Queens Park Rangers 0

Wrexham 1

   
  Blackwood
   

This report was written by Zeus on the qpr.org message board

Anyone who has followed the RRR's for any length of time will not be surprised by this result.

1 opponent's get new manger
2 opponents get new loan signings
3 QPR are even money at the bookies

We were bound to lose, but enough of fate. To me we lost this game after about 25 minutes, make no mistake we had vast superiority in the first half, we got our tackles in, Connoly saw plenty of the ball on the left hand side and overall Wrexham were not in the game and had little hope of stinging 2 passes together.

But on around 25 minutes we suddenly made a switch pushing connoly forward on the right and moving Griffiths effectively to left midfield. The game progressed much the same as before but it seemed a seed had been sown in the minds of the Wrexham players, "Hold on" they must have thought, maybe we have a chance here. The inevitable happened before half time a very rare Wrexham sortie should have been easily cleared twice by forbes both times the clearance went to Wrexham and they where gifted the easiest of chances, 1-0.

For all Olly's talk of improving our passing game we seem to have only one game plan, hoof the ball into a corner for griffiths or Thommo to chase. this is pretty poor fare even if executed properly and doubly so when our players can't measure their passes. Couple this with a abject failure to deal with Wrexhams off side trap and the spectacle was dire indeed. The second half progressed much the same Dou Dou replaced griffiths after 55 minutes and spent the rest of the game in an ariel battle with the tall central defenders, guess what, he lost.

Eventually bignot and connoly were subbed for Perry and Wardley but to little effect although wardley seemed to cause their defenders one or 2 more problems especially in the air, nice to see that Wrexham gave Connoly a standing ovation when he was subbed. Wrexham meanwhile grew in stature and confidence despite going down to 10 after a 2nd bookable.

And we could have lost by a couple in the end. Speaking to Wrexham fans on the way back to the car and in the pub afterwards they were all as mystified as us hoops, they clearly raised their game and were inspired by the new manager etc but even so they were no great shakes and we have to look at this as 3 points lost.

So what did I take away from the game, We are worryingly short of fire power, Dou Dou and Griffiths have despite excellent work outside the box failed to provide results, this has to be a concern because Thommo is a Patch player and looking at Yesterday he may be entering a barren period, we need goals from elsewhere.

We are absolutely awful in the air, we must play the ball on the ground if we play the current team, If we are going to have to resort to ariel bombardment then Wardley would be a more effective partner for thommo than Girffiths.

The midfield does not support the forwards enough, None of the midfield commit to get into the box if the ball is wide, also they do not release the ball early enough on the floor to give thommo the chances he relishes. Connoly looked up for it for 30 minutes then ghosted out of the game until replaced by wardley toward the end, I would like to see Hamid Bar get a full game on Tuesday to see what he can do for us in midfield.

As for the defence well they were OK apart from the abberations from Forbes, but he is young and learning, we knew he would probably make some howlers at some point, sadly he made a batch of them yesterday which made him look a bad player, he isn't we just have to accept that this will happen from time to time with youngsters new to 1st team football.

I hope people bear this in mind when Danny Murphy makes his debut he will not become a gillard or wilson overnight it will take time for him to find his feet and we must expect the odd cock up along the way.

We don't need to panic, my expectations have grown slightly since my original prediction of 8th at the start of the season and the play-offs are a realistic possibility but for anyone still thinking that we can run away with this division perhaps there are whiff's of ground coffee beans in the air this morning.