Injury ravaged QPR scraped together another point for their Championship total, and kept a dreadful Cardiff City side at five-point arm’s length in the process, in a dreadful game at Loftus Road on Saturday.

On the front row of the director’s box, all of your strikers. All of your strikers, all of your creativity, most of your centre backs. Most of your experience, and all of your quality. Michael Frey, Zan Celar and Rayan Kolli. Steve Cook, Jake Clarke-Salter and Ilias Chair. Koki Saito, suspended, out on the Tiger Feet Walk.

You and I can get frustrated, angry or despondent. Christian Nourry, writing the theme tune and singing the theme tune as director of football and CEO, can leap around the director’s box flapping his encouragement and instruction. Marti Cifuentes, the increasingly downbeat and checked out head coach, can stand on the touchline pointing and cajoling. When you’ve got that much payroll enjoying the sun at the front of the main stand, none of it will make much difference. Scrape the top ten players from any team in this division and it will struggle. Scrape the top ten players off a team that was as poor as QPR in the first place, and it’ll struggle to even compete.

That line-up at the front of the South Africa Road stand was the storyline on Saturday. Which is just as well for those of us employed to find those in the on-field action and were left farming unfertile ground on Saturday. You’ll travel a long way around this country, you’ll watch a lot of football at this level, before you ever see a game as poor as this one again.

There were some positives for QPR to take away from a game we’ll never remember. Front and centre of those was the result. Having collapsed in a heap at Stoke last week and allowed one of the teams below them in the table to narrow the gap, it was imperative Rangers didn’t repeat that against a Cardiff side currently occupying the final relegation spot five points back. A 0-0 bore draw was job done in that respect, and you suspect it’ll be a similar mission on Wednesday night at fellow strugglers Oxford. In their present state it seems the best QPR can hope for is a repeat of the 1997/98 Ray Harford season where the team stayed up despite winning only one of its last 16 games by drawing six of its last seven. Where is Jamie Pollock when you need him?

The return of Liam Morrison to the defence was also overdue and welcome. Rangers are unbeaten in Morrison’s ten starts for the club – five wins, five draws. They have conceded just six goals with him on the pitch this season across his 761 minutes of action (ten starts and five sub appearances). The team has kept nine clean sheets all season, and Morrison has played in six of those despite only making 15 appearances. That includes both matches with Cardiff, and he and Ronnie Edwards formed a reasonably calm and composed centre back pairing on Saturday. Despite an ever decreasing shambles further up the pitch, Paul Nardi didn’t have a serious save to make in goal and the young centre backs had a lot to do with that.

Sam Field’s earlier than expected return from injury was also welcome. QPR had lost four and drawn one of the five games played in his absence and have only won three times in four years without him on the pitch. Field and Jack Colback in the midfield was enough coagulant to keep the stodgy 0-0 intact, despite the woeful efforts of Lucas Andersen as the third man in that system. Panicking Skywalker, like The Force his skills are completely invisible.

Paul Smyth was all effort and energy as usual. Not much to write home about, but when quite a few of the other players aren’t even offering that it makes the Northern Ireland international stand out in the same way he looks alright in this team because he’s the only player we’ve got in the whole squad who’s faster than Methuselah’s Volvo. One moment in the first half where he spun out of one challenge then arced round a second into space on the fly caught the eye briefly, but then everybody ran to the near post and he chipped the cross to nobody at the far so that was the end of that.

Other than that… Christ it was a bleak afternoon, improved only for those of us lucky enough to be on the south-facing side of the ground by a beautiful spring sunshine which tanned us to a crisp golden brown while we snoozed through the absolute dirge on the pitch. Close your eyes and you could have been on a beach somewhere, pale blue sea gently lapping at the shore, bare breasted locals ambling through the surf, condensation cutting through the frost of your first complimentary bottle of beer of the day. To be fair, you could also have been steadily cooking yourself into a hospitalising sunstroke in the concrete beer garden of some flat roofed suburban Wetherspoons. It would still have been better than this. Anything would have been better than this. But, still, sun. Lovely.

Marti Cifuentes copped it a week ago for his team selection in the Potteries. Bar moving Edwards back out of the midfield role he’d performed admirably against Leeds, the main criticism seems to have centred on not selecting Alfie Lloyd to start up front and instead trying to take on Stoke with a similar collection of midget forwards that had failed to lay a glove on West Brom before the international break. The Spaniard justified this saying Lloyd, his only remaining fit striker, has a groin problem and is not able to start games currently.

Here, either bowing to pressure or through sheer desperation, Lloyd did start the game as one of four changes. He was somewhat effective in the first half in that accidental, chaotic way of his, more through sheer physical presence than any ability or ever once having the ball under control. He had half a shout for a first half penalty when Mannsverk went to ground with a meaty challenge as Lloyd crossed into the penalty box. The Cardiff man appeared to take the ball, and referee Whitestone waved the appeal away, before then giving an offside against Yang Min-Hyeok which, if true, would mean Lloyd played the ball, Mannsverk didn’t and it was a penalty after all. A quick 2+2 sum to do in the heat of the moment for the official, but I didn’t think it was a penalty personally. Ten minutes into the second half Lloyd’s groin blew out, exactly as Cifuentes had said it might if we started him, and now we go to Oxford on Wednesday night with no strikers at all. Fantastic. Just kick me in the crotch and be done with it.

There had been occasional first half threat. Paul Smyth’s long-range speculator swerved and almost tricked a very nervous seeming Ethan Horvath in the Cardiff goal who made a right dog’s breakfast of a routine save. The American later dallied on a pass back so long Min-Hyeok was within a whisker of robbing him and rolling into an empty net. Another Smyth cross shot looped over the keeper and looked like it might drop in at the back post but Fish was able to just about watch it wide.

That was it really though, as you’d expect from a team that has successfully completed just seven (seven) through balls in 40 games this season – Leeds, for comparison, have completed 78.

Implausibly, things after half time got worse as an already ropey starting 11 was weakened repeatedly by enforced substitutions.

Lloyd was replaced up front by Daniel Bennie, an Australian teenager who’s never started a game at this level before and isn’t a striker in any case. That had about as much impact as you would expect.

Jonathan Varane replaced Field when his hour-long race was run. The French midfielder took a chance to play Smyth away down the right flank and passed it straight into touch. Then he allowed a simple bit of control to run under his foot completely sparking a mad scramble to retrieve the situation behind him – Edwards and Morrison spent a lot of their afternoon mopping up brainfarts like this. If you couldn’t really blame Bennie for his toils, we were entitled to expect far more of Varane here.

Kieran Morgan, confidence and adrenalin of his early performances now well and truly drained, continues to look lost. An 18-year-old, physically slight, midfielder in a poor team, tough league and his first ever season of professional football. It’s surprising we got as much use out of him as we did early in the season, and he needs a big summer of preparation into him now rather than being relied upon in hiding-to-nothing situations like this.

Karamoko Dembele played more than half an hour, attempted six passes, and gave three of those away. He did, however, take a series of threatening corners, swinging them out and drawing them back with a lovely arc that dropped the ball plum under the cross bar and had Horvath sweating like Fred West on Time Team. No goals from them, but nice to have set pieces that weren’t immediately thudded away by the defender on the near post for a change.

Emmerson Sutton was on the bench for the first time and I’d have loved to see him, just because this became so thunderously tedious I was worried my pulse may cease entirely and I could have done with some interest and excitement being injected into the game just to stop me expiring entirely right there at the front of the F Block. I can see why a responsible head coach wouldn’t want to chuck a kid of that age into this though, and Sutton is neither the striker nor the physical presence this team so desperately lacks either. Probably not the time or the place, but great to see him down there and hopefully he can have a run or two if/when we can finally put a fork in this season and declare it done.

Despite it all – despite the litany of injured first teamers in the main stand, despite the further injuries suffered during the game, despite the woeful spectacle that would have disgraced most Conference South games – Harrison Ashby and Nicholas Madsen remained rooted to the bench. A Premier League loanee, already swapped between two top flight teams for several million pounds and with a watch worth as much as your flat; and the club’s multi-million pound, 6ft 4ins tall, marquee summer signing. A game of such an abysmally low standard you could have legitimately brought Jude the Cat off the bench and improved things, and yet those two were sat down and left there. Rarely before have two words been such a damning indictment on the recruitment and retention that has led us into this mess – unused sub.

This is what Cifuentes is working with. A man who arrived at QPR so tanned and handsome, so full of Cruyffian ideals, who talked of hating draws and never settling for a point and always wanting his team to attack, spent his post-match saying whether people agreed with him or not this was a good result. A 0-0 against the worst team we’ve played across two matches this season. He’s right. What exactly do we want him to do, other than this? We finished the game with an 11 of Nardi; Dunne, Morrison, Edwards, Paal; Varane, Colback, Morgan; Smyth, Bennie, Dembele. There isn’t a worse side in the Championship than that, certainly north of the back four.

Fortunate, therefore, to be playing such a rank opposition. Cardiff have played 180+ minutes against this QPR team this season and haven’t even scored a goal. That takes some doing. Having slipped into the bottom three during the week when Derby won for the fourth consecutive game, and with only six fixtures left after this to secure Championship status, the need of the Welsh side felt pretty urgent to me. With just two away wins all season and trips to Preston and Sheff Utd forthcoming you won’t get many better chances than this to make it three, and yet the modern football, modern Championship disease that 0-0 is always a good result away from home infected their minds to such an extend that Horvath was actually wasting time in the second half to protect a point that kept them in the relegation zone against one of the lowest quality QPR teams in living memory.

Their threat in the first half was limited to a 30 yarder from this-enormous-child-will-devour-us-all Ruben Colwill. That had fallen his way after Kenneth Paal, not for the first or last time, had been targeted at the back post but responded with a decent clearing header. The Bluebirds’ other three attacks both came from QPR giving the ball away in good positions – Jimmy Dunne tackled the first counter behind for a corner, Liam Morrison came across with a good tackle to end the second, then the Scot had to take a tactical yellow card for a foul to prevent the third ending in a one-on-one chance with Nardi. Like I say, the amount of cleaning up those centre backs had to do on Saturday it might have been fairer to send them out there with a Henry hoover.

Presumably displeased, constant caretaker Omer Riza made three half time changes. QPR are tiny and timid, and when they start using that bench they’re going to get smaller and weaker still. Therefore, let’s open our new Massive Bastard app, hit ‘right now’ in our likes and preferences, and try the first three wallopers who turn up at our door. Tanner, Robinson and Daland trundled on, and made precisely no difference whatsoever – mainly because in open play Cardiff were every bit as laughably poor as QPR, and from set plays they insisted on sportingly booting the ball all the way over the penalty box and out of play at a height and velocity none of their players could ever hope to reach even if you’d armed them all with a stepladder and a butterfly net.

Hmmm, how to solve a problem like incompetence? I know! Riza went back to the Massive Bastard app and after a quick scroll through landed on Yakou Meite. Oooooh now we’re talking. A footballer as wide as he is tall - and he’s really fucking tall. Let’s try that. Like sticking a fairly substantial brick-built public convenience in the middle of the penalty box. I’ve certainly seen park toilets with more mobility. Planning permission successfully obtained, Meite then took turns with Robinson to plant free headers at the back post miles over the bar. LFW official counsel (not a salaried position) has urged me stress that I am in no way suggesting this game was fixed as a 0-0 draw before it began, but if it had been would it have looked a lot different to this?

An already laughably poor football match between two teams who couldn’t find their own arse with both hands and seemed absolutely thrilled to death about that descended all the way through unwatchable into the realms of farce. The amount of times people on the same team bumped into each other was amazing. This is one of the lowest quality games I’ve ever seen, and I include matches I’ve played in. It was like watching Soccer Aid. Everybody’s game, everybody fancies a kick around, everybody likes football, everybody’s having a nice time – but nobody out there can trap a dead rat. I wondered whether Cifuentes might give Ollie Murs a run around for the last ten. More likely to score than anything we actually had out there to be fair.

Salech volleyed one over the bar, and missed his connection with a low cross from the left entirely with the goal gaping. He was still, by some distance, the only player involved in this second half who looked like a footballer.

Bar Dembele’s corners, QPR’s lone threat after half time came from Smyth’s mishit shot from the edge of the box which Horvath, once again, made look a far better effort than it really was. Having established the Cardiff keeper was ropey in the first half, Rangers did precious little to investigate his failings further in the second. Cardiff looked by far the more likely side to score, though that was never likely to be today.

Dean Whitestone stuck a bare three minutes on the end and strongly gave the impression of a man who’d had quite enough of this absolute nonsense. He blew at the first possible opportunity and everybody was glad of it.

The amount of times we gave the ball away was criminal. The amount of stupid free kicks we gave away, fouling poor players just as you’ve got them heading away from goal where you want them, turning unthreatening positions into a chance to stick another free kick high into the land of the giants. Even in the very last second of stoppage time we were doing it. You’ve got your draw, you’ve secured your 0-0, you’ve bored us all to death. Fine. Fuck off home then, and we’ll go back to work for the week. But, no. Let’s give them one more needless free kick. Let’s let them sling one more cross into that box just to see. Just to see if we can make this experience even worse still for you. School for the gifted.

There was next to no reaction at all from, somehow, another capacity crowd. No booing, little applause. Just a sort of low, fed up, harrumph. Like one of those deep guttural burps that creep up after a can of Coke and can embarrass you in polite company or public transport. Bffffffff.

Let us never speak of it again.

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

QPR: Nardi 5; Dunne 5, Morrison 6, Edwards 6, Paal 6; Andersen 4 (Bennie 54, 4), Field 6 (Varane 54, 4), Colback 6; Smyth 6, Lloyd 5 (Dembele 54, 5), Min-Hyeok 5 (Morgan 61, 4)

Subs not used: Ashby, Fox, Madsen, Sutton, Walsh

Yellow Cards: Morrison 30 (foul)

Cardiff: Horvath 5; Rinomhota 6, Fish 6, Baden 5 (Daland 46, 5), O’Dowda 5; Colwill 6, Mannsverk 5; Davies 5 (Robinson 46, 4), Ashford 5 (Meite 66, 4), Alves 5 (Tanner 46, 5); Salech 6

Subs not used: Goutas, Robertson, Turnbull, Turner

QPR Star Man – Liam Morrison 6 Record speaks for itself. Twice rescued disasters of our own making in the first half.

Referee – Dean Whitestone (Northants) 6 Nothing to referee really.

Attendance 17,066 (1,700 Cardiff approx.) And this place sells out every week.

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Photo: Action Images

Rangers67 added 14:26 - Apr 7 Great report and exactly as I saw it. A dreadful game all told. And your point about us giving away silly free kicks when we have the oppo players going nowhere and with no options rings loud and clear with me. From the first minute Lloyd had one of their players 5 mtrs from the goal line and going nowhere fast and proceeds to shove him in the back allowing him to collapse in a heap and get the free kick. This scenario was repeated at least another 3 or 4 times. Note to Nourry or whoever is recruiting these players, first on the agenda isn,t how fit physically they are but how high is their IQ. Must be one of the worst games I have ever seen between two very poor teams. I have a lot of sympathy for Marti but someone needs to sort out the physio dept there and how many injuries we are shipping.

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Oxfordhoop added 16:23 - Apr 7 Totally agree. Sitting in that sun, found it difficult to keep my eyes open in the second half.😴
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062259 added 18:58 - Apr 7 whatever
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amicuorejewel added 21:14 - Apr 7 I have never been this bored at a QPR match. I couldn't even be bothered to clap the substitutions. You gave Varane a 4 so I reckon you must have slept through most of the second half..I wouldn't even have given him a 1!!
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Burnleyhoop added 21:31 - Apr 7 Surely we can pop down to Clapham Common or somewhere hosting Sunday league football and draft a striker in for a couple of weeks? Believe you me, I have played with and against players with far more about them than anything we have rolled out this season. This is without doubt one of the weakest, lamest looking QPR teams I have seen in many years. We really are plumbing the depths of talentless tosh these days. Sad, just plain sad.

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Burtonni added 09:31 - Apr 8 I left thinking how on earth are we going to replace Edwards & Jimmy should he leave. Very poor game to watch.
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londonscottish added 11:19 - Apr 8 I picked a great game to miss. I ended up a birthday bash as the Gardern Bar (pka the Station Tavern) on Latimer Road. That was quite close enough.
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Marshy added 22:35 - Apr 8 Has anyone got the antidote for mediocrity?
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jerath added 16:11 - Apr 9 I just read the latest match report, and honestly, the QPR vs. Cardiff game was a bit underwhelming. Another draw means it's just a tough season for QPR. On a brighter note, if you're into music games, I recently stumbled upon Sprunki, where you can create your own music easily. It's super fun and a great way to unwind! You can find it here: https://play-sprunki.org.
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