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2010/11 BEST HOME PERFORMANCE OF THE SEASON A tough one to call with just two home defeats all season and so many great performances at home, big wins over Middlesbrough and Barnsley were superb, vital promotion defining games against the likes of Leicester City and Sheffield United helped get us over the line and the game against Swansea was high in quality and was as good a performance you'll see from Taarabt. The one I've gone for though was the key game in my opinion, the one where we opened up and a gap and started to believe and put major doubt into the heads of our main rivals, plus it's always good to beat Cardiff.
QPR outclass Cardiff to pull five
points clear - full match report QPR moved five points ahead of Cardiff, and eight of Swansea, at the top of the Championship with a thrilling 2-1 win against the Bluebirds at Loftus Road on Saturday. Bring a friend for God's sake, football doesn't get
any better than this. The biting cold, pierced by the high intensity gleam
of the floodlights that made a near faultless playing surface sparkle
in a luminous green colour was the ideal backdrop for what was an
almost perfect football match at an atmospheric Loftus Road. Goals, entertainment, and controversy - this game
had the lot and it ebbed and flowed throughout. QPR fans begged
for the final whistle as they held their 2-1 lead through four agonising
minutes of stoppage time but to be honest I could have watched this
game all night. A captivating, enthralling, encounter that only
the Championship could really serve up. Talk to me about Arsenal and their easy on the eye
total football style, or Manchester United and their ruthless effectiveness
at home. Talk to me about Rooney and Drogba and Giggs and Scholes
and Essien. Talk to me as much as you like but remember that nine
times out of ten Man United, Arsenal and Chelsea are playing against
teams vastly inferior to themselves, who set up with everybody behind
the ball and try not to get beaten or, worse still, just sling their
reserve side out to start with and as good as admit they don't think
they can win. Next year that might be us, Rangers are now unbeaten
in almost half a season and clear once more at the top of the league,
and one can only hope we maintain this high intensity, ambitious
attacking game at the higher level should we ever make it. It's
the QPR way and it's fantastic to see it back at Loftus Road after
an absence of six years. How do you like your attacking threats? Big and muscular,
powerful and poised - Jay Bothroyd and Rob Hulse delivered a comprehensive
lesson in the art. Tricky and different, skilful and quick - Craig
Bellamy and Adel Taarabt were right on top of their games and shared
a goal each. Throw in a conventional threat from wide areas or two
in the former of Chris Burke and Tommy Smith, a ball busting central
midfield destroyer such as Shaun Derry or Seyi Olofinajana, and
good old fashioned right backs marauding forward down their flanks
to pose an attacking threat whenever they could, and if there are
two finer exponents of that art in this league than Kyle Walker
and Kevin McNaughton then let them speak now or forever hold their
peace, and you have a recipe for the perfect Championship match.
Amongst it all Alejandro Faurlin and Peter Whittingham, gifted left
footed players, adept at finding space to express themselves where
there seems to be none, calmly spraying balls this way and that
with occasional threats on goal thrown in for good measure. This was high quality stuff, between two freakishly
well matched teams who even after 96 minutes of football were still
flying at each other's throats and looking to score more goals.
No men behind the ball and holding what we have here - this was
like a Kevin Keegan wet dream. Cardiff left Michael Chopra on the bench, preferring
to partner Craig Bellamy and Jay Bothroyd together in a conventional
big man-little man strike partnership. Chris Burke and Lee Naylor
returned to the side after missing last Saturday's defeat to Nottingham
Forest with injury and former Rangers' loanee Tom Heaton started
in goal on the ground where he made a solitary QPR appearance last
season. Accrington Stanley were the opponents that night, and the
crowd was less than half what it was on Saturday. Kettles of fish
sprang to mind as he emerged from the tunnel. Prior to the start of play Cardiff had lost four
games more than this unbeaten QPR side but only two points separated
the teams with City boasting an impressive away record of six wins
from nine matches compared to QPR's four wins and five draws. There's little left for the two men on the touchline
to see or do in their careers. Well on the way to 2000 games managed
between them, and boasting eight promotions, Dave Jones and Neil
Warnock look like men who've simply thrown caution to the wind to
this season and gone for it - Warnock, still laughably in shorts
until QPR lose a game, seems to be enjoying it while Jones is the
modern day Steve Coppell, getting steadily more miserable with each
passing victory for his side. Jones blamed referee Kevin Friend
for his side's demise, but made key tactical mistakes in the second
half and ignored two very good shouts for penalties from the home
team. It was hard not to sympathise with him though, Cardiff should
have had a spot kick seven minutes from time with the score at 2-1
- it wouldn't be the Championship without an incompetent referee. I wondered before the game, with Cardiff's forward
line boasting pace in abundance, whether Warnock may have been tempted
to return Bradley Orr to the side at right back and move Kyle Walker
to the left to provide extra mobility to the QPR defence. I wondered
that a little bit more after three minutes when winger Chris Burke
gave Clint Hill a comprehensive going over and smashed a low cross
into the near post that Kenny claimed cleanly with Bellamy loitering
in the vicinity awaiting a fumble. Kenny quickly bowled the ball out to Faurlin and
Rangers went on the attack themselves, stringing together an attractive
five pass move that culminated with Rob Hulse touching the ball
off to Mackie who fired a foot or so wide of the post from fully
25 yards. Heaton had a clear sight of the ball and would have made
the save had it been targeted inside the post rather than wide.
Olofinjana then tried his luck from similar range, but it posed
more threat to the greenhouses to the rear of the properties on
Loftus Road than it did to Paddy Kenny's goal. Cardiff's attack is sufficiently threatening to create
problems for opponents out of nothing, so the last thing QPR needed
to do was give them a helping hand. In the ninth minute a slip in
midfield by Faurlin as he received a pass from Derry conceded possession
to Bellamy who found Burke racing forwards down the right flank.
Having reached the penalty area he teed up Whittingham for a curling
left foot shot from 20 yards that cleared the crossbar by a matter
of inches as Kenny scrambled across praying for a positive outcome
- the keeper would have been nowhere near it had it dipped in. And Rangers didn't heed that warning. After a penalty
appeal at the School End when Blake appeared to divert Taarabt's
cross behind with his arm Cardiff were gifted the opening goal by
a slip in almost the same place as Faurlin's earlier mistake, this
time by Kaspars Gorkss. Personally I felt awarding a spot kick against
Blake when his hand was down by his side and the cross was fired
at him from a few yards away would have been harsh, but we had a
penalty awarded at Portsmouth for less so City could count themselves
lucky with that, and the through ball to Bellamy who appeared to
be a yard or two offside when Bothroyd seized on Gorkss' error and
played him in. The Welshman appeared at first to have taken too
long over his finish, and Paddy Kenny did get a foot to the subsequent
shot, but it found the back of the net anyway and Cardiff were in
front. QPR's response came within five minutes - an equalising
goal that again owed much to incompetent play by the opposition
defence. Tom Heaton moved out into the right back spot to take a
free kick but completely fluffed it, hacking it right into the heart
of his own defence where Rob Hulse seized on it and was immediately
hauled to the ground by Mark Hudson. Unbelievably the former Palace
defender escaped without a booking but when the free kick was taken
by Taarabt and nodded down across the face of goal by Gorkss with
nobody able to get a touch QPR were able to keep the pressure on
and fashion their first goal of the afternoon. Taarabt beautifully set up Faurlin to cross from
the corner of the penalty area but his ball was just too high for
Gorkss. Tommy Smith retrieved the ball by the right hand corner
flag, faced up his man and then delivered a perfect left footed
delivery straight onto Gorkss' head and the Latvian didn't need
asking for a third time - he thumped an unstoppable header past
Heaton and into the bottom corner. Huge credit must go to Taarabt,
Faurlin and Smith who keep the pressure on for almost two minutes
with three fine deliveries into the penalty area that Hudson and
co at the back for Cardiff simply couldn't cope with. Both teams were now settled and well into the game,
buoyed by their respective goals, and the chances flowed at a rate
of one every couple of minutes after Gorkss equaliser. First Hulse,
in really top form for the first time since joining QPR, nodded
down for Taarabt on the edge of the area but his shot was blocked
away. Four minutes later Craig Bellamy got in down the
right and cut the ball back towards Bothroyd only for Kyle Walker
to intervene. Rangers didn't really have anybody that could live
with Bellamy and within 45 seconds he was in behind the home defence
again, this time choosing to go for goal himself and volleying high
into the Loft End. For all the ironic cheers and jeers he drew with
that effort it was clear to everybody inside the ground that Bellamy
was playing extremely well and QPR were affording him far too much
time and space to do damage - partly that was because he is such
a good player with a natural instinct for drifting into space, but
I also think the QPR defenders showed him too much respect and were
afraid to get close to him because they knew he could burn them
for pace if he had grass behind them to put the ball into and chase. At the other end Taarabt was posing a different kind
of threat to Cardiff but Hudson and Blake were making all the same
mistakes as Gorkss and Connolly were with Bellamy - conceding too
much time and space for the Moroccan to operate in. I expected Olofinjana
to try and nail Taarabt early in the game on Saturday but he wasn't
really detailed to deal with him and in fact the only time the pair
did come face to face was midway through the half when Taarabt faced
the big Nigerian up, hinted at a run to the right, and then drew
his body back the other way and took a shot on with his left that
flew a couple of yards wide of the far post. Taarabt wasn't nearly as effective on the half hour when Cardiff crowded him out as he hunted for options on the edge of the penalty area and then Whittingham cleared the ball down field to Bothroyd who outpaced Gorkss and was then denied by a fine, brave save by Paddy Kenny down at his feet. When we sold Damion Stewart in the summer the one major concern I had was that it left us short of pace through the middle of our defence with neither Gorkss nor Connolly particularly quick. That hasn't really been a problem so far this season,
and Stewart has not been a success for Bristol City, but for the
first time on Saturday I thought our centre backs looked really
slow and were regularly in trouble against Cardiff's speedy front
two. Gorkss and Connolly constantly backed off looking for the sanctuary
of their own 18 yard box and on this occasion Gorkss needed Kenny
to rescue him from an increasingly dire looking situation as Bothroyd
bore down on goal. In the closing ten minutes of the half Cardiff won
a couple of corners, both of which were bravely headed out of the
heart of the six yard box by Clint Hill. At the School End Tom Heaton
got down well to save Alejandro Faurlin's low drive from the edge
of the area in the bottom corner and the chasing pack looking to
seize on the rebound were subsequently flagged offside. The second half was a slow burner to begin with,
at least when compared to the end to end breathlessness of the first.
An early foul on Faurlin gave Taarabt a chance to deliver a ball
to the heart of the penalty area but Heaton confidently emerged
from his goal line to claim the ball after it had initially been
headed high into the night sky. QPR also forced a corner, and were
left half heartedly appealing for a penalty that was never going
to be awarded when Rob Hulse's near post flick may, or may not,
have struck the arm of a defender. Cardiff, for their part, threatened when Bothroyd
ran at Gorkss and forced a corner with a cross that was headed behind
at the near post. When that set piece was cleared Danny Drinkwater,
in a rare attacking position, dragged his shot wide. Then just before the hour Cardiff made a very strange substitution. They took off Drinkwater and put on Jason Koumas. Now on the face of it that was a pretty obvious move to make as Koumas has been a sparkling talent in this league before and Drinkwater had hardly caught the eye in an hour of action. However in doing that Dave Jones removed the man who was keeping Kyle Walker under wraps down the right flank of the QPR team. In an evenly matched game Walker could easily have been a key figure for QPR but Drinkwater had, to this point, prevented him from making much impact in attack. Within 55 seconds Koumas had been yellow carded for
an ugly challenge on Walker tight to the far touchline and for the
last half an hour of the game QPR looked so much more dangerous
down the right than they had done before while Koumas offered almost
nothing going forward for City. If Drinkwater was injured then fair
enough, if not then Jones may wish to examine his own decision making
before questioning that of the referee especially as they spent
much of the second half knocking long balls up to Bothroyd thereby
reducing Craig Bellamy's effectiveness markedly. A second booking in as many minutes for the visitors saw Whittingham have his name taken for a cynical shirt pulling offence against Taarabt as he skipped his way towards the Cardiff the penalty area. It seemed as if QPR were starting to get on top and Rob Hulse nearly hammered home that point when he collected the ball in the penalty area and fired wide after engineering space for himself. Finally on Saturday QPR saw something like the Rob Hulse they thought they had bought in August, battering the inadequate Hudson into submission. Hulse later glanced a header wide after Adel Taarabt
used trickery to create space for a devilish cross from the flank.
Rangers were slowly tightening the vice. Jamie Mackie came close to breaking his 12 game QPR
scoring drought with an instinctive 25 yard snap shot in the sixty
sixth minute. Patient, passing build up play around the edge of
the Cardiff penalty area almost resembled an ice hockey power play
for a minute or so as the likes of Derry and Faurlin moved the ball
this way and that probing for an opening. Eventually the ball was
fed into Hulse's feet on the edge of the box and he brilliantly
muscled Blake out of the way before touching it back to Mackie who
saw his shot acrobatically saved by Heaton - had he set it out wider
of the goalkeeper to start with Rangers would have been in front. They didn't have to wait much longer though. From
the corner Taarabt's delivery was cleared initially, but then played
back to him by Derry whose crossfield pass was flicked perfectly
to the Moroccan by a flick on from Tommy Smith. Showing rigidity
not always apparent in his game Taarabt ploughed through an early
tackle from Lee Naylor designed to stop him causing havoc in the
penalty area and with Naylor now out of the game that was exactly
what he did. Taarabt surged into the area, ran straight at a rather
terrified looking Hudson, performed a couple of well executed step
overs and a drop of the shoulder to create space and then dispatched
a perfect left foot shot past Heaton and into the far top corner
of the net. Taarabt raced away to celebrate with assistant manager
Keith Curle on the touchline as Loftus Road erupted. It was nothing
more than QPR deserved having dominated the match since the half
time break. Cardiff responded immediately and were unfortunate
not to level when Burke cut into the area after receiving the ball
from Craig Bellamy and then unloaded a shot at goal that flicked
off Kaspars Gorkss on the way through, caught Paddy Kenny full in
the face and stayed out. Not for the first time this season I wondered
if this amazing run of good luck and fortune we've enjoyed this
season might just well mean it's our year. Kenny can do no wrong,
even when he doesn't seem to know anything about what's just happened,
and after one save with his face he then made an unorthodox stop
with his feet when a low shot from Peter Whittingham seemed to have
deceived him, either through a deflection or a bad read on the goalkeeper's
part. Whatever the reasoning, he managed it, and the lead remained
intact. Cardiff sent on Michael Chopra for Chris Burke ten
minutes from time and immediately threatened after Taarabt conceded
possession in a poor area - Clint Hill didn't seem too disappointed
to receive a yellow card having cynically stopped the counter attack
in its tracks with a foul on Kevin McNaughton. Taarabt was again
lucky to get away with some selfishness when a foul on Rub Hulse
presented Rangers with an interesting attacking free kick that he
drilled straight into the wall when a cross was the obvious option
- Cardiff countered and the R's were lucky to survive. Taarabt was
otherwise excellent though - unusually diligent in his tracking
back and typically effective in possession. In many ways he was
the difference between the two sides. Seven minutes from time Cardiff should have been
awarded a penalty. That familiar story of pacey striker running
at terrified centre halves that had dominated the day at both ends
of the pitch was played out again as Bothroyd sprinted right at
the heart of the QPR defence with the ball at his feet. After turning
back inside he then hit the deck after a blatant trip by Matt Connolly
who had committed himself too early the other way. It was a clear
and obvious penalty without even needing to see the replay, those
in F Block were unanimously agreed, but referee Kevin Friend, never
shy of favouring a home team unmercifully, ignored the lengthy appeals
from the visitors. On went the game and within a minute Cardiff were tearing into the QPR penalty area again. This time it was Bellamy and again he fell to the floor as he entered the area. Hill was the nearest man to him but it was an obvious dive. Presumably Bellamy was looking to exploit any doubt in the referee's mind over the previous decision and get him to even up the poor call against Cardiff with an equally bad one in their favour. The calls were ignored, and Bellamy was booked, although
as the subsequent corner was still allowed to be taken I presume
the booking was for dissent rather than the dive itself, otherwise
Rangers would have restarted play with a free kick. Leon Clarke came on with three minutes remaining
- ostensibly to waste time and allow Adel Taarabt to receive a standing
ovation on his way off - but he could hardly have made a bigger
impact with his seven minutes on the field. The first thing he did
was scythe down Kevin McNaughton wide on the Cardiff right, a challenge
for which he was booked, and the resulting inswinging free kick
from Whittingham was headed away by Derry. Then, in the last minute of four added at the end of the game when Agyemang, another late sub for the tireless Mackie, crawled all over Lee Naylor Clarke was able to collect possession down the QPR right and power into the penalty area. I don't think it would be too unfair to say that hopes of a positive outcome at this point were low but Clarke, to his credit, did some sort of Bambi on Ice routine and bumbled past Blake who then clearly and obviously wrestled him to the ground for a stone wall penalty. Three sides of Loftus Road erupted as one, and then stood astonished and captivated as Friend ignored the appeals, Clarke rose from the ground and poked the ball back into play on the edge of the box. Penalty or not the goal was still there for the taking
but for reasons known only to him, and possibly the Gods of comedy
who created the situation for their own general amusement, Fitz
Hall entered the stage from the right with the ball rolling towards
him, the goal gaping, and not a Cardiff man in sight. Hall struck
it hard and low but Cardiff threw a get out of jail free card in
his way and blocked the ball away on the goal line. QPR were at
this point a team that was supposed to be hanging on at 2-1 but
still they came - Agyemang had finished mauling Naylor's carcass
and made his way into the area to collect the rebound for a second
time. He chipped it up to the back post and with the stimulation
of it all threatening to pop my eye balls in their sockets Leon
Clarke reappeared for act two, but fluffed his lines and nodded
the ball onto the roof of the net. Whether Friend was just evening up the poor Bothroyd
penalty decision by not awarding Clarke his, couldn't be doing with
the hassle when he knew he was going to blow the final whistle after
the goal kick, or is just completely incompetent it was hard to
tell. Dave Jones bleated and moaned to anybody that would listen
to him after the game about the Bothroyd decision, but strangely
didn't mention the foul on Clarke which was every bit as blatant.
I wonder why? This was a tremendously entertaining, even game between
two sides with an abundance of attacking talent going all out to
win the game right to the end. Even in stoppage time with a one
goal lead QPR were on the attack and looking to add a third goal.
Had both sides been awarded the penalties they should have been
by referee Kevin Friend then it would have finished 3-2 with a last
minute winner, probably by Rob Hulse, and that would have been fitting
drama and excitement for a game as enthralling as this. It was impossible
to take your eyes off it for a moment. As you would have expected looking at the league
table the teams were incredibly evenly matched. Dave Jones brought
Craig Bellamy inside to play as part of a conventional front two,
and largely matched QPR's successful system across the park. In
Jay Bothroyd and Rob Hulse both teams had old fashioned target men
who were right on top of their game and won just about every header
they went for against the respective centre half pairings who were
mediocre for both sides. The knock downs and lay offs by Hulse were
seized on principally by Adel Taarabt while Cardiff had Craig Bellamy
sniffing around at the other end - again you could barely get a
cigarette paper between the respective performances with neither
defence coping well with Taarabt or Bellamy all afternoon. Cardiff
had Chris Burke, QPR had Tommy Smith. Cardiff had human battering
ram Seyi Olofinjana, QPR had Shaun Derry once again shining in his
continuing Indian summer. The reason QPR won, in my opinion, was because of
their ball retention and work rate. QPR had an amazing 62 per cent
of the possession according to the after match stats and were able
to pick up enough second balls from Bothroyd at one end while maintaining
possession for long periods around the Cardiff penalty area - the
value of having the ball and keeping the pressure on summed up perfectly
by our two goals which both came after initial deliveries into the
box had been cleared. Cardiff had nobody in their midfield that
moved the ball around and won it in the air as well as Alejandro
Faurlin and nobody in their team who worked as hard as Jamie Mackie
and that overall tenacity, class and work rate told in the end. I've shied away from any "we're the real deal"
statements that I usually make just before QPR collapse but it almost
feels as if we've had our sticky spell and are hitting top gear
again and everybody is coming back to form and fitness and the forthcoming
fixtures look favourable… Remain calm everybody, nice and calm.
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