QPR started 2026 with a rank display at home to Norwich City, losing to the relegation-threatened Canaries for the second time in a month.

On a mountain of skulls, in the castle of pain, I sat on a throne of blood. The season of evil begins with the birth of a new year.

Having given the players something of a pass for their underperformance in tricky fixtures at Portsmouth and West Brom during a hectic time of year, it’ll be difficult to do so again here for a New Year’s Day debacle against second bottom Norwich given they were barely able to successfully complete one to themselves across 100+ minutes of dire Championship ‘football’.

A first half so desperately poor the half time whistle was met with a harrumphing silence from a capacity Loftus Road crowd frozen stiff through temperature and boredom gave way to a second in which Norwich successfully picked away at all the things they’d liked before half time while QPR, improbably, got worse.

Julien Stéphan will face significant questions on his decision making for the first time since becoming QPR manager in the summer. Rangers moved to within three points of the play-off places with a pre-Christmas thumping of Leicester setting themselves up for a festive period of fixtures against the teams 24th,23rd, 21st and 16th in the table. The only thing the R’s have filled their boots with since is lead. One point from a possible nine. Portsmouth, who Rangers were lucky to draw with on Boxing Day, were subsequently beaten 5-0 at Bristol City. West Brom, victorious against the R’s in midweek, went on to lose to a poor Swansea team.

The manager’s decision to rest and rotate for a midweek defeat in an eminently winnable game at The Hawthorns was not vindicated by a tired, disjointed effort from his side and a second consecutive 2-1 defeat. Eight changes to the starting 11 here included the bizarre rotation of the goalkeepers back to Paul Nardi, three of the back four being switched around again, three of the four midfielders likewise, and another long afternoon of watching players getting in each other’s way, apparently confused about what they were supposed to be doing, and openly exasperated with each other.

In a 4-4-2 formation the partnerships are vital. The two centre backs, the two central midfielders, the full backs and wingers in front of them, and the two up front. All have been disrupted during this period and my God did it look like that yesterday. The selection against West Brom, in particular, felt bizarre at the time and put the manager under pressure to get positive results from home games against the bottom two in which Rangers have fallen at the first hurdle.

Stéphan, though, does not cross the white line and play the game. A mystifying and frustrating as I’ve found the decisions he’s taken in a first ever Christmas in English football which has pretty obviously caught him out and must be learned from, I’ve been equally annoyed by footballers who showed you what they were capable of in that Leicester game when the former manager was back in town, and have regressed so rapidly to such a low level since.

Karamoko Dembele was hooked here 56 minutes into a dreadful performance and traipsed round the side of the pitch with a face on. Look at his contribution here compared to the previous home game. Not the same player, on the same planet, from one home game to the next.

There are myriad reasons for that – fatigue, fixture lists, Leicester’s abysmal performance, couple of flukey goals, a pitch that has gone from ‘ropey’ to ‘dead’ over the last fortnight, the natural inconsistency of a player who wouldn’t be at a club like ours if he was able to churn performances like that week on week – but I do think this is partly a mentality and culture issue at our club. We go all out to beat a former manager, or get the odd home win over Brentford. We’re quick to congratulate ourselves. But do we play well again? Do we win the next game, and the one after that? Very seldom. Brentford, meanwhile, go past us into a different universe, leaving us with that one 3-2 win in a midtable Championship season to keep us warm at night. I don’t know where Marti Cifuentes will be in five years’ time, but I’m pretty confident we’ll be basically exactly where we are now.

I’m trying not to read too deeply into the fun little things the club puts out on TikTok and Instagram - which I mostly enjoy, think are well put together and funny, and help build connection between the fans and the players - but the only one who, when asked for his “favourite thing about the Leicester game”, was looking forward to the next game and the one after it and the need to get positive results there was Ilias Chair. The rest were mostly laughing at Nicolas Madsen’s Estrella animation. There is to be no further talk about how Chair fits into this team given the relative performances of literally every other attacking player at the club over the last three matches.

This game, like the two before it, was there for the taking at any point up to and including the stoppage time, for want of somebody pulling a finger out of their arse. An unwatchable footballing bilge of a first half, not helped at all by the appalling state of the pitch which is now as bald as I am and played like an icy car park, featured one shot on target from the hosts when Rumarn Burrell struck Richard Kone’s nice turn round the corner low towards the bottom corner and Kovacevic saved nervously with his legs. The visitors returned fire after Isaac Hayden got muscled out of possession by two assailants (we’re going to talk about how often beaten midfields win football games shortly) and Jurásek was played in by Sargent for an improvised shot very well saved with one hand by Paul Nardi.

That was it. Steve Cook flicked one header through the goalmouth and wide from one corner, Karamoko Dembele hung another vaguely dangerous delivery up to the back post to cause momentary panic, but this was a half of players pretending to be injured to try and get the game stopped, and first touches that would disgrace a park football game. Amadou Mbengue’s attempt to pull one ball out of the air on 12 minutes came with a hefty death toll.

That’s not the first time we’ve had 45 minutes like that at Loftus Road this season, though. It doesn’t have to be terminal to the team’s prospects of winning the game. In fact, the homer against West Brom at the start of the month played out almost identically and had me sweating on just what on earth I was going to write until stoppage time when Madsen burst into life with two bits of creative magic resulting in a rare headed goal for Jonathan Varane. Rangers went on to win that game 3-1, and deserved to do so.

That was all here for us again as an outcome against a Norwich City side which, despite their recent uptick under Philippe Clement, looked a poor team to me. Instead, it was Clement and the Canaries who spent half time in corrections and clarifications mode, while Rangers trudged out and served up the same old slop. The visitors had clearly seen something they liked a lot down the Rangers left in the first 45. In the second they visited there repeatedly, taking Reece Norrington-Davies out into some deep water and drowning him in man of the match Matěj Jurásek.

That very quickly resulted in a goal for Rod Flanders – one in 18 prior to this because of course – though in truth Norwich had an unmarked queue of players like the Morrison’s meat counter at that far post waiting for Jurásek’s cross and any one of them could have scored.

It is starting to feel like a few teams have ‘seen tape’ of QPR now and are starting to find lots of ways of getting at Stéphan's preferred 4-4-2 system, particularly through midfield where it is painfully easy to outnumber out two with three and win the game because you don’t win football games by losing midfield. I actually thought Isaac Hayden played quite well for an hour and was an improvement on Jonathan Varane’s woeful efforts at West Brom, but it wasn’t enough and when he was substituted it collapsed completely with poor Kieran Morgan seemingly on the same juice Harvey Vale had sunk before his cameo at The Hawthorns. One particularly slack giveaway had Nardi scampering back to prevent a goal from the halfway line which would have rather summed the whole thing up.

Kwame Poku did more in his first 60 seconds on the pitch than Dembele had done for 60 minutes before him, Rayan Kolli ran around and tried hard, but Koki Saito was every bit as anonymous as Paul Smyth had been on a day when Rangers went almost exclusively down the right side of the pitch, and there rarely felt like any realistic prospect of a comeback, even to draw, even at just 1-0.

To add to the monotony of the first half, the match officials decided they were going to sink to the level of the players and roll around with them in the mud in the second. Dean Whitestone has refereed in this league since 2008, his first QPR fixture we were playing Colchester for goodness sake, and if you’re a fit and able referee at this level throughout your 20s and 30s without a hint of promotion, given some of the drek they have elevated to the Premier League, that should really tell you something. Basically, they need enough referees to put 36 EFL games on each weekend (three of QPR’s last six aways have been done by the same bloke) and so you have to keep people like this guy, and Gavin Ward, around just to keep the show on the road.

Having been quite hot on the pretend injuries in the first half, and booked Norwich keeper Kovacevic for time wasting good and early, I had him on a reasonably high mark. But he made it clear he had no intention of sending the goalkeeper off so he was given free reign for the final half hour, and his tolerance of the shithousing, time wasting, stealing yards at free kicks became farcical. Norwich had a hilariously blatant penalty waved away when Steve Cook obviously clattered through the back of substitute Jovon Makama and the entire ground waited for the inevitable whistle only for Whitestone to laugh and run away. Madsen got kicked in the head. Is this a yellow card? Apparently not.

Fair play, he did add nine minutes on for all of Norwich’s various nonsenses, but Rangers only used that time to concede a second goal when one of umpteen lame crosses into the box was easily cleared out and Kvistgaarden freed Makama for a run at Kieran Morgan and a shot slightly deflected past Nardi and into the net. An absolute ground emptier. Rangers have now won one of 13 meetings with this opponent. Norwich have 24 points so far this season and we've given them six of those.

Among many, many of yesterday’s frustrations is that Kovacevic looked like a walking disaster zone between the sticks. Apparently desperate to give away a goal/red card/penalty or combination of the three. After Burrell’s shot on the half hour QPR never went near the fucking clown again until nine minutes into stoppage time when Amadou Mbengue tried a shot from out by the Hayes Bypass and the Bosnian ‘stopper’, entirely predictably, punched the ball down into the ground and up into the roof of the net.

One of the worst visiting goalkeepers we’ll have here all season and Rangers tried him out with the grand total of two shots on target all afternoon, one of which he fell over and saved with his feet the other he threw into the net for us. Twice at the start of the second half he punched obvious catches and Richard Kone pumped the loose ball over the bar. Did we hang another cross in on him again to see if that might be a rich seam to mine? Reader, we did not. There are questions about Kone and particularly Burrell, now without a goal in six and tiring on his high press efforts, but in a 4-4-2 the strikers rely on service from wide and here it was all inversion and aversion rather than getting to the byline and banging a ball across until Poku came on. Rather than hang a few corners and crosses under the crossbar and ask a few questions, Madsen and co went with a procession of low outswingers almost exclusively onto the head of the nearest defender. I’m starting to think about asking for my money back on that training ground bond.

It feels very much like Christmas was Leicester and Leicester was Christmas. Job done, everybody very pleased with themselves, and to hell with the rest of it. If you’re travelling to West Brom on December 29, well that’s on you. That win should have been seen as the start of something, not the end. Three points from the play-offs with the bottom two to come at home and a huge FA Cup tie. But that’s not how we think or how we act.

Unless we can find a way to stick a Cifuentes mask on the Sheff Wed manager, I’m starting to worry about that one as well. One win in 18, one win all season, Barry Bannan…

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

QPR: Nardi 5; Mbengue 5, Dunne 5, Cook 4, Norrington-Davies 4; Dembele 3 (Poku 56, 6), Madsen 5, Hayden 5 (Morgan 65, 3), Smyth 4 (Saito 57, 4); Burrell 4, Kone 4 (Kolli 74, 5)

Subs not used: Field, Varane, Hamer, Morrison, Vale

Goals: Mbengue 90+9 (unassisted)

Norwich Kovacevic 4; Fisher 6, McConville 6, Córdoba 6, Chrisene 6 (Mahovo 61, 6); McLean 7, Mattson 6; Jurásek 7 (Stacey 72, 6), Wright 6 (Kvistgaarden 87, -), Schwartu 7 (Makama 61, 7); Sargent 7 (Springett 72, 6)

Subs not used: Slimane, Darling, Grimshaw, Marcondes

Goals: Sargent 46 (assisted Jurásek), Makama 90+6 (assisted Kvistgaarden)

Yellow Cards: Chrisene 45+1 (foul), Kovacevic 72 (time wasting), Stacey 82 (foul)

QPR Star Man - N/A

Referee – Dean Whitestone (Northants) 4 Not helped by the lino on the Ellerslie Road side of the ground who had a very contrary afternoon, but it will never make sense to me why referees allow players to take the piss out of them and undermine their authority in games like this. At Portsmouth on Boxing Day QPR tried the sit down and get the game stopped with a fake injury thing once, James Linington wouldn’t have it and gave Portsmouth the chance to play on, so it never happened again. Here the second half became a farce, and it was all really obvious, really easy to deal with. If you have to send the goalkeeper off, send the tosser off. Missed a penalty decision in Norwich’s favour so obvious my gran would have given it, and she’s been dead ten years.

Attendance – 17,452 (1,800 Norwich approx.) I don’t know what has happened to our pitch, where it looks like the natural grass is dying leaving only the artificial strands behind, nor what we’re going to do about it at this time of year and in this weather, but I’m not convinced pouring water onto it every time the players go off is the right approach for what is essentially now a mudbath. We get into ‘named storm’ season and we’re going to have postponements here on this thing. A real state.

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Pictures - Ian Randall Photography

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