QPR scored six goals in a game for the first time since January 2020 in wiping the floor with Portsmouth on Saturday, but the scoreline barely tells half the story of a perplexing game of football.

There’s been a real ‘here we go again’ theme to Queens Park Rangers in recent weeks.

Oh good, it’s that bit of the season where all the players get injured. Oh look, there goes that three-point gap to the play-off places. Oh terrific, here’s that long losing streak we all enjoy so much. Fantastic, it’s time for the monumental gob bumming in an away game where the contest is over by half time and the QPR fans have mostly all gone home by the hour. Excellent, it’s time to confront the players at the front of the stand. And lo, what is this I see looming large on the league table? Sixteenth after all. Of course. Like that episode of Frasier where he keeps riding his bike into the same tree.

Sunrise, sunsets, QPR in the Championship, ten years and counting. Like you’re trapped in a really shit, budget remake of The Matrix, and every level you ascend or descend to is Deepdale, with Gavin Ward refereeing, and Ben fucking Pearson playing against you. History doesn’t repeat, but it can echo.

So, it’s with some degree of horny glee that today we’re not only talking about a QPR win - and a thumping win at that - but also the sort of football game I cannot recall seeing before.

On the face of it, your standard late-season humping of a League One-bound team with whom the facts of life are fast catching up.

Portsmouth spent ten years getting back to this level, and surrendered supporter ownership to one of the world’s richest men to get even that over the line, but now he says there is no more money and the locals are starting to question what the point of all this is. The underinvestment in this Pompey side is chronic; you see it everywhere you look. Best player injured, last season’s top scorer fallen on hard times, solution in January… £500k for 30-year-old defensive midfielder Ebou Adams from Derby, who left the field in tears here, such is the level of his frustration after barely three months at the club (I’d have cried too if they’d shifted me to ‘ten’ while John Swift and Marlon Pack creaked about in my position like Waldorf and Statler). They came with ten first team players missing through myriad muscle and soft tissue injuries - there’s a guy here who’s missed seven months with a “quad issue” - not a sign of a well-staffed, run, funded organisation… as we know ourselves. Andre Dozzell, shockingly, among the absentees. John Swift retired to an island, unfortunately for all concerned the island was Portsmouth.

Pompey conceded every time QPR went forward. Usually I exaggerate for comic effect - here that’s a stone-cold fact. I can rarely recall a collective defensive performance as inept as this since that night Dickie, Dieng and Co contrived a 6-1 loss to Mick McCarthy’s Blackpool. The return of Conor Shaughnessy to the middle of the defence for a first start in two months was supposed to solidify John Mousinho’s team after one point from the prior five games. If so, I’d hate to have seen them before. They were in the sort of mortal peril you’d usually associate with a six-yard box scramble every time QPR crossed the halfway line. Couldn’t find their own arse with both hands.

It was three before half time, and six by the end. The much-unfairly-maligned Paul Smyth, finally adding nuts and bolts numbers to his ever-lasting QPR commitment and hard yards to the cause, scored goals one and three. The first came back to him off a defender from Harvey Vale’s increasingly prevalent prodding and probing and was dispatched into the top corner with unusual precision and efficiency. Swift’s miscontrol on the touchline and pass back towards his own goal to set the whole thing in motion hilariously poor. Smyth’s next, from more Vale approach work, was cooly and calmly finished in a one-on-one situation and was in from the moment he streaked clear of the last man.

It was that sort of day: summersaults and tumbles, dinosaur impressions, Paul Smyth calm and composed, dogs and cats living together. In between, Rayan Kolli strode into space and opened up a can of Why The Hell Not from 25 yards. Goalkeeper Nicolas Schmid could, apparently, do nothing more than fall over and watch it curl into something generously approaching the bottom corner. I’ve quite liked the Austrian goalkeeper when I’ve seen him previously, here he played like he’d been in the Crown & Sceptre with us since 10.30.

We often say it’s not all sunshine and rainbows. Here it was. Spring light beaming down on a replenished Loftus Road playing surface. Aggro and antagonism relieved by last week’s surprise win at Leicester City. Pitch forks down in early trading on Monday. Freedom and folly on pitch and off. The supporters, seemingly, not the only ones who had the weight of the world lifted from their chest by last week’s sixth away win of the season. The team looked happier in itself.

Jimmy Dunne spoke after the Birmingham debacle about “rediscovering” ourselves and learning how to play i.e. how do we get the ball forwards when the only midfielder we have who passes forwards is injured? Particularly with Jonathan Varane playing like this – great back to goal game, just a shame it’s their goal. In the last 180 minutes Julian Stéphan has found an answer in Cork’s finest, Harvey Vale. Terrific last week, all too much for Portsmouth here. The Frenchman’s plan for the wingers to constantly invert makes a whole lot more sense when they’re inverting onto positive, purposeful, forward through balls like Vale was springing here.

Portsmouth tried to arrest the slide at the break by hooking the (frankly fairly embarrassing) Segecic for the artist formerly known as Colby Bishop. Even in this scoring drought he loves a physical battle, but Jimmy Dunne was more than willing to bash the Bishop, and on we went with the floor show.

Rayan Kolli made it four with what I’m coming to consider a typical Rayan Kolli goal. If he’s here in ten years, which I hope he will be, we’ll start calling it a vintage. Whatever you think of him, whatever his faults, whatever the politics, that boy can strike a football. He doesn’t die wondering, he doesn’t look for another pass, he doesn’t pisball about trying to chip a goalkeeper. If he can see the paint on the posts and the whites of the keeper’s eyes he’s having a shot, and it’ll be a proper fucking shot as well. No messing, no back lift, boot through the back of the ball, wallop. Eat that and tell me you’re still hungry. It’s a shame there wasn’t a better goalkeeper than Schmid in the way because it would have gone in anyway.

Ruthless 🔥 pic.twitter.com/Ho40UomO9X— QPR FC (@QPR) March 21, 2026

With Smyth and Kolli now both on hat tricks all that was required to complete the day’s entertainment was a fight over who would take a penalty for the fifth. That conversation already seemed to be taking place in the celebrations after Kolli’s goal, captured by the official club videographer, but party pooper Stéphan chose to remove them both – possibly to spare Pompey’s embarrassment. Sure enough Kolli hadn’t even made it all the way back to the dugout by the time Esquerdinha chucked himself to the ground in a hopeless dive, implausibly awarded as a spot kick by referee John Busby who - perhaps spooked by his nightmare afternoon at Ipswich Leicester last week - gave all sorts of soft nonsense all afternoon.

I was amazed we didn’t take Richard Kone off earlier in this game. Like Madsen and Burrell before him he looks like a player being run into the ground, asked to play every minute often with his knee strapped, and therefore yet another injury waiting to happen. Why not hook him here? Give him a rest. Let Rayan and Paul chase their hat tricks? I bet Kolli was absolutely gutted to be off when a chance like this for a first senior hat trick was presented on a silver platter. But, then, this is perhaps why I write for this website and don’t pick the team. Kone smacked the penalty confidently into the corner of the net. Then, as Portsmouth’s difficult afternoon gave it a full Titan submarine routine, the Ivorian strode through straight from the kick off to add a second of his own and QPR’s sixth of the afternoon. Having waited five years since Andre Gray to even get a striker in double figures, now Rangers are highly likely to have two to ten in the same season, and one of them hasn’t played since the turn of the year. A great day for “the model”. Portsmouth taking six servings of dick.

The away end was an absolute study all afternoon. If Fratton Park wasn’t such a vile shed to go to as an away fan, if they hadn’t booted off here the way they did in 1997, I’d have some sympathy. I do, at least, empathise. We’ve all been there. In our case, last week. A few we spoke to afterwards said it was the first time the supporters have really turned on their team. Boy did they have a lot of pent up points to make. About half the travelling capacity stayed to the end, and those who did stay to the end did so for one reason – to absolutely eviscerate their players and manager. Adams was often the only one of theirs who looked bothered about the scale of this capitulation – losing his head completely over QPR’s prolonged celebrations of Smyth’s second and then immediately starting a round of handbags with his predecessor Isaac Hayden for which both were booked. His reaction to the coating they received at full time was so visceral that Jake Clarke-Salter and Hayden had to lead him away in a show of comradeship. Interesting that no teammate thought to do that, bar teenage loanee Harvey Blair. If relegation this season is to be decided on what we’ve seen against us, it’s this lot and Leicester. Games to come against the Foxes and Oxford will be fascinating watches.

And yet…. And yet. Portsmouth had 60% of the possession in this game. On the face of it, not surprising, and part of their problem. QPR’s last 18 wins have all come while having less of the ball. The last time the R’s won with more possession than an opponent was against a poor Blackburn side in February 2025. Pompey, in every way, the perfect team for Stéphan’s Rangers to play – like to have possession, wasteful with it, in peril in every transition. But some of the other numbers as well… Portsmouth touches in the opposition box 33, QPR touches in their box six. Pompey 20 shots to QPR’s nine; eight on target to their seven. I think xG is a load of bollocks, really, but theirs was 1.64 to our 1.63.

I’d usually say ‘forgive us for rushing through the QPR goals because we’ve got a lot to get through’. Here, we really didn’t. Every time the R’s went forwards, they scored. That was it, six shots, six goals; no misses, no saves. You could have replaced Schmid with a reasonably sized pot plant for the same effect. A combination of laughably appalling defending and ridiculously clinical finishing and final ball. Every shot a goal. Every time we crossed the halfway line, a goal. That Warbs Warburton post-match interview come to life: it’s about what happens in both penalty boxes, Nick.

Portsmouth spent prolonged periods of the game camped around the Rangers’ area. John Swift, who always loved a goal against the R’s for Reading, piped one in off the post when the score was still 3-0. Mbengue too busy moaning about a free kick rather than getting back into position for it, Edwards with a weak clearance, but that 30-foot patch of grass Hayden Hackney ran amok in here for Middlesbrough remains the biggest problem. QPR’s central midfield more a theory than a physical thing. The times balls dropped into that space 20-35 yards from goal, dead centre, and Portsmouth players were free to collect second ball and shoot was really quite alarming. Joe Walsh saved an effort like this from Adams in the second half. Kone and several others executed desperate blocks.

Had it gone to 3-2 I suspect a full-blown panic might have erupted. Walsh had already offered Swift the right corner of his net from an early free kick and sprawled well to save before his insistence on staring straight into the sun without aid of a cap saw him go full Tony Roberts with a catch over his right shoulder from Devlin’s shot that missed the ball entirely and he escaped an embarrassing Pompey second by a matter of inches. This prompted a full-blown nervous breakdown from one of the regulars at the front of G Block – “Put. A. Fucking. Hat. On.”– and you know it’s bad when even the normals are losing the plot (I find it amusing when it’s not me). Even at 3-0, 4-1, this game rarely felt in control, this crowd constantly uncomfortable. A product of QPR’s recent failings and our own ingrained paranoia certainly, but also this entirely weird pattern of play.

Adams glanced a header wide from a cross by Mellenic Alli (rocks and diamonds all day long) when he should have done better before half time. Pack had a volley blocked and Brown hit the rebound over straight after. Jimmy Dunne was winning big headers and leading his team, but at one point he looked like the latest off-the-ball collapse from our 90% availability stats – in the end it appeared he’d kicked himself in the face trying to do keep-ups mid game, which felt rather apt. Good job he could continue really, because we kept going deep and it kept causing chaos: an insane period of pinball in the box eventually scooped wide of the target; Pack headed over an open goal after Walsh came for a cross and missed; Walsh saved from Adams; Poole turned on one in the six yard box but the home keeper improvised an unorthodox save.

Is there such a thing as a narrow 6-1 win/defeat? Louis Theroux’s Weird QPR Weekends.

Typically the message board is trying to outdo itself on extreme pronouncements on how bad QPR were, how underserved the scoreline was, and so on. I think it’s a stretch to suggest a team that collapses in on itself every time the opponent crosses halfway was “the better side” in the game. QPR won 6-1. I do accept though that this was a very strange 90 minutes of football. Stéphan himself said it wasn’t his team’s best. Certainly not one for the “underlying numbers” crew, but a big tick in the box for the old school traditionalists.

A little over a year ago QPR dicked Derby here 4-0 on a Friday night, and I had a wonderful day. Afterwards I was told, in fact, we hadn’t played well, we’d done all of these things wrong, a better team would have beaten us. We immediately embarked on a seven-game losing run, while John Eustace’s Rams have barely looked back. County have a strong chance of making the play offs, we’re exactly where we were and seemingly ever more shall be. But, at the risk of us never winning another game again this season, I’ll repeat what I said then – if you can’t enjoy this, what's the point? It’s only football, and it’s meant to be fun.

We don’t have many good times here. The last few weeks have been horrid. We are starved in a footballing wasteland. We’ve been stuck in this division for ten years, the highest we’ve finished is ninth. It’s club policy to deliberately ignore the cup competitions. They tell us nothing, and are working out ways to tell us even less, but when they do speak their stated aim is to develop a player into being good enough for Crystal Palace to buy… It isn’t Sheff Wed levels of bleak following QPR, but it’s really fucking dull if we’re honest. Ask our hierarchy what we’re aiming for and it’s “younger team” and “sustainability”. Christ on a bike, stand down trophy engravers of W12.

In my lifetime we’ve scored six goals in a game on six occasions, including this one. One of those, here against Crystal Palace on the last day of the 1998/99 season, smelt as fishy as a chancellor’s promise. Another, against Partizan Belgrade, saw us lose the away leg of the tie 4-0 and go out on away goals. The others were achieved by good Rangers teams on top of their game: Bannister and Byrne laying waste to Chelsea on Easter Monday 1986; Paul Parker’s only career goal at home to Luton a month or so after reaching a World Cup semi-final with England; Ebere Eze, Bright Osayi-Samuel and co breathing fire over Cardiff’s wheatfields in January 2020. What this present day class turns into we’ll find out in time, if they’re ever fit enough to all turn up for school together, but meanwhile enjoy the moments when they do click and fire. You’ve beaten Portsmouth 6-1 in the sunshine at Loftus Road, sometimes it’s not much deeper than that. Set cocks to wank and don’t worry about the clean-up.

A fortnight ago we were in existential crisis mode and among the comments were wise words from a wise contributor – ‘remember you often say things are never as brilliant, nor as terrible, as they seem at the time’. That’s probably a good spot to end on.

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

QPR: Walsh 6; Mbengue 6 (Clarke-Salter 66, 6), Dunne 7, Edwards 6, Norrington-Davies 6 (Bennie 83, -); Vale 7, Morgan 6, Hayden 6 (Varane 50, 6), Smyth 7 (Poku 66, 6); Kolli 7 (Esquerdinha 83, -), Kone 7

Subs not used: Adamson, Cook, Hamer, Saito

Goals: Smyth 7 (unassisted), 29 (assisted Vale), Kolli 24 (assisted Smyth), 55 (unassisted), Kone 86 (penalty won Esquerdinha), 87 (assisted Vale)

Yellow Cards: Smyth 22 (kicking ball away), Hayden 32 (fight), Norrington Davies 73 (foul), Kone 90+2 (foul)

Portsmouth: Schmid 2; Devlin 2, Poole 2, Shaughnessy 2 (Swanson 60, 2), Oglivie 2; Pack 4, Swift 4 (Chaplin 60, 4); Segecic 2 (Bishop 46, 3), Adams 5, Alli 3 (Blair 75, 4); Brown 3 (Caballero 60, 4)

Subs not used:Williams, La Roux, Dia, Bursik

Goals: Swift 38 (unassisted)

Yellow Cards: Adams 32 (fight), Devlin 90+2 (foul)

QPR Star Man – Paul Smyth 7 Works his arse off for this team every time he’s out there. Now with added end product.

Referee – John Busby (Oxfordshire) 5 Gave a lot of very, very soft nonsense all afternoon, culminating in our penalty for a ‘foul’ on Esquerdinha that I’d have been stewing hard on had it been awarded against us.

Attendance – 16,962 (1,748 Portsmouth) Having spent much of the previous week writing about our own away end’s loss of patience at Leicester last week, it was with some degree of morbid curiosity that I sat and watched the School End dissolve yesterday afternoon. The early leavers, the arm folders, the booers, the testiculators… there was a bit of everything going on up there. The bloke in the white hoodie over the ‘P’ in Portsmouth on the scoreboard suffering an hour-long existential headloss was my favourite. Couldn’t blame them really, to be fair. I’d have been doing the same.

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Pictures - Ian Randall Photography

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