It’s been a tough week for QPR, who are fast building another losing run and shouldn’t really stand much chance at home to massive Leeds tomorrow - for once though history is on the side of the Hoops.

QPR (11-11-15 LWLLLL 14th) v Red Bull Leeds (23-10-4 WWWDLW 1st)

Sky’s Super Saturday Brunch Spectacular >>> Saturday March 15, 2025 >>> Kick Off 12.30 >>> Weather – Bright, breezy, chilly >>> Loftus Road, London, W12

Throughout his time at the club Marti Cifuentes has stressed the importance of not getting too high when things are seemingly going well, or too low when they’re not.

In theory Queens Park Rangers would be the perfect club for that. They’ve been in the Championship for ten years straight and rarely threatened to move out of it in either direction during that time. The highest they’ve finished is ninth and they’ve had one season they could generously describe as a play-off push, the lowest they’ve finished is 20th and they’ve never gone into a final day of the season under threat of relegation. A club that’s finished 12th, 18th, 16th, 19th, 13th, 19th, 11th, 20th, 18th and is currently 14th does not immediately stand out as one of the sport’s cliched rollercoaster rides.

Yet to observe, listen to and be part of the fan base you’d think triumph and disaster lurk around every corner. We’re all always either cancelling holidays for the second weekend in May or wondering whether that pub we used last time we had to go to Crewe is still there.

Perhaps we’re just easily encouraged or panicked. Perhaps every support base is like this. Maybe it’s driven by so much dialogue around the club taking place online, where hyperbole and anger and extremes cuts through a lot better than “we’re probably just going to level out in 16th again lads”. The club’s propensity to self-immolate doesn’t help. What’s that now Skip? Ilias Chair’s hit a bloke in the head with a bit of old brick? Two academy lads have been arrested for voyeurism in a Kingston nightclub? The club’s been levied with the biggest fine evewr handed down to a sporting organisation? If you’re Paul Morrissey you must be scared of your own ringtone. And the fans are… jumpy.

The way the team goes about attaining these lower midtable finishes doesn’t help either, though. Spread the results around a bit and nobody really notices how you put together the sort of 11-11-15 record we’re currently carrying. This season, though, has been very typical of the last decade – one win in 16 to start and five points adrift at the bottom, one defeat in 13 to follow and up to within touching distance of the play-offs, then seven defeats from nine dropping us back into the relegation whirlpool. It’s always boom or bust. The team’s propensity to lose six in a row, often just after it’s had a really good run, is something no manager has been able to cure it of. The collapse in the 2021/22 season followed an unbeaten January that had pushed Rangers to within sight of second and finished with a 4-0 home win against Reading. Rangers won only two of 15 games after that, I wonder if something similar is going to follow the 4-0 tonking of Derby this year.

I’ve been determined to try and keep a lid on any anger or panic in the previews and reports during this latest slump.

A team that we always knew had issues in both full back positions, central midfield and up front, a squad we knew lacked depth, physicality and pace, has lost several key players to injury. When absences have occurred this season they’ve often come in the same position at the same time – all the centre backs were injured at once over Christmas, now it’s both first choice central midfielders and the strikers. Reminiscent of Don Howe’s last year here where every centre back that went within 500 yards of the playing surface immediately exploded into a thousand pieces. Our midfield and strike force wasn’t very good to start with, it’s not going to function if you remove people like Varane, Field and Frey from it on top of that.

We’ve also eyed this run of fixtures from February into March with trepidation for some time – almost since the fixtures came out. The squad is in year one of what we hope will be a successful rebuild after three traumatic years and FFP issues. Not to go all Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink, but this team is what it is. I’m surprised it’s been able to get as far away from the bottom three as it has, particularly after the start it made, but you can really tell its level when it plays anybody remotely decent –16 games against the top ten sides as they were on Tuesday and only one win, at home to ninth placed Blackburn. That’s highly unlikely to improve much tomorrow against promotion chasing Leeds, who have a wage bill of £140m+ to our £23mish.

Tough it has proved with now four straight defeats and five in the last six games, but all those losses have been by a single goal and there’s mitigation galore. Coventry we conceded with the last kick of a game we should have drawn and could easily have won – they won nine out of ten games as part of that run. A poor performance at Portsmouth for sure but a couple of late misses away from a point, and they won eight and drew two of 11 at home during that period. Nobody has won as many away games as Sheff Utd, we were pushing for an equaliser right to the end. Poor again at West Brom and Middlesbrough no doubt, but again only the odd miss here and there away from better results against teams able to add Adam Armstrong and Morgan Whittaker types to their team in January – imagine the excitement signings like that would have generated around Shepherd’s Bush if we’d been making them.

We expected to lose these games, and we have. If we come out of this run so demoralised and short of players that we then start losing the Stoke, Cardiff, Oxford and Preston games we have on the other side of it, falling behind them in the league table as we do so, then it’s the time for some panic and anger.

It’s pretty tempting to get angry anyway when you spend five days of your life and some considerable amount of cash trekking around less than salubrious parts of the country watching the team lose two what turned out to be eminently winnable games at The Hawthorns and The Riverside. When you put that much into it as a fan and you perceive the team is rather phoning it in on the pitch, as felt distinctly the case for the majority of Tuesday night, then it’s easy to bang the table and say “we deserve better”. Perhaps we do, but nobody forces us to go to Middlesbrough on a Tuesday night and QPR have shown you quite clearly over many decades now that if you do these trips primarily for the football and the score of the game you’re going to be disappointed much more often than not. So, again, I’ve tried to make a conscious effort not to be my usual self righteous self about what it’s like to be one of the 400 weirdoes standing up in the corner watching that unfold during the week.

There were, however, a couple of things that specifically disappointed me about this week’s away games.

I think those opening paragraphs tell you that I am hyper realistic about where QPR are in this division and the grand scheme of football in this country at the moment. Whether that’s age or wisdom or the club has simply beaten me into submission, my expectations are extremely low. We do have to have hope though. We do have to see a more positive future for the club. Otherwise, what’s the point? What are we doing here? As a club, as players, as supporters.

I don’t think it’s unreasonable or unrealistic to expect incremental improvement. You want to see the team and its manager learning from its mistakes, not making those mistakes again, and getting better as a result over time. You want to be a better, more experienced, more effective football team today than you were yesterday. One of the worst elements (among many) of having Harry Redknapp as our manager was his solution to every problem we had, his plan A, B and C for every issue, was just to go out and sign a different player or six. That the idea of coaching the team on the training ground or innovating and planning tactically was just completely alien to him. Why study tape and work on shape and coach players on their weaknesses we can just go out and sign the boy Niko?

So, it was incredibly disappointing to watch us go through that second half at West Brom last week playing against ten men in exactly the same way we’d played against Plymouth’s ten men and Sunderland’s ten men previously. We’ve now spent three second halves this season playing against ten men and haven’t even scored a goal. Looking at the way we approached the situation at The Hawthorns there’s little wonder. We wouldn’t have scored a goal if we were still there now. To just toss out the same thing that hadn’t worked before and shrug our shoulders at the end wasn’t good enough, and more to the point of this piece it doesn’t show us improving, learning and getting better over time. You want to think that if we go to Stoke next week and they have a geezer sent off after 40 minutes we’d have a better, more effective plan and some learnings from what happened previously. I didn’t see much suggestion of that at West Brom.

One of the other ball aching bits of Redknapp management (like I say, there were plenty to choose from) is that attitude I displayed myself a few paragraphs north of this. West Brom and Middlesbrough can sign Adam Armstrong and Morgan Whittaker, they spend more on wages than us, they have better players than us, and therefore we’ll likely lose to them particularly when playing away. Redknapp infamously branded away matches “bonus games” during our last spell in the Premier League and subsequently won none of the 13 he was in charge for. The attitude and approach of the team on Tuesday night looked to us in the away end like one going through the motions, that didn’t harbour any real ambition of going there and winning the game. As it turned out, with the sending off at the weekend, and a similarly lengthy injury list and morale sapping run of form in the North East, both games this week were absolutely gettable. QPR nearly took a point from Boro regardless in a hectic final ten minutes despite playing like complete tarts for about 75 minutes of that game – imagine what might have happened had they played properly.

Again, as we look forwards, that sort of mentality, and this team’s ongoing propensity to just chuck in a six-game losing streak several times a season, doesn’t suggest a great deal will change in the future. If we are to overcome these teams and clubs with logistical advantages over us then our mentality has to be strong and our standards have to be high. We have to expect and demand a lot of each other. I didn’t see a lot of that travelling with this team this week.

Not ideal preparation, therefore, for the visit of title chasing Leeds – a team that has scored more goals than anybody else across all four divisions. By rights, with the teams on paper and their respective form, Rangers should get pulverised here. Leeds, though, have an appalling record in London and at Loftus Road in particular where their promotion bid last year crashed and burned and where they’ve been beaten in six of their last seven visits. That 4-0 win, and Portsmouth’s uncompromising approach to beating them 1-0 at Fratton Park last weekend, provide a blueprint and cheat sheet for how we could potentially go about this. Put it in on them, rough up a defensive set up missing key man Ethan Ampadu, get Rodon moaning and acting like the whole world is against him, and batter one of the division’s most accident prone goalkeepers. This probably isn’t the day for the painful Nardi to Cook to Dunne to Insert Opponent Here ‘game model’ which hasn’t been working against much worse teams than this in recent weeks.

Show you’ve learned, show you can adapt, show you have improved. Stick it in on them. It’s only the Championship. Give it a go. A better go than you gave it on Tuesday anyway. Maybe the travelling fans do deserve at least that, a little bit.

Links >>> Falling apart again? Oppo Profile >>> So close – History >>> Top flight official – Referee >>> Leeds United official website >>> Yorkshire Evening Post — Local Paper >>> Yorkshire Post — Local Paper >>> The Square Ball — Fanzine >>> WACCOE — Forum >>> Marching on Together — Forum >>> Not 606 — Forum >>> SB Nation — Blog

Below the fold

Team News: With another week to go until we can even scan him and get a firm date on his return (sounds like my GP), it would seem Ilias Chair has been added to the season-long absentee list after his hamstring injury at Boro on Tuesday. Three separate injuries have restricted Chair to just 19 starts and two goals this season which, if it finishes that way, will easily be his lowest total since he emerged from the QPR academy to become a first teamer. In the last four seasons Chair has played in 176 of QPR’s 196 games, starting 169 of them. He now joins Sam Field on the long term absentee list – Field has featured in 128 of the 134 league and cup games QPR have played, starting 123 of them, since the start of the 2022/23 season.

Harvey Vale, Jake Clarke-Salter and Zan Celar are also likely done for the season. Karamoko Dembele has made sub appearances in his last four games as he pushes towards a first start since October. Jonathan Varane has missed the last two with an unspecified injury. Rayan Kolli is due back on the other side of the international break. Elijah Dixon Bonner has joined Swedish side Västerås SK on loan for their summer signing which begins in April – says a lot about how far his stock has fallen in a short period of time that he’s been allowed out while our two first choice central midfielders are both injured.

Isaac had the Schmidts for the midweek home win against Millwall but Daniel Farke will welcome him back for this one. Joe Rothwell is unlikely to be risked from the start for game three in a three-game week. Ethan Ampadu is a key absentee.

Elsewhere: A few out-of-form teams sweating a little more profusely after the bottom three suddenly coughed into life this week. Wins for all three of Derby, Luton and Plymouth (their first away win of the year at last) has breathed some new life into the relegation battle. Plymouth and Derby play each other at Home Park this weekend while Luton host Middlesbrough.

The teams immediately in the firing line are led by Cardiff, now just one point outside the bottom three after their midweek home loss to Luton. The Bluebirds have an awayer at Blackburn this weekend. Oxford have also slid back into trouble with no wins in nine matches and now just four points above the dotted line. The U’s host Watford on Saturday. Stoke also only have a four point cushion ahead of their Saturday lunchtime trip to Millwall.

There’s then a clutch of four teams between QPR and the whirlpool. Two of them play each other as Preston Knob End meet Portsmouth. Swanselona are drawing 0-0 with Burnley, while Hull travel to West Brom who’ve only lost twice at home all season.

At the top end of the table Leeds get first swing on Saturday morning before that Burnley game in the afternoon. Sheffield Red Stripe have their Steel City derby at Hillsborough on Sunday morning. Two of the play-off dwellers meet as Sunderland host Coventry, and two of those who’d like to break in clash as Bristol City meet Norwich – that’s your television game this evening.

Referee: Once a Championship regular, Tim Robinson steps down from the Premier League to take charge of a QPR game for the first time in two and a half years this weekend. Details.

Form

QPR: After one defeat in 13 games it’s now seven defeats in nine for the ever-streaky Queens Park Rangers. The R’s have now lost four games in a row for the second time this season – they were beaten by Blackburn, Hull, Derby and Portsmouth in September/October. Things have been better at Loftus Road where it’s two defeats in ten games and seven victories. It’s now 14 league and cup games since Rangers last drew a game – away at Norwich between Christmas and New Year – the longest such run since 2018. They haven’t drawn at home since Stoke on November 21, ten home games ago. The R’s have lost five away games in a row for the first time in five years.

This has definitely been a game for the home sides in recent years. QPR lost 2-0 at Elland Road in the first meeting this season which made it five straight defeats and seven without a win there. At Loftus Road, however, the R’s have won the last four meetings and haven’t conceded a goal in the last three. The 4-0 Rangers victory in the most recent meeting here condemned Leeds to the play-offs, and eventually another year in this division, while it preserved Rangers’ Championship status – the R’s were 40 points behind Leeds at the point of that thumping victory. The R’s have won six of the last seven meetings in W12 and lost only one of the last eight. If Leeds do win here it’ll be the first double done between these two sides since Leeds won both meetings in 2017/18.

Steve Cook’s goal at Middlesbrough during the week made it 22 different goalscorers, the joint most in club history along with the 2013/14 promotion season. It’s 23 if you include own goals, a club record.

Leeds: Daniel Farke’s side have been setting the Championship pace through the winter with a 17 game run without defeat – the club’s longest unbeaten run since 1974 when Don Revie was leading the club to a league title. The heavy lifting has been done more at Elland Road where they’ve lost only once and won 15 of 19 games. Away from home it’s a marginally less impressive 8-7-3 record – chasing pair Sheff Utd and Burnley both have stronger away records than the Whites. Don’t concede first in this game - Leeds are unbeaten in 75 Championship games when scoring first (won 66), since a 2-1 defeat at home to Wigan in April 2019.

Only Burnley (11) have conceded fewer than Leeds’ 23 goals against which is made up of 22 league clean sheets and a recent run of seven shut outs in eight games. More impressive still, though, is their running total of 74 goals scored – the next best total in the league is Norwich’s 59. No team in the Football League has scored as many goals as Daniel Farke’s side this season. Joel Piroe is the top league scorer with 15 followed by Dan James with ten and Brendan Aaronson with eight – all totals higher than QPR’s top scorer which is Michi Frey with seven.

For all of that, Leeds were beaten at Portsmouth last weekend and drew with West Brom the game before to re-open the door for Burnley and Sheff Utd. If they lose here it will be the first time they’ve lost consecutive away games in the league since December 2023. Last season they blew promotion by losing four and drawing one of their last six games, but had been unbeaten in 15 league matches immediately prior to that. Since beating QPR 3-1 in December 2017, Leeds have lost 24 of their 31 league games in London (W4 D3) and have lost nine of their last ten in the capital.

Prediction: In our Prediction League for 2024/25 we’ll once again be handing out prizes for being top at Christmas and overall winner from The Art of Football - sample the merch from our sponsor’s newly extended QPR collection here. For the first time last year we had joint winners so this season you’ll be hearing from one or both WestonsuperR and SimplyNico in the match previews...

Nico’s Prediction: “After the latest loss, this time to a very beatable Middlesborough, we continue our journey to our spiritual home of 16th (we are now level on points with it). Next up, Leeds. I do not see this being a repeat of last season’s 4-0 battering for Leeds or anything remotely close. In terms of squad depth, Leeds have a lower table full Premier League squad. In comparison, we can call on Harrison Ashby, Alfie Lloyd and Nicolas Madsen. We are slow, and we have an injured defensive central midfield and forward line. I suspect that we are going to get properly taken to the cleaners in this one.”

Weston’s Call “The results achieved by Derby and Luton has a pessimist like me starting to look at the table very slightly concerned, lose on Saturday as likely and other results go against us and that concern will grow. We need a couple of wins to be safe, recent performances and the injury list doesn’t in any way suggest this is likely to start against Leeds. I am fully expecting another routine defeat to add to our recent woes.”

Nico’s Prediction: QPR 0-3 Leeds. No scorer.

WestonSuperR’s Prediction: QPR 0-2 Leeds. No scorer.

LFW’s Prediction: QPR 1-3 Leeds. Scorer – Jimmy Dunne

If you enjoy LoftforWords, please consider supporting the site through a subscription to our Patreon or tip us via our PayPal account loftforwords@yahoo.co.uk.

Pictures - Ian Randall Photography

Myke added 21:09 - Mar 14 Very difficult to see anything but a comfortable win for Leeds. There is nothing to suggest we will raise our game to even be competitive. Which is why we might.
0

TacticalR added 23:01 - Mar 14 Thanks for your preview. At the moment it feels like we can't get out of second gear, so it doesn't matter if we are playing against ten men. If it wasn't for that home win against Derby we would be at the bottom of the form table. I agree with WestonSuperR that we need a win from somewhere, but it looks unlikely to be against Leeds, even if they've had a bit of a wobble in recent weeks.

0

062259 added 23:08 - Mar 14 Dread
1

gigiisourgod added 01:53 - Mar 15 Great preview, thanks Clive.
0

Blogs 31 bloggers

Queens Park Rangers Polls