QPR have time, league position and points on their side, but not form, fitness or confidence as they enter a potentially season-defining week of games against struggling Cardiff and Oxford.

QPR (11-12-16 LLLLDL 15th) v Cardiff (9-13-17 WLLLWD 22nd)

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The travelling thousand QPR fans at Stoke last weekend really put the ‘support’ into supportive.

Beaten soundly by one of the few teams left below them in the league, 3-1 and lucky to get it against a side that had won four of its prior 24 games, there were regular choruses of manager Marti Cifuentes’ song and a generous round of applause at full time for those players who dared to venture across to the corner. Bar some frustrated boos immediately prior to half time, when general casualness and half-arsedness gave way to rank incompetence and a second Stoke goal, there was precious little dissent from those who care about the results of this team the most.

That’s in stark contrast to this time two years ago when a team that had topped the league in October looked to be crashing and burning all the way into League One. A 1-0 defeat at fellow strugglers Wigan, a game that had been billed as the start of a great turnaround following an international break and the return of several supposedly “key” players from injury, made it eight defeats from nine and just two wins from 24 games under three different managers. The sight of Ethan Laird once again taking a seat and demanding to be subbed, while teammates implored him to get up and carry on, and Leon Balogun gracing us with his presence for the first time in four months only to give away the stupidest of penalties after five minutes, provoked the away end to erupt into anger at full time – fury only exacerbated by Balogun cupping his ears at the supporters after the final whistle, legitimately deaf as well as tone deaf it seemed.

Then, it felt like the players were taking the piss out of us. They had shown what they were capable of when things had been going well under Mick Beale, and then collectively downed tools the moment he left. Happy to sulk our club all the way to relegation because their precious mentor had taken his “you versus yourself” journey up to Ibrox instead. They’d absolutely chucked Neil Critchley under the bus, and Gareth Ainsworth was hopelessly out his depth in the situation. Fan anger at the players, the manager, and the people responsible for them being there, was inevitable.

Things may well change this week should QPR flop in games against poor Cardiff and Oxford teams, playing our way back into a relegation battle we looked to have long since escaped from. A bad result tomorrow, a loss at Oxford on Wednesday night, you can see players and manager starting to cop it from a sold out away end down at the bowling alley end.

For now though there seems to be a general acceptance that it’s not really the fault of the team or Marti Cifuentes.

This wasn’t a very good side to begin with: a shot stopping keeper who won’t come off his line; good but mostly injured centre backs; a centre back at right back to provide us a player who can head the ball at both ends; an out of contract left back in ropey form with no cover; a central midfield that cannot progress the ball, or indeed do anything much at all really other than execute a grizzly low block out of possession; a collection of midget tens all trying to play the same position; and the worst collection of strikers in the league, mostly all permanently injured.

We were told the recruits this year were “in the top 50% of physical attributes for last year’s squad” and we’ve “modelled against European leagues we feel are most like the Championship”. As Kevin Gallen points out on this week’s West London Sport podcast, that modelling doesn’t seem to have noticed those leagues play Saturday to Saturday while the Championship infamously plays every day of the bastard week. We’ve put together a team with no pace, no height, no physicality.

The games the team was winning earlier in the season felt like gigantic struggles, and now a good nine or ten of the team are out injured. You take nine or ten players out of any Championship side it’s going to struggle. You take nine or ten out of a team already as deficient as ours you’ll be lucky if it ever wins again. What, really, were they meant to do at Stoke with Karamoko Dembele leading the Munchkins from the Wizard of Oz in attack? How were they meant to get up the pitch? It’s a miracle it was only 3-1. That will go down as one of the lowest quality starting 11s QPR have fielded in this decade-long Championship stay. It’s not that they weren’t trying, it’s just that they weren’t good enough, or strong enough. You clap more out of sympathy than anything.

Cifuentes has credit in the bank with supporters after twice leading recoveries from almost identical one-in-16 starts to the last two seasons. A less popular manager would already be facing cliched ‘lost the dressing room’ accusations just for the phoned in rubbish at Middlesbrough and Stoke. For now the supporters, at least, like and respect their manager and continue to sing his name. He’s far from blameless. He admitted in his post-match in the Potteries that he’d got the team selection badly wrong. But when you look at what was available to him and nail people to the wall for what should have been done differently the best anybody can suggest is Alfie Lloyd should have started up front and gone on for as long as his injury would allow, and Ronnie Edwards should have stayed in midfield with Liam Morrison covering for Steve Cook. I agree on both points, that should have happened, but do you think we were Alfie Lloyd up front and Ronnie Edwards in midfield away from beating Stoke last week? I don’t. That game played like a 4-0 cakewalk.

The feeling among the home and awayers seems to be, largely, that the manager has been dealt a bad hand and is doing the best with what he’s got. The Cardiff game, again, he goes in with Alfie Lloyd as his only striker - a player who wouldn't get on the bench at most other Championship clubs. No Chair, no Saito, no Cook, no Clarke-Salter. Good luck with that Marti. Nicholas Madsen’s latest horror show from the bench at Stoke has come to represent how we recruited for this season. Cifuentes critics, Christian Nourry supporters, are keen to tell you the manager had a say in all the transfers. But QPR’s recruitment and retainment - bar last January with Lucas Andersen and Isaac Hayden and the January of 2021 when Sam Field, Charlie Austin, Jordy De Wijs and Stefan Johansen turned the season around - has been lousy for years, way before Cifuentes got here. It’s been a huge part of why we’ve been so shit for so long.

Throw in a season-long injury crisis, which has decimated us at centre back and centre forward in particular, and is littered with soft tissue strains and pulls and recurrences of problems in key players (Cook, Chair, Clarke-Salter, Frey), while the performance department is led by a bloke in Dubai collecting pay cheques from three different gigs, and what exactly do you want the manager to do?

We have combined our CEO and DOF roles and given it to one person who’s never done either job before. It shows.

Maybe those clapping the team off last week just feel as I do. Dawn, I’m fed up etc.

This time last year I was literally losing sleep over our team. It occupied most of my waking thoughts. The victories against Leicester, Birmingham and Leeds brought tremendous outpouring of emotion and celebration. Moments like Asmir Begovic’s horror show at Plymouth cut deep, stung for days, and provoked enormous anger and frustration. It felt like an opportunity to transform our club teetered on the brink. Just stay up this time and we’ve got way more FFP headroom, a new TV deal, a great and inspirational manager, a new forward-thinking executive rank, a weaker division. We could be off to the races… tenth maybe! Just imagine?!

Instead, and you can choose your fighter on who’s to blame, they’ve fucked it up again. Turns out we’re shit anyway. The money we had has been spent on duds, and the contracts they’ve been given saddle us with them for years into the future. I mean, if he keeps playing like this, how do you shift Madsen? You can’t play him. If you’re selling a boat with a hole in it, don’t sell it on the river.

I don’t know if I’m in denial, if deep down I think it’s unlikely to happen, and the panic and anger will kick in (possibly this week) as the reality dawns, but at the moment I’m struggling to be overly excited or worried about whatever’s about to happen to us. The likely scenario is we about stay up, Cifuentes likely leaves, the same recruitment operation gets the laptops out and furnish us with a whole load of new Madsen types this summer, possibly with an Ebere Eze sell on fee to burn through and waste, and this time next year we’ll be back here again. And that’s one of the better case scenarios. Meh. May as well go and see some new grounds.

Perhaps, though, it’s just fatigue. We’ve run out of energy to boo, abuse, get angry. We’ve been browbeaten into submission.

QPR have, once again, gone six matches without a win, losing five of them. In the ten years we’ve now had in this division this is the 18th different occasion we’ve embarked on a losing run of at least six games. Blame Cifuentes for this latest one if you like. Or Nourry. Like we blamed Ainsworth, and Critchley, and Ferdinand. Like we blamed Warburton, Holloway, McClaren. There are few constants at QPR over the last ten years. People come and go and bullshit and obfuscate. What is permanent, however, despite the turnover, is a fragility to the team physically and mentally. It goes on long losing runs constantly. Our culture is one of phoning in injuries, downing tools for six weeks if you don't like the manager, sacking the manager to cover failings elsewhere, windmilling your micropenis around whenever you get within six points of the play offs, and losing the last dozen games of every season because you're too busy focusing on your next contract/loan deal/Dubai holiday.

That’s us. It’s been us for a decade. Look at the state of this. And remember all the way through that we were apparently always just one more managerial sacking, one different director of football, one move of Ronnie Edwards into midfield away from it all magically going away. These are the winless runs our team has inflicted on us over the last decade.

2024/25 13 games without a win, now six and counting.
2023/24 Two separate runs of 12 and eight games without a win.
2022/23 At various points separate sequences of six, seven and 13 without victory (one win in 20, two wins in 27 at one stage)
2021/22 Different spells of six, five and five games without a win.
2020/21 A winless run of seven, another of ten.
2019/20 Seven, and five.
2018/19 A run of five without a win, another of seven, at one point we won one of 13 games.
2017/18 Separate runs of seven and six.
2016/17 Three different spells of six without a win, including two where we lost six in a row.
2015/16 A run of eight games without a win, while in receipt of parachute payments.

Medium and long term we have to address this mental and physical fragility that plagues our club.

Short term we just need a win or two to maintain Championship status and pack this season away in a neat little box we can take to a place far, far away and bury never to speak of again. Can’t see them shifting many 2024/25 season review DVDs. Short of stodging the midfield back up again, or going all radical with Jimmy Dunne up front, its difficult to really see how the manager induces that with the squad he’s got at his disposal for two key games this week. Sam Field’s return is a big positive - whatever his detractors tell you he’s key to this team and we’ve won only twice without him in nearly four years (Blackburn away last season, Norwich home this).

When you look at how that litany of runs eventually turned around with a win, there’s an element of randomness to it. We don’t get new manager bounce, so it’s never been broken by us sacking the manager and experiencing an immediate uptick. Cifuentes took four games to get off the mark after replacing Ainsworth, and I guess you could largely put that down to him getting Willock and Chair back together and believing they were God’s gift again – even then, it needed a last minute Ben Pearson own goal in a game against Stoke we’d long looked like losing to ten men on a night of multiple refereeing decisions in our favour. The later eight game run was broken by a 2-0 home win against a similarly cratering Millwall, and Asmir Begovic almost dropped an equaliser in his own net shortly before we scored the second goal in that. The previous year Neil Critchley and Gareth Ainsworth both scraped 1-0, barely deserved, wins against poor Preston and Watford sides, before immediately descending into losing runs again. Ainsworth lost 6-1 at Blackpool the week after. There was a last minute 1-0 against relegation bound Derby to snap Warburton’s final streak, but that wasn’t enough to revive the play-off bid and we lost the next two regardless. Warburton was rescued another time by the Austin, Field, Johansen signings. Luke Freeman got Steve McClaren out of a hole single handedly against Leeds, and the team promptly went on another long streak which included the home losses to the bottom two Bolton and Rotherham which ultimately cost the wally his job. Ian Holloway won randomly at Wolves, with a midfield of Sandro and Ryan Manning, and then again in the penultimate game against Forest.

The first run this season came to a close with a 2-0 win at Cardiff immediately after the lowest ebb of the 4-1 home defeat to Middlesbrough and meek surrender at Leeds. Cardiff had 64% of the ball, 24 shots, seven on target. Paul Nardi was the man of the match by a street. Zan Celar scored two goals he’ll never score again as long as he’s got a hole in his arse. And we won.

Sometimes you just end up beating somebody by accident. If that accident could occur again, against the same opposition, on Saturday, it would go a long way to finally putting a bullet in this retched season. That’s the only thing that matters for now, but it’s another long summer of tough questions and soul searching ahead whatever happens over the next seven games. We can’t go on like this.

Links >>> March Roundtable – Patreon Podcast >>> Taarabt genius – History >>> Seven games to save themselves – Oppo Profile >>> Keepers going short – Analysis >>> Whitestone in charge – Referee >>> Cardiff Official Website >>> Three Little Birds — Blog >>> CCMB — Message Board >>> Wales Online — Local Paper >>> Mauve and Yellow — Blog >>> View From The Ninian — Website and Podcast

Below the fold

Team News: Sam Field is back in training after his ankle injury suffered against Portsmouth and could return to the midfield here. The good news ends there though - Michi Frey remains sidelined with a groin injury, Rayan Kolli has apparently suffered a setback in his recovery, and Zan Celar remains dead in as much as he was ever alive in the first place. It leaves Alfie Lloyd as the only recognised forward available to Marti Cifuentes tomorrow. At the back Steve Cook remains hobbled by his long-standing foot injury. Worse still, Frey and Cook are unlikely to make it back for another crunch game at Oxford on Wednesday. Jake Clarke-Salter is done for the year.

Top scorer Callum Robinson and former QPR winger Chris Willock will return to the Cardiff squad after missing the draw with Sheff Wed last time out. Big Dick Ng is unavailable in defence. Anwar El Ghazi and Joe Ralls have also missed training this week. Aaron Ramsey is a long-term absentee and has started just 13 league games in nearly two years since his high profile and extremely expensive return to his boyhood club. Midfielder Andy Rinomhota lost his brother Joseph during the week after he collapsed following a Muay Thai fight in which he received a kick to the chest.

Elsewhere: Well, I guess we’re back to doing this again, so, from the bottom…

Plymouth Argyle are dead last, seven points shy of safety and 11 away from QPR. They’re done, to all intents and purposes. Who would have thought making Wayne Rooney your manager could have such an effect? Argyle need a win this weekend to keep the flame flickering, and to be fair Norwich at home isn’t a bad one to pick given the Canaries gave up on their season long ago.

Luton Town are second bottom, seven points back from QPR, and three away from safety, but may fancy their chances against league leaders Red Bull Leeds who are having a typical late season wobble of one win in five games. Daniel Farke has already announced he’s finally dropping accident-prone keeper Illan Meslier, without whom Leeds would already have been crowned champions, and Karl Darlow will play at Kenilworth Road. A shame from a comedy point of view – come on Daniel, life’s tough enough, don’t take away what little joy we’ve got left – but with QPR’s growing plight it’s probably for our own good tomorrow.

Cardiff currently have hold of the third bottom bomb, one point from safety and five away from QPR, because Derby won for a fourth game in a row during the week against Preston Knob End. John Eustace really is doing a remarkable job at Pride Park, they looked dead and buried when beaten 4-0 at Loftus Road but will now play for a fifth consecutive win away at Swanselona. Derby are one point above the drop zone and four shy of Rangers. Swansea are immediately below us on the same points with a worse goal difference. Hull also have 41 points alongside the Rams, they’re fourth bottom ahead of a trip to Sheff Wed where players and staff have once again not been paid this month by wanker owner Derek Chansiri.

Stoke and Oxford are 18th and 19th on 42 points apiece, three back from our total. Oxford have only won one of 11 and now host the division’s best away side Sheffield Red Stripe. Stoke follow their trouncing of our sorry mess last weekend with a trip to Deepdale.

Portsmouth join Swansea and ourselves on 45 points and they are away to Millwall.

The only other team in the Championship on a run of form as poor as QPR’s is Blackburn. Amidst a hail of protests against their owners, they are tonight’s TV game at home to play-off chasing Middlesbrough.

The other 12.30 games concern the play-off picture with Sunderland hosting West Brom in the Moany Towbray derby, and Burnley drawing 0-0 at Coventry.

Bristol City v Watford is the only game we’re yet to mention.

Referee: Championship mainstay Dean Whitestone gets this game. His first QPR match since the 3-1 home loss to Sunderland under Gareth Ainsworth last season when Jack Colback was (deservedly) sent off. Details.

Form

QPR: QPR are now six without a win (five defeats) and have lost eight of their last 11 games after suffering only one defeat in the prior 13 games. No team in the division has lost more than Rangers since the run started on January 25. It’s the second time this season the R’s have embarked on a long losing run, having gone 13 games without a win and only one win from the first 16 league games to begin the season. That dire start ended with a 2-0 victory at Cardiff in the first meeting, Zan Celar got both goals which are to date his only goals for the club.

Away from home it’s now six straight defeats for the first time since August 2018, and the first time in a single Championship season since 2006/07. Things are slightly better at home where Rangers drew 2-2 with title chasing Leeds last time out and have lost only one of their last four games and two of the last 11. Yang Min-Hyeok’s consolation goal at Stoke made him the 23rd different goalscorer for Rangers this season including own goals – a club record.

Cardiff won this fixture 2-1 last season at the turn of the year – they have never won two visits to Loftus Road in a row. The last three meetings have all been won by the away side with QPR winning in Wales either side of that game. In general City have a poor record at Loftus Road. Prior to last season they’d won one of eight, two of ten and three of 14 visits here. QPR had won five of the previous six including a 6-1 here in January 2020. There hasn’t been a draw between these two sides in ten meetings, and the last tie here was in 2015.

Cardiff: Derby’s midweek win against Preston, their fourth in a row, puts Cardiff in the third relegation spot with seven games left to play. City haven’t been in the third tier since 2002/03 when they beat QPR in the play-off final at the Millennium Stadium to exit that division. In this their sixth consecutive Championship season the Bluebirds have won only nine of their 39 league games this season, and lost 17. Away from home they have just two wins to their name in 19 attempts – at Watford on December 29 and Blackburn in their last game before the most recent international break. That victory at Ewood Park is their only win in six and snapped a run of four straight defeats. They’ve since drawn 1-1 at home to Sheff Wed.

Only Plymouth (77) have a worse defence than Cardiff’s 63 goals conceded. Callum Robinson is the top league scorer here with 12 goals in 23 starts and eight sub appearances in the Championship. Chris Willock has scored just twice in 15 starts and 13 sub appearances since swapping Loftus Road for South Wales in the summer. His last goal was at Millwall on January 21 and he hasn’t started a league game for the Bluebirds since February 25 at home to Hull. Cardiff’s Will Alves has three assists in his last five Championship appearances and despite only debuting for the club in February, only Rubin Colwill has more assists for the Bluebirds this season (four) than his three.

Cardiff have won just four of their last 41 league matches in London (D14 L23), though two of them have been at QPR (in March 2022 and January 2024).

Prediction: In our Prediction League for 2024/25 we’ll once again be handing out prizes for being top at Christmas and overall winner from The Art of Football - sample the merch from our sponsor’s newly extended QPR collection here. For the first time last year we had joint winners so this season you’ll be hearing from one or both WestonsuperR and SimplyNico in the match previews...

Nico’s Prediction: “This week we have Cardiff at home. When we played them away, we had seen signs of recovery in the way we were playing in spite of our then terrible record. Currently, we are flatlining, with the players either injured or uninterested. If we lose this, we are properly back in the relegation mix. Sadly, it is difficult to see where the wins are going to come from. There are no goals in what passes as the forward line, the defensive midfield is missing and the left side of the team is woeful. Regrettably, I see this as being a continuation of our terrible form.”

Weston’s Call “Difficult to be positive considering the awful run we are on and arguably the worst performance of the season last Saturday but we desperately need to be up for this one, lose and no question we are right in a relegation battle. Our home form, if not results, has at least been reasonable over the last few matches so I am clinging to the hope this continues and we get at least a draw.”

Nico’s Prediction: QPR 0-1 Cardiff. No scorer.

WestonSuperR’s Prediction: QPR 1-1 Cardiff. Scorer – Michael Frey

LFW’s Prediction: QPR 1-0 Cardiff. Scorer – Former culture and media secretary, Tessa Jowell.

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Pictures - Ian Randall Photography

Harbour added 20:42 - Apr 4 Thanks Clive great report but worrying. Blimey that stat re Sam Field here is hoping his return sparks a revival tomorrow. Interesting that there are 3 different predictions for the result tommorow sums up the mixed feeling amoungst our supporters. The 10 years in the championship seem to have morphed into one…if Marti leaves I can only see it getting worse. Amazing the fans sticking with it another full house tommorow likely.fingers we fluke a win tommorow.

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TacticalR added 22:08 - Apr 4 Thanks for your preview. I can remember when those losing streaks started everyone freaking out. Now we're used to them. All our defects have been magnified by our injuries. As Nico says, we are flatlining. We desperately need some inspiration from somewhere.
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joolsyp added 23:45 - Apr 4 Perhaps we should stick young Dillon on the bench if we’re looking for inspiration from somewhere. Raw AF but at least he seems to know how to kick the round thing between the two upright poles.
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Myke added 00:28 - Apr 5 Thanks, Clive an incredible piece of prose, laying bare all our short-comings, past, present (and future?) Of the entire piece, the only sentence I didn't agree with was; Zan Celar scored two goals he’ll never score again as long as he’s got a hole in his arse. I thought they were two quality goals as I said on a post at the time, nothing fluky of 'gimme' about them. Hugely ironic and the epitome of our entire injury-ravaged season that he had a season -ending injury in the very next match. I think their is a player in there, IF we play to his strengths - I also think Frey played better when he had genuine competition for the one place up front. After Celar got injured, Kolli stepped up and provided that comp, but lately -nothing. Thanks again, fabulous work.

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062259 added 02:38 - Apr 5 Apathy
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