QPR are on the cusp of the play-off picture and buoyed by a rousing rout of Leicester, but now travel to the scene of a previous humbling on a day of the year they usually sack off.

Portsmouth (5-6-10 WLLLWD 21st) v QPR (10-4-8 WLWWLW 7th)

Mercantile Credit Trophy >>> Friday December 26, 2025 >>> Kick Off 15.00 >>> Weather – Bright, windy, cold >>> Fratton Park, Portsmouth

I knew we’d win against Leicester.

That’s not me being a smart arse, check the preview prediction, I said we’d win. Ask the Crown & Sceptre regulars, I was very confident pre-game.

It was clear from Nicolas Madsen’s interview after Middlesbrough a few of them held grudges about how their 2024/25 had gone under Marti Cifuentes. Madsen, who’s said nothing to anybody since he got here, suddenly started posting AI animations of him supping a can of Estrella on Saturday night. I wasn’t surprised to see the Dane, Jimmy Dunne, Karamoko Dembele suddenly playing out of their skin. Rare LFW 8s all – in the case of Madsen and Dembele arguably their best performances for the club.

Players only love you when they’re playing, right? But it was a big day for the back office as well. There’s no love lost. It’s clear. Was that Ben Williams I spied on the touchline at full time suited and booted?

This was a tough gig for Julien Stéphan to come into. Following somebody who was popular with the fans, widely seen to have done a very good job, and dismissed in murky circumstances. His personality is more studious, more thoughtful, than your average football manager. I’ve interviewed every QPR manager since Redknapp (bar one, ahem) and Stéphan is the most… curious? I’m struggling for words. Not a good thing, for somebody who trades in words, on a website called Loft for Words. I liked him, but he’s out of the ordinary/French.

(I mean, it’s not a high bar. Steve McClaren spent much of our meeting having it explained to him through the medium of finger puppets why the fanzine was called A Kick Up The R’s.)

It makes Stéphan harder to work out and warm to than a Cifuentes, who played the PR game to an absolute A* standard when he first arrived here - laps of the pitch and clever use of the press. For Stéphan’s team to deliver a coal hole beasting so harsh as that on Saturday was a big moment for him. His players pushing their reluctant manager forwards to receive the acclaim of the crowd at full time. The ‘Last Christmas’ song from the Loft so apt, because we really did give our hearts to his predecessor. This could be a big moment for the supporter-manager connection you really, really need if you’re going to succeed at a club that buries managers at a rate most dog owners pick up shit.

I’ve liked our direction of travel lately. Norwich will happen because it’s us, Middlesbrough will happen because they’re good, but we’re winning at a point in the season we usually lose, and we’re standing up strong in circumstances we usually wilt.

Stéphan took time this week, in his best pre-match interview of the year, to go back to a couple of recent home wins: Hull, where QPR were twice behind and won, and Birmingham, where we suffered a gut punch so soul destroying it would have derailed a normal Rangers team for the whole holiday period and instead calmly went out and won the game. That’s what Stéphan seems to want from his team – a 3-2 rather than a 1-0. Mistakes are fine, as long as you go out and immediately correct. He said it in his welcome interview and God love him for that.

We’ve suffered in 16th in this league for ten years, taking the ball to the corner to protect the odd 1-0 win against Blackburn - or whatever idiot scum it was that weekend. What is life if not for living? Don’t live in fear, engage in hope. This was why I liked Mark Warburton so much when he arrived, and why I got so frustrated with him towards the end – he went from ‘I’d rather chase 2-0 than protect 1-0’ to ‘Jeff Hendrick is starting every game’.

QPR have already won six home games this season with 12 still to come – they won seven in total in the last two seasons, and it’s already equal to the whole of our 2022/23. Lots of managers have trotted out the crowd pleasing “Loftus Road fortress” rhetoric, Stéphan is making it so. I wouldn’t want to come to W12 next – four wins from four, averaging three goals a game, get that into you and tell me you’re still hungry.

The bit I most liked about Stéphan’s pre-match, though, was: “The past is the past, the past is done.”

That performance against Leicester was play-off worthy, but you won’t get there unless you back it up, and back it up again. I want Karamoko Dembele to play like that, if not every week, then more often than not. He’s clearly got it in him but has had a poor start to this season and up to the weekend had more shots on goal without scoring than any other player in the league (bar one, more later). It’s no use suddenly pulling your finger out of your arse because your dander is up, especially if you then go and lose the next game.

QPR have four games in nine days coming up, which is daunting on a logistical level. Let’s not forget, though, that when the fixtures were released we had our first 12 games penned as pretty favourable, and our next 12 as very tough. Rangers have faced Ipswich, Southampton, Sheff Utd, Norwich, West Brom, Birmingham, Middlesbrough, Leicester - which was fairly terrifying when listed in June - and come out on the cusp of the play-offs. We’ve battered a couple of those teams as well. We now have games against 21st, 16th, 23rd and 24th before the cup game at West Ham.

This is real opportunity to, as Neil Warnock would say, “dip us bread”. You’ve done the hard bit, just tap it in. Just give it a little tapperoo.

QPR, famously, do not do that when such opportunities are presented. Nor do they win on Boxing Day.

The last time we won this post-Christmas fixture was 2018. Hell, the last time we even scored a goal was that home win against hopelessly relegated Ipswich seven years ago. We haven’t scored an away goal on Boxing Day since 2015 (Junior Hoilett in defeat at Portman Road) and we haven’t won away on Boxing Day since 1967 at Plymouth. Oh, well, we can’t have played away on Boxing Day that often, you might surmise – in fact, 23 games since that win at Home Park (D7 L16), only Blackburn play away from home the day after Christmas more than us. Last season’s worst performance was Swansea - away, on Boxing Day. The previous season’s worst performance was more debatable but Millwall - away, on Boxing Day - ran any other candidate close.

I think Stéphan is starting to get us. Us as a club, this group as a squad, and this as a league. You can’t knock a Frenchman taking on the Championship with a 4-4-2, two physical strikers, two pacey wingers, 3-2 wins and to hell with it. But what I think he wants to root out of us is that innate ‘typical QPR’, self-deprecation, self-fulfilling thing that we’ve already seen several times this year – because we always lose away to the team that hasn’t won a home game, and we always lose when it’s game three of a three game week, and we always lose at Nottingham Forest, and it’s really bloody tiresome.... Are there any other clubs that have as many shit stats as this hanging over them? I don’t know. But we never win on Boxing Day, particularly away.

Channelling his inner John Sitton, Stéphan said pre-game: “We will see, if we are a very good team that means we understand that every time, every game we need to switch and we need to prepare.”. Good players want to be good players all the time, don’t you understand how profound that is, haven’t you examined the words? The manager went out of his way to praise their mentality for the Hull and Birmingham responses, but pointed out his big learning from the Championship so far is that if we drop our level, by even just 10-12%, we get beaten.

QPR have been far, far below that for multiple Boxing Days. It’s just accepted as part of the culture of the club. Our preparation and attitude hasn’t been good enough. We haven’t won an away Boxing Day game since 1967. Just process that length of time for a moment. We got our absolute arse handed to us at Portsmouth last season as well, something else Stéphan was keen to state publicly he’d watched and learned from.

What I didn’t expect was for us to be 4-0 up at half time against Leicester.

On the way to the LFW Christmas curry that night I was pestering Andrew Scherer and Jack Supple for stats on when we’d last been four goals up at half time. Our guesses, without signal, on the Hammersmith and City Line, were Cardiff 6-1 January 2020 under Mark Warburton, Hartlepool 4-1 December 2003 under Ian Holloway, and Middlesbrough 5-0 March 1998 under Ray Harford. One of those is right. Two of those were dogs having a day. One of those was a mentality monster on its way to a promotion.

We’ll get a good indication of what we’ve got on our hands this time around on Boxing Day. Stéphan knows it too. He’s laid that gauntlet down.

Merry Christmas my R’s.

Links >>> Major January work to do – Oppo Profile >>> Gallen’s sliding doors moment – History >>> Linington in charge – Referee >>> Portsmouth official website >>> Fratton Park Ground Guide >>> True Blue Army – Forum >>> P04Cast – Podcast >>> Pompey Chimes – Forum >>> The News – Local Press

Below the fold

Team News: More bad news for the luckless Jake Clarke-Salter. I was hoping his half time withdrawal against Leicester was just us taking the opportunity to get him out of the firing line in a game already won, but it turns out he took a nasty challenge on his ankle and is now absent once more and awaiting a scan. Other than that Julien Stephan reports a clean bill of health with Ilias Chair back in training. Ben Hamer is back between the sticks with the use of a mask to protect his face after the nasty injury at Blackburn – his contract is up at the end of the month. Joe Walsh is fit again, Ziyad Larkeche is a long term absentee. Amadou Mbengue has remarkably made it through two games without a yellow card, and so remains two shy of the threshold for a two game ban.

Portsmouth’s form has dropped off a cliff since they became the only team to lose a Championship game to Sheff Wed and key defender Conor Shaughnessy blew his hamstring out. The Irish centre half hasn’t played since and won’t return until the New Year. The squad’s only recognised left back Connor Ogilvie is also out while Floraj Bianchini and Thomas Waddingham are long term absentees. Josh Murphy starred in this fixture last season but is rated doubtful with a hamstring injury that forced him out of last week’s draw at Derby on 51 minutes.

Elsewhere: A pre-Christmas managerial casualty at Oxford who have dismissed Gary Rowett ahead of their first second tier meeting with Southampton since 1976.

This is one of those ones where it’s easy to reach a conclusion from afar if you’re not following the team around every week. Gary Rowett has a shelf life with support bases of the teams he manages because his football is an attritional, survival-based grind. Millwall and Birmingham, both clubs where he did well, grew bored of it. And if you’re slogging up and down the country watching it every week you don’t deserve to cop it from smarmy Championship podcasters. They’ve lost three and drawn one of the last four games, and amongst those were matches with poor Swansea, Blackburn and Charlton sides who Oxford really need to be reeling into that relegation dog fight with them. But, then, what do the U’s really expect? Never sack a manager who would be his own best replacement and if he hadn’t just been dismissed then Rowett would be the perfect appointment for their situation, as he was this time last year. Until they get their ground move this is a barely a League One club. Anyway, the good news is Honest Mick Beale’s name cropped up within two hours of the announcement, presumably via the agent he doesn’t have.

Second big bit of Championship news this festive period is preferred bidder status being granted to a consortium looking to buy Sheff Wed. Local journo Rob Staton says it’s a group led by James Bord, a professional poker player who has majority shareholding in Dunfermline and a minority stake in Cordoba. Whether that inspires the Owls to a Boxing Day win against Hull is largely irrelevant, given they’re now 30 points adrift with just one win to their name. Wednesday haven’t kept a single home league clean sheet in 2025 and have shipped 40 goals at Hillsborough this calendar year – only in 1957 have they conceded more in a year (42).

The whole league is playing on the same day for a change, although there are two early kick offs and a late one. Birmingham are hosting Derby at 12.30 in the John Eustace derby, while Millwall are at home to Ipswich. The Tractor Boys have kept just one clean sheet in their last 27 away league games, winning 2-0 at Hull last month.

Leaders Coventry go off at 15.00 against Swansea, a forgone conclusion you’d think given the Sky Blues are 11 points clear of third and have scored 53 goals in 22 games already while the Welsh outfit are sixth bottom (albeit with three wins from four games since their managerial change). But this is a bit of a bogey fixture for Cov who are in less in their last nine home games against Swansea (D5 L4) and last beat them on home turf in 1981. Swansea lost 2-0 against Coventry in their last league meeting in February, ending an 18-game unbeaten run in these meetings (W8 D10).

Middlesbrough are Coventry’s closest challengers, six points back in second, and also have something of a gimme at home to Blackburn except… Blackburn are unbeaten in their last ten away league games against Middlesbrough (W3 D7), though the last time they did lose this fixture was a Boxing Day meeting in 2012. Middlesbrough have won nine of their last 11 home league games on Boxing Day, with both exceptions coming against Sheffield Wednesday (0-1 in 2018, 3-3 in 2024).

If Leicester are looking to recover quickly from last week’s debacle at Loftus Road there may be more bad news coming at home to Watford. In English Football League history, only Newcastle (47) and Burnley (45) have lost more games on Boxing Day than the Foxes (43). They have won just one of their last 11 such games (D2 L8), beating Man City 2-1 in 2018. Still, Watford have won just one of their last 16 away league games (D5 L10) and haven’t kept a clean sheet in any of their last 15 on the road, last having a longer run between April 2012 and January 2013 (16).

Stoke, with four defeats in five, are starting to move back towards more the position we expected of them in our pre-season preview. They have also won just one of their last 12 home league games against Preston (D6 L5) and are winless in all seven since relegation from the Premier League in 2018 (D2 L5). We need to do a bit more on how on earth Knob End have ended up fifth (third last week) but that can wait for now.

The afternoon games are rounded out by West Brom v Bristol City and Norwich v Charlton while the evening fixture is Wrexham v Sheff Utd – their first league meeting at The Racecourse Ground since 1983.

Referee: Safe Boxing Day sailings to the Isle of Wight’s James Linington, who could probably swim to this one if push came to shove. Only two teams have had more appointments with the Championship’s most experienced, and in our opinion best, official than QPR’s 31, but Portsmouth have won all four of their games with this official including a 2-1 at Loftus Road last season. Details.

Form

- QPR have won five of their last seven games, and four straight at home, to climb to seventh, a point and place away from the play-offs. Only Sheff Utd (16) have picked up more points in the league since November 22.

- QPR’s 4-1 win over Marti Cifuentes’ Leicester City was their biggest victory against a former permanent QPR manager returning to Loftus Road since Tommy Docherty’s Man Utd side lost 4-0 in April 1977. It was the first time the R’s have been 4-0 up at half time since beating Middlesbrough 5-0 at Loftus Road in 1997/98. @JTSupple

- Incredibly, despite the domination last week, QPR still officially registered just 44.7% possession in the Leicester game which means Rangers’ last 14 wins have all come with less of the ball than the opponent. @HoopsDreams_QPR

- QPR have scored 15 goals in the last seven league games, this after scoring just 17 goals in opening 15 games.

- However the last two QPR away games have both finished in 3-1 defeats to Norwich and Middlesbrough.

- QPR have won 19 league games in 2025 – their highest tally of wins in a calendar year since 2021 (26 wins).

- Portsmouth have lost seven of the last 11 games winning only twice, but come into this on an unbeaten run of two after beating Blackburn at home and drawing with Derby away. John Mousinho’s team has as many points in last two League games (four) as they did in previous nine.

- Portsmouth are 4-2-5 at Fratton Park. Middlesbrough (2nd), Preston (5th) and Millwall (6th) have all lost here already. Pompey have won two of the last three games on this ground.

- Portsmouth have scored 18 goals – only Sheff Wed (16) have scored fewer. They have failed to score in six of their last ten games. Adrian Segecic is top scorer with four.

- Colby Bishop has scored one in 18 starts and three sub appearances, Josh Murphy is yet to score in 13 starts and two subs – last season those two scored 18 league goals between them.

- Portsmouth did the double over QPR last season, as many times as they’d beaten them in their previous 16 league meetings (D5 L9).

- QPR have won just one of their last six away league games against Portsmouth (D2 L3), beating them 3-1 on the final day of 1999/00 with goals from Richard Langley, Kevin Gallen and an Andy Myers own goal.

- Karamoko Dembele scored his first goal of the season against Leicester with his 34th shot of the campaign. Only Portsmouth’s Josh Murphy has had as many shots in the Championship this season without scoring a goal (34). Murphy scored and assisted in a man of the match performance in this fixture in February.

- Portsmouth forward Conor Chaplin has scored five goals in six Championship appearances against QPR (four in four for Barnsley, one in two for Ipswich), his most goals against an opponent at this level.

- Rumarn Burrell has netted nine goals in the Championship this season, and could become the first QPR player to reach double figures for league goals in a single campaign since Andre Gray in 2021-22 (ten).

- Nicolas Madsen has played more minutes (1,802), created more chances (26) and won possession back (93) more times than any other QPR player this season. @JTSupple

- So, those Boxing Day stats again… QPR haven’t won a game on this day since beating Ipswich at home under Steve McClaren in 2018. The one prior to that was 2010 against Swansea and the R’s have only won seven times on this day since 1986. Our overall win % on Boxing Day is 25% – the worst in the Championship.

- QPR haven’t scored a goal on Boxing Day since that 3-0 win in 2018. The last away goal on Boxing Day was scored by Junior Hoillet in 2015 in a 2-1 loss at Ipswich. Prior to that you have to go back to 2008 and goals from Lee Cook and Dexter Blackstock in the 2-2 draw at Charlton

- QPR haven’t won an away game on Boxing Day since a 1-0 win at Plymouth in 1967. The R’s have played away 23 times on Boxing Day since then, drawing seven and losing 16. Since the war QPR have only ever won three away games on Boxing Day - 1967/68 – 1-0 v Plymouth Argyle, 1955/56 – 2-0 against the mighty Aldershot, and 1947/48 – 1-0 v Watford.

- That is an away win % of 7% – unsurprisingly again the worst in the Championship (our home win % of 49% is actually only fifth worst, yay for us)

- In addition to having the worst away record in the league, QPR play away on Boxing Day almost 56% of the time – only two teams (Swansea and Blackburn) play away from home more frequently on the 26th December

- Since our return to the Championship in 2015 we have a 1-2-5 record (the win inevitably coming at home, versus Ipswich in 2018) and have played 6 out of 8 Boxing Day matches away (0-2-4 record)

Prediction

In our Prediction League for 2025/26 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. JB007007 made a strong start and held off the competition to win our first prizegiving for being top at Christmas. QPR_Hibs won last season’s Prediction League at a canter and is lending his thoughts to this year’s previews…

“’Alright pop pickers!’ If I was to ask you which song opens with the lines ‘I was 21 years when I wrote this song, I’m 22 now but I won’t be for long…’ I’m pretty sure a lot of you would say that it’s Billy Bragg’s ‘A New England’, written in 1983 and made famous by Kirsty McColl’s cover version in 1985. And you’d be right, of course. But some others might say that it’s ‘Leaves That Are Green’, written by Paul Simon in 1965 and recorded by Simon and Garfunkel in 1966. And you’d be right too.

“It was only recently that I first heard the Paul Simon tune and, in amazement, rushed to check out the story relating to the Bragg number. Billy has admitted to appropriating the lyrics as a direct homage to the earlier song and he has stated that he is a massive fan of Paul Simon, but he fails to give him any songwriting credit. As a side note, Billy also reveals that he stole the melody for ‘A New England’ from Thin Lizzy! As Picasso was reputed to have said, “Lesser artists borrow, great artists steal.

“What a joy it was to be at Loftus Road last Saturday to witness QPR dismantle an (admittedly poor) Leicester side. The whole team looked truly ‘up for it’ and the only disappointment for me was that Hamer and the defence didn’t get their deserved clean sheet. It appears that I was wrong, last week, to be anticipating a shaky defensive performance. Mbengue and RND were superb at full back and JCS and Dunne looked composed in the centre. Madsen controlled the game and is beginning to look like the player we thought we’d bought last season. Kone and Burrell make a great front two and Dembele had his best game for us, so far.

“We move on to Fratton Park on Friday to play fourth bottom Portsmouth. Rangers haven’t won an away Boxing Day fixture since 1967 and we've also not played well against the ‘bottom’ sides this season, taking only two points combined from the Norwich, Oxford and Sheff Wed games. Last season we tried and failed to play Portsmouth at their own physical game, and I feel that we really need to be on the attack from the start this time. I think Julien may well go with the same line-up again, unless there are any injury worries. This could prove to be RND’s last game, as rumours abound that he will be recalled by Sheff Utd next week.”

QPR_Hibs Prediction: Portsmouth 1-1 QPR. Scorer – Richard Kone

LFW’s Prediction: Portsmouth 1-1 QPR. Scorer – Rumarn Burrell

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