Only Sheff Wed conceded more goals than QPR in 2025/26 as the R’s once again shipped 70+ in a league season, so who’s culpable or excused among the team’s backline?

If you want to hear the LFW panel of Simmo, Andy, Jack Supple and myself debate the marks for this year’s report you can do so via all three subscription tiers in our Patreon. Part one, keepers and defenders, is live now.

3 – Jimmy Dunne B

Jimmy Dunne was not only QPR’s best player in 2024/25, deservedly sweeping the board at the end of year awards, he was one of the best defenders in the Championship – hence Sheff Utd came in hot and heavy in January to try and add him to their promotion push.

It was always going to be difficult to reach those heights again and he was hampered in doing so by several factors last summer. First, a hip flexor injury picked up in pre-season training ruled him out of the initial games against Preston and Watford and saw him come in undercooked for the third at Coventry which… did not go well. Second, so much of his success at the back end of Marti Cifuentes’ reign was down to his unlikely, surprise new lease of life as a rampaging right back, charging in at that back post to dominate teams in both boxes. Julien Stéphan did not play the same formation, or the same style of football, and quickly Dunne started to look like a centre back playing out of position – which, to be fair, is what he was. By Sheff Utd away the obvious swap of Amadou Mbengue to the right and Jimmy back into the centre had been made.

From there he played 40 times again, more minutes than anybody else (3,482), despite starting the campaign injured. This is Dunne’s fifth full season at QPR and he’s played 40+ games in four of those and 30 in the remaining one. At a club where the treatment room frequently resembles the rush for the platforms at Euston Station, durable, hard bastards like this are very valuable indeed.

Dunne scored at Portsmouth for the second year in a row. This time it was enough for a point, but both games were very similar – QPR apparently coy and cowed by a tight old ground and certifiable bloke ringing a cow bell, falling into every Fratton Park trap and stereotype, and Jimmy the only one performing to his potential. That game came on Boxing Day this year and was part of a run of MOTM awards from both me (Portsmouth A, WBA A, Stoke A) and you readers (Portsmouth A, WBA A, Stoke A, Sheff Utd H). That’s Jimmy Dunne standing up, maintaining his standards, and leading the team, while everybody else around him crumbled mentally and physically. Rangers had a dreadful Christmas this year – one win from eight between December 26 and January 24 – and Dunne was one of very few to emerge with credit. He chucked his heart and soul into the West Ham cup game, and it was such a shame that his error ultimately led to the winning goal in extra time.

Dunne captained the side this year and is the oldest player remaining in it bar Paul Smyth. That alone makes him fairly vital to our chances next year, if he wasn’t already. For the second year in a row he missed Millwall away, and we all saw what that looked like all over again. Missed the last five games of which Rangers lost four and drew one.

Heads it, kicks it, gets it.

In numbers:

Interactive Ratings — 6.00

4 – Liam Morrison D

It’s impossible to hit with every recruitment decision, you’re inevitably going to miss with some. Neil Warnock’s 2010/11 title winners brought in Shaun Derry, Clint Hill, Jamie Mackie, Paddy Kenny, and, oh, how we raved. How we ate our words about his old boys act. They also signed Leon Clarke. A positive start was bolstered with Tommy Smith, Wayne Routledge, Ismael Miller, and of course Adel Taarabt. They also signed Rob Hulse. Some of the more pessimistic/defensive points of view on football recruitment reckon if you get one in four right you’re at least par. Kiss a lot of frogs, etc.

Liam Morrison is one of those who was initially counted as a hit, but is quickly sliding to a miss, and for a development club that’s not ideal. This time last year we awarded him a very generous A/B rating and summarised: “QPR’s recruitment this season left the team deficient in both full back positions, with a central midfield that refused to turn around, a collection of tinies who all want to play ‘ten’, and if not the four worst strikers in the league then pretty close to it. The team has no height, and no pace. Within that, however, there were individual success stories and along with Paul Nardi, Ronnie Edwards and Koki Saito you can surely include Liam Morrison’s name.”

Morrison arrived from Bayern Munich and his win percentage in 24/25 was 42.11% - the team won about 30% of its matches overall and that went up more than 10% when Morrison is one of its centre backs. Rangers didn’t lose a game Morrison started until Swansea on Easter Monday, his 19th appearance. Starting 13 games before suffering your first QPR defeat was the best record since Kyle Walker and Morrison finished the season with the best points per game average in the team. QPR conceded somewhere between 1.3 and 1.4 goals a game on average under Marti Cifuentes, and when Morrison was on the field that dropped dramatically to 0.71

We described him as a “beautiful example of a player who passes both the eye and the numbers test” and concluded “a big summer coming up for him, and for us, but almost all of the signs are good at this point”.

A year on, and when we talk about progress, there has been none here. He finished the year on loan at Aberdeen, where he’d in theory gone in a final desperate bid to win a Scotland World Cup squad place, but ended up in a side fortunate not to be sucked into the SPL relegation play off picture. His red card there at home to Dundee was a nonsense (you think VAR is bad down here…) but he won just three of his 13 appearances while at Pittodrie.

He’d started the season at QPR as first choice, and his win percentage across 12 starts was bang on the team’s 33.33%, but he was diabolically exposed at Coventry and his final four appearances for the side saw it lose 2-1 at home to Millwall, 4-1 at home to Ipswich, 2-1 at home to Southampton, and then rather embarrassingly 2-1 to a West Brom side for whom that was their only win in 15 games while rotating through three different managers. He excelled in 24/25 once the game model had been abandoned and Rangers had retreated into a deep, low block, with the sluggish centre backs sitting right on top of the goalkeeper. As soon as we try and expand out of that, Morrison is sadly found a bit wanting.

With the club myopically focused on lowering the average age of the team, often regardless of what that means for results, 23-year-old Morrison still stands a decent chance of making it here. Steve Cook is gone, Jake Clarke-Salter is crocked, there are no guarantees Jimmy Dunne will still be here come September 1. But this has been a wasted year for the Scot. We now have a player a year older, with all of the same problems he did 12 months ago, and zero visible improvement.

In numbers:

Interactive Ratings — 5.33

5 – Steve Cook C

Out of pure exhaustion in the final three-game week of the season, and in the interests of ‘these previews don’t write themselves’, I essentially spunked everything I wanted to say about Steve Cook a month ago prior to his 100th and final appearance for the club in the home loss to Swansea. You can re-read that tribute here if you so wish.

Cook seemed to pick up on what the club had put the supporters through over the prior few years, and what they needed to see from their players and, quickly, their captain. A bit of commitment, a bit of elbow grease, some fucking professional standards around the place to be frank about it. It was very, very much appreciated. And as well as all of those intangibles, QPR were in need of some serious tangibles as well. Steve Cook is a bloody good centre half. You don’t go as far as he went with Bournemouth, play at the top level for as long as he did, without some actual ability. It’s not all vibes and leadership and chest thumping, he knows where to stand, he knows what to do, not much goes past him and those who do often get hurt trying. A good footballer. Hard.

Going out the way he did, in a half full stadium on a tube strike night, making a bad mistake for a Swansea goal within the first two minutes, was an unfitting end to an important three-year stay here. The way the club announced his extended stay a year ago, going out of their way to make clear he’d triggered the extension through appearances under the previous manager rather than because they wanted him here, was needlessly catty towards somebody who joined us when we were on the bones of our arse and did more than almost any other one individual to keep us in this league. However, announcing his departure in advance, giving the supporters notice that this would be the last time we saw him, doing comprehensive farewell coverage on the official website – culminating in a frankly hilarious video with his two boys, who should have their own show/podcast – was terrific, and showed the club had taken criticism on board on how the departures of Clint Hill, Nedum Onuoha, Yoann Barbet and others had been handled and acted upon it.

The Swansea goal, his performance in the damaging home defeat to struggling Blackburn, Coventry away… I don’t think many people at this stage would argue it’s not the right time to be shaking hands and going our separate ways. I’ve heard some vague link of a one-year deal at Portsmouth. Personally, if he wasn’t against heading north again, he’d be first on my shopping list to be captain in next year’s rebuild at either Leicester or Sheff Wed. But, as we sit here now, nobody should underestimate how important Steve Cook still is to this team. Just four games ago, at Millwall, we went with the fun, fit, progressive, passing centre back pairing of Jake Clarke-Salter and Handsome Ron and got our absolute arse handed to us from the first minute – two nil down and out of it before most of our players had even broken a sweat. Bullied. It needed Steve Cook, who we were about to release, to come on at half time and stem that bleed. After a dreadful Christmas of poor performances, dismal defeats, and multiple injuries, it was Dunne and Cook back at centre half for a rot-stopping January in which we kept four clean sheets in seven games and beat league leaders Coventry at home. He scored in the defeat that ruined that run, at home to Wrexham. In a dire 0-0 at Charlton it was Cook, not expensive new capture Edwards, who outran Lyndon Dykes and executed a goal/game saving tackle right in front of the away end. Despite only starting half our games this season, only Mbengue has more clean sheets on his record than Cook (11).

Personally, I think teams need players like this at our level. There are going to be games like Leicester and Portsmouth at home where you can just have a lovely time with all your tiny tens and analytics boys cutting about. There are also going to be some real pug ugly games and midweek trips at Millwall, Charlton, Birmingham etc where you need game smarts, nous, and nastiness. “What would you do if you played against Harry Wilson?” asked one of his kids on that YouTube video. “Kick him.” Too fucking right as well. QPR too often underestimate this, hence our record against the top five this season, and our laughable count of eight away wins in London derbies in the last 30 (thirty) years. If it isn’t to be Cook, it needs to be somebody else, in my view. Sunderland’s own attempt to conquer this league under a novice CEO with U24s only went horribly wrong in 23/24 – there was even a comedy cameo from friend of the site Mick Beale. Add in a few Alan Browne and Chris Mepham types last season, under a manager incredibly similar to the one we’ve got now, and off they’ve gone to the Premier League and European football.

Stéphan agrees. That is clear. He used his final press conferences of the season to press the word experience over, and over again. Christian Nourry said at the recent fan site meeting: "I appreciate the point of view (that experienced players are important) and certainly there are teams that have got promoted out of the Championship with very experienced squads and there are teams that have had success, in terms of Sunderland, having a Luke O'Nien, Mepham and Browne and that was it in terms of significant Championship experience. There is no written rule that you need X experience to be successful in the Championship. If being a good Championship team was anything to do with age then we would have had a worse season this season than the previous season because the team got younger. Ultimately it will be down to how the head coach sees the squad versus the budget we have available, decide what the priorities are and work from there with Andy Belk, Julien to define those things.”

I think a lot of next season’s prospects hang on who wins that battle, and who’s right.

In numbers:

Interactive Ratings — 5.77

6 – Jake Clarke-Salter E

A disaster, really. For a player who one presumes is desperate to play, and for a club that went hot and heavy with a nice chunky *REDACTED* contract the second he managed to clock 30 appearances in a season for the first time in his life.

Started just ten games all season, finished only three of those, and two of the others were over by half time. More concerningly still, he wasn’t very good when he did play – four fours among the 11 appearances he was on the pitch long enough to warrant a mark. He looks heavy, slow, and mistrustful of his own body – constantly trying not to stretch, or turn, or get up above a jog, for fear of something going again. We said at the start of the season Michi Frey was moving like a walk-in bath salesman - Clarke-Salter looks like someone who might buy one off him. Watching him chug around warming up underneath us in F Block I feel in pain myself. He also looks absolutely miserable, as I suppose you would be at this point. There’s a job of work to do here mentally, as well as physically, at this point.

All particularly problematic now we’ve just lashed out our biggest transfer fee in ten years on Ronnie Edwards to be our ball playing centre back, usually to the left of Jimmy Dunne, which is what Clarke-Salter is supposed to be. That likely means two of our highest earners and longest contracts now want to do the same role in the same position – we got to see what that looks like in practice at Millwall away and I’m not sure any of us are in a rush for a repeat. To be fair, those two were paired in the middle of the defence for a clean sheet at home to Bristol City and were about the best of us in a tedious end-of-season ball ache.

I don’t know what happens next, but neither he nor we can continue like this.

In numbers:

Interactive Ratings — 5.31

18 – Rhys Norrington-Davies C

Having dug themselves five-and-a-half feet into a six-foot grave by first trying to go into a season with Ziyad Larkeche as left back covered by Esquerdinha, then losing Larkeche to a nine-month ACL injury, then burning off what remained of the transfer window with his Brazilian understudy getting torn to shreds, Rangers really pulled one out of the bag with the underrated capture of Rhys Norrington-Davies.

To get a player this good, with this much Championship experience, so late in the window, and with the rest of the world knowing we were desperate and panicking after a 7-1 roasting at Coventry, was very good business indeed. Luckily Sheff Utd made a similarly terrible start to the season with Ruben Selles trying to pick RND as a third centre back and were keen to do business. What a coincidence, you are desperate to buy, while we are desperate to sell. Advantage, Burns.

Both regular readers will know from my years of sticking up for Jake Bidwell and Kenneth Paal that I’m a sucker for a steady, 6/10 bloke you just rely on to stand at left back for 40 games in a season with minimal bed shitting. It’s especially valuable at QPR at the moment given how much we struggle to keep our first team players on the pitch. Unfussy, steady Eddie, get 20 games deep into the winter and you’ve forgotten he’s even there. Lovely.

Norrington-Davies arrived with a history of knee problems at Bramall Lane and initially Stéphan admitted they were having to manage him through three-game weeks which saw Esquerdinha make some further unhappy appearances and Sam Field do a reasonable job of filling in over there up to but not including Norwich away. Still, 34 starts and five sub appearances were decent numbers – only three players clocked more minutes (Dunne, Kone, Mbengue). His man of the match awards this year tell you a lot - Oxford H, Sheff Wed A, Southampton H, Norwich A, i.e. games when the overall team performance was so rotten you only had to maintain a 6/10 level to be the best player. I’d say in the land of the bald the man with three hairs is king but, given the circumstances, Rhys might not appreciate that analogy.

However, I also like my full backs to contribute going forwards. That’s partly through growing up watching David Bardsley and Clive Wilson, who were way ahead of their time and would be worth a small fortune in the modern game, but also because football has progressed (or at least had done prior to this year’s morph into the Ultimate Fighting Championship) to a point where your full backs are absolutely vital attacking weapons and players like prime Kyle Walker are among the best in the world. Norrington-Davies did belatedly get off the mark with a consolation goal while following in Paul Smyth’s shot in the home loss to Swansea right at the end of the season, but to all intents and purposes was a full back who contributed zero goals and zero assists. I wouldn’t even accept those numbers from my goalkeeper. Even the often maligned Paal would consistently contribute at least three of each. A second half rally after four-sub surgery at Millwall floundered on his inability to keep a cross on the island – only 25 of the 100 crosses he attempted this year found a teammate. His propensity to take a first touch which always set a second on his unfavoured right foot was something you couldn’t unsee once it had been pointed out.

And, so, I would file this one under “fine”. We were in a bit of a pickle, we needed reliable Championship infantry, and Norrington-Davies has certainly been that for Stéphan’s team this season. Would I go for a second date? Probably not, particularly if the outlandish rumours about how much money he’s on at Sheff Utd are anywhere close to the truth. Too often QPR get a loan to do a job and then get so carried away when he fulfils that remit that they go all hot and heavy with a permanent contract to do something completely different – i.e. become reliant on him as our starting full back for the next three years rather than fill in for the last nine months.

However, if the plan is once again to start next season with Larkeche as first choice and Esquerdinha as second then grab the keys, I’ll drive, we’ll go to Sheffield now and pick him up. This a squad, as we’ve mentioned already, that is bleeding out Championship experience and currently has 28-year-old Paul Smyth as its elder statesman. And while I live in hope that there are better signings out there to be made than Rhys Norrington-Davies, our record in buying full backs doesn’t imbue a lot of hope that we’re capable of finding one – hence he ended up here in the first place, while Amadou Mbengue, Jimmy Dunne and Sam Field all spent time in those positions this year. If it’s another Hevertton Santos they have in mind then, again, let’s get on the M1 before the evening rush shall we?

For now, though, had a job to do, and did it.

In numbers:

Interactive Ratings — 5.86

27 – Amadou Mbengue B/C

If, like me, you’ve discovered the weird, wonderful (and apparently completely bent) world of Scottish football in the last few months then you’ll also no doubt have seen Motherwell cutting about, qualifying for Europe, and generally being a pain in the arse to the teams they’re playing. This is quite unusual because hitherto Motherwell were best known for being a bit shit.

Success has many fathers but it’s been a tough few weeks for LFW so I have decided we’re going to put this rise up the SPL entirely down to their poaching of our analysts Greg Spires last summer to do their opposition scouting (which, for the benefit of any Southampton fans in the room, is where you watch tape of previous games and go to see your future opponent play to see what you can glean from their patterns of play and set pieces, not hiding out in the bushes with a long lens telescope like some horny Luke Ayling fetishist).

It makes me stupidly proud we were able to give somebody a little leg up into an actual job in the industry (there goes Clive Whittingham, must remember to thank him) and both regular readers will know they’ve got a good ‘un in Greg. After all, when you didn’t even know who Paul Nardi was, he was telling you: “there was evidence of him being unconvincing, where he stuck to his six-yard-box or waited too long to rush out to attackers… he doesn’t seem as strong or commanding at claiming crosses and high-balls as Dieng or Begovic were, from what I can see” and when we were all still in ‘no, not that Varane’ mode he said: “Varane’s defensive numbers are elite, but he’s showed his limitations in the final third”.

Which belatedly brings us to Amadou Mbengue of whom our signing piece said: “If you’re a fan of old-school, full-blooded tackles– you might just have a new favourite player. He doesn’t always time these challenges well and can be a liability as he mistimes them on occasion… his temperament is naturally bold and aggressive.” Hmmm, quite. Cheerful, but capable of enormous violence.

Amadou Mbengue collected a formidable 14 yellow cards this season. A foul, a foul, a foul, general insanity. A foul, a foul, a foul, over celebrating a goal which he didn’t score and wasn’t on the pitch for at the time. A foul, a foul, a fight, time wasting, dissent… Occasionally he’s been booked on reputation – the yellow card he received at Stoke was a total nonsense cooked up by referee Tony Harrington, seemingly going through some form of nervous breakdown at the time. But nine times out of ten, or 13 times out of 14, they were wholly justified and more often than not long overdue in the game. Wouldn't have wanted to be this lad's primary school teacher.

Now, I tend to find players like this quite amusing. Samba Diakite was a laugh riot. You go to football to be entertained, and Mbengue is entertaining. What’s he done now? Oh he’s charged 80 yards across the pitch from the bench and launched the corner flag into the Q Block. However, it can wear thin. He was singularly fortunate not to be red carded at West Ham for piercing Max Kilman with his studs in a matter of fact way. The implosion at home to Wrexham was sparked by a daft red card on 90 minutes with Rangers leading 2-1 and Mbengue heaving himself into a challenge he didn’t need to make. That didn’t need to cost us the game, though. Both goals that followed were from individual errors on our part, and with Dunne, Cook, Norrington-Davies, Field and Hayden all on the pitch at the same time Rangers had more than enough experience out there to cope with that situation better than they did. I thought the flogging Mbengue took for that, after a simple mistimed tackle, was over the top. Clearly, though, discipline needs to improve.

What also needs to improve, if he’s to play full back for us permanently, is decision making and final ball when in possession and on the attack. His crossing from the right side in the Watford home game in particular was so horrific the away end were openly mocking and laughing at him, ironically cheering as each new attempt was skied into the stand – if anybody understands an embarrassing farce it’s Watford fans. The only cross Mbengue managed to keep in play this season actually went in the net of its own accord in the home thrashing of Marti Cifuentes’ Leicester. Not to blow any more smoke Greg’s way but he did say: “Once he’s in space, he has a tendency to lose control or make poor decisions.”

What he does have is a lot of raw, physical attributes the rest of our defenders lack. His recovery pace is vital to a back four which is presently made up of him and three very slow teammates. At Birmingham at home he was excellent against Demarai Gray, not giving him a sniff all night – it cost him the Wrexham red but I do like how he quickly shuts down wingers and crunches them before they can get a ball under control and out of their feet. His 117 ground duels won was the most of any QPR player. Kieran Morgan made all the headlines that night with his winning goal but he’d cost us the equaliser – Mbengue had to go off, Morgan went on out of position, Birmingham got joy down that side for the first time all night and scored from it.

Mbengue is a quick, physical addition to a team we said was too slow, too nice, and too easy to play against, showing good learnings in the recruitment from the summer before. He’s a big character in a dressing room we’d again previously accused of being too meek, too quiet. Early season criticism of his outrageously over the top celebrations were also misplaced – following QPR has been too boring, and too miserable, for too long, I want to enjoy watching and us and I want to see players enjoying themselves as well. That little enclave of French-speaking lads, always last off the pitch, leading the team for a French manager is an underrated positive, for me.

I know a lot of you hate me for saying it but if you’re signing for QPR there is something wrong with you somewhere because if there isn’t then an early 20s footballer with no faults at all will not fit within our budget. He throws funny, he waddles like a duck, in Mbengue’s case he’s a certifiable lunatic. Fine. He’s only 24, you’ve picked him up for a very reasonable reported fee in the region of £350k, this is where you show you’re a development club, not in contrived stats about loans for teenagers or U24s getting first team minutes. You’ve got a player here who is physical, but unhinged; quick and powerful, but with zero final ball; passionate and keen, but lacking composure. These are correctable problems. Work with that.

It was noticeable after Wrexham, and teetering on the brink of a two-game ban for ten yellows, he went eight games without one. As soon as the amnesty passed he quickly got booked three times in four games and started running the risk of a three-game ban for 15 stretching into next season, at which point he again got through two games without one. It suggests to me he is teachable, and this is where a development club will literally earn its money, although if I’m sitting here this time next year saying the same things then maybe not.

Take his brain out and give it a rinse under a cold tap, teach him to cross a ball, I think we might have something here.

In numbers:

Interactive Ratings — 5.69

28 – Esquerdinha D

Like the decision to chuck Joe Walsh in as first choice from day one, the idea Ziyad Larkeche was going to play a full season as starting left back at Championship level with only Esquerdinha as cover was one fraught with pretty obvious risk from the start. Larkeche’s ACL injury which ended his season before it had even begun was terrible news for him personally, and I’d never wish that on anybody, but it may have saved the club from itself to a certain degree. Along with the nightmare start to the campaign and thumping at Coventry, it forced QPR to go and get the steady, experienced Rhys Norrington-Davies type they obviously needed out there after Paal’s departure last summer.

Esquerdinha subsequently made 16 appearances and spent most of those showing how far off Championship level he presently is and how punchy it was to ever believe he was a viable option for us this season. Defensively, most wingers in the Championship will be able to go around him on the outside at present, and if they don’t fancy the trip then his positioning is so chaotic the inside channel is wide open as an alternative.

Going forwards he’s lots of fun, and a late season surge into the box brought a penalty in the home rout of Portsmouth – though, if that’s a penalty, then please stop the world because I really do want to get off now. Much of his early years development seems to have been spent running the star man across to the dugouts for a 50-yarder into the far top corner on Sensible Soccer (God bless Ruel Fox) and if he does ever find the net with one of those outrageous long rangers it’ll be a long old night back at the Crown & Sceptre. For now, though, it’s rather irritating watching our attacks end with scattergun fire into the Upper Loft.

Not half as irritating as his tendency to play dead when there’s nothing wrong with him, mind. At Oxford it was hats off, heads bowed, Catholic priest on emergency call, only for him to be back in training by the end of the week. Away at Stoke, with QPR holding onto a barely deserved point in the last minute, he was robbed of the ball on the attack and hit the deck demanding a free kick which never came (just about the only decision Tony Harrington got right all day). With Stoke piling forwards on the counter against a now short-handed opponent, Esquerdinha continued to roll around on the floor in front of the away end trying to get the game stopped. When that didn’t happen either, he got up and sprinted off. He’ll have to cut that shit out, and toughen up significantly, if he’s ever to be a viable option in the Championship.

All of this should be set against his age (20) and his total career appearances (barely 30 at senior level here or in Brazil). Nobody can be judged at that point really. Additionally, he’s a young lad, on the other side of the world from his family, in a strange city, a foreign language, and a notoriously demanding league physically. As I get older, and balder, I get more and more uncomfortable trying to comment on young footballers with more talent in their little toe than I’ve ever had in my life. But, then, what’s more damaging? Some tosser criticising on the internet, or putting Esquerdinha in cold for a first appearance in a month at home to Ipswich Town, where Egeli, Philogene and Clarke can take turns cracking his skull and feasting on the goo within? At the fans forum in August one of the stock phrases was “putting the players in the best position to succeed”. Have we done that with Esquerdinha, who’s sporadic starts this year came against Coventry A, Ipswich H, West Brom A, Sheff Utd H? With Walsh?

At the moment this looks to me like a signing we’ve made through a combination of FotMob stats and YouTube videos without ever physically watching him play, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see him move back home. But we’ll see. Nicolas Madsen was a write off this time last year, and he should be better for having another 12 months acclimatisation under his belt.

In numbers:

Interactive Ratings — 4.47

37 – Ronnie Edwards C

Last summer QPR went very hot, and very heavy, to try and turn their holiday romance into a permanent relationship, chucking several REDACTED offers at Southampton that would raise eyebrows if you were allowed to know how much they were worth. Never fall in love with a loan player? Rangers were absolutely smitten.

Ultimately Southampton, with £100m of summer sales to bank along with their parachute payment (no wonder they had to spy on Oxford United’s training), resisted a final deadline day push and retained Handsome Ron for the Championship campaign they’d sent him to QPR to prepare for in the first place. This did not go to plan. Will Still was not the tactical demigod the Jake Humphrey High Performance Podcast had made him out to be and the Saints won two of their first 13 games, languishing in 21st position by the time they got to Loftus Road on Bonfire Night. Edwards had been dropped by that point. He was given a real chasing by Wrexham’s Kieffer Moore on the opening day, conceding a penalty in a game Southampton eventually (fortunately) won and was subbed at half time of a 2-0 home defeat by Preston Knob End on November 1 which really was the beginning of the end of his time on the South Coast.

Good news for us. He made just two (very) late sub appearances in Southampton colours between the start of November and end of December which meant when the transfer window opened again the seller was much more amendable to a deal and Ronnie was a Ranger once more. This wasn’t a particularly well kept secret, anybody who’d had a boiler serviced in the Harlow area over the previous six months knew he was coming back, and his QPR-supporting family were publicly overjoyed to see their boy “somewhere you can be happy again”. He certainly looked it, sprawled out on a training ground sofa for his opening shots, hair spilling across cheekbones, like Jack Sparrow with designer gear. “The fans here saw something they liked,” he said. Alright Ronald, it’s very rich, so don’t spread it on too thick.

This was also quite expensive. QPR have spent serious money by their standards over the last two seasons. It will to an extent even out with the small sums received for Sinclair Armstrong and Lyndon Dykes, and the bigger one for Charlie Kelman, but the latest set of accounts (24/25) said the summer outlay was a £1.5m deficit even with the long-pined-for Ebere Eze sell on (£8m-10m) and the fees for Edwards and the man, myth and legend Justin Obikwu will go on top of that. Edwards is certainly our most expensive acquisition since coming out of the Premier League ten years ago. He also plays the same position, in the same way, as Jake Clarke-Salter, so as we say above you’ve committed two of your longest, most expensive, contracts, to two players who want to do the same job in the same way.

Is he worth it? I still think probably yes. You watch him carry the ball out from defence, the way he beats the first press, the way he uses the ball, and there’s a future Premier League player there for sure. He’s only 23, nothing for a centre back – might not be in his prime for another seven years. Clarke-Salter’s situation is such that we can’t really factor him into the thinking anymore, however sad (and ruinously expensive) that is. I got all horned up this time last year describing him as a future England player, but in my defence he was in the U21 squad for their tournament last summer on the back of his performances here, and looking at who Thomas Tuchel has picked for this summer’s World Cup I’m starting to think I might still be a future England player.

That form for Southampton that brought the deal back into play is, however, a concern. They thought everything we thought of him, and his return to St Mary’s was fairly disastrous. Now, we know they’re a basket club, and he was deeply unhappy there. Edwards certainly seems to me, more than most footballers, to be somebody who plays well when he’s loved, wanted, and enjoying himself. But to return to our repeat theme of ‘there must be something wrong with you to sign for us’ there are obviously flaws here. The moment on a Friday night at The Valley, when Lyndon Dykes chugged off on a run from the halfway line, marauding towards that packed away end, wasn’t quite Bob Malcolm v Jermain Johnson, but it wasn’t far off for the reaction it wrought from the QPR fans. He’s… very, very slowly, getting away. It needed Steve Cook to come charging in to rescue his junior teammate and clear out the Scot sometime late in the evening session of that test match. Ronnie, it seems, might be a bit slow, which would also explain why he doesn’t look that comfortable at full back (where he was used initially while Stéphan steadied the ship with a Cook and Dunne centre back pairing).

To be fair, he got back up to speed and match fitness quickly and in several games (Bristol City H) looked every bit the sexy bastard we thought he was. His ratings, like Koki Saito’s to come, tell a real story - 7, 6, 5, 6, 3, 6, 5, 6, 8, 6, 7, 7, 7. At Leicester he produced a transformational moment for his team. Losing to one of the division’s worst sides, four defeats in a row, manager on the brink, team circling the drain, fans in open revolt (“backwards and sideways, everywhere we go”), Edwards picked a 50-yard ball from the Gods that sent Harvey Vale screaming in for an equaliser (assisted – away end). He added the third himself to a narrative-changing victory. Edwards averaged 50.8 accurate passes per 90, the best rate in the team and was the first centre back to score and assist in an away game for QPR since Darren Peacock vs West Ham in August 1993. There remains enormous potential here.

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

He does, however, present you with a selection problem. We saw at Millwall that he and Clarke-Salter are too similar, too the same, too nice, too easily bullied. If you’re picking Edwards in a 4-4-2 you need a big, hairy-arsed bastard alongside him. Jimmy Dunne does that absolutely fine, but with Steve Cook gone if Dunne were to follow then that centre back situation starts to look all style and no substance. We’ve actually got the players there to go to a back three, as Mark Warburton and others did to try and stem the tide of goals at a club that has 60+ goals in a season in six of the last ten campaigns and 70+ in four of those. Mbengue to the right of Dunne, Edwards or Clarke-Salter to the left, that’s a lovely combination of the three different kinds of central defender, and it helps cover the weaknesses of each of them. Unfortunately, we don’t have the players for it anywhere else. We’d need new wing backs on both sides, it would restrict our ability to play Kone and Burrell together, it would mean the majority of our expensively assembled tiny tens not starting. Centre back wise though, you would be ‘cooking’ those three.

An intriguing one for the head coach to grapple with this summer. For now, he’s here, and he’s beautiful etc.

In numbers:

Interactive Ratings — 5.93

Others One of the great things the club has done under Christian Nourry is aggressively forcing the age of the development squad down through the floor, while at the same time trying to get that team playing higher quality and more physical opposition. The Chris Ramsey operation he inherited had become a standing joke, with the same Charlie Owens, Nico Hamalainen, Mide Shodipo, Joe Gubbins, Aaron Drewe types kept on deep into their 20s and forced on a series of managers who were then (certainly in the case of Warbs Warburton) punished for stating the obvious about these players’ ability. With the greatest of respect, and we’ve seen it with some of the much heralded members of last year’s cup winning development squad, if you’re 20+ and doing loans at Bedford, Tonbridge Angels etc then you’re not going to be a Championship footballer for QPR.

Jaiden Putman and Alex Wilkie were both part of a performative creche at Plymouth in the League Cup which did neither of them any good at all, but the former is rated quite highly by our development squad watchers. Hevertton Santos is seemingly rated by nobody and made 24 appearances for Gil Vicente back in Portugal this year – 16 of those from the bench. Roll up, roll up.

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Pictures - Ian Randall Photography

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