 Friday, 10th Sep 2010 00:18 by Clive Whittingham QPR must avoid the much talked about ‘curse’ of the Manager of the Month award when they take on a Middlesbrough side with a distinctly Scottish flavour to it at Loftus Road this Saturday. QPR (1st) v Middlesbrough (16th)npower Championship >>> Saturday, September 11 >>> Kick Off 3pm >>> Loftus Road, London, W12 Isn’t it horrible when you see that long lost pain in the arse walking down the road towards your front door? There you are minding your own business with the paper in one hand and a nice coffee or bottle of beer in the other and you happen to glance out of the window to marvel at the wonders of God’s creation and suddenly you catch sight of him/her/it striding purposefully towards your front door with the soul intention of sapping an hour or three from your life. “It’s not is it? It is. You remember, we used to live next door to her. No, the other side. Oh Christ she’s coming up the path, hide, pretend we’re not in, oh God but the car’s outside, and the windows are open, shit she’s seen us. Has she? Yes she’s waving, shit, hi Belinda come on in, no I was just trying to climb under the kitchen table because I thought I saw a mark on the floor…” You can never hide convincingly enough, quickly enough can you? The bastards, it’s always at the worst possible time as well. I wonder if Neil Warnock and Ishan Saksena were hiding under their desks with the lights off on Thursday, as the Football League panel sat in judgement on its first Manager of the Month award of the season? Warnock was the obvious choice for it, QPR are after all top of the table and even the slightly ropey draw they got at Derby came courtesy of a memorable injury time comeback. Still, as Cardiff City seems to be the centre of the universe at the moment, I fully expected Dave Jones to get the nod on the basis that they made it through a round of the cup as well as taking ten points from 12 – and that they’re the media’s latest pet project outside the Premiership. Craig Bellamy has signed for them, I don’t know if you’d heard. A Newcastle United level of Sky coverage beckons no doubt. Anyway allow me to pack my cynicism away for a moment because the award did in fact go to our Neil, who will now lose his next game at home to Middlesbrough if the award stays true to form. It’s a bit like being told you’ve got the best toilets in the league when you win the Manager of the Month – technically it’s an award but it’s not one you go out of your way to win. Warnock expressed surprise at QPR’s start to the season when reluctantly posing for photographs with the trophy – I get the impression he was hoping to play it a bit more low key than being top of the table really allows this early in the season. Putting aside superstition and such like and looking at things practically – the Manager of the Month award isn’t cursed, it’s merely a reward for the extraordinary and therefore it’s unlikely a team will continue to perform as it has after the award is made because otherwise, by the mere definition of the word, that wouldn’t be extraordinary. QPR took ten points from 12 to win Warnock the award, and are unlikely to do so again in September not because he won it, but because if we take ten points from every 12 available this season we will finish with 115 points and nobody has ever managed that before. Teams just don’t take ten points from 12 for month after month, and that’s not the harmless little trophy’s fault. QPR will certainly be lucky to take ten points from their next 12 with Boro at home on Saturday followed by two difficult road games and then back to the Bush for a game against the division’s dark horses this season (in my opinion anyway) Doncaster Rovers. None of those games are unwinnable though, and there is a new found confidence sweeping through the QPR camp at the moment. It’s a poor league this season with few outstanding teams and Rangers now have more than enough about them to really excel in it. Middlesbrough were the pre-season favourites for the title and if they repeat their August performances at Loftus Road on Saturday it will highlight just what a great opportunity this season is for us.
Five minutes on MiddlesbroughRecent History: It is said that in London, you’re never more than ten feet away from a rat. In Scotland you’re never more than three weeks away from another game with Kilmarnock, and to be honest you’re better off with the vermin problem. The Scottish Premier League is now one of the worst top flights in world football. Dominated to ridiculous levels by two sides who hammer everybody and everything out of sight for 12 months before embarrassingly crashing out of Europe at the first possible opportunity to the third best team from the Macedonian First Division leaving them another 12 months of endless fixtures against Motherwell, Inverness and Hamilton. They play each other four times, and there are two cup competitions, so once the might of Utrecht, or whichever dog of a European side it is this year, has dumped the religious zealots out of the continental knock out competitions it’s anywhere between four and seven fixtures against one park side after another for the rest of the campaign. I’d say it’s about as fun as trimming your pubes with a rusty hack saw, but at least if you were doing that would have a little drama and danger to hold your attention which is more than you’ll get from St Mirren’s latest trip to Dundee United. It’s a league that has suffered from throwing its hat in with Setanta Sports, and then having to crawl to Sky for whatever television deal it could get when that all fell apart, and is now completely devoid of quality, competition or interest from anybody. I can watch football. I can sit and watch Stoke and Coventry and Sheff Utd and all manner of dross. I can watch Unibond League football, for hours I can sit at Matlock and Alfreton and Ilkeston and watch no hopers kick seven bells of shit out of each other. But I can’t watch the SPL, and it seems I’m not alone. In the last weekend before the international break, the attendances for a round of SPL games excluding Rangers’ home game were – 3,851 at Inverness, 11,287 at Aberdeen, 4,480 at St Mirren, 9,207 at Motherwell with Celtic the visitors and 12,898 at Hearts. To put that in perspective it’s less for an entire weekend of league action than went to see Sunderland v Man City in the Premiership. Even Grimsby got 3,822 for their Conference game with Luton. Nobody cares, and it’s not hard to see why. Remember Michael Duberry? Hopelessly slow and clearly set for retirement in an ill-fated spell with Wycombe as they were relegated from League One last season? Now first choice for St Johnstone. Sam Parkin, knees battered and last seen in League Two Luton’s reserve side, and Cleveland Taylor, of Carlisle and Scunthorpe fame, join him. Danny Invincible, ex of Swindon with no great success, plays for Kilmarnock. Yoann Folly has bounced back from his relegation with Plymouth and loan at Dagenham last season to take up post at Aberdeen. Perhaps the most damning indictment of the whole sorry mess is that Liam Miller, disinterested, lightweight and completely ineffective at QPR, not only plays for Hibs but stands out as one of the division’s better players. It’s a division made up of players looking to prolong their careers after dropping as low as they could in England, failures from home and abroad and layers and layers of absolute tat. The Scots treat James McFadden as some sort of demi-God and celebrated their 97th minute winner against Liechtenstein (population 35,000) like a World Cup win on Tuesday night. They haven’t qualified for anything since 1998. Which all rather begs the question – why is Gordon Strachan spending the ample funds provided to him by chairman Steve Gibson on players from the Scottish Premier League? It’s like winning the lottery, then going to Lidl to buy the meat for the celebration barbecue. Nine have arrived so far, at considerable expense, and Strachan was at Ibrox again before the international break scouting for more. I’m amazed he found nine players he felt were worth buying north of the border, to be looking for a tenth seems ludicrous when you consider the quality of Boro’s performances and results since they started arriving in January. Those he has already brought south probably felt right at home in August when Boro played out a dire match against Sheffield United in front of 18,000 empty seats at the Riverside Stadium. Gibson is often held up as a shining example of a patient chairman, and he backs his managers with decent spending power in the transfer market, but he’s been rather left behind in the grand scheme of football club owners recently and has made some strange decisions which have contributed to the current situation where Boro have an expensively assembled squad that has so far shown little to suggest it is going to fulfil its pre-season title of favourites. I remember watching Middlesbrough live on Sky one Sunday in 1995 away at Arsenal. It was the first game of a new Premiership season, Boro had just been promoted and signalled their intentions by signing Nick Barmby for big money, and they were about to be the first club since Scunthorpe in the 1980s to move to a brand new stadium. Nowadays though it’s billionaires buying football clubs, not millionaires, and Gibson is small fry compared to the Sheiks and Scumbags running Premiership clubs these days. Boro used to be that team from outside the so called big four or five who went out and spent big money on players – Ravenelli, Juninho, Emerson, Barmby, Hignet, Gascoigne and so on. Going on for three years ago now they spent £12m on Alfonso Alves (I’ll refrain from the David Blunkett’s wife’s pubic hair joke this season) but at the same time their better players like Mark Schwarzer, Mark Viduka, Yakubu and Jonathan Woodgate were being sold and ultimately it proved to be a death of a thousand cuts when they were relegated, devoid of quality, in 2009. Boro then made a mistake that could well condemn them to many years of strife in this league – a mistake we made ourselves back in the 1990s after relegation from the top flight. They kept Gareth Southgate as manager, allowed him to attempt to rebuild in the summer transfer window, and then sacked him in October. If Gibson blamed Southgate for the relegation, and as Boro were actually fourth in this league when he was sacked and had just beaten Derby 2-0 it’s a fair assumption that this was predominantly the reason for the dismissal, then he should have bitten the bullet and fired him that summer. By firing him then it gave his replacement, Gordon Strachan, no transfer window to work in and another man’s squad to manage. That effectively meant last season was a write off and in an attempt to make amends this year Boro have spent more money – but they’ve spent it on scrapings from a very mucky barrel. It might work out for them. I tipped them to win the league this year regardless but I’ve seen them against Chesterfield and Sheffield United so far and they’ve been bloody awful both times. With the Premiership clubs getting richer and further detached from this league and Boro’s parachute payments soon at an end now is not the time to be settling in for a prolonged stay in this dog of a league. Strachan’s gamble north of the border must pay off. Manager: The ginger haired Scot would probably would probably read that and respond with “what a load of bollocks.” He would rightly point to his years of experience in both the English and Scottish leagues and say he knows a whole lot more about it than me, he’d say he’s worked with the majority of the signings he has made from up north and knows them all well enough to judge whether they can cut it in this league, and he may well point to Graeme Dorrans and Charlie Adam who were the Championship’s outstanding talents last season after moving from Scotland the season before. Both were promoted at the end of the season with West Brom and Blackpool respectively. Strachan would also say that having made such widespread changes to his squad over the summer it’s a little bit soon to judge him – we are after all just four games into the season. Strachan himself moved into English football having started off in his homeland as a player. He was part of Alex Ferguson’s all conquering Aberdeen side and then followed Ferguson to Old Trafford before winning a title with Leeds in the last year of the old First Division and enjoying an Indian summer at Coventry City. More than 130 goals in more than 600 appearances – Scottish football was a different proposition in those days. Strachan was an obvious choice to take over from Ron Atkinson at Coventry in November 1996 at a time when the Sky Blues specialised in miracle escapes from relegation at the end of dire campaigns – the season before they had survived late on at QPR’s expense and they did so again in his first campaign in charge because, ironically, Middlesbrough were docked three points by the league for failing to fulfil a fixture at Blackburn. Strachan went on to build a very entertaining Coventry team with the likes of Craig Bellamy, Darren Huckerby, Mustapha Hadji and Dion Dublin to the fore, but he couldn’t maintain it and they were finally relegated from the top flight in 2001. Coventry then made the same mistake QPR had done before them, and Boro have done since, by persisting with the manager that relegated them only to then replace him five games into the following season. It’s a mindless decision to make that one, always a recipe for disaster. Strachan benefited from another early sacking by moving straight into the hot seat at Southampton after Stuart Gray’s promotion from within went sour. As he had done at Coventry, Strachan produced an entertaining and winning side at one of the Premiership’s traditional strugglers – with players like James Beattie, Chris Marsden, Michael and Anders Svensson excelling. Southampton reached the FA Cup final in 2003 and qualified for Europe despite losing to Arsenal. Strachan then, strangely, announced that 2003/04 would be his last season with the Saints and as always happens with these advanced resignation announcements the team went on a horrendous losing run that necessitated an earlier than planned departure. After a year of television work he replaced Martin O’Neill as Celtic manager in the summer of 2005 – a thankless task if ever there was one. The annual humiliating early exit from Europe for the Scottish “giants” duly followed as those giants of the world game Artmedia Bratislava won the first leg of their play off 5-0, and although Strachan went on to win an impressive three SPL titles, two Scottish Cups, one League Cup and three Manager of the Year awards there was always a vocal minority of Celtic fans critical of his work – essentially because he wasn’t as brilliant as O’Neill obviously was/is. Strachan is a slow starter as manager. He has never won his first game in charge of any club and having succeeded Southgate at Boro last Autumn it took him five matches, as it had done at Southampton, to register a win. When it came, it was an emphatic 5-1 win at Loftus Road in this fixture as QPR suffered their tri-annual collapse that became a feature of the Flavio Briatore reign in W12. Since then Boro have been consistently crap. They finished 11th last year, some eight points behind the final play off spot, and have started this season poorly as well. Strachan signed five SPL players permanently and one on loan last season after taking over and despite the poor results has added another four this summer at a cost of about £5m. Strachan is assisted by former Leeds and Scotland team mate Gary McAllister who, nice guy and fine player notwithstanding, has an abysmal record as a manager at Coventry and Leeds. Three to watch: And so it stands to reason, having said all of that, that a player who scores bundles of goals in the SPL is a bit of a risky purchase for a manager in the English leagues. After all, I bet most of you reading this would probably fancy yourself for a brace if Michael Duberry was all that stood between you and the goal. Plenty of teams have had a look at Kris Boyd in recent years, and Birmingham City came very close to taking him to the Premiership a year ago, but it’s Boro that have finally taken the plunge. The numbers he has posted are impressive. He is the SPL’s record goal scorer with 194 goals from 359 appearances in all competitions, a ratio of more than a goal every other game. He scored 26 goals for Rangers last season, 31 the year before, 27 in 2007/08, 28 the year before that and so it goes on. I mean how do you like your goal scorers? Big, hairy, nasty, consistent, ruthless, prolific? He’s off the mark for Boro already as well, seizing on a frankly hilarious mistake by Chris Morgan to smash home the only goal of a dour match with Sheffield United in August. I’m keen to see what kind of numbers he posts this season because on the face of it he’s far too good for the football played in his homeland and has done more than enough to suggest he can succeed down here. He’s ruggedly built so is unlikely to be daunted by a physical league and he’s got that first goal under his belt now so there will be no stigma following him around as sometimes happens when a new striker arrives in a high profile transfer – see Diego Forlan at Man Utd. Like I say, I try to avoid watching Scottish football for the benefit of my mental health, so the recent Sheff Utd game was the first time I can recall seeing him play a full 90 minutes in any great detail. The BBC’s Roddy Forsyth describes him as a ‘grazing bull’ of a player who will amble around the penalty box in much the same way as our own Andy Thomson used to do waiting for the ball to find him rather than the other way around. Don’t expect an all action performance with Boyd popping up here there and everywhere on Saturday – by the looks of things he will remain very central, rarely venturing outside the width of the goal or more than a couple of dozen yards from the QPR penalty area. I’m genuinely intrigued. Boro were obviously outstanding at Loftus Road last season – nobody more so than centre half David Wheater and I’m very surprised to find him still in this league nearly a year later. He’s a big lad, but pretty mobile with it, and has England Under 21 caps to his name. I’m surprised somebody from the top flight, a Fulham or Everton type club, hasn’t had a punt on him yet, and QPR will have to work a whole lot harder to trouble him than they did last season when he needn’t have changed out of his club suit for either fixture. Strachan added defender Matt Kilgallon to his line up on loan during the transfer window. The former Leeds man has endured a tough time at Sunderland since leaving Sheff Utd in January – reinforcing the idea that he may well be one of these players in the Wayne Routledge club of being a bit too good for this division but not quite possessing enough quality to play upstairs. He was a fine servant at Bramall Lane and the professional football hooligan Chris Morgan has been badly exposed since he left so on the face of it he’s a good signing for Boro. I say on the face of it because when I saw Boro in August he was playing left full back. I mean if you need a left full back go and get one, don’t get a centre half and shoe horn him in. Maybe that’s a temporary measure, otherwise it’s straight out of the Ian Holloway Big Book of Transfers 2002 edition. I know it’s a “three to watch” section but I’ll just squeeze a fourth one in quickly. Former Sunderland man Julio Arca, another talent wasted on the Championship, came on as a sub against Sheffield United and completely changed the style and ethos of the Boro side with his quality. I’d be very happy to find him bench warming again come 3pm on Saturday.
HistoryRecent Meetings: Rangers paid a heavy penalty at the Riverside Stadium in February in Mick Harford’s last game in charge. A dull and lifeless encounter devoid of any quality whatsoever was settled by two penalties to the home side just before half time. A rash tackle by Peter Ramage on Jeremie Alliadiere set the ball rolling five minutes before the break and that was quickly followed by an equally stupid lunge, this time from Gorkss on Lita. Barry Robson comfortably outwitted Carl Ikeme in the QPR goal with both spot kicks. We had an excellent turkey and stuffing roll from a van behind the away end. They also did roast beef. Middlesbrough: Coyne 7, Naughton 6, Wheater 7, McManus 6, Pogatetz 6 (Taylor 78, 6), Flood 6, O'Neil 6, Robson 8, Aliadiere 5 (Franks 66, 6), Lita 6 (Arca 83, -), Killen 6 Subs Not Used: Jones, Hoyte, Miller, Grounds Booked: Killen (foul) Goals: Robson 39 (penalty), 45 (penalty) QPR: Ikeme 6, Ramage 4, Stewart 5, Gorkss 4, Hill 4 (Borrowdale 53, 4),Cook 6, Leigertwood 7, Faurlin 6 (Taarabt 69, 6), Buzsaky 7, Simpson 6, German 5 (Bent 54, 6) Subs Not Used: Cerny, Vine, Balanta, Ephraim Booked: Gorkss (foul) Things were a good deal worse for Rangers in December when they lost 5-1 to Boro at Loftus Road. This was the start of a chain of events that led to the departure of Jim Magilton and the implosion of a promising season which meant that by the time the teams met three months later we were some 15 places lower in the league and under the guidance of Mick Harford, our third manager of the campaign. Boro, in what must surely must have been their best performance of the season, cut Rangers to ribbons to provide a first victory in charge for new manager Gordon Strachan in his sixth game at the helm. Dave Kitson gave Boro a one goal half time lead but they cut loose in the second half when Leroy Lita ran riot, scoring twice and setting up another fro Gary O'Neil. The impressive Mark Yeates rounded off the rout with a fifth late on, only a brief flash from subs Rowan Vine and Patrick Agyemang who combined to score for the R's ten seconds after coming on, provided anything for the home crowd to cheer. Two days later the R’s lost 3-1 at Watford live on Sky and after the match the fateful dressing room incident between Jim Magilton and Akos Buzsaky brought things to a head. QPR: Cerny 4, Leigertwood 3, Hall 3, Gorkss 4, Borrowdale 6, Taarabt 5, Watson 3, Faurlin 6, Routledge 5 (Pellicori 80, -), Simpson 6 (Agyemang 52, 6), Buzsaky 4 (Vine 52, 5) Subs Not Used: Taylor, Ramage, Stewart, Williams Booked: Hall (foul) Goals: Agyemang 53 (assisted Vine) Middlesbrough: Jones 6, R Williams 7, St. Ledger 7, Wheater 8, Pogatetz 8, O'Neil 9 (Digard 79, 7), Arca 7, Yeates 8, Osbourne 7, Kitson 8,Lita 9 Subs Not Used: Coyne, Hoyte, Riggott, Emnes, McMahon, L Williams Booked: Lita (over celebrating), O'Neil (foul) Goals: Kitson 31 (assisted O’Neil), Lita 50 (penalty), 60 (assisted Yeates), O'Neil 75 (assisted Lita), Yeates 87 (unassisted) Head to Head: QPR wins – 13 >>> Draws – 15 >>> Middlesbrough wins – 13 Previous Results: 2009/10 Middlesbrough 2 QPR 0 2009/10 QPR 1 Middlesbrough 5 (Agyemang) 1997/98 QPR 5 Middlesbrough 0 (Sheron 2, Gallen, Bruce, Vickers og) 1997/98 Middlesbrough 2 QPR 0 (FA Cup replay) 1997/98 QPR 2 Middlesbrough 2 (FA Cup - Gallen, Spencer) 1997/98 Middlesbrough 3 QPR 0 1995/96 QPR 1 Middlesbrough 1 (McDonald) 1995/96 Middlesbrough 1 QPR 0 1992/93 Middlesbrough 0 QPR 1 (Ferdinand) 1992/93 QPR 3 Middlesbrough 3 (Ferdinand, Penrice, Sinton) 1988/89 QPR 0 Middlesbrough 0 1988/89 Middlesbrough 1 QPR 0 Links >>> Middlesbrough 2 QPR 0 Match Report >>> QPR 1 Middlesbrough 5 Match Report
This SaturdayTeam News: Physio Nigel Cox did an informative piece for the club’s online television channel this week so we have some more detail than usual for the team news. Martin Rowlands stepped up his recovery from ruptured knee ligaments with a 70 minute run out against Spurs for the reserves but is still a few weeks away from being able to make a first team return. Physio Cox says Fitz Hall has an “outside chance” of being fit for this game as he continues his comeback from a hamstring injury picked up on loan at Newcastle last season and aggravated against Sheffield United in the second league game of the season. Lee Cook remains a month away from a return to full training with Cox telling QPR Player that the left winger was brought back too early from his knee injury last season and has needed to re-do his rehab this summer. It could be the end of October or the beginning of November before we see him in first team action again. Adel Taarabt missed international duty with Morocco last week as the club continues to monitor a groin niggle but Cox says he is “confident he will be there or thereabouts for Middlesbrough contention.” Rob Hulse is likely to be denied a debut by his ongoing Achilles problem, but Tommy Smith is signed, sealed and ready to go. Midfielder Gary O’Neil is hoping to return to the Boro midfield this weekend after a knee injury. The former Portsmouth man, outstanding in this fixture last season, has only played once this season and is limited in the training he can do by the long standing complaint. Tarmo Kink has also been suffering with a knee problem and although he was one of six Boro players away with their national sides during the week he only played the final few minutes of Estonia’s defeat against Italy before featuring throughout a 3-3 draw with Uzbekistan. Barry Robson and Kris Boyd have knocks to their thigh and knee respectively and have missed training this week but will travel. The club has belatedly received clearance for the transfer of Mikael Tavares following a summer move from Hamburg. Wilo Flood, Rhys Williams and Kevin Thomson are long term absentees. Elsewhere: The only televised offering from the Championship this weekend is a Saturday night clash on BBC2 between Lancashire rivals Burnley and Preston at Turf Moor. Burnley are looking for an immediate return to the Premiership after last season’s relegation and have started well with two wins and a draw, while Preston have won one and lost three and look set for a season of struggle as they attempt to trim their wage bill from £10m a season to £6.5m. The club this week sent a begging letter to Premiership managers asking for players that hadn’t made their 25 man squads on loan. It remains to be seen if Nigel Adkins is still the Scunthorpe manager for their Saturday match against Bristol City, the Iron are discussing compensation ahead of his potential move to Southampton. Derby v Sheff Utd and Coventry v Leicester (take a good book to both) have been moved to early kick offs on police advice. Cardiff v Hull will no doubt be billed as the game of the day in the media. Referee: Mick Russell is back at Loftus Road for the first time this season. He refereed us twice at home last season, both games finished 1-1. In the first, against Palace, he called the initial fixture off due to a waterlogged pitch then awarded a penalty to both sides in the rearranged game – although there was nothing controversial in either decision. Then after Christmas he was in charge for a 1-1 draw at home to Derby when Rangers were denied a nailed on penalty in injury time when Antonio German was blatantly hauled back in the penalty area. Click here for full details.
FormQPR: Three wins and a lucky draw from the first four games park QPR on top of the Championship as the campaign moves into its second month. So far at Loftus Road this season the R’s have beaten Barnsley and Scunthorpe in the league, scoring six and keeping two clean sheets, but a League Cup defeat to Port Vale with a scratch side out highlights a lack of strength in depth that could be exposed again as the season wears on. Last season’s hammering on this ground by Boro sparked a run of one win in 14 matches that included victories in W12 for Ipswich, Scunthorpe and Sheffield United. Since then only Cardiff and Newcastle have won on this ground – QPR have taken six wins and three draws from their last 11 home matches. The two goals against at Pride Park brought an end to a run of three consecutive clean sheets this season, and six shut outs from eight games dating back to Easter when we were walloped 4-0 at Leicester. Games against Boro are rarely low scoring – Boro’s last two visits to Loftus Road have finished 1-5 and 5-0, although the games were some 11 years apart. Middlesbrough: After a summer of spending it has been a slow start to the season for Boro. Their dire 1-0 win against Sheff Utd on Sky in August is their only success so far and they have already been beaten at Millwall and Barnsley on their travels. Ipswich won 3-1 at the Riverside on the opening day of the season. Strachan has now been in charge for 40 matches in all competitions with Boro, and has won only 11 of those including two against QPR. They did manage a respectable seven away wins in the league last season, although four of those came in their first 12 matches in the league when Gareth Southgate was in charge. Their last away win in the league was in April at Plymouth. Prediction: Well having said all that about how Boro are underperforming and Scottish football is crap I suppose I can do little else other than predict a QPR victory. We’re more confident, more cohesive and better managed than Boro are, and we’re in form and at home. Strachan will need time to settle his new team down after so many signings but six of them have been away for the last fortnight when that may have taken place – Neil Warnock by contrast has only been without Kaspars Gorkss and Heidar Helguson for the internationals. It all points to a home win, despite the Manager of the Month award. How often have we seen QPR mess up situations like this though? The only fear I have is Boro must surely click at some point – hopefully not on Saturday. QPR 2-0, 17/2 with Bet365 Photo: Action Images Please report offensive, libellous or inappropriate posts by using the links provided.
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