#19 A Glimmer of Hope

After a dismal Christmas that culminated with QPR ending the year on only ten points, seemingly staring relegation in the face, we are now two league games and a cup game in to the new year and remain undefeated.

Celebrating going one up at Chelsea

We began the year with the daunting task of visiting a free scoring Chelsea at the Bridge and after our disappointingly poor showing against Liverpool few people could see anything less than the kind of hiding they gave us there last season. Nevertheless three thousand plus R's made the short journey having splashed out ridiculous amounts of money for a ticket at a time of the year when money was tight and they were deservedly rewarded with the shock result of the season as "Little Old" QPR beat the European Champions on their own manor. R's fans every where were jumping around in delirium even though we remained bottom of the league, it didn't matter, we had beaten Chelsea. In fact they have not scored against us this season and we have taken four points off them. More importantly, it was an enormous turning point in the epic journey that our players have embarked on in their quest to secure our premier league survival. This result meant so much to everyone that is QPR (fans, player or staff) and you could see it on their faces at the final whistle. The travelling R's had been in magnificent voice all night and the players revelled in it as, at long last they were able to give something back to the loyal R's fans. Wright-Philips was our goalscoring hero on the night, eventually breaking his premier league goal scoring drought (after over nine hundred days) but disappointingly did not celebrate his goal due to some misguided respect to his former club. It was quite fitting that he managed to score here tonight, as he was having a shocking game till he scored, but that's football and that's three points that nobody had counted on us achieving and can be offset against the points we expected over Christmas. More importantly, Harry sorted out the shambles from the  Liverpool game immediately and although we nicked the win we thoroughly deserved our clean sheet as every one worked their socks off as a cohesive unit, finally getting all eleven players to put an effective shift in. Much as we all love beating our foes in SW6, we've still got to build on this result to turn this disaster of a season around, so our feet must remain firmly on the ground.

Goal

Next up was WBA at Loftus Road in the cup and an unsurprisingly low attendance. Considering the two home games over Christmas followed by Chelsea away and the clubs insistence on charging silly money for tickets to this game, you would have thought they would have learnt from Chelsea in the cup last year. The game itself was quite uneventful and was never going to meet the euphoric levels of our shenanigans at Stamford Bridge days earlier. It did give Harry a chance to blood new signing Tal Ben Haim as well as have a look at returning loanees DJ Campbell and Bothroyd. Ben Haim had a solid game although he was asked to play at left back as a right footer and Bothroyd had a brief outing without doing very much and I cant see Harry including him in the squad of twenty five at the end of the month. Campbell who has been scoring freely whilst on loan at Ipswich, didn't get much of an opportunity as QPR's second half dominance failed to produce any clear cut opportunities for Campbell to capitalise on. The R's early second half dominance eventually petered out and they conceded a silly goal late on, but Dyer equalised for the Hoops in injury time to secure a replay at the Hawthorns. Dyer was subsequentley released by the club before the clause enabling them to do so expired, as Harry started to shuffle and make room for his twenty five man squad for the end of January. Harry's motives I suspect being Dyer's lack of availability due to injury and he didn't want to risk a place in the twenty five. Not a bad player, shame we didn't see much of him and I wish him well, but right call from Harry I think.

Following the cup game news began to break that our dependable centre half Ryan Nelsen had accepted the managers role at Toronto FC in the MLS. We are still unsure as to when Nelly will actually leave the R's, but I'd say it is unlikely to be before we have a replacement. Sadly some R's fans have been slating him and seem to have forgotten he was the only one to lead the team during the dark days of the previous manager. Nelsen signed for QPR as a squad player, but he has ended up being our first choice centre half and has arguably been our best player this season. The 35 year old Kiwi has openly said that his ankles and knees are made of glass and I'm amazed we've got this many games out of him. He has played through illness and given his all to the cause of QPR and I wish him well.


Dyer late equaliser before his exit from QPR

Further transfer speculation involving QPR is the continuing tug of war with Newcastle over the signing of Loic Remy, (I doubt very much if R's misfit, Joey Barton, has done much to sell the club to Remy, in fact he's probably encouraged him to go to the Toon.) whilst we continue to be linked with M'Vila and are currently preparing an improved bid for Peter Odemwingie. At the time of writing, it looks likely that we will also secure the services of Jake Livermore on loan for the rest of the season. On the players out front, Cisse is being linked with a move abroad and rumours are surfacing that Chelsea are interested in Mbia.

Away from all the transfer rumours, QPR welcomed Harry's old club Spurs to Loftus Road on Saturday and a very good performance from the R's earned a creditable draw. Harry got the troops to turn out another hard working and organised performance, as the R's managed to secure their first consecutive clean sheets in the premiership. Onuoha and Fabio occupied full back roles alongside captain Hill and Nelson, with this back four configuration seeming to be our most successful combination and Onuoha had a good game and looked settled in the right back role. However, it was the collective work rate of the team that earned this result and is the reason behind the good start to the year. Cesar made a few outstanding saves, proving his claim as first choice keeper. Wright-Philips recent form continued in so much as he's not as bad as he has been, but he is still not good enough or the answer. QPR's three best chances fell to him, but he failed to convert and I can't help thinking that the likes of Campbell etc would have put at least one of those chances away, which is what we need to to if we want to stay in this league. By the end of the day other results were not kind to us, but our last two games have produced four points when those around us were expecting us to achieve none.

Bothroyd scores to secure cup win

I was going to finish with the Spurs game, but I have waited for the cup replay at WBA. Another thousand odd faithful QPR travelled up in the freezing conditions to the Hawthorns to be rewarded by another QPR victory away from home. Harry made six changes to the side from Saturday starting both Cisse and Bothroyd. Cisse was pretty woeful in the freezing conditions and was replaced by Wright-Philips halfway through, but Bothroyd seized his chance and produced arguably his best performance in a QPR shirt and nodded in the winner to put the R's into the last 32 and a home tie with MK Dons. Green is reported to have made some fine saves and more importantly the collective effort of the team that Harry put out replicated the ethos and work rate of Saturday and it would seem our Harry has got through to his players and they are beginning to deliver. Many had thought this fixture to be a non event and one we could do without, but the victory has made me feel good and the all important momentum has continued as we find ourselves unbeaten in four games in 2013. Of these four games we have conceded only one goal, had three clean sheets and surprisingly our goalscorers were Wright-Philips, Dyer and Bothroyd. In 1982 we won a 3rd round replay that no one fancied up at Middlesboro after a late equaliser in the home tie, and that year we got all the way to the final, you never know we might have a good run in the cup this year.


Loic Remy signs for QPR

Finally as I complete this blog post, QPR have just confirmed the signing of Loic Remy from Marseilles (No thanks to Barton,but big thanks to Fernandes and Mbia) and the signing of M'Vila is looking imminent. Bottom of the table and people still want to sign £or u$. Here's hoping these guys love the club and deliver.

Next up is West Ham away this Saturday, who will have one day less to prepare as they have a replay at Man U to negotiate and a number of injury worries. We need to get at least a point from there. In Harry we trust, thanks for the nice start to the new year and thanks for giving us a glimmer of hope.

Come on You R's


The Bush Ranger

No Fear

The QPR revolution continued its evolution with an entertaining goalless draw against our hated neighbours from SW6, Chelsea.



Ferdinand snubs Terry
 

First of all the handshake debacle. Or as it turned out no handshakes. Rightly so, with the world media focused on the pre match handshake farce, Anton Ferdinand rejected the hand of the despicable John Terry and Ashley Cole. Ji Sung Park followed, commendably, with a double snub of Terry by also refusing to shake his hand on the coin toss too. Whether it was out of support for the Ferdinand brothers or maybe representative of the the rest of the QPR team, I believe the snubbing was justified. However, before I draw a line under the handshake issue, the situation could have been avoided if the complete and utter farce of meaningless, insincere handshaking did not form part of the pre match ritual. In reality this is another Premier League cash cow that serves the purpose of international exposure for the league's sponsor in front of a world wide television audience. Don't expect this pointless exercise to be abolished any time soon.

So on to the match. The European Champions were greeted with an unsurprisingly hostile reception from the QPR faithful, with Messrs Terry and Cole subject to a relentless afternoon of unflattering rhetoric from the R's fans and just as last season, everyone associated with Chelsea couldn't get away from Loftus Road quick enough. I don't think they enjoyed themselves in W12 today.

The international break, normally an unsettling element to a season, turned out to be a blessing as Mark Hughes and his staff had an extra week to work with his transfer window acquisitions. Hughes  didn't waste this time and got the game plan and team selection spot on for this fixture, opting to play 4 4 2 again and keeping AJ and Zamora together up front.

It became immediately clear from the opening moments, that this was a new, better, well organised side. A side with belief working collectively as a unit. Gone were the frightened rabbits that we saw for the first 35 minutes at the Etihad two weeks before. The back four lead by the magnificent Ryan Nelson pushed further up the pitch as the industrious midfield of SWP, Faurlin, Granero and Park hustled their Chelsea counter parts making it increasingly difficult for them to settle and in fact making the Chelsea back four play deep for much of the first half. The midfield were a revelation, tenaciously winning possession, being patient and keeping the ball, something we have not done consistently since our return to premiership football.

Chelsea as you would expect were dangerous at times but the R's coped and actually played with no fear in a confident and diligent manner and were always comfortable taking the ball forward and pushing Chelsea back. Playing this way took masses of pressure off the back four, which has been an ongoing problem and kept the vociferous and fervent R's supporters racking up the decibels at Loftus Road.

Chelsea had a couple of penalty appeals turned down. Terry and Nelson in the kind of tussle you see dozens of times every game and Hazard looking for a spot kick as SWP lunged in, none of which convinced Referee Mariner. Andy Johnson was more than a handful for Chelsea as we saw why he was once held with such high regard before unfortunately suffering an injury that saw him replaced by an eager and obliging Mackie. This was after Fabio had also picked up a knock that saw him replaced by Onuoha with excellent Bosingwa switching to the right. The enforced changes highlighted strength of the QPR squad as the changes didn't upset the game plan too much and we still had the likes of Taarabt, Hoilett, Cisse, Dyer and Green to choose from.

Julio Cesar had an excellent debut proving himself early on with a very good save from Hazard plus two or three other important saves during the course of the game. With a commanding presence he seemed to instill confidence in to a back four that looked more comfortable playing in front of him and he looks like he is going to be a solid keeper for QPR.  The R's continued to push forward with Park notably missing our best chance heading a great cross from Granero into Cech's hands and Zamora taking to long to finish after beating Cech to a misplaced back pass. This left Hazard to miss one last chance for Chelsea blasting high over the bar from eight yards.



In summary this was a very very good QPR performance. The R's actually edged the possession stats against the European Champions and Chelsea were never able to completely settle and never got forward in numbers as they like to do, mostly because they had to do most of the work further back up the pitch as our four man midfield won that battle today. QPR's ball retention, distribution and the work rate was arguably the best its been since promotion and more in keeping with our ambitions. Today, finally, QPR comfortably looked like and played like a good premiership side.(against quality opposition) Had it not been for the two forced substitutions in the first half I think Hughes would have utilised some of our options on the bench for the last 15 minutes and we could have got all the points. It is clear that we have turned a corner and this side is going to get better and better. So will the results. The midfield with Granero and Faurlin are quality, if the midfield functions, the defence will sort it self out, particularly with the influence of Nelson. Playing higher up the pitch at a higher tempo suits us and I like watching it.

True to form, QPR don't always get the credit they deserve and this was blatantly obvious on Match of the Days pitiful misrepresentation of the game. Needless to say it was not a fair reflection of the way in which QPR played. Still the more this goes on the longer the odds will be when backing QPR, because this QPR side are going to win lots of games this season. (Back QPR to win at Spurs on an Asian Handicap at +1 to +1.5)

We haven't got it right yet and there is still lots to do but there has been significant progress. This team has belief and is now playing with no fear and have overcome a massive psychological barrier. You can feel the excitement the players have, being part of  the QPR revolution. This is QPR though, so the ride will be bumpy. Buckle your seat belts, we're going for a ride and its going to be a good one.

Blog to you soon.

The Bush Ranger