QPR’s attempts to coast through to the end of the season with engines on idle put their supporters through another grim 90 minutes on the road in Stoke on Saturday as the R’s lost comfortably for the sixth away game in a row.

A couple of recollections from the match preview, if I may, before we get into the vengeance, recriminations, reprisals, violent sexual imagery, heavy petting and guns.

Point number one – this QPR side really needs to be ‘on’ to win games. Defeats, frequently heavy defeats, come very easily to this team and have done for many seasons under a plethora of different managers. Losses slide right off the bat. Victories feel like passing a kidney stone the size and shape of a stegosaurus through the sort of penis you usually find attached to Leeds United’s YouTubers. Deep, traumatising ordeals, barely watched at all with head in hands, clawed with our fingernails, whistled to death through hours of stoppage time by desperate supporters just longing for the thing they do for pleasure at weekends to stop making them feel so terrible through the week. The whistle blows, the crowd exhales, Silver Lining coughs into life, the players slump to the turf exhausted, and deep congratulations are offered. You’ve beaten Preston North End 2-1 at home. King’s birthday honours.

The two exceptions to that this season have been Derby, who Rangers couldn’t help but whitewash 4-0 given the appalling state of the opposition, and Oxford, against whom Marti Cifuentes’ team tossed up one of the worst first half performances I’ve seen at Loftus Road since Mick Harford’s “not befitting a professional football club” night against Ipswich Town but somehow managed to win the game 2-0.

This leads to preview point two – the teams QPR have beaten this year. These victories the side has achieved, these odysseys we’ve been through together, these monumental efforts the team has extolled, these 747s we have dragged down Goldhawk Road using only our bare hands and a length of rope, have come almost exclusively against the worst teams this dreadful quality division has to offer. As the league table stood on Saturday morning, Rangers had played 13/16 games against the top eight and won none of them. More than half the 45 points they have put on the board have come against the bottom seven sides. You have to get to Blackburn Rovers in ninth before you find a top half team Rangers have beaten – a late 2-1 victory, in a hard-fought home game, against a team whose supporters are protesting against how their club is being managed, in which the visitors had two very good penalty shouts.

To summarise, QPR have to be at their absolute pedal-to-the-metal maximum to win games in this Championship, and even then they’re only capable of beating the sides from 13th down. Even two of those – Portsmouth and Swansea – have wiped the floor with Rangers on three occasions.

Good news and bad news, then, as the club lurches out of the final international break of the season into its final eight games once more on one of its interminable two-month losing sequences. Rangers hadn’t won in five weeks and six games. They’d lost four and drawn one of the last five. They’d lost the last five away games, their worst run on the road in five years. They’d lost seven of the last ten.

Good news - having come off a tough sequence of games against the teams currently first, second, fifth, sixth and seventh in the table, they now faced a more favourable run against the sides placed 20th, 21st, 18th, 14th and 16th.

Bad news – this team isn’t ‘on’ at all. It isn’t ‘on’ by any understanding of the term or concept. It is the farthest thing from ‘on’. This team couldn’t any more turned ‘off’ if John Prescott heaved his sweaty frame on top of it after a long hot day gardening and said ‘come on Pauline put a bit round that’.

Some of the reasons for that are perfectly understandable – and, believe me, after spending a day going to Stoke and back to watch that with a wisdom tooth that’s decided to try and exit my skull northwards through my brain, I am absolutely not in an understanding frame of mind.

The team on Saturday was missing its first choice centre back pairing of Steve Cook and Jake Clarke-Salter. It was also missing its best and most reliable central midfielder Sam Field (old enough to remember the Twitter telling me he was the one holding this team back, lost every game we’ve played without him). Its best player for the last several years, Ilias Chair, is sidelined. Koki Saito is suspended for three games. All four of what was already a pissweak forward line-up are injured and/or ill. You take nine first choice players out of any team in the Championship, it’s going to struggle. Take nine players off Leeds, they’ll struggle. You take nine first choice players out of a team operating on a £23mish wage bill in a division currently led by a team with a £145m payroll and it’s barely even going to compete.

It's a team that has big issues anyway. Partly through those budget constraints and a degree of bad luck, but also mismanagement, incompetence, hubris and arrogance we have recruited and retained ourselves into a position where you could, unkindly but factually, describe even our ideal starting 11 thusly…

It has a good shot stopper in goal who is a big improvement on the fat retirement package we paid a fortune to last season but wouldn’t come off his line if they fired up the air raid sirens and said Putin’s pressed the nuclear button. It is strong at centre half but the best one of those is never available and hasn’t been seen for months, the next best one of those is at the fag end of his career and clearly running on fumes with a fatigue-related foot injury, and the third best one has to play right back because… It has issues in both full back positions. We signed one right back who wasn’t up to the level, panicked and loaned another who’s more bothered about what he’s got on his wrist than what’s coming off his boot, and now have to put a centre back out there so we’ve got somebody who can head it. We have a left back they spent all last summer trying to shift on, yet then went into the season with him as their only option – now out of contract, out of form, with zero protection in front of him, Kenneth Paal took a knee second half here and surrendered. We have a central midfield that cannot do anything other than execute a basic, deep, tight, narrow midblock – it doesn’t score, it doesn’t progress the ball, there is nothing it cannot turn into a pass back to the goalkeeper. We have a collection of midget tens all trying to play the same position. We have four strikers who, when fit, are four of the worst strikers in this league. And they’re never fit. The team is slow. Coastal erosion slow. We pick a League One standard winger on one side because he’s the only one that can run fast, and he’s got a long throw that nearly reaches the penalty box if he really puts some puff into it. The team is physically weak, and short, in a physically strong, and tall, league. We pick a centre back at right back because he's the only one we’ve got who wins headers in either box, on either side of the ball.

That’s what we've recruited. That's our team when it’s fit. That’s our team at its best. It is a miracle it’s as high up the league as it is.

Now missing a thick nine players, it won’t be staying that high for long. It won’t be staying that high for long for some of the less understandable reasons it’s not ‘on’ that are starting to creep in.

No chance of the play-offs, seemingly safe from relegation, it has – not for the first time – clocked off.

Again we have, to an extent, recruited and retained ourselves into this position. The vast majority of the team is either out of contract, or on loan – including every available defender bar Liam Morrison who’s coming back from injury. You and I may think playing professional football is a privilege and a gift to be treasured, and every game should be played like your last. You only have to listen to Undr The Cosh, or watch Grant Hall and Loyal Taylor break cover in lockdown, to know it’s all about where that next ivory backscratcher is coming from. Put it all on the line now for QPR’s efforts to move from one bit of midtable to the next, or go through the motions and look after yourself for next year’s deal, loan or shot at your parent club? I said there was the faint whiff of Mykonos on the breeze of this side’s recent phoned in effort against a similarly out of form, injury hit and nervous Middlesbrough side. Here, against the worst Stoke side in 25 years, there was a tanned Greek lad in tight trunks handing out olives.

It is, sadly, the culture of this club. We’ve been in the bottom half of the Championship for ten years and on multiple occasions in that decade, under a wide variety of different managers, the team has not so much coasted through the final descent to May as decided it’s close enough to the airport to switch the engines off entirely and glide the fucker in to save fuel. Often, it’s turned out, there’s still been five or six hundred miles to the threshold, and we’ve run that close.

This, again, sorry, copy and pasted from the match preview…

In March 2017 Ian Holloway and Marc Bircham really got us going, with five wins and a draw from seven, a 4-1 win at Birmingham and a 5-1 at home to Rotherham amongst them. It felt like we were flying under a great team of proper Rangers men. We then lost six in a row for the second time that year and needed to beat Forest 2-0 at home in the penultimate game to make safe divisional status.
It's easy to forget, because he was so comedically hopeless, that Steve McClaren had a great autumn. We won eight and lost only three of 14 games. It included a four-point haul from Jack Grealish’s Villa. We beat Brentford 3-2 in a thrilling home game. We won at Nottingham Forest for the first time ever. That play-off push dissolved into seven straight defeats, one win from 15 games, two wins from 19 games, Rotherham’s only away win in three years, Bolton’s only away win all season and another managerial sacking. Still beat Leeds though, natch.
Mark Warburton went into lockdown in touch with the play-offs, with Ebere Eze and Bright Osayi-Samuel absolutely flying. Stoke beaten 4-2, Cardiff 6-1, Preston 3-1 at Deepdale in the final game before the government locked us all in our homes. We had three months to prepare for a run in where we had the bottom six teams to play plus Fulham. We lost every game. In the end we were glad of rather spawny late wins at Boro and home to Millwall behind closed doors to stop it getting hairy at the other end. Warburton would suffer another collapse two years later, from pushing Bournemouth for second at the end of an unbeaten January that finished with a 4-0 home win against Reading, to winning two of 15 games.
Mick Beale had us top of the whole league at the end of October. The team won two of its next 28 games under three managers and stayed up courtesy of two even flukier wins than the ones before at Burnley (their only home loss all season) and Stoke again.

This is us. Marti Cifuentes is not perfect, and he’s not blameless. But this shit was going on before him, and it’ll go on after him too.

Having hit upon an effective solution to the chronic midfield problems last weekend against Leeds, it was disappointing and difficult to understand why the manager went away from the Edwards and Colback combination, and why Liam Morrison was on the bench. QPR had lost only one of the 13 games Morrison has played before this one, and his inclusion in the autumn was a catalyst for our upturn. I get the manager likes a left foot-right foot balance at centre half, but I didn’t see any great benefit from having out-of-contract, aging, ropey Morgan Fox out there on Saturday just because he could kick with his left foot ahead of Morrison who’s young, good, ours, under contract and playing well. He mostly used that left peg to whack the ball into the side stand. This was Fox’s best ever game for Stoke, and he played for Stoke for three years.

I sympathise with the manager massively with the hand of cards he’s been dealt up front. Zan Celar, who scored two goals in 20+ appearances (both against mighty Cardiff), missed a penalty against Stoke first time around, and then died. Michi Frey, somewhat effective at home in an unorthodox fashion that strongly suggests a new gearbox might be required but a complete waste of time in away games (in which he’s scored once for us in more than year), has only been able to complete 90 minutes for the team five times and on the last three of those occasions he had to sit out the next match, including this one. Rayan Kolli, promising, but rarely available. Alfie Lloyd, limited, enthusiastic, and apparently now banned from doing anything more than 45 minutes by the sport science department. That the department whose head lives in Dubai. Seven different staff members with “performance” in their title on thea squad photo (like a barbecue round Jake Humphrey’s gaff) along with physios and doctors who have overseen a shambolic season of rampant absenteeism, soft tissue injuries, muscle strains, relapses and recurrences which have completely hobbled an already limited squad from the outset. Heads should be rolling all over the place there this summer. Maybe the "head of methodology" could choose which ones?

Likewise, anybody who signed off on the idea to populate the attack with a whole load of 5ft 4in gnomes in a land of the giants league. QPR won 29% of the aerial duels in this game. Even the good Championship sides only afford themselves the luxury of one or two like that, and even then they have to be Callum O’Hare and Gus Hamer good. QPR’s dwarf army is far south of that, in quality and physical stature. Having tried to start them altogether up front at West Brom with predictable results, it was disappointing to see the manager go with it again here at bloody Stoke of all places. Dembele, early Ledesma-like hype and fancy absolutely-not-saved-for-the-fans forum contract extension dick swinging fast fading, wasted QPR’s best/only chance of the first half by trying to be too cute with a monster Paul Nardi clearance that just needed whacking goalwards.

Whoever the manager picked on Saturday though, he was likely onto a hiding to nothing. This is not a team that presently cares about what it’s doing. It is not committed or concentrated. We accused them of not looking arsed at Middlesbrough and waited for a response. There was intent and intensity against Leeds. Bring that to Stoke and you’ll win the game. Everybody else does. This lot are begging to be toppled over into League One. The three goals conceded nicely summed up QPR’s attitude to the task.

The first was turned in by Bae Jun-Ho at the near post after 21 minutes and, given the manner of the South Korean’s disallowed last-minute strike at Loftus Road in the first meeting, there was probably some poetic justice in that. But when you talk about concentration, commitment, intensity, you look not only at Kenneth Paal’s token efforts to stay with Tchamadeu and stop his cross, not only at Lucas Andersen’s shamelessly half arsed covering job on Nathan Baker, but mainly the fact Stoke had visited that side of the pitch in the same way twice in the previous two minutes and nobody clocked on. Baker had already seen a mishit, deflected cross skim off the bar from the same side - same attacking combination, same defensive culprits. Rangers were lucky to escape a second time soon after when Nardi denied Baker with his shins. Where’s the strength, the leadership, the game smarts, from either touchline or centre field, to say ‘we need to put a stop to that’? Somebody out of midfield just drop in there and cover for five minutes. Somebody from left centre back, left footed or otherwise, just slide out and lend a hand for a bit. Somebody kick somebody. Somebody go down pretend injured and let’s have a conflab on the side. Sam Field would have done one of those, in my opinion. Where’s senior man Colback? Or great hope Varane? Paal’s gash at the moment, I wouldn’t defend his performance here for a second, but Andersen’s “protection” in front of him was an absolute abdication, and the lack of teammates willing to come and double up to stem that bleed for a minute or two was shameful. A goal five or ten minutes in the coming, and eminently preventable.

The second goal was implausibly, even worse.

The only threat QPR have been posing anybody at any point for several weeks is from Paul Smyth’s long throw which isn’t that long but sort of is. Given the chance to put one in the box, one nil down and fading fast, he let the defenders trundle up field then played it short. QPR gave the ball away, as they do from every short throw in they ever take. Jonathan Varane then got lazily caught wrong side of his man, yanked him back, free kick and yellow card – bone-idle. From our throw in the attacking third to a Stoke free kick and a yellow card in ten seconds and four touches. I’m sorry, that’s just unforgivably shite. Having won the ball back, Rangers then turned it straight over to Stoke immediately – tales from the stats part one, six QPR players who did big minutes in this game (Dunne, Fox, Smyth, Morgan, Andersen, Madsen) gave the ball away at least one in every four times they had it. Two passes straight through the middle of the pitch unchallenged later and Stoke should have scored with Baker’s first shot from the initial cutback, saved by Nardi, before Rangers showed zero interest in getting to the rebound which was dispatched by Tchamadeu.

Pure slop. The kind we flush into chalk streams in this country.

Cifuentes said afterwards he regretted his team selection. He made three changes at half time. Alfie Lloyd put himself about a bit up front more than Dembele was able/willing to do. Yang Min-Hyeok scored an actual full-blown goal, turning home cutely from the edge of the box late in the day long after the game was dead. But it was a full 45 minutes for this season’s record signing Nicholas Madsen which blew my mind the most.

You know things are bad when Cifuentes is turning to the Dane for inspiration and my God did you see why here. The half began with Jimmy Dunne throwing him a basic ball from five or six yards away, harmlessly inside the Stoke half, to control and pass back to him. Madsen collapsed to the floor and shrugged. You can tell from this report already that I’m not easily speechless, but I’m struggling for words that aren’t “soft” and “as shit” so we’ll move on to Manhoef outpacing Fox by a ratio of one fully functioning adult human to one concrete bollard at the bottom of the sea, drawing Nardi, and slotting a third into the empty net. Stoke have won four of their last 24 games.

It could and should have been many more. Three one flattered QPR. Four nil would have been just. Five you couldn’t have argued with. A free header from Ben Wilmot at a corner landed with Jun-Ho whose unchallenged shot bobbled wide. Baker was allowed to trick in through two pathetic tackles from the left flank and draw a leg save from Nardi. Tchamadeu walked clean through on goal for a certain score but delayed long enough for Paal to heave himself in front of the ball and salvage the situation. Wilmot flicked a 71st minute free kick right through the goalmouth, agonisingly out of reach of teammates, and off the far post as it went out. Paul Nardi got caught 40 yards out from goal with nobody around and just about got his sliding tackle right to prevent another empty netter. Stoke have won 20 of their last 65 home games.

Things being this bad, and the game obviously this over, allowed me to actually just stand there and watch Madsen. I watched him for two separate batches of ten minutes. Just to see. It is remarkable. I’d recommend it.

I have repeat dreams. About being in an aircraft struggling for flight, the noise of it clipping the trees as the engines toil and we all grip our seats praying for altitude. About not attending any A Level Geography lessons, and an A Level Geography exam fast approaching. About being many miles away from where I need to be, with time ticking, and my legs not working, and the trains letting me down. I wake, sweating, in sodden sheets. I also dream about playing for Hull FC, but not in the every boy dreams of playing for his favourite team way. There I stand, in black and white hoops, usually at Wakefield, with muscly Australians and northern lads charging hither and thither around me. My task is to not look out of place, but not go near the ball. Just hang back here, don’t go into the line, please God nobody run at me. If I have to catch it I’ll drop it. If one of these bastards tackles me I’ll be killed to death. Don’t get found out. I’m not meant to be here. My body isn’t physically capable. My skillset is non-existent. Oh, please, Lord, don’t throw me the ball. It’s terrifying. And then I wake up.

I wonder when anybody – us or him - are going to wake up from this Nicholas Madsen nightmare. I have never seen somebody on a football pitch actively trying not to get involved in the proceedings quite like this. He withdraws, he withdraws deep and to the right, he withdraws and he withdraws. He withdraws to the point sometimes where you think he might go and sit in the first row of the stand on that side. It’s a fascinating watch. QPR break forward – go, get up there, get involved, arrive late in the box, provide a distraction at least, Stuart Wardley scored 14 goals in this league once just hanging around behind Rob Steiner. Steiner was hardly Erling Haaland, and Wardley was a furniture removal man. Madsen just doesn’t want to know. We get a corner, he shows short. We play it long. He’s 6ft 4ins tall. Get in the box you dopey sod. I feel like I’m losing my mind here.

Some more tales from the numbers. Madsen goals 0, assists 0, shots 0, xg 0, offsides 0, expected assists 0, key passes 0, passes into final third 0, backwards passes 5, passes completed 8/14 (57%), touches 22, fouls 0, fouled 0, possession lost 11, dribbled past 0, clearances 0, interceptions 0, ball recovery 0. This is your central midfielder. We spent millions on this guy. He may as well not be there. He makes Andre Dozzell look like Pickle Rick. He’s not alone in a team that can turn any situation into a pass back to their own goalkeeper (Lucas Andersen goals 0, assists 0, shots 1, on target 1, xg 0.15, offside 0, expected assists 0, key passes 0, passes into final third 1, backwards passes 6, passes completed 11/14 79%, touches 19, fouled 0, fouls 0, possession lost 7, dribbled past 2, clearances 0, interceptions 0, recoveries 2) but, honestly, fuck me.

Medium term we need to be asking very strong, serious questions about whether we really want the people who’ve been responsible for putting this together to have another summer, another transfer window, another chunk of our money to take another swing at it. Ebere Eze’s slow start to the season has this week exploded into a first England goal and an FA Cup quarter final carried on his shoulders. We’re a world away from his super slalom second on this ground, and the Mark Warburton team he was part of now. The world is talking about him again and a potential move this summer could net QPR anything up to and north of £10m, £15m or more in sell on. It would be a generational opportunity for a club that has no FFP headroom and no prospects remotely close to a sale to help with that. Having largely blown the money from his initial move to Selhurst Park, we cannot waste a second such opportunity if that God-like boy should provide it to us. You want to give the people who brought you Nicholas Madsen, Zan Celar et al that opportunity? Possibly with them picking a new manager thrown in for good measure? Stop the boat, I want to get off.

Short term, we’ve turned next week’s spring sunshine stroll in the park against Cardiff into a reasonably big game. If you can’t beat that lot at home at the moment you really are in trouble, but then we said that about Stoke.

Marti Cifuentes, openly fuming in his post-match, described it as the biggest game of his 18 months here. Given what’s gone before that’s really saying something.

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

Stoke: Johansson 7; Tchamadeu 8, Phillips 7, Wilmot 7, Bocat 6; Pearson 5 (Thompson 68, 6), Burger 7; Manhoef 7, Baker 8, Jun-Ho 7 (Koumas 69, 6); Gallagher 6 (Lowe 61, 6)

Subs not used: Bonham, Gooch, Mmaee, Moran, Rose, Seko

Goals: Jun-Ho 21 (assisted Tchamadeu), Tchamadeu 44 (unassisted), Manhoef 54 (unassisted)

Yellow Cards: Pearson 67 (being a knob)

QPR: Nardi 5; Dunne 4, Edwards 5, Fox 4, Paal 3 (Ashby 69, 5); Varane 4 (Morrison 74, 6), Colback 4, Morgan 4 (Lloyd 46, 5); Smyth 4, Dembele 3 (Min-Hyeok 46, 6), Andersen 3 (Madsen 46, 3)

Subs not used: Bennie, Murphy, Petrie, Walsh

Goals: Min-Hyeok 78 (assisted Colback)

Yellow Cards: Varane 43 (his standard lazy foul), Colback 58 (his standard lazy foul), Min-Hyeok 67 (called Ben Pearson a knob)

QPR Star Man – Yan Min-Hyeok 6 Scored a goal. Called Ben Pearson a knob.

Referee – Tony Harrington (Cleveland) 7 A Premier League referee able to stroll through a wholly uncompetitive game played at pre-season friendly levels of intensity.

Attendance 23,192 (950 QPR approx.) A frankly remarkable number of QPR fans stayed to the end and clapped them off after this. Each to their own, I’m amazed at that. Those people are owed a response on Saturday against Cardiff.

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Pictures - Reuters Connect

stowmarketrange added 00:30 - Mar 31 That report sums it up pretty well for me.I’ve seen some shocking away performances in my time watching this team,but I honestly think yesterday’s was up there with the worst of them. We could see the 1st goal coming a mile off as they created chance after chance in the time before they scored and they all came the same way.These are supposed to be professional footballers that have been training for almost 2 weeks to be ready for this match. God help us in the next 7 games because we won’t win another game if we continue to play like we did yesterday.

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062259 added 01:52 - Mar 31 Disinterested
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Wegerles_Stairs added 09:57 - Mar 31 Fair play to anyone who goes to the away games at the moment...but why oh why would you clap them after a performance like that? Shout abuse, throw tomatoes at them, turn up at the training ground ultra-style, yes...but clapping?????
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JamieHastings added 10:25 - Mar 31 I thought Clive was going to get through the report without mentioning Ben Pearson. Almost. We're used to this succession of response (Leeds), followed by non-response (Saturday). What was especially shocking was that it played out like a re-run of the Middlesbrough game, except Stoke are a much inferior side. Maybe it's Madsen's particular gift for ghosting through a game like Marty Hopkirk that helps him escape the ire directed at the sit-down merchants, Taylor, Tyler, Ethan etc.

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nick_hammersmith added 13:54 - Mar 31 Anderson providing cover to the full backs not seen since SWP, who also thought it was someone elses job to track back, break a sweat, give a toss, etc...
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sinceApril66 added 15:49 - Mar 31 Have just read this outloud to my son; only had to stop reading 12 times because of disturbingly hysterical laughter (and I am a therapist)... Thank you so much, Clive, for finding some consolation in your screami g in the dark humour... I even have very similar repeat dreams. Paradoxically, in one of our most bleak moments, you write more entertainingly than ever (a big ask!)... Hope they've found a painless exit for your tooth. Getting desperate now... and still hopeful because of Marti and a few of our best players...

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Sittingbournehoop added 21:52 - Apr 1 There must be a clause in a contract such as a non performance clause where we can terminate it in terms of Madsen, is he even a professional player. Recruitment again poor, we’re going backwards and another season I can’t wait to end.
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