QPR were attractive and dominant for much of Wednesday night’s game at Charlton, but familiar stories of profligacy and player availability were the main talking points from a second scoreless draw in as many meetings.

Into The Valley, betrothed and divine. A QPR team that wins away now father, and can often look really bloody sexy doing it.

Pierce Charles one smarter, straighter pair of slacks (and a belt) away from professional golfer status. Standing on the tee, staring down a distance that would take you half a day to cover by car, with a seven iron in hand. Nonchalant in the back swing, effortless on the follow through, and always placed to within three feet – 52 passes in this game, 92.5% accuracy. We are in the presence of pure skill.

Ronnie Edwards, an Action Man doll fresh from the box. Not a hair out of place or a bead of sweat on his smooth skin. Gliding around the field making everybody else look bad and feel worse about themselves. Intercepts and probing passes – 94 attempted, 97% accuracy. Reading the opposition attack like a one-page novel. A footballing swan - so graceful, so serene, so beautiful.

Glen Kamara, a midfielder who never scores, never even shoots. Just slaloms and strolls out of tight spots and into space then moves the ball on elsewhere. Evri dream of this man’s delivery stats – 94 passes attempted, 88 completed successfully. Metronomic. Do we press the Shaun Derry button here? A player you never truly appreciate until he’s doing it for you, on your team. He never gives the ball away – one, two, three, four.

The football this side can produce is so eminently watchable. We had Matt Smith up front recently. Out and round and through and over and under the sorts of high press attempts that scared previous iterations to death. Jimmy Dunne out to Nicolas Madsen and back to Edwards, Edwards incisive to Alfie Lloyd and over the bar. Dunne to Tariq Lamptey, a give and advanced go with Kamara, one shot blocked and another whipped wide of a beaten goalkeeper and post by Harvey Vale. Edwards out to Vale and in for Burrell to back flick goalwards… but not goal bound. Two away wins on the slate already in the first week of September and every indication a third was in the offing here early doors. I haven’t seen anything this lustful in popular culture since Jessica Rabbit lifted her leg and whispered “you had plenty money, 1922”.

A packed away end enjoying watching their team. No small thing for a support base trapped in a Championship purgatory for more than a decade. No climax at the end of all the foreplay this time though. A second goalless draw of the season already for the team that shoots more than any other in the league but converts at the same rate as Lincoln City. The first, against lowly Bolton, was all about inspired goalkeeping and missed sitters. Here, with Richard Kone and Ilias Chair injured out from Saturday’s loss to Middlesbrough and Koki Saito and Kwame Poku ominously absent altogether, there wasn’t the creativity to crack a Charlton backline led exemplarily by one of the division’s most underrated (outside of South London) centre halves in Lloyd Jones.

When Paul Smyth broke through one on one with Arthur Okonkwo after half time that was the moment to seize power, but Smyth never adequately cleared his feet with the ball and his finish lacked conviction - allowing a save rather than forcing one. Balls would occasionally zip through the home penalty box – Rumarn Burrell irritatingly out of reach of the best of those late on – but actual saves from the Wrexham loanee in goal were few and far between. Alfie Lloyd has an exemplary attitude and is willing, but if that's the qualification then I can give you 20 minutes. Rayan Kolli standing behind the goal while Stéphan sought answers to a second blank scorecard of the week on a bench containing the lesser-spotted Justin Obikwu and 17-year-old Leon Scarlett (allowed out on a school night) will only further antagonise that ridiculous situation.

This may be the strongest squad Rangers have put together in a long while, it may play some of the best football we’ve seen here since Ale Faurlin and Adel Taarabt were cutting about the gaff, but it has to become more clinical and incisive in the opposition final third. Stop waving it around, start fucking.

As much as some things change, they stay the same. Charlton’s ground has been Death Valley for QPR sides of all shapes and sizes – now one win in 15 visits back to 1987, and not even a Rangers goal to shout about in any of the last five league meetings in this corner of the capital. The last time we toasted victory by the flood barrier, Adam Bolder scored and we gave Marc Nygaard a rating of eight. Simpler, more innocent times. I had hair.

Things could have been a lot worse. Kealey Adamson blocked a fearsome Karlan Grant drive with his beak in the opening moments. Aggggh, my face. The Australian did well to stand up to (and after) that and stuck to his task gamely and competently all evening. We lose a lot going forwards when it’s Adamson rather than Lamptey or Mbengue at right back but, for a player I didn’t think was anywhere near the level, he’s now very diligently handled two difficult assignments against Abu Kamara at Portsmouth and Tyreece Campbell in this game. Kealey can be pleased with his night’s work. Brave lad.

Elsewhere, Myles Leaburn (son of Rangers legend Carl) climbed all over his opponent for an early corner headed wide. QPR had 12 of those of their own and produced the square root of fuck all – Harvey Vale very much at the twos end of his twos and eights delivery scale on the night. I was glad to see the back of Leaburn at half time - replaced by the fairly dreadful Joe Rankin-Costello - but not half as relieved as I was by an offside flag that ruled out Campbell’s apparent opener and fifth goal of the season midway through the first half. It was, at best, a borderline call.

Friend of the site Nathan Jones took this in the calm, adult, rational and proportionate manner you’d expect. He told the media afterwards the assistant referee had de-facto accused him of “volleying his cat”. By the time inconsistent referee Tom Nield had waved away a valid late claim for an obvious pull back by sub Dennis Cirkin on freed Charlton forward Karlan Grant, and a debatable Mbengue block on a speculator in the QPR box, the former Luton boss was bent double in mental anguish. Performatively hopping around the north end touchline like somebody had put Gollum on a hotplate and cranked the dial. Who is this for?

When asked about a midweek meeting with Championship referee’s boss Kevin Friend (and if you want to know why standards are as they are, people like Kevin Friend being in charge isn’t a bad place to start) to discuss grievances from a weekend 4-0 loss at Stoke, Jones just made a series of guttural noises into the microphone while shaking his head and staring at the table. He vibes as quite an unwell man. Potentially escaped from a secure unit. With one win from now 12 career games against QPR I can’t say I’m wholly against our role in pushing him closer and closer to whatever giant butterfly net is surely out there searching for him. If I was going to pick a manager for us to have a hex over he’d be on a shortlist of… well, a short list. One wonders if you might get more 50/50 decisions from officials if you didn’t talk to/about them in this way?

Still, when you don’t take your chances, and you leave the game in the balance, you do run the risk of ending your evening watching that poisonous little goblin scaling the stanchions to “celebrate in a certain way”. QPR had 72% of the possession, and should have buried this game, but wilted the longer it went on. Winning when dominating ball remains something of a boss level for this side. It is now 70 games and 23 victories since QPR last beat a team while holding more possession than their opponent.

The other recurring theme was more troubling still. After a reasonably bright and enterprising opening, Tariq Lamptey sat down and signalled to the bench that he needed to be replaced. I don’t think I’ve ever heard/felt/seen the air go out of an away end without a goal being conceded in quite the way it did at that moment. An audible sigh and exasperated groan. Here we go again.

To compound this, Jimmy Dunne lasted barely 90 seconds of the second half before doing the same. That may seem heroic, but the five subs in three tranches rule doesn’t reward you for going out and trying to run something off for the first couple of minutes of a second half. It left Stéphan with three subs to use, but only one opportunity to use them, and things got raggy and baggy from thereon in. Justin Obikwu’s long-awaited QPR debut nine months after signing was a non-event out of position wide left. Amadou Mbengue didn’t kill anyone, but that’s about as much as you can say. Leon Scarlett acquitted himself well and I like the look, but when you’re bringing on small children in game six of the league season that isn’t the positive some will spin it to be. Rayan Kolli watched on with the rest of us. Silly.

We are not unique in this most shambolically of organised fixture lists. Having (sensibly) shifted the League Cup first round into that final pre-season friendly slot to alleviate fixture pressure, the EFL is now in the midst of five games in 15 days that would be worse still had QPR (stop laughing) made the second round of that competition. Back-to-back midweeks are followed by a spare Tuesday/Wednesday next week, then a home game against Preston, then three whole weeks doing nothing. We will play no football on Good Friday or Easter Monday this year, but between January 26 and March 2 will play Tuesday night away games at Burnley, Derby and Bolton. Millwall are already nursing 13 first team injuries. Charlton were missing nine for this game, including our former charge Charlie Kelman. Did somebody say player welfare? Did anybody say ‘football without fans is nothing’? Oh yes, but you see the Champions League sides can’t possibly play another game here, so we have to seed them, and split the round and… fuck off. Fuck all the way off over there, and then when you get there fuck off all over again.

Sadly, though, this isn’t new to QPR. Soft tissue injuries, muscle injuries, recurring injuries, have plagued this team for the past two years, under two different managers. Rangers finished a good chunk of places lower than they should have done last year because they couldn’t put their best team on the pitch often enough. Julien Stéphan has said publicly he doesn’t know what this group is capable of because he hardly ever sees the group together. He cut a frustrated figure in post-match, batting back generic journalist questions about what he thought of the game by asking what they thought of the game instead.

From raving about attacking options, to failing to score in three of the last five games. From talking about depth, to being one Jake Clarke-Salter or Rumarn Burrell injury away from a serious issue. From talking about how fit and firing Rangers looked to begin the season, to once again nursing a whole plethora of non-descript muscle injuries and awaiting firm news which rarely comes. This is still a team that hits the wall after an hour, a team losing players to injury at a rate of two each first half, a team that cannot get its best players on the field for any length of time. The air went out of the balloon, on and off the pitch, as hands went into the air, again. Sick of it, as a local Welshman might say.

This is QPR this season. A play-off standard team has been assembled. Can they get it on the pitch, and keep it there?

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

Charlton: Okonkwo 6; Mesik 6, Jones 7, Bindon 5, Bell 6; Coventry 6, Skipp 5 (Mwamba 85, -); Grant 6, Carey 5 (Mbick 65, 6), Campbell 7 (Alli 88, -); Leaburn 6 (Rankin-Costello 46, 5)

Subs not used: Brooks, Nkeng, Knibbs, Laqeretabua, Ouma

QPR: Charles 7; Adamson 7 (Mbengue 79, 6), Dunne 6 (Clarke-Salter 48, 6), Edwards 8, Lamptey 6 (Cirkin 36, 6); Vale 5, Madsen 7, Kamara 8, Smyth 5 (Obikwu 79, 5); Burrell 6, Lloyd 5 (Scarlett 79, 6)

Subs not used: Alemayehu, Varane, Morrison, Ward

Yellow Cards: Adamson 74 (foul), Clarke-Salter 76 (foul)

QPR Star Man – Glen Kamara 8 Oliver Skipp, lol.

Referee – Tom Nield (West Yorkshire) 5 Seems to change his mind on what constitutes a free kick and what doesn’t an awful lot. Charlton fumed over three key calls, and perhaps had a point (on one of them). Paid attention to the new ‘countdown’ clampdowns on time wasting like people pay attention to ticket gates on the tube. Booked Stéphan, not Jones, which I think says a lot for his judgement.

Attendance – 17,876 (3,051 QPR) None of last year’s crushing, turnstile fiascos, and close cavity searches. I even had time for a concourse pint. Flat as a witch’s tit, but a pint of it whatever it was all the same.

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Pictures - Reuters Connect

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