A desperately needed victory at Leicester and a week of fronting up from the QPR hierarchy ahead of Saturday’s visit from struggling Portsmouth.

QPR (14-8-16 WLLLLW 16th) v Portsmouth (10-10-17 WLLDLL 20th)

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If I ever give the impression that I actually enjoy tearing Queens Park Rangers limb from limb after their latest unmitigated fucktastrophe, like some demented Brentford supporter set up a QPR website and ran it for 20 years just to rip the piss out of their decline, I would encourage you to listen to last week’s Patreon Podcast from the Leicester away game and just hear the emotion and the relief on the train home. A meaningless midtable victory in another 16th-placed finish, and I could literally feel the weight of the previous few weeks lifting off my chest walking away from the stadium.

We spoke in last week’s preview about the propensity of our team to just absolutely collapse through the second half of seasons. Turning potential play-off pushes under Steve McClaren and Mark Warburton into deep plunges down the table, turning automatic promotion chances under Warbs and Mick Beale into end of season bloodlets that consumed all before them. What we’d perhaps underestimated in making our predictions a week ago is how often they pull a result out of the fire, just when all seems lost, just when the crowd is on the turn. “Oh, Christ, even the guy with the novelty cheese wedge on his head is pissed off, better pull our finger out a bit here lads.”

That’s rarely been more starkly illustrated than at the “King Power” last weekend where the away end, under heavy and prolonged torture, finally mutinied on their captors and started letting them know they weren’t happy. Booing the endless passing back to Joe Walsh, singing about the monotonous “sideways and backwards”… this support base has sat through a metric tonne of shit over the past five years, almost all of it inflicted on us by the people running the club, and we've responded in such good grace I actually didn’t think we had such dissent left in us. Welcome back everybody, claim an assist for the first goal when Ronnie Edwards knocked a glorious forward pass to Harvey Vale possibly fearing for the reaction if he hadn’t.

The club has been on the charm offensive this week. Lee Hoos interviewed for the first time in a long time on the club’s YouTube channel, ostensibly about the Community Trust (and not much good news there either by the sounds) but also about the troubles of the first team, and then Ben Williams’ appearance on Open All R’s last night. There’s a similar piece with Christian Nourry to come on Hoops&Dreams too, I believe. The cynical reaction to that is ‘win a game and suddenly everybody gets an interview’ but it is only fair to say, categorically, those appearances were all booked in before the Leicester game last weekend.

I could sit here and pull them apart. Certainly, plenty on the message board have done that for me - here and here. Williams steadfastly sticking to his numbers about our fantastic availability before Christmas while Saffa calmly read back the litany of Poku, Chair, Clarke-Salter, Larkeche, Frey, Walsh types we saw nothing of in the first half of the season had me jogging round Greenwich Park this afternoon screaming at my headphones. "We didn’t include Larkeche in the numbers”. So, you’ve got great availability, apart from the players that are unavailable?

I’m going to resist, for now, because frankly the fact they’re even talking to us at all is something of a step forward. As I said last week, it feels to me like the pattern and direction of travel since Christian Nourry took over here is to be as closed as they can possibly get away with, tell us as little as they can about anything, avoid scrutiny wherever they can. That they wouldn’t even disclose how they voted in the play-off extension plans, when it’s really bloody obvious how QPR would have voted in that, shows that the automatic reaction is “don’t tell him, Pike” rather than transparency and involving the support base.

“Interview access has been reduced, pulled, or editorial control eroded. Transfer fees - undisclosed. Contract lengths - secret. Injuries - GDPR mate. What injury updates they were putting on the official website now seem to have ceased, and the old ones deleted. We’ve signed a lad who hasn’t been seen since he put pen to paper because he’s got bone bruising in his shin, which is a perfectly reasonable explanation, but instead of just saying that the club stay silent on it allowing a vacuum to persist and conspiracy theories to run riot. Fans forum - stick it out before the season starts and that’ll do for the year. Have an interview, as long as you don’t ask about Marti Cifuentes. Invite questions for an online q&a with the coaching staff – never happens. When an online q&a is held with the CEO, the questions selected are “do we have open academy trials?” and “can we rotate the pitch 90 degrees?” and “do we scout Norway?” and it’s whacked out Friday night before the accounts land the following week so no questions about those are possible.”

So, the fact Hoos, Williams and Nourry did at least front up to the extent they did this week is a positive in itself, to be encouraged, and wankers like me ripping it apart won’t help it happen again.

Williams admitted mistakes had been made with some players this year, specifically Poku and Chair, and they would do different things in hindsight – the first time I can remember anybody at the club coming close to admitting they got anything wrong and apologising for it since Nourry got here, and some hope for better results next season. He didn’t quite get as far as apologising for his cack-handed “favourite player” remarks at the fans forum, but was quite open about public speaking and interviews not really being his thing, not something he’s had to do before, and probably not a strength – you have to take people at face value when they’re open and honest with you like that, give the benefit of the doubt and empathise. It was a good hour of uncontrolled, unedited access, and while I thought a lot of what he said was BS, frankly, I’m taking that little win for now.

That’s because the club really has a job of work to do with its fanbase. I’ve often said the internet is not real life, and what is said online is often far more extreme than what is said in the Crown & Sceptre or in F Block or on the train to bloody Leicester, but that crowd turned on its team last week. QPR fans were booing and heckling their own players, because they’d got to the end of their tether with the club. That’s been coming. It’s been coming since the Cifuentes farce at the end of last season. It’s been coming since the Plymouth/Coventry/Watford debacles in August. Anybody who travels with the team could have told you that. We told you that back in Perpignan.

Working out how and why that’s happened, and turning it around, should be a priority for next season because, honestly, I think the tolerance for another season of 7-1, 5-0, 4-0, 4-1 defeats is pretty low. Now 16th again we are, according to Opta, the only/first team with 0% chance of relegation, promotion, or play-offs in the division. Eight games to go, roll up, roll up.

The last three away games, even allowing for two midweeks, are all ones I would expect us to sell out, and we took barely half our allocation in each of them. I can’t remember going to Southampton or Birmingham with that few QPR fans alongside me in a long, long time. We have halved our away support at Leicester in two seasons: from 3,000 people behind their team and their manager to 1,500 people barracking the players for back passes. That should be an enormous alarm bell to the people running the club.

Lee Hoos said something interesting in his bit…

“We need to stick to our plan, and our plan is about bringing in young players, and developing those players. As long as I see young players getting game time and developing that’s the plan we need to stick to… We have to make this as positive an environment as we can for them. People pay their money to watch the team and they have every right to vent their frustration, football was built to vent frustrations… every fan plays a part, it’s up to each fan what part they want to play. I’m absolutely not saying it’s the fans’ fault, I’m not saying that at all, but if you’ve got a player whose confidence is low and can’t make a pass it doesn’t help him if we boo him off the pitch. They all want to play well, players are human, boards of directors are human, everybody makes mistakes and feels pressure. Ultimately it comes down to we have a plan in place, if we stick to it and don’t deviate this time, long term it will pay off. Let’s keep going with it, keep going with the young players, give them as much support as we possibly can, I hope the fans can join in and give as much support as they can possibly offer as well and look forward to next season and the season after where I think we can really build some momentum.”

Who can argue with that? He’s right. There is absolutely no point in screaming and shouting at Kieran Morgan, Rayan Kolli, Esquerdinha etc. It’s totally counter productive. And, listen, every change they’re currently proposing to FFP/PSR is around linking spend to revenues, and our revenues are relatively shit – we spend 100%+ of our income on wages, that would have to come down to start with under every version of the new proposed rules. So, we’re going to have little choice but to go cheaper/younger in the future.

I think the big message I would give the club at the moment though is… take the fans with you.

We’ve been insanely patient during a ten-year stint in this division where we’ve been bottom half of the table seven times and never higher than ninth. We’ve tolerated you when ridiculous decisions (replacing Ian Holloway with Steve McClaren, dismissing not only Mark Warburton but his obvious successor John Eustace as well, letting Mick Beale sign all those Tyler Roberts and Taylor Richards types, the treatment of Marti Cifuentes, firing Paul Furlong) drove us to the brink of League One on several occasions. It now feels like the attitude is ‘well, this is what we’re doing, and you can choose what sort of fan you want to be’. Every business in the world is currently trying to involve its customer more and make them part of “the story/journey”. QPR feel, to me, after 33 years of support, to be doing the opposite, and the result of that is the reaction you got last week.

It’s no use really saying ‘this is what we’re doing and you can choose what sort of fan you want to be’ while losing 5-0 at Southampton. People gave up half a day of work and dropped a tonne+ on going to that game. “Sorry, young players are inconsistent” isn’t good enough. That’s about standards at your organisation – it is not right that we get thrashed out of sight as often as we do.

You could win a lot more friends simply by treating the cup games with more respect. What happened at Plymouth in August was disgraceful. I will die on that hill over and over again. Not a single one of the boys slung into that situation has ever been seen again, bar Tylon Smith’s unhappy cameo against Boro. Coventry have managed to combine player development and league performance with amazing cup runs, because it’s all part of the same thing - building a support base, giving them those moments, gaining momentum, putting players in the shop window (Gyokeres, Hamer, Sheaf, £40m in sales right there) in a winning team playing in big games. They started from a base of League Two and playing games at Northampton. Mel Johnson's son does their recruitment, a hybrid model of data/analytics and old fashioned scouting.

Brighton - once homeless in the division below playing at an athletics track, now an established Premier League team in a new stadium playing games against Ajax - have their aims and values stated openly on their website. It’s all a bit Jake Humphrey for me but they are: treat people well, exceed expectations, aim high and never give up, act with integrity, make it special, be fan focused. What’s our equivalent? We want to develop players so we can sell them and you can choose what sort of fan you want to be? I suppose you can see why we don’t have it on the website.

Derby, another club that’s going past us now having been destitute a very short time ago, have events like this, where John Eustace appears with three of his players and takes questions from the fans. We had a fans forum last year where the manager didn’t even appear. Derby have got some Agyemang, Clark (only a loan at this stage), Langas development prospects you’d get good money for, but they’ve also got some Matt Clarke-type real John Eustace signings because the first and foremost aim of any club should be to compete in the Championship. Yeh, they've spent big money this season. But we have spent big money this season too.

As Kevin Gallen said on the recent WLS, you’ve got 16,000 QPR fans coming tomorrow who want to win. Players get bought from winning teams. Concentrate on that, first and foremost. Be competitive. Have promotion in mind as the goal. Go into cup competitions to win them, however unlikely that is. Player sales will follow as a natural product of that. I refuse to believe anybody is looking at a team getting pumped 5-0, 5-0 and 7-1 inside nine months and thinking that’s a fertile ground for talent. All this talk of "the project" really needs to stop.

There isn’t a QPR fan alive who isn’t super well versed in FFP/PSR, profit and loss, and where we fit in the grand scheme of things. We get it. We empathise. We’ve had it up to our eyebrows. Involve us, inform us, make us part of it, and give us something to dream about.

Ten more years in the Championship with the aim of creating something Crystal Palace can buy from us is no kind of pitch.

Links >>> Pompey nosedive – Oppo Profile >>> Spencer settles riot – History >>> Busby in charge – Referee >>> Portsmouth official website >>> Fratton Park Ground Guide >>> True Blue Army – Forum >>> P04Cast – Podcast >>> Pompey Chimes – Forum >>> The News – Local Press

Parish Noticeboard
- Predictably, our trip to promotion chasing Millwall on April 18 has been moved to 12.30pm for live Sky coverage. Hard to think of what else they could do to make that one less attractive to be honest. Jalfrezi enema at half time?
- Speaking of arse aches, the 2.5 mile elevated stretch of the Westway from the A40 at White City to Marylebone Road in Paddington is closed from today for the next month while bridge joints are replaced/repaired.
- To make your life easier, the good people at Hammersmith & Fulham Council are also running a trial restricting non-borough residents from driving/parking on the roads around Wormholt Park. Cameras and PCN fines are in operations. Details.
- Closures on six tube lines, most notably the Elizabeth Line east of Paddington.
- If you make it as far as the turnstile a man will appear holding a box with a key in it, he will ask you three questions...

Below the fold

Team News: After Kwame Poku made a successful return to action from the bench at Birmingham and Leicester last week, now there’s a suggestion that a real live Justin Obikwu may finally be spotted out in the wild for the first time two months after he signed for the club from Coventry. Mr Julian says: “He trained this week and will train on Friday. We need to continue to rebuild him physically because he has not played for a long time. But it’s an option for me to involve him in the 20 players. He’s not ready to start the game, but perhaps ready to play some minutes if we need him.” Fucking hell ambassador, you’re really spoiling us here.

Ilias Chair, Steve Cook, Nicolas Madsen and Rumarn Burrell are all sidelined, and in every case bar Burrell we have yet to be told a) what’s wrong or b) when we might see them again. Karamoko Dembele and Ziyad Larkeche are long termers. Harvey Vale has been rewarded for his form and switch of allegiance with an immediate Republic of Ireland call up ahead of their World Cup play-off.

Portsmouth’s injury problems have been just as chronic as ours this season and they come to West London missing ten first teamers, including now Harvey Blair who missed Monday’s defeat to Derby with a groin problem. Josh Knight (MY SPINE) is a long termer along with Thomas Waddingham whose “quad issue” is now up to seven months inaction and counting. Keshi Anderson pulled his hamstring getting off the train from Birmingham in January. Franco Umeh did the same against Arsenal in the cup. Aji Alese joined on loan from Sunderland in the winter window but tore a quad four minutes into his debut so that’s his Pompey career over with. Star boy Josh Murphy’s injury interrupted campaign finished in December when he broke his foot. Florian Bianchini has sat out since November with tendonitis in his knee. No Loftus Road return for Andre Dozzell either, he’s not expected back until the Easter break with something or other. Mark Kosznovszky blew his knee ligaments out against Charlton in December.

Remember that bit at the start of every episode of Casualty where the old gimmer went up a rickety ladder with a chainsaw while dutiful, elderly, white-haired wife stood at the bottom saying "ooh, are you sure, George?"

Elsewhere: The TV game this evening, for reasons I cannot even begin to comprehend, is Preston (17th) v Stoke (13th). If you were wondering how Preston’s annual second half of the season collapse is going they’ve won one of the last 13 games, losing nine, and are now below us in the table. The Potters, meanwhile, have two wins from 12. In case your hard on wasn’t big and stiff enough for this one, two of the last three meetings have finished 0-0. See you there.

The early games tomorrow very much focused on the teams trying to run Coventry down at the top of the table with a crunch 12.30 clash between Ipswich and Millwall at Portman Road, both teams on 68 points in third and fourth, while second placed Middlesbrough head to struggling Blackburn on 70 points. Cov, now with a seven point cushion to Boro and nine to third, go last tomorrow with an evening game at Swansea.

That congested play-off picture is starting to look a lot more clear now with two out of Ipswich, Boro and Millwall almost certainly taking the third and fourth spots, and fewer and fewer teams realistically posting the points totals and form to play for the other two. Derby and Birmingham are two of the chasers with a reasonable shout, they meet at Pride Park at lunchtime. Derby have the most Championship wins in games with fewer than 40% possession this season (12) - can’t wait for that final home game of the season.

Hull are in possession of fifth at the moment with a three point gap and a gimme tomorrow at home to Sheff Wed. Wednesday are winless in their last 32 league matches (D8 L24), the longest streak without a win by any side in England’s top four tiers since Macclesfield in 2018. Southampton, for the first time all season, hold sixth as it stands ahead of a home game with Oxford, but are level on points with Wrexham in seventh ahead of their trip to Sheff Utd. The Saints have lost only two league games in 2026, only Ipswich can match that record. This is the first time the Saints and Oxford have shared a league since 1987.

At the other end it’s now very much five teams competing for two spots currently separated by four points. Leicester, after last week’s debacle, are second bottom on 38 ahead of a trip down to Watford. Oxford have 39, but three wins and a draw from the last four prior to the Southampton trip. That’s put pressure on West Brom, a point ahead and travelling to Bristol City after finally getting their first win of 2026 last time out against Hull, and drawn our opposition Portsmouth back into things on 40. Blackburn have 42 and that tough homer with Boro.

Charlton you would think are basically out of the picture now on 48, only a win or two required, but they’ll do well to get that tomorrow against one of the division’s surprise form sides Norwich City.

Referee: John Busby from Oxfordshire for this one, last in charge of Rangers for a 1-0 win at Swansea before Christmas when the hosts had Yalcouyé sent off in the first half for butting Steve Cook. Details.

Form

- The victory at Leicester last week ended a run of four straight defeats to nil for QPR. Julien Stéphan's side now need a win here to halt a run of three successive home defeats in which they’ve conceded nine goals. The last time they lost four consecutive home league games under the same manager was in February-April 2015 under Chris Ramsey (five), when they were in the Premier League.

- Only Sheff Wed (76) have conceded more goals than QPR so far this season (60). In the last ten seasons Rangers have conceded 60+ goals in a season on six occasions and 70+ on four.

- Last season ‘own goals’ was the joint third top scorer for QPR with four, the joint most own goals in the club’s favour in a single season in its history. Remarkably, Ben Nelson’s farce last week means we’ve gone one better this year with five. Only Rumarn Burrell (ten) and Richard Kone (eight) have scored more.

- Portsmouth won the first league meeting between these sides in ten years 2-1 here last September, their first Championship win of the season at the tenth attempt and only victory in their first 14 fixtures.

- Portsmouth won four of their first 22 league games last year up to New Year’s Eve. They then won ten of their final 24 league games to survive with plenty to spare. That looked like being repeated this season when Pompey won five of their first 22 league games to Boxing Day and then put on five wins in ten games through the remainder of December, January and February, however they have dropped off again lately and arrive at Loftus Road with one point from their last five games.

- Portsmouth are winless in their last five league matches, suffering more defeats in these last five (D1 L4) than in their previous 13 combined (W6 D4 L3).

- The away form has not been too bad despite this. Since a 5-0 defeat at Bristol City on New Year’s Day Portsmouth have won at Sheff Wed (1-0), Charlton, Millwall (both 3-1) and drawn 1-1 at Watford and Blackburn with single goal defeats at Wrexham and Preston.

- Only Sheff Wed (23) have scored fewer than Portsmouth’s 36 league goals in 37 games this season. Adrian Segecic is the top scorer with just six. Colby Bishop and Josh Murphy contributed 18 league goals last year but have scored just twice between them this.

- Now 20th, one point above the drop zone, Portstmouth’s remaining nine fixtures include Norwich, Boro and Coventry away, Ipswich at home and six pointers with Leicester and Oxford at Fratton Park. Five of their remaining nine fixtures are away, including this one.

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

- The win at Leicester last week was QPR’s second double of the season (4-1, 3-1) after the win at Hull (3-2, 3-1). They have two remaining chances to secure another (Bristol City and Swansea H).

- Leicester’s 61.8% possession in that game last week continues QPR’s record of winning without the ball. The last time Rangers won a game with more possession than their opponent was a 2-1 at home to Blackburn last February, the R’s have won 18 games since all with less of the ball than the team they were playing.

- Currently 16th in the league, QPR have finished between 15th and 20th in each of the last three seasons. In the ten years since returning to the Championship they have finished in the bottom half of the table on seven occasions and have never finished higher than ninth. Their average final league position over that decade is 15.1.

- Prior to joining Portsmouth forward Conor Chaplin had 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.

- Ronnie Edwards is the first centre back to score and assist in an away game for QPR since Darren Peacock vs West Ham in August 1993. @JTSupple

- Last week was Jimmy Dunne’s 200th appearance for the club. Dunne is one of only five players to make 200+ appearances for QPR in the 21st century - alongside Ilias Chair (276), Kevin Gallen (225), Nedum Onuoha (224) and Martin Rowlands (217). @JTSupple

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. QPR_Hibs won last season’s Prediction League at a canter and is lending his thoughts to this year’s previews…

“Every Thursday I get a helpful little email from Transport for London with advice about getting around during the upcoming weekend. This includes information about tube line closures, places where roads might be busier than usual, and the like. This week they have pointed out that there are various sporting events taking place, where there may be increased footfall and possible road closures. On Saturday, for example, Fulham are at Craven Cottage and on Sunday Spurs are playing at home and there is also the League Cup Final taking place at Wembley. Have they deemed to mention that the mighty Superhoops are playing at Loftus Road? No, of course they bloody haven’t. Well, that makes sense though, doesn’t it? The crowd will be fairly small – perhaps only around 17,000 people. However, TfL have suggested that I avoid the area around the Emirates Stadium on Saturday morning, where Arsenal Women are playing West Ham – a game that had a crowd of precisely 3621 last season – and this game’s on Sky as well.

“There was an unexpectedly good performance from Rangers at Leicester last Saturday in a game that I neither saw live nor on a stream, choosing instead to watch the Six Nations Rugby (so, maybe I’m the JINX?) It was good see Clive’s match ratings include two eights and three sevens rather than the recent eight twos and seven threes. And another twenty minute cameo from Kwame Poku can only be good news.

“I really have no idea what sort of showing we are likely to be privy to against Portsmouth, but it would be good to witness a first home victory since 31 January. We continue to struggle against most of the sides near the foot of the table this season, so I wouldn’t take it as read that we can just turn up and win the game. However, Portsmouth are on an awful run themselves and morale in the Rangers camp seems to be on the up again, after it looked like nobody could be bothered to put in much effort for the last couple of weeks. All QPR injury news is, of course, subject to GDPR but Julien Stéphan has let it slip that Justin Obikwu may get some minutes from the bench on Saturday. Other than that, I expect a similar team to the Leicester game.

“As far as the result is concerned. Anything could happen, and probably will.”

QPR_Hibs Prediction: QPR 1-1 Portsmouth. Scorer – Jimmy Dunne

LFW’s Prediction: QPR 1-1 Portsmouth. Scorer – Richard Kone

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Pictures - Ian Randall Photography

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