QPR halted their latest long losing and scoreless run with a 3-1 win at relegation haunted Leicester on Saturday despite falling behind early, with starring roles for Harvey Vale and Ronnie Edwards.

A midweek defeat at Birmingham far more convincing and one-sided than the single goal scoreline suggested had us arriving at the point of the QPR Doom Loop named in honour of former striker Chris Martin - where the defeats to nil and plunge down the table have become so chronic the players and manager start saying the quiet part out loud in the official club interviews.

Julian Stéphan described his team’s first half at St Andrew’s as “embarrassing” while captain Jimmy Dunne said the players needed to have “a good look at themselves in the mirror” and strongly intimated some of them weren’t sure what they were meant to be doing. You’re one more chunky defeat away from Tyler Morris being replaced by Lyse Doucet on commentary when you get to here.

Generally, one of two things tend to happen next.

Either, things go a bit J G Ballard and the crisis becomes an all-enveloping existential sort of thing swallowing all before it. Symptoms can include Leon Balogun inciting a riot by cupping his ear at a disgruntled away end, then demanding a summit with supporters at the training ground to assure them he’s fully committed to the cause and not about to jump ship back to Glasgow Rangers, shortly before jumping ship back to Glasgow Rangers.

Cures sought for this usually include the dismissal of whoever happens to be the manager at that stage and Julien Stéphan has been giving the strong impression of somebody eyeing a one-way trip on the Eurostar as his team have lost 5-0, 2-0, 4-0 and 1-0 in quick succession over the last fortnight. The last time a QPR team lost five in a row without scoring was 2002.

Things felt very much on that path as Rangers, once again, started a game half asleep at Leicester City on Saturday and fell behind early. The Foxes could literally have scored after 25 seconds (Will there be a cross into the box? You bet. Is their striker left completely unmarked? Of course.) and Mavididi had curled a sighter past the post before the opening goal. City’s best player Jordan James allowed to stroll through the wide-open spaces of the QPR midfield and get a shot away unchallenged. Joe Walsh’s positioning and footwork all wrong, down in Asmir Begovic-style instalments, and picking the ball out of his net for the 13th time in five games. QPR, the team that gave up football for Lent.

Had anybody got on the end of a cut back into the six-yard box after a prolonged period of home side pressure around the half hour it’s likely this QPR team would have sunk without trace. Rayan Kolli dribbling the ball around in his own half until he lost it, resulting in a foul by Richard Kone, yellow card and furious reaction by the Ivorian towards his young team mate rather summed it all up. Things were getting aggy.

The general consensus in the pub beforehand was that Stéphan had got the team selection about right with what he had available – certainly the brave decisions to finally drop Jonathan Varane and Koki Saito were to be commended – and yet here we were with the water lapping over our heads again. When you try everything and nothing works you’re in trouble.

Or… something happens to turn it back in your favour. You beat Swansea 4-0 out of the blue, you win 2-1 at Vincent Kompany’s all-conquering Burnley with 10% of the possession, Marc Nygaard scores from 35 yards. You climb out of hell, one inch at a time.

Here, a foul on Isaac Hayden in midfield and injury provided QPR with a free kick on halfway and two minutes to think about what they were going to do with it. When play restarted they took this opportunity to put a ball into the opposition penalty box and passed it instead sideways and then back to goalkeeper Walsh. At that point the away end decided it had seen enough. The travelling QPR fans, among the most patient and tolerant in the league having taken ten years of rank mediocrity and responded to it by selling the ground out every week, started to jeer and boo their own players. Every new way the lads discovered to work the ball back to their own goalkeeper brought another, louder, tirade of abuse rolling down from the corner of the ground. “Sideways and backwards, everywhere we go” started to ring around the King Power. It’s an old fashioned mutiny is what it is, long overdue as well.

We came here two years ago with a far worse team in much greater relegation trouble, brought twice as many fans who were totally united behind the players and their manager, won the game and celebrated long into the night. How you halve that support and upset it this much in such a short period of time should be studied.

Ronnie Edwards, perhaps fearing the reaction if he didn’t, got his head up and played a ball forwards. That’s all it took. Leicester are so poor themselves it didn’t need anything more complicated than that. A beautiful forward pass, right down the centre of the pitch, centre back Ben Nelson slow off the mark, goalkeeper Stolarczyk caught in two minds, Harvey Vale walks between the two of them and runs the equaliser into the empty net. Football is as simple as that. Play forwards.

From there it was a completely different football match, between two completely different teams, in an altogether different stadium. The away end, remembering what it felt like to score a goal after more than seven hours without one, returned to taunting their stricken opponents rather than their own players. “We’re going to Tottenham, you’re going to Creeeeeeeewe” – catchy number, albeit betraying a lack of awareness of the League Two promotion picture.

The massed home ranks dwindled towards the exits long before the end as their team collapsed in on itself. City, so utterly dreadful and appallingly half-arsed in a 4-1 defeat at Loftus Road in December, quickly turned a 1-0 advantage into a 3-1 deficit and churned out a second half performance to be truly ashamed of. If Jordan Ayew (no goals in 13 appearances, the sort of forward who strikes confidence into the defenders) really wanted to be here, he was doing an awfully good impression of somebody who didn’t.

QPR, by contrast, suddenly seemed flush with confidence. Kieran Morgan, who’d given the ball away with each of his first three touches in the game, suddenly started drawing back-spun passes into the channels with the outside of his boot as if he had the thing on a string – like watching Ernie Els’ golf swing, relaxed and filthy in equal measure. The new Irish lad, Harvey O’Vale, started tearing Leicester up down the right-hand side after a midweek performance at Birmingham from someone that looked an awful lot like him that had me concerned for his health.

Having scored the first, Vale set up the second and third. First marauding into the Leicester penalty area and putting in a low cross which the hapless Nelson couldn’t resist thrusting a leg out and diverting away from the goalkeeper who was about to claim it and into the net to turn the game in Rangers’ favour. After the persistent and hard working Paul Smyth tried his luck from long range and drew a routine save from Stolarczyk, Vale swung the corner straight onto the head of an unmarked Edwards for a simple first goal of his second spell with the club. Built up frustration of the last few weeks, in the stand and on the pitch, pouring out in raucous celebrations down in front of the away end.

If you wanted to be mean about it you could say Leicester invited QPR to win and we reluctantly agreed – Walsh had to save another long range effort from James, and also inadvertently flapped a cross onto his own crossbar – but to be honest after the last four games I was just glad not to have our arse handed to us again. Jimmy Dunne’s crunching tackle on Mavididi for a yellow card when caught high up the pitch much more the sort of resistance and physicality we’ve been missing of late. Dunne, on his 200th appearance for the club, also put a big shoulder in on sub Patson Daka for the weakest of weak penalty claims – referee Dean Whitestone was buying none of that shit from either side all afternoon.

A second impressive cameo from the bench of the week from Kwame Poku made another 4-1 scoreline more likely than Leicester getting back into the game – although Jonathan Varane was seriously fortunate his dallying around and loss of the ball in his own penalty area didn’t come with more serious consequences. We, sadly, haven’t seen much of Poku this season but he’s difficult to knock off the ball and purposeful with his running. I thought one late sojourn to the byline where he lost and regained the ball three times each in quick succession might be the moment to ice a few cakes but the chance went begging.

Any hope Leicester’s midweek win here against Bristol City would stir a season saving run in the Foxes had drained out of the place long before full time, along with the vast majority of the crowd. Like Tottenham in the league above it’s hard to believe a club of this size with a squad of this cost and ability will be relegated, but they’re doing an awful lot of things a club that is going down would do. As at Loftus Road, the impact of Mavididi and Fatawu, two players capable of greatness at this level, was so minimal you couldn’t help but conclude they simple cannot be arsed. Jordan James the only one who looked interested in the task at hand. The defence, with two horribly accident prone centre backs in between the laughably poor pair of Hamza Choudhury and Luke Thomas, was just there for the getting all afternoon. Choudhury mooched off nonplussed with 12 minutes left to play – try not to get tanked up and drive home won’t you? Rowett said his defence had made it “like Christmas morning for QPR” and that he needs players he can “trust throughout, not just once or twice”. He’s running out of time to find them with eight games left and second bottom of the table, though City do have a very kind fixture list to come.

QPR’s own remote fears of a tangle with the bottom three are now surely allayed. With the R’s difficult run of fixtures out of the way and some kinder home games on the horizon it would be nice to think we can get back to playing the odd bit of football, scoring the occasional goal and, hell, even winning the odd football match. Poku’s two performances this week provide real hope and excitement of something to look forward to in the coming weeks, if he can stay fit and get more gametime. Maybe they’ll even get round to telling us where Ilias Chair is?

Football’s often about moments. Between them Ronnie Edwards and Harvey Vale managed to produce one in the nick of time for their team and their manager here, just as things were beginning to turn nasty. A second Leicester goal at 1-0 and I fear for how this would have gone. Once level Rangers looked a different side and in the end won the game comfortably. Leicester the fans turning on their own team, fleeing for the exits, and looking forward to trips to Mansfield and Doncaster while QPR had fun in the sun.

I wouldn’t describe it as joy or elation, more relief. It changes nothing, for me, just some paper for the cracks, but I could feel the weight of the last few weeks lifting off my chest as we walked away from the ground in the early evening sunshine after a win.

A full blown, actual, real live win, out in the wild. Thank God for that.

Links >>> Ratings and Reports >>> Message Board Match Thread

Leicester: Stolarczyk 4; Choudhury 4 (Pereira 78, 4), Okoli 4, Nelson 3, Thomas 4; Skipp 4 (Winks 61, 4), James 6 (Richards 78, 5); Fatawu 4, Mukasa 4 (Reid 61, 4), Mavididi 4; Ayew 3 (Daka 60, 4)

Subs not used: Aribo, Veites, Lascelles, Monga

Goals: James 14 (assisted Nelson)

Yellow Cards: Nelson 25 (foul)

QPR: Walsh 5; Mbengue 6, Dunne 7, Edwards 8, Norrington-Davies 6; Vale 8 (Bennie 90+5, -), Hayden 5, Morgan 6 (Varane 72, 5), Smyth 7 (Saito 84, -); Kolli 6 (Poku 72, 7), Kone 6

Subs not used: Adamson, Hamer, Clarke-Salter, Esquerdinha, Smith

Goals: Vale 43 (assisted Edwards), Nelson own goal 50 (assisted Vale), Edwards 58 (assisted Vale)

Yellow Cards: Kone 28 (foul), Dunne 78 (foul), Varane 83 (foul)

QPR Star Man – Harvey Vale 8 Between him and Ronnie Edwards, Vale with two assists and a goal shades it. After that weird performance at St Andrew’s where he looked to be running off one leg and constantly belted every dead ball into the first defender, this was quite a turnaround.

Referee – Dean Whitestone (Northants) 7 One or two perplexing moments, as there always will be, but kept the game flowing, didn’t buy into the diving and play acting, and all cards were justified.

Attendance – 27,494 (1,464 QPR) Really quite troubling to see our away support in this fixture halve in two years. We were in much deeper crisis, with a far worse team, playing a much better Leicester side, with far less chance of winning, when we came here in 2023/24, and yet we packed that away end out and it felt like the whole place was united behind manager and players with great hope for the future if only we could stay up that year. Now, back down to the hardcore, and even a lot of those struggling to face the idea of travelling to watch this side play. Still, look at the joy and the relief on the faces here as the third goal goes in. All any of us ever want is for QPR to succeed, be in safe hands, and treat us with respect.

Went to make a note on my phone about a full shot on target spotted out in the wild and look what I found… pic.twitter.com/7cSNDG4Ze8— LoftforWords (@LoftforWords) March 14, 2026

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