, Chris Willock, Ilias Chair, Lyndon Dykes and Tyler Roberts is quite the list — seven of them started and two of them came off the bench in the impressive win at Bristol City earlier this season, for example. Missing that many first team players, ostensibly the team’s whole back four and entire first choice striking line up, will trouble any team at any level. For QPR, competing with a limited budget in a parachute payment-dominated league, it’s proving terminal to their chances this season — as we’ve said for sometime, we have a decent starting 11 here but as soon as you scratch the surface you’re dropping significantly from somebody like Chris Willock to somebody like George Thomas, Seny Dieng to Jordan Archer, Ethan Laird to Osman Kakay, Kenneth Paal to Niko Trävelmän and so on. It’s little wonder the team is struggling.

Ordinarily, the situation would elicit sympathy, for the players involved and for the manager(s) who have inherited the situation and been asked to turn it around. You couldn’t do anything else but feel for Ilias Chair who left the field against Blackburn in tears at what, at the time, looked and felt like yet another bad hamstring injury afflicting one of our star names at the worst possible time. Chris Willock has gone from a player named seventh in last season’s FourFourTwo countdown of the 50 best players in the EFL, and a genuine sellable asset for the club, to a young man who’s now suffered three hamstring injuries in 12 months, whose form and confidence was decimated between the second and third, and who with only one more season on his contract now looks borderline unsellable. It’s a sad, sad situation, as one visitor to the director’s box tomorrow might have sung.

It’s worth remembering that during the Covid-19 lockdown season, so much of the success after Christmas was built on an impeccable record with injuries and the virus. I think only Lyndon Dykes had to isolate, and only Luke Amos picked up a serious injury in that period — people like Yoann Barbet and Rob Dickie were clocking up consecutive appearances getting on towards the 100 match mark. The reliability and durability of the team was its key strength — older pros like Stefan Johansen and Lee Wallace were able to churn out game after game. The club, and its medical team, received a lot of kudos for it — I gave them heaps of praise, because I’m a happy clapper in the pocket of the club.

Since then though, across the last two seasons, injuries have been a real problem. Mick Beale was very outspoken about it when he arrived last summer, saying there were too many players missing too many games and he would be doing his darndest to put a stop to it — he didn’t so much strongly hint as just come right out and say that perhaps the players weren’t looking after themselves as well as they could, and there were improvements the club could make around sport science. Tony Fernandes said on record in interview a couple of seasons back that we would be overhauling the sport science department at the club because we constantly had so much payroll sitting in the stand. Is our injury treatment, rehab, sport science where it needs to be? I ask that as an open ended question because how would I know? We praised it when things were going well, now we question it when it’s not. Mick Beale later said that he’d played people in the Boro home game who perhaps weren't ready to play, and kept them on for longer than he'd been advised, because he wanted a result to "get this thing going". He got that result, but Chris Willock didn't play for three weeks afterwards and has never been right since, and Luke Amos has barely kicked a ball all season. Are we looking after our assets? I think given how last season ended and this season has gone this should be a key part of the summer inquest.

Now, this could all just be an inevitable biproduct of our recruitment. We have deliberately in the past signed players with dodgy injury records - Clarke-Salter, Field, Thomas - because it's a way for us to get value in the market and we trust our medical team to get them right. Again, not my words, they've said this in interview with LFW in the past — Mark Warburton and head of recruitment Andy Belk. If Sam Field had been fit to play every week he’d still be at West Brom, that he wasn’t meant we could pick him up within our budget and his appearance record since joining shows where that can really work in our favour. We had an incredible run in the Covid years of nobody getting sick, or injured, which led to our best form in ten years and they got a lot of praise for that idea. The club were happy to talk up this policy at the time but has it now backfired on them? You ditch Yoann Barbet, who played nigh on 100 consecutive games, some of them with a broken shoulder, one of them after being slammed into a concrete wall, because he's 30, on a good contract, no resale value, and you replace him with Jake Clarke-Salter who is a younger, better prospect, better pedigree, more resale value. Makes sense, sure, we praised them for the ideal. But Clarke-Salter’s record, as I wrote when we signed him, was intimidating - he's never managed 30 games in a season in his life, and won't again this year. That looks a particularly brutal example of where we’ve got it wrong in 2022/23. If it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, sometimes it's just a duck, and we've signed a few ducks this year. Is that just us doing what we have to do out of necessity? Perhaps.

The elephant in the room is the absentee list being dominated by players who signed last summer and who, truthfully or not, Mick Beale claimed a lot of credit for bringing in here. Bar Tim Iroegbunam, who whatever you say about him is at least available to play each week, Kenneth Paal’s absence last week at Rotherham continued a trend set by Balgoun, Clarke-Salter, Laird and Roberts before him. Their appearance records before and after Beale leaving, much like their performance levels on the pitch - Laird at Watford, Paal at Millwall, Tim against Reading, compared to how they’re all playing now - are stark. Rightly or wrongly it’s fuelling the perception that we let the manager have the players he wanted, they came here to play for him, and when he pissed off and left them behind they downed tools.

That perception is not being helped by a couple of other factors. Not only is it the same faces, not only are they frequently from the Beale intake, but the problems are rarely contact injuries, and seldom what you would traditionally associate with a serious problem that’s going to keep you out for months on end. Hamstring tears and pulls, fine, nightmare. Pneumonia, less than ideal. But Ethan Laird has departed three games early now with what has been described as “some muscle tightness”, while Tyler Roberts is heading back to Leeds this week, his season apparently done after 14 starts and four goals, with an issue he apparently arrived with in the summer that has only ever been described to us publicly as “a calf problem”. The way Roberts, Paal, Clarke-Salter and Laird have all just sat down on the field in the middle of play, waved an arm at the bench, and then walked off the pitch has done none of them any favours with a crowd that is currently angry, emotional and looking for anybody and anything to blame for the current demise. At Birmingham Clarke-Salter and Roberts both did this in the first half, and in the latter case before we’d actually got the sub ready to come on and replace him. Stefan Johansen got injured that night too but limped on to half time to help the team and not have us spend our third sub before the second half. At Hull Roberts trooped round behind the goal and ignored the away fans completely, until they attacked him for it and he belatedly offered some acknowledgement. I guess the kindest way to put it is the optics aren’t great. It’s led to a good deal of anger, scepticism and suspicion among the support base.

Very, very frequently, players who are ruled out with injury in this team are described as minor, not long term, just a muscle injury, just a calf, nothing to be too worried about, and then disappear for literally months. Now, perhaps they’re being let down by the club’s communication. Perhaps we're deliberately keeping it vague for the opposition — Gareth Ainsworth has already made a big thing of not wanting to tip people off. Leon Balogun is entering month five of absence with an injury that was, again, described as "a calf problem" when he first dropped out. Perhaps they're lying to us to throw opponents off the scent, in which case I would say the PR strategy has failed because the teams we’re playing don’t look especially bothered by all the surprise witnesses we’re calling, and meanwhile it's turned a lot of supporters against our own players. It’s nearly a month since Neil Critchley said in his pre-match interview "Tyler didn't feel he was quite right for Saturday", now the player has felt the need to go on Instagram to tell everybody he’s done for the year and is heading off for an early summer of concentrating on being “the best version of himself” — Ainsworth’s keep it all under wraps strategy lasting all of a fortnight. If they are genuinely injured, and if the injuries are bad, it might be better in future to just front up and be honest with us, because it’s risked making pariahs of one or two of our own players this year.

Further fuel for the fire that actually they're not as serious as the players are making out, however, came from Neil Critchley post Middlesbrough, when he said publicly, on the club’s own website, that some of the injured players would "have to put their hand up to play". Not my words, that's the manager speaking. That certainly says to me he felt there were players who could play, and are choosing not to. You don’t have to listen to too much Under The Cosh to know if the going is tough, if results are bad, if the crowd is angry, if they’re not having the present manager, then there are players, weaker characters or whatever, who will hide. That little calf twinge you'd be desperate to play through if it was a cup quarter final this weekend, or you'd won five in a row, or you'd scored five in your last six, suddenly becomes a big problem if you've lost six in a row, if the crowd are on your back, if it's a long awayday. Every week you can listen to ex pros have a few beers with Parky and Browny and do big belly laughs over how they got out of this game because they thought the manager was a dick, or ducked out of that game because they wanted to go on Minty's stag do. Again, don't take my word for it, Critchley said it publicly.

The cynical side of me also says this is another problem when you rely quite so heavily on loan players, and perhaps also make quite such a big deal about QPR being a stepping stone to bigger and better things later in your career. If you're out of contract this summer, hoping for a move next window, or only on loan here and therefore hoping to either play for your parent club next season or get a decent loan elsewhere, how keen really are you to risk jeopardising that by chucking yourself on the line to play for this team, in this form, at this point? Especially if you came here for Beale and he abandoned you? If you've got any slight doubt about your hamstring or anything else, and you’re thinking about where you’re going to be next season, are you playing for QPR now? I don’t think you are. And, once more, don't take my word for it, look what happened in the lockdown fixtures - Grant Hall for us, Loyal Taylor at Charlton, loads of out of contract players, flat out refused to play for risk of ruining next year's big contract. In Taylor's case it condemned Charlton to relegation, but he got his £40k a week at Forest so happy days. People like Angel Rangel, who played regardless and blew out his Achilles to end his career prematurely, are rare heroes in the modern sport. Look at our injury list again - every single one of them is either coming out of contract, coming out of loan, hoping for a move, or a combination of all three.

It wouldn’t be such a problem if QPR had better back up. I’ve said already recently it is a damning indictment of Les Ferdinand’s eight years as director of football, and the myriad coaches working below him including a former first team manager and current international boss, that there isn’t one lad anywhere in the club capable of doing Lyndon Dykes’ job for ten games while he’s ill. To a large extent that’s working within our budget: you’re not going to have a lot of strength in depth on a wage bill of £27m at this level, and even that’s a good £7m too high for this club. But the revelation from last week’s accounts that we now have 136 players, managers and coaches on the books, up from 113 the previous year, 191 employees in total up from 171, is amazing to me when you look at the output we’re getting from them — one win in 20 games, Chris Martin shipped in on a short term deal to cover Dykes. For comparison Millwall had 40 football team management, 49 admin and ground staff, and 53 players including academy for a total of 142 at their last set of accounts; Luton this week published similar numbers of people, but a wage bill £10m shy of ours. Trävelmän is 26 now, out on loan again; Mide Shodipo is 25, back in League One again; Charlie Owens, 25, playing for the U18s during the week; Ody Alfa, on loan at Chelmsford City, 24 this week. We’re packed to the gills with chaf, not good enough to even make the bench apparently while we miss ten first teamers with injury. Rafferty Peddar is scoring frequently for the B Team, but is said to be too slight to stand much chance of making a Championship impact — maybe we’ll soon find out — and in any case is also now 21. Our B Team and U23 side is comparatively old — Aaron Drewe’s debut last week was a lovely moment, but he’s 22 now and has one start and one sub appearance. That none of these players are good enough to help us out in this crisis, while all well into their 20s, has exacerbated the problem — we saw this with the goalkeeping last year, when Dillon Barnes collected a third year of money but we still had to get Kieren Westwood in.

In many ways, it's our fault. If you try and get value in the market by signing players with bad injury records then for every pat on the back you get when Sam Field proves a good 'un, you'll get a Jake Clarke-Salter. It's our fault for allowing Beale to bring his own players in. Our fault for relying on so many loan players. Our fault for making the club out to be merely a stepping stone in your career, rather than a place you should be proud to play for regardless. Our fault for focusing so much on that development and sell on, and perhaps not on character and basics of putting a robust team together capable of coping physically at this level first and foremost. Our fault for keeping a huge backlog of 20-somethings who can’t step into the first team on contract here, sucking up resources.

Perhaps we have just been unbelievably unlucky. Perhaps it is simply a product of the market we have to shop in because of financial constraints. Perhaps it’s yet another downside of giving the manager of the moment everything he wants and then living with the consequences when he inevitably departs. Whatever the truth of the matter, an absolute priority when this squad is inevitably ripped apart and rebuilt (on a significantly lower wage bill might I add) this summer is a focus on the durability and availability of the players coming in, because a lack of that has absolutely shafted us over the last 14 months.

Links >>> Diakite’s reign of terror — History >>> He said he’d changed, mum — Interview >>> Man from the island — Referee >>> Edge of the precipice — Column >>> Watford Official Website >>> WFC Forums — Message Board >>> Watford Observer — Local Press >>> Voices of the Vic — Podcast

Below the fold

Team News: Well, the whole sodding preview is basically team news this week isn’t it? Tyler Roberts is now back at Leeds and assuming he doesn’t play again for us this season will surely go down as one of the worst loan signings in the history of the club. Potentially returning this week are Ethan Laird, Kenneth Paal and Ilias Chair, while Lyndon Dykes has done a week of full training after his illness and may make the bench. Leon Balogun is also said to be close, at last. Chris Willock and Jake Clarke-Salter remain a way off, Luke Amos remains a mystery, and Taylor Richards is out shopping for slip-on shoes.

Watford have a cavalry of their own due to return on the other side of the international break with Tom Cleverley, Hassane Kamara, Joao Ferreira, Tom Dele Bashiru, Edo Kayembe and Dan Gosling all due back for the run in. Summer arrival from Villa Kortney Hause has returned to his parent club with a knee injury, while fellow new arrival Nicki Manaj was released just six months into his stay. Francisco Sierralta is done for the season with a broken ankle. Slaven Bilic copped criticism for playing a negative, lone striker system which has yielded five draws from eight games prior to his sacking — Yaser Asprilla was the pick of the subs in a 0-0 with Preston last week, with Keinan Davis and Britt Assombalonga also stepping off the bench, and may push for a start in Chris Wilder’s first game.

Elsewhere: Perhaps QPR’s best hope of survival this season lies elsewhere. There are currently four teams below them in the league, two of them had games in hand during the week and neither won — Huddersfield drawing 0-0 with Bristol City and Wigan losing 1-0 at West Brom. Despite Rangers winning one of their last 20 fixtures, the gap to the final relegation spot, currently occupied by Blackpool, remains seven points. Wigan have won one of their last 14 games and two of the last 22, Blackpool have won one of 18, Huddersfield one of 11 meaning the teams that are meant to be chasing us have actually only won four of their last 51 games combined and lost 28 of those. QPR play Blackpool and Wigan in their next two away matches either side of the international break.

One would strongly expect Wigan to chalk up another defeat this weekend with an away fixture at champions Burnley. Blackpool start Saturday away at Bristol City, who are injury hit and gave up four points to Cardiff and Huddersfield to damage our prospects last week. Huddersfield, like Wigan before them, have a tough assignment against there former boss Carlos Corberan at West Brom. Cardiff had been cratering themselves with no wins from 12, but Sabri Lamouchi has tightened them up of late with three wins from four and three clean sheets into the bargain as well — they have an eminently winnable fixture at Preston this Saturday, who would appear to be the first plane on the apron requesting clearance for Mykonos. Reading are still keeping it all at arm’s length, but betting was suspended on their relegation this week amidst talk of another points deduction, and a home game with Millwall probably isn’t the one they’d pick this weekend — two wins in 11 for Paul Ince Is A Wanker.

Next week’s home game with John Eustace’s Birmingham looks massive for Rangers. Both teams are on 39 points and miserable runs of form — the Blues have taken one point from five games and won just three of their last 18 games. They have a home game with Rotherham this weekend, who on last week’s evidence will give them all they want and look set to pull comfortably away from the drop zone to end years of yo-yoing between this division and the one below.

It's a big weekend, too, up at the end of the table we used to be interested in. While Burnley look home and hosed, and have a gimme at home to Wigan, Middlesbrough have a great chance to narrow the seven point gap between them and Sheffield Red Stripe in second — the Blades host fellow promotion chasers Lutown at Bramall Lane, while Boro go away to free falling Swanselona who themselves have won three of 19 games — I can scarcely recall a Championship season where so many teams have been on so many biblically awful runs of form all at the same time. In most other seasons we’d be in even deeper shit than we are now. Looking to take advantage of any slips are Blackburn, turning out to be rather good after all with four straight league wins and a grewat chance to make it five at Stoke in tonight’s TV game, and Norwich who’ve suddenly come to life with three league wins under David Wagner to climb back to sixth ahead of Sunday morning’s match with Sunderland — lovely considerate kick off for the travelling fans that one.

Coventry v Hull is taking place to get a few blokes out of the house for the day.

Referee: A string of dates with the more competent officials in the league continues with our latest outing with James Linington. Perhaps even the PGMOL feels sorry for us now. Details.

Form

QPR: Put a bullet in me. Last week’s defeat at Rotherham was QPR’s fifth in a row, they’ve conceded three goals in each of the last four for the first time since 1959 (the fifth, sixth, seventh and eighth times they’ve done that this season), and lost the last three all by the same 3-1 scoreline. Only QPR, Crystal Palace and Forest Green Rovers remain without a victory in 2023 across the Football League. Those results mean it’s now one win from 20 matches and extends the current winless sequence to 13 games going back to December 17 — nine points taken from the last 57 available, the worst run since another one win in 20 sequence under Ray Harford in 1998. Rangers haven’t won at Loftus Road in nine attempts, losing seven including the last three. Only bottom placed Wigan (10) have lost more at home than our eight and conceded more goals than our 26. Across the last 46 games, stretching back into last season, QPR have lost more than half of them — 25. They’ve scored just six goals in the last eight, and haven’t scored more than one in a game in nine attempts — that 2-2 at Reading the only time they’ve scored more than one goal in a match in this sequence of 20. Three shots on target in South Yorkshire wasn’t a lot to write home about — one of them a penalty of course — but it did at least halt a run of 1, 2, 2, 2, 4, 4, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2 from the prior 12. Rangers have conceded 27 goals in their last 12 games, keeping zero clean sheets — they have only recorded seven clean sheets in 37 games this season. Only Wigan and Reading (54) have conceded more than our 52 goals. Jordan Hugill’s second half penalty was the sixteenth goal QPR have conceded from a set piece, pulling ahead of Swansea’s 15 as the worst record in the league. Hugill’s double was the eighth and ninth goal we have conceded to a former player this term - Jack Clarke (two), Jeff Hendrick (two, still cannot believe that), Josh Bowler, Luke Freeman and Nahki Wells (one apiece). Rob Dickie, at fault for all three goals against the Millers, hasn’t started any of QPR’s last seven victories — the last time he started in a game we won was against Hull on August 30 (he came on as a second half sub against Reading H, Wigan H and Preston A).

Watford: The Hornets moved onto manager number three this week with Chris Wilder replacing Slaven Bilic, the second consecutive season they’ve worked their way through three bosses in one campaign. Vladimir Ivic was in charge when this fixture was last played, a 1-1 draw in November 2020 under lockdown conditions, and there have been six bosses in football’s hottest seat since then. They have had 18 managers in the last decade, as many as West Ham have had in the history of the club. Bilic paid the price for a run of one win from their last eight games, five of which have been draws as an uninspiring one-up-front system bored the locals at Vicarage Road. Away from home Watford were stoppage time away from toppling champions Burnley recently, but have only won one of their last seven away games. Their five away wins is the joint lowest total in the top half of the table and the victories have come at the teams currently 16th, 21st, 23rd and 24th as well as sixth placed Norwich. They have dropped to tenth in the table, four points off Norwich in sixth, despite signing 16 players this season at a cost of more than £13m and trading 28 the other way for receipts of more than £50m. Since the Pozzo family bought Watford ten years ago there have been 66 separate transactions with Udinese, 55 of them listed as a loan or undisclosed fee, including this year’s £16m move of Hassane Kamara to Italy followed immediately by a loan back to Vicarage Road. If Chris Wilder is to salvage their play-off hopes, he’ll perhaps be grateful for a favourable fixture list — starting tomorrow they play the teams currently 20th, 19th, 24th, 5th, 23rd, 8th, 13th, 21st, 14th, 11th and 16th. Ismaila Sarr is top scorer here with nine. Watford have won none of their last six league games against QPR.

Prediction: We’re once again indebted to The Art of Football for agreeing to sponsor our Prediction League and provide prizes. You can get involved by lodging your prediction here or sample the merch from our sponsor’s QPR collection here. Let’s brace for the impact of what last year’s champion Cheesy thinks tomorrow…

“Just read an interview with GA on the official and he said two players expected back this weekend. I think its got to the stage where if the two players were Marsh & Bowles it still wouldn't get us out of this mess. Can't see where the next win is coming from. I'm hoping for some improvement vs Watford to give us something to go on ready for Blackpool and Birmingham.”

Cheesy’s Prediction: QPR 0-4 Watford. No scorer.

LFW’s Prediction: QPR 1-3 Watford. Scorer — Chris Martin

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TacticalR added 13:53 - Mar 11 Thanks for your preview and a detailed attempt to get to grips with what has gone wrong. It feels like Beale has holed us below the waterline with the players he brought in. But then we gave him the keys to the shop. The change of Barbet for Clarke-Salter that you focused on sums up everything that has gone wrong. I have given up on the Beale intake. It doesn't really matter if they are injured or don't want to play. In my book it's as if they have already gone (and Roberts has actually gone back to Leeds). Unfortunately we are permanent saddled with some of them like Clarke-Salter. The whole thing has been a fiasco. This has been compounded by the injuries to our existing players, plus the collapse in form of players like Dickie. There is no point in getting on the backs of the remaining players like Kakay, who are at least available. We can only hope that Ainsworth can organise them to get us over the line.

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