QPR come limping out of the final international break and into the last eight games of the Championship season in poor form and once again missing multiple key players to injury – a supposedly more favourable run of fixtures starts at Stoke.

Stoke (9-12-17 LLDLWL 20th) v QPR (11-12-15 WLLLLD 15th)

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If I could pick a club for QPR to have a hex over, Leeds United would be fairly near the top of that list.

Sure, there are more obvious answers. If you could guarantee we beat Chelsea even more than we already do I’d obviously shake you by the hand and thank you very much. If you nailed me to the wall and forced me to choose then I’d go for Man Utd, having grown up in northern hell holes surrounded by the gloating, glory-seeking, unimaginative, unoriginal, virginal little toss pots in Sharp shirts. But we rarely, if ever, play these two anymore, despite United’s recent best efforts. It would feel like a waste. It might be 20 years before it starts to pay dividends.

No, Leeds is a good choice. Not that you’d know it to listen to them, but they’re down here in the Championship mud with us more often than not. They twirl their scarves and sing about a fictitious European championship, while denying all knowledge of all those tough times in this division and the one below where the best supporters in the world abandoned their club to the extent half their side stand was closed altogether for home matches. They bitch and moan about The School End, and their ticket allocation, and not getting both tiers, while parking us in the division’s worst away end, guarded like a demilitarised zone by one jumped up twat in an orange coat for every paying spectator, and striping us for £46 for the privilege. They sing their one song, give it the biggun, swagger/waddle down South Africa Road, dipping the shoulder into you as they pass you by the other way… Tiny dick energy.

And then they fold. Like a pack of cards. Every time.

Six defeats in seven visits prior to last week, a promotion blown in W12 a year ago, now just one win in nine visits to the People’s Republic of Shepherd’s Bush. The husband-and-wife team podcasting from their sofa, scent of Strongbow Dark Fruits wafting across the airwaves, talking about “QPR, for fuck’s saaaake”. The YouTuber with the blond rinse, who starts every sentence with “all due respect” before talking about how Leeds are going to steamroller you and your family into the ground, ranting about us into the camera outside his mate’s birthday party. It’s just so glorious. I’m getting hard now writing about it.

For half a wonderful hour last week it looked like it was happening again. Koki Saito, Steve Cook, two nil up. This against a side that has lost only four times all season. What is it about Loftus Road that spooks that lot so much? Can we bottle it? I’ll replace my Peroni intake with it. I’ll Eyeball Paul it right through my retina. At the mere sight of a hooped top their whole side turns into the embodiment of its centre back Joe Rodon – moany, bitchy, miserable. Hating the whole experience, and being a professional footballer full stop. Hook it to my veins and leave me be.

A shame, really, we couldn’t see it through for the win, but given the respective resources, seasons, squads and form that was a great result for QPR. With a full-strength side out it would have been a £23mish salary bill playing £145m+ of payroll (the highest ever in the Championship) and with the players we had missing it was more like £14m vs The Death Star/Amazon. They’re bringing Gnonto off the bench, we’re asking Frey to charge about for 90 minutes like “oh God, Strange Uncle Michi had too much to drink at the family barbecue again, you should have seen him”. CALM DOWN MICHAEL, you’ll hurt yourself. Well, don’t come crying to me in the morning. Jesus, he’s tackled the referee. Pillock.

We created next to nothing at all in open play, and still only ever looked like scoring from set pieces – specifically Paul Smyth’s weird long throw that isn’t a long throw but somehow is – but the intensity was better, the shape was improved, and Marti’s latest coagulant mixture of Colback and Edwards to solve our chronic central midfield issues was very effective. I enjoyed watching the game. I was pleased with the result. It was a good day. (Fuck me, we should have it stuffed and hung on the wall).

We knew March would be tough, and it was. We’d called it miles out, just by looking at the fixture list.

You have Chris Wilder’s Sheff Utd coming to town - best away record in the division, through the front door us, dead northern me etc etc. Follow that with four days on the road starting at The Hawthorns where West Brom have only lost twice all season, and all the way up to Middlesbrough who pulverised us in the first meeting (Hevertton Santos gently rocking backwards and forwards, “no Ben, put it down Ben”). Then back down here for game three of a three game week (which, as we know, QPR are statistically worse in than the whole of the division over a period of years) against champions elect Leeds, Leeds, Leeds, Yorkshire, Yorkshire, Yorkshire.

We’ve lost three games by a single goal, to go with the merited single goal defeat we got at Fratton Park where Leeds and everybody else are losing too, and the single goal defeat we didn’t really deserve in the last second at a Coventry side who’ve won ten of 11.

March, to put it simply, looked like March was meant to look like.

Few teams in the Championship this season punch their weight class quite as consistently as QPR. The hackneyed cliché about us playing better against the better sides and then ballsing it up against the Swindon Towns of this world may have been the case for long periods of history (it was 93/94 Ollie for goodness’ sake man) but it’s not at all true this season. As the league table stands we have played 13 games against the top eight (Bristol City, Burnley and Sunderland to come) and won none of them. Not a one. Six draws and seven defeats of which the 2-2 against Leeds is by far the best result we’ve had. You have to get to Blackburn in ninth before you find a team we’ve beaten, and that was a narrow, late, 2-1 at home. Flip to the bottom seven and you find more than half our points (23 of 45) with seven wins, two draws and just two defeats (Hull H, Derby A).

There are a couple of anomalies at either end of the midtable – we’ve won two and drawn one of four against Blackburn and Watford in ninth and tenth and should really have won at Vicarage Road as well, while Swansea and Portsmouth in 16th and 17th have taken us apart three times over – but that midtable shifts around very fluidly. Generally speaking we are in the middle of the table because we lose to all the teams in the top half and beat the sides in the bottom half to a remarkably consistent level.

Now, this should bode well for the next month or so. April, on paper, looked far easier than March. Rangers have just come off a run of matches against the sides currently first, second, sixth and eighth in the table, but now face 20th, 21st, 18th, 14th and 16th in the next half dozen games starting with this one against the worst Stoke City side there has been in two decades. This lot are Viktor Johansson against the world, and would already be relegated without their miracle working goalkeeper.

Stoke, with extensive help from referee Gavin Ward, have already turned one of our bad runs around once this season. The home match with the Potters was a real sliding doors moment. Marti Cifuentes, however much the club deny it, was close to dismissal. Stoke led early in the first half. Ward handed QPR a penalty lifeline and instead of letting Nicholas Madsen take it – literally the only thing that bloke does seem to be able to do is take penalties – we gave a charity offering to try and get Zan Celar off the mark. He sat the goalkeeper down then slotted wide of the vacant bottom corner he’d created. When they strap me to the chair please let them know the murders were just. Stoke scored an own goal for us. Solidarity comrades. Then, when Jun-Ho leathered a last-minute winner in from 25 yards, Ward pulled him back for a handball committed a quarter of an hour earlier in the move. The crowd chanted Cifuentes' name throughout – again, whatever the hierarchy tell you, it definitely moved the needle on his future – and we escaped with a point. Salvation lay beyond, with two Celar goals and a first win in 14 at Cardiff that midweek.

By and large, we’ve got what we wished for.

We wanted a hex over Leeds, and we’ve got one. A hilarious one. We even beat them here in the FA Cup. We wanted to progress from the trauma of the last couple of years back into midtable, and so far we have. We wanted the club to keep faith with Cifuentes, and they did. We knew March would be tough and the general consensus on our message board in the autumn was if we could get clear of that month with distance between us and the bottom three that would be job done. It would take a highly unusual and unlucky set of results for us to be sucked into that bottom three from here.

We’ve got, albeit from a pretty downtrodden and meagre wishlist, pretty much what we hoped for so far, and if we can kick on over the next month into a 12th-ish finish then, per everybody’s summer predictions, and certainly per everybody’s Christmas wishlist, that would be a satisfactory campaign.

And yet, there’s just that typical QPR sense of unease around the place.

I try and check myself. Travelling to every single game can warp your perception and make everything feel a lot worse than it actually is, because who ever had a happy trip back from a Tuesday night in Middlesbrough? (Though, weirdly it does seem to be the ones who don’t go to the games who have the most extreme reactions). Producing LFW has effectively turned my hobby into my job, and whoever liked going to work? I knew March would be bad, I told myself to prepare for it, but it still feels shit. Standing there at Portsmouth watching us try that fucking, bastard, sodding goalkick routine for the millionth time without success until it literally ends up back in our own net. Watching Ilias Chair do the hold it, hold it, hold it, hold it… THREE POINT JUMP SHOT routine over and over against a highly amused ten-man West Brom. It’s been ball aching.

There is more to it than that, though. QPR have been in the Championship for ten years, almost exclusively in middle of the bottom half, and have never got down to the last day requiring a result to stay up. However, multiple times within that they have clocked off around this time of year and run it far closer than it ever needed to go. Not so much sticking it on autopilot as deciding they’re close enough to the airport to turn off the engines completely, save fuel and just glide the fucker in.

In March 2017 Ian Holloway and Marc Bircham really got us going, with five wins and a draw from seven, a 4-1 win at Birmingham and a 5-1 at home to Rotherham amongst them. It felt like we were flying under a great team of proper Rangers men. We then lost six in a row for the second time that year and needed to beat Forest 2-0 at home in the penultimate game to make safe divisional status.

It's easy to forget, because he was so comedically hopeless, that Steve McClaren had a great autumn. We won eight and lost only three of 14 games. It included a four-point haul from Jack Grealish’s Villa. We beat Brentford 3-2 in a thrilling home game. We won at Nottingham Forest for the first time ever. That play-off push dissolved into seven straight defeats, one win from 15 games, two wins from 19 games, Rotherham’s only away win in three years, Bolton’s only away win all season and another managerial sacking. Still beat Leeds though, natch.

Mark Warburton went into lockdown in touch with the play-offs, with Ebere Eze and Bright Osayi-Samuel absolutely flying. Stoke beaten 4-2, Cardiff 6-1, Preston 3-1 at Deepdale in the final game before the government locked us all in our homes. We had three months to prepare for a run in where we had the bottom six teams to play plus Fulham. We lost every game. In the end we were glad of rather spawny late wins at Boro and home to Millwall behind closed doors to stop it getting hairy at the other end. Warburton would suffer another collapse two years later, from pushing Bournemouth for second at the end of an unbeaten January that finished with a 4-0 home win against Reading, to winning two of 15 games.

Mick Beale had us top of the whole league at the end of October. The team won two of its next 28 games under three managers and stayed up courtesy of two even flukier wins than the ones before at Burnley (their only home loss all season) and Stoke again.

We are used to these things spiralling. We’re used to them getting out of hand. And there have been some concerning signs in recent weeks.

We do only look like scoring from long throws, and even from those the division is now well wise to Jimmy Dunne.

Injuries are once again mounting up to key players and, having been quick to publicly praise the head of performance last year when the medical record was spookily exemplary, the club must accept criticism that allowing him to remain on salary while based abroad and also working for several other organisations is not a great look given how the casualty list has decimated our season.

We’ve also recruited and retained ourself into a position where the majority of our starting 11 is either on loan or out of contract – with all the uncertainty that brings. Listen to any episode of Undr the Cosh, hear how footballers think, feel and talk. If you haven’t got a contract next season, or you’re looking for your next loan or success at your parent club, are you going to be chucking it all in for QPR’s midtable finish this year? Are you going to risk an injury? Or might that strain you’d otherwise play through actually be something to keep you out of Oxford away on a Wednesday night? Covid required the Grant Halls and Loyal Taylors of this world to break cover on this, but it happens every year at every club. Not everybody is Angel Rangel, and what happened to him here is why. The injury and contract situations are both most acute in our back four – Liam Morrison is literally the only defender we have who is a) fit to play and b) contracted here next season.

QPR have to be really on it to win games in this division. Only against Oxford have they won this season without playing really well. Drop levels even slightly, QPR don’t win many games at this level. There was a distinct Mykonos scent on the breeze of our recent “effort” at Middlesbrough, where the last ten minutes of the game showed even a modicum of intensity against an injury ravaged and mentally fragile host might have yielded a better result.

That intensity was there against Leeds, and ultimately a combination of their better quality and us running out of bodies/steam meant we only got a point. That was, as said, still a terrific result for us. Bring that intensity again, to games against Stoke, Cardiff and Oxford over the next week, and more points are there to be taken. Points to achieve everything we realistically wished for back in the summer.

So, that’s the challenge. Do that.

Links >>> Disasterclass – Oppo Profile >>> Helguson masterclass – History >>> View from the outside – Column >>> Premier League official – Referee >>> Stoke City official website >>> Stoke Sentinel — Local press >>> The Oatcake — Message Board >>> The Wizards of Drivel — Podcast >>> Every Step Along The Way — Podcast >>> Stoke City official website >>> Stoke Sentinel — Local press >>> The Oatcake — Message Board >>> The Wizards of Drivel — Podcast >>> Every Step Along The Way — Podcast

Dave Thomas (no, not that one) is a QPR legend.

Guys, you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone. If you are able to chip in to keep our fanzine going, and allow Dave the rest and recuperation he needs right now (not, Dave, writing a fucking issue for Bristol City at home, mentalist) then Sindy Grewal has kindly set up a GoFundMe to keep things ticking over which you can donate to here.

Below the fold

Team News:QPR will be thin on the ground for tomorrow’s trip, although Jonathan Varane and Alfie Lloyd will be back in the travelling squad. Steve Cook’s long standing foot injury has flared again and will require a period of rest while Koki Saito starts a three-match ban for his red card in the Leeds game. Rayan Kolli and Sam Field should return to training next week but this game too soon. Ilias Chair, Jake Clarke-Salter and Zan Celar will miss the rest of the season.

Enda Stevens, Sol Sibide and Ben Gibson, who scored an own goal in the first meeting, all remain sidelined for Stoke. Loaned Ipswich striker Ali Al-Hamadi missed international duty with injury but is training ahead of this game. Bae Jun-ho, Million Manhoef, Andrew Moran, Viktor Johansson, Lewis Koumas, Ashley Phillips, Jordan Thompson and Andre Vidigal were all away on international duty but have returned unscathed.

Elsewhere:Sheffield Red Stripe v Frank Lampard’s Coventry is a pretty obvious game of the weekend between two in-form promotion chasers and that’s the TV offering tonight. Slightly harsh on both squads with players still filing back from international duty yesterday.

The three other clubs in the top five will wait on that result knowing they all have winnable home games tomorrow. Red Bull Leeds host Swanselona where caretaker manager Alan Sheehan has been given the go-ahead to continue in charge to the end of the season, Burnley are drawing 0-0 with Bristol City at Turf Moor while Sunderland welcome Millwall. West Brom currently occupy the last play-off spot ahead of a trip to rapidly descending Norwich.

The early Saturday games focus very much on the bottom end of the table. Plymouth might fancy their chances of a second away win of the season as they travel to typically on-the-beach Watford, although chairman Simon Hallett sounded like he’s already waved the white flag on their Championship status as he prepares to welcome new investment to the club. Hull and Luton face each other in a six pointer.

Other games to watch down the bottom include Cardiff at home to Sheff Wed, Oxford away to Boro who put six through them in the first meeting, and Portsmouth at home to Blackburn. Rovers are planning protests against their owners once more, and have asked the CEO and Venkys representatives not to attend the remaining matches – a request the club has refused. (Go get the rooster).

We’re minus a game this weekend because Preston horribly undermined and jeopardised their own quest for 16th position with the distraction of reaching the FA Cup quarter-final at a sold-out Deepdale against Premier League side Aston Villa. I’m sure they’re gutted and looking forward to focusing fully on the resulting game in hand at home to Derby on Wednesday night.

Referee: Premier League referee Tony Harrington is back in the Championship for this one. Harrington has awarded seven penalties in his last 11 QPR appointments – four for and three against. Details.

Form

Stoke: This is Stoke’s seventh season back in the Championship since relegation from the top flight in 2017/18 and they infamously haven’t finished in the top half of this division once since they returned – 16th, 15th, 14th, 14th, 16th and 17th. Now 20th with eight games to play they’re certainly not going to improve on that record this season, and in fact just two places and one point separate them from the final relegation spot which is presently occupied by Derby who they face on the final day. Stoke have won only four of their last 24 games.

Mark Robins is already the club’s third manager this season following the sackings of Stephen Schumacher and Narcis Pelach. Still time for Tony Pulis to don tracksuit and cap for a final survival mission here. There’s been precious little new manager bounce for Robins who has won just three of his 16 games since arriving on New Year’s Day. Stoke have won just one of the last six, two of the last nine, and lost five of the last eight coming into this having conceded a stoppage time penalty at Millwall to go down 1-0 at The Den in the final game before the international break. With Tom Cannon (nine) gone it leaves Andrew Moran and Lewis Baker as top league scorers on a paltry four. Striker Sam Gallagher has just three, two of them in one game against Coventry, but he’s scored six career goals against QPR – the most he’s netted against any side – his last coming for Blackburn in Rangers’ 2-1 win at Ewood Park last February.

Only Hull (four) and Sheff Wed (five) have won fewer than Stoke’s six home victories – a total matched by bottom side Plymouth. They do draw a lot here though (eight, only Preston and Burnley have more) which means their total of five home defeats is fairly respectable (Coventry have the same in fifth). Stoke have lost just one of their last seven home league games (W3 D3), keeping five clean sheets across that time. This is in keeping with recent seasons – in 2022/23 Stoke and QPR both lost 12 times at home, our club record, which was more than any other side in the division and concluded with Rangers’ 1-0 win on this ground which kept the R’s in the division. Stoke have won only 20 of their last 65 home games in the league at what was once considered to be the proverbial fortress.

QPR: It’s been one thing or the other and nothing in between for QPR so far this season. Spread their 11-12-15 record out more evenly and here’s to a season we’ll never remember, but this one has included a sequence of 13 games without victory and one win from the first 16 league games, then another stretch where the R’s lost one and won eight of 13 games eventually putting ten wins and only four defeats on the board in 18 matches. Now it’s five without a win including four losses, and seven defeats in the last ten games. The current run of five consecutive away defeats, all by one goal, is the worst record on the road since February 2020. The 2-2 with Leeds snapped a run of 13 games without a draw, the longest since August 2018.

The initial dire start to the season culminated in a 1-1 draw at home to Stoke in which the home crowd sang Marti Cifuentes’ name on repeat letting the club know he retained their support and that we felt the blame lay elsewhere. The Rangers faithful were rewarded with a Ben Gibson own goal, a penalty which Zan Celar missed, and a disallowed Stoke goal in the very final minute by referee Gavin Ward.

QPR were beaten here 1-0 in this fixture last season on a not-very-romantic Valentine’s Day midweek. Stoke though - like Boro, Derby, Leicester, Southampton and Cardiff – is one of those wide, expansive, frequently empty identikit new stadiums where Rangers have tended to do quite well down the years. Since losing their first visit here 2-1 in 1998 Rangers have played at whatever they call it these days 14 times and won seven of those with a 2-2 draw in 2018/19 under Steve McClaren thrown in there for good measure. Stoke City have won just one of their last 11 league games against sides from London (D4 L6), failing to score in seven of those matches.

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: “Following the surprise performance at home to Leeds and the international break, next up is Stoke. They are a very odd club. All the money in the world, the ability to bring in really good managers and then it all goes to hell on the pitch. They are the Championship equivalent of Man Utd. They are not scoring many and losing a lot away from home. For the Hoops, whilst it looks like Varane might be back and we may have a functional midfield, upfront we still only have Michi Frey and possibly Alfie Lloyd again to run around at 70 minutes. I see this as a low scoring draw.

Weston’s Call “This is a tough one to call, definitely some positives to take from the Leeds match and Stoke in general haven’t looked particularly good recently. I do rate Robins though who has a good record against us. I’d expect a low scoring cagey match that I fear we lose by the odd goal.”

Nico’s Prediction: Stoke 1-1 QPR. Scorer – Jimmy Dunne

WestonSuperR’s Prediction: Stoke 1-0 QPR. No scorer.

LFW’s Prediction: Stoke 1-0 QPR. No scorer.

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Pictures - Ian Randall Photography

062259 added 03:57 - Mar 29 vulnerable
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TacticalR added 14:58 - Mar 29 Thanks for your preview. So, after a nightmare start to the season, we are somehow where we should be. Is this the zen of QPR? (even if you can never really take anything for granted at QPR). Now, at the end of the dreaded March fixtures, we are bottom of the form table. But then so are Stoke.
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