We said it would be one thing or the other against promotion chasing Millwall on Saturday, and unfortunately it didn’t take long at The Den to know this would be a very typical QPR away performance in a London derby.

With Queens Park Rangers long since safe in the Championship, and their faint play-off hopes extinguished by a lousy spring, so much of their March and April has been about next season. Like sticker collectors on the school playground, what have we got, and what do we need?

Several recent performances might have given the impression Rangers are actually not that far off. Portsmouth vanquished 6-1, Watford beaten far more comfortably than the 2-1 scoreline suggested, and in players like Richard Kone, Rumarn Burrell and Nicolas Madsen it’s felt like a few of the rare shinies you need for a complete collection are already in place. Ronnie Edwards, now captain, has started to look like the star boy he was while at Loftus Road on loan a year ago and the R’s have gone from four straight defeats without scoring to five unbeaten with the goals flowing.

The whole situation seems to have relaxed the team into playing some quite decent football, reward for the faith of a long-suffering fanbase, but there’s always been the niggle that we’ve been playing some very poor sides in this sequence. Watford, Preston and Bristol City have long since been on the beach with us, while Portsmouth have struggled all year and Leicester are a national laughing stock destined for League One. Games against superior Millwall, Ipswich and Derby sides were always likely to present sterner tests if those three still have promotion riding on the result by the time the game rolls around, and so it proved at The Den on Saturday morning.

As long suspected, in goal, at full back, and central midfield the R’s were found wanting. These are the three areas most often talked about in relation to this summer’s transfer window.

An abysmal first half from Jonathan Varane in particular will have been the final straw for many of his doubters, and you’d think the club would be wise to take whatever they can realistically get for him this summer. If it’s anything like the figures being bandied around a year ago we should bake whoever’s offering that a cake though I can’t imagine many visiting scouts will be impressed with what they’re seeing at the moment – if you’re selling a boat with a hole in it, don’t sell it on the river. The Frenchman hasn’t progressed this year and his part in a defensively shambolic second goal, committing himself to a sliding tackle that allowed Camiel Neghli to simply turn inside and find the net unchallenged, was something you’d bollock an U8s midfielder for.

Varane frustrates because physically, and technically, he’s all there, and occasionally he’ll turn in a performance that makes you think we’ve got a potential £10m player on our hands. But those days are too few and far between. He’s struggled for form and confidence after his injury, which can happen, but he’s not a brave footballer, and his aversion to passing the ball forwards has become chronic. So many times Edwards and Jake Clarke-Salter were looking into midfield for a passing option, at times openly spreading their arms and begging a team mate to offer, and Varane didn’t want to know.

I’m also hoping yesterday brings an end to the debate about whether you’d sign Rhys Norrington-Davies permanently. A left back with no goals and no assists all season, what few attacks QPR were able to mount often floundered on the rocks of his first touch and final ball. One second half cross high into the away end was absolute amateur hour. He wasn’t alone in that – Paul Smyth’s hot streak cooled considerably into a lousy 45 minute stint, and if Harvey Vale is indeed only ever 2/10 or 8/10 with his delivery then the good news is he owes us a lot of eights on Tuesday night – but when we’re talking about 26/27 my feeling has been for some time that we could probably do better on that side of the defence.

It’ll likely only heighten the chat about Amadou Mbengue. Putting somebody with a screw this loose into this situation always had the potential to backfire, and the Senegalese defender lost his head from almost the first whistle. Varane was not alone in erring for the second Millwall goal – a disaster of many fathers – and the cross that came into the box in the lead up was delivered while Mbengue was rolling round on the floor and appealing to the referee for a foul that never was, rather than defending the ball and man in front of him. He’d given the ball away in the first place to start the whole chain in motion too, with Thierno Ballo then able to get a cross over unchallenged despite being outnumbered two to one.

Mbengue was then fortunate not to be sent off for a wild attempt on Zac Sturge, penetrating the former Chelsea left back with his studs in a matter-of-fact way. Referee Tom Nield, a bold choice for this game I thought but largely well in control, settled for a yellow – 15 of those in this Mbengue’s debut Championship season. We could do with somebody taking his brain out and giving it a rinse under a cold tap.

Joe Walsh, too, did little to sooth his detractors. He’d already come charging out into no man’s land, clearing Ballo out in the process, allowing the piratical Max Crama to have a go at lobbing into an empty net, and been drawn out to the edge of his box for a simple long ball dealt with by neither Edwards nor Clarke-Salter giving Neghli the chance to do the same, when he conceded the second which seemed to pass right through his arms. A competent goalkeeper calms those in front and behind them, Walsh is terrifying his defenders and supporters in equal measure at the moment.

I could go through individuals like this all day. Harvey Vale and Kieran Morgan left the ball to each other on the edge of their own box after three minutes allowing the excellent Derek Mazou-Sacko to stride in and smack the first goal in unchallenged after three minutes. The sponsors gave Crama the man of the match award, and to be fair to them there were plenty of candidates campaigning for a vote, but for me Mazou-Sacko was superb. Just 20 years old, a quiet £400k pick up from Ligue 2 side Rodez last summer.

Julian Stéphan, for the first time, made four half time changes which really emphasised just how beaten QPR were all over the park – every single player out there lost every single one of his individual duels in that first 45 – and how unhappy the manager was about it. A real Bonnie Blue of a first half – fucked by 11 different men at once.

Strong, proactive, management from the Frenchman at least reassured me I wasn’t going completely mad in thinking the first half was absolutely pathetic, but questions have to be asked of the team he picked and the way he set us up in the first place. Why, after that situation with the Bristol City corners a week ago, are we still ending up in scenarios after just six minutes here where Paul Smyth is left with three players to deal with from a short set piece in a wide area? Crama really should have done more with the free header afforded to him from that cross. Why no role, in what was always going to be a difficult assignment, for some of the more experienced, physical players like Steve Cook and Isaac Hayden? Why this refusal to ever deviate from a 4-4-2 that frequently leaves us outnumbered and out played through midfield? Varane and Morgan v the seriously impressive pair of De Norre and Mazou-Sacko was no contest and both were deservedly mercy killed at half time. The surprise decision to start Kwame Poku as the second attacker was a failure. Making four subs at half time is a damning indictment on the team’s performance, but also suggests the selection and tactics were wrong in the first place.

Stéphan would no doubt point out Millwall are a very good side, third in the league and going for promotion for good reason – only Coventry have won more games than the Lions this season. That there’s little point in picking somebody like Cook when he won’t be here next season. That he’s missing key players in key positions – without Jimmy Dunne the mismatch in the two sides was most clearly seen at Millwall corners where Morgan, Mbengue and Kone had to try and keep hold of titanic trio Taylor, Cooper and Crama.

As part of his half time massacre Stéphan was able to reintroduce to action several of his injured senior cohort and Nicolas Madsen and Rumarn Burrell made an obvious difference, soon followed by Ilias Chair for a first outing since December. There were no positives at all to take from the first period, as the manager said himself, but the return of these three and the way they played was at least some wreckage to cling to through the second.

Madsen was able to quickly wrestle back control of a midfield previously totally lost to his side, and get the ball moving forwards to the starved strikers. I’m excited about what the Dane might look like in season three, and he had QPR’s only serious shot on target with a late bobbler well watched by Anthony Patterson. Chair posed the biggest goal threat with a typical three-point jump shot wide of the target having cut in from the left, and Burrell might have done better with a free header from a Clarke-Salter cross. Steve Cook tightened the defence and Isaac Hayden tackled people. Better players on the pitch meant for a better quality performance, who knew?

So perhaps it’s not that deep. Take the four or five best players out of any Championship side and it’ll have difficulties, particularly against a very handy opponent like this, but as we again cast glances forward to next season the thing we lacked most in that first half yesterday, and when we've played there the last two years, is not something you can buy.

You've got to have the heart and the mentality to go with Millwall in those first 20 minutes. You have to match them, show that you won't be cowed or bullied or beaten up, establish yourself in the game physically, and then play from there. I don’t mind somebody getting booked in that period, if it’s for a meaty challenge. You’ve got to be up for the battle. Wawll were always going to come out firing like that yesterday, and we were weak as piss in our response – both teams absolutely playing up to their respective stereotypes. We've failed to do the basics in this fixture three seasons in a row now and this is now our longest losing run against the Lions since 1953. We were one down after a minute in this fixture last year, and this time it took only three. You can smell it on us right from kick off.

You won’t play many teams where it’s more important to stop the delivery into the box, and compete for second balls, than an Alex Neil Millwall. You won’t see many teams less interested in doing either of those things than that first half QPR side. Femi Azeez put 18 (!!) crosses into the box by himself in this game, 12 by half time – more than the entire QPR team combined. But for poor finishing – Sturge selfishly put a first half chance into the side net with a queue of suitors to his right, Josh Coburn had a header tipped over before half time and then somehow contrived to miss two more in the second half you’d have fancied yourself for – this could have been another four or five goal defeat to go with the growing collection of thrashings already meted out our way this season. QPR’s propensity to just fall in a hole is a persistent plague on their chances.

I don't know if it comes with lowering the average age of the team and we now don't have the experience and nous to deal with it, whether it's that point I've made previously about a "development club" which pitches itself as a place you come to do your time before going onto play somewhere 'proper', whether it's the manager… but our attitude and physicality in these games is nowhere near where it needs to be. Softer than the journalism in an in-flight magazine, and you won't ever compete for promotion or the play-offs if you're a soft touch.

The biggest thing we need, is a nastier edge.

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

Millwall: Patterson 6; Crama 7, Taylor 7, Cooper 7, Sturge 7; Mazo-Sacko 8 (Bannan 90, -), De Norre 8 (Langstaff 70, 6); Azeez 8 (Cundle 86, -), Neghli 7, Ballo 7 (Watson 70, 6); Coburn 6 (Ivanovic 86, -)

Subs not used: Crocombe, Leonard, Lovelace, McNamara

Goals: Mazou-Sacko 3, Neghli 17 (assisted Mazou-Sacko)

QPR: Walsh 5; Mbengue 3 (Cook 46, 6), Edwards 4, Clarke-Salter 4, Norrington-Davies 4; Smyth 4 (Burrell 46, 6), Morgan 4 (Hayden 46, 6), Varane 3 (Madsen 46, 7), Vale 4; Poku 4 (Chair 60, 6), Kone 5

Subs not used: Adamson, Hamer, Bennie, Kolli

Yellow Cards: Edwards 19 (foul), Mbengue 30 (foul), Hayden 90+2 (foul)

QPR Star Man – Nicolas Madsen 7 Stepped into a broken and busted midfield and made an immediate, tangible difference. Just wanting to get on the ball and pass the thing forwards made him the king with the curly perm in the land of the bald.

Referee – Tom Nield (West Yorkshire) 7 Quite a few crowd pleasing bits and pieces where you thought ‘there’s absolutely no way he’d be giving that our way in the same circumstances’, but that’s seen through blue and white hooped glasses. It was a ballsy appointment giving a referee I’ve often felt isn’t quite at this level yet a game like this, but I think he mostly did quite well. QPR would have done well to just play the game, rather than constantly fall over hoping the referee would help them out with a free kick.

Attendance – 18,934 (2,952 QPR) Since relegation from the Premier League 30 years ago QPR have played 140 London derbies (I’m not including Watford here) across three divisions and three cup competitions. They have lost 74 of those and won 31. Away from home they have won eight games in 73 attempts against other capital sides. Dawn, I'm fed up.

If you enjoy LoftforWords, please consider supporting the site through a subscription to our Patreon or tip us via our PayPal account loftforwords@yahoo.co.uk.

Pictures - Reuters Connect

Recent Stories