QPR 1-1 Coventry
QPR put an end to their four-game losing streak yesterday, coming back from a 0-1 deficit against Coventry City at Loftus Road to secure a point. It wasn’t a great performance and drawing against fellow strugglers is nothing to shout about. But at least we showed some fighting spirit and our goalscorer was 18 year-old Kieran Morgan, making only his second senior appearance for the club. Maybe we should make him our second-choice striker, given how ineffectual Van Celar has been all season. Unfortunately, this may have been our last chance to put any points on the board before the next international break, with our next four games being against Burnley, Sunderland, Middlesbrough and Leeds. Three of those teams currently occupy the top three spots in the table.
Martí Cifuentes made four changes to the starting line-up, replacing Morgan Fox with Jake Clarke-Salter, Nicolas Madsen with Jonathan Varane, Harrison Ashby with Paul Smyth and Michy Frey with Celar. That meant we lined up in a 4-2-3-1 formation as follows: Paul Nardi in goal; Jimmy Dunne, Steve Cook, Clarke-Salter and Kenneth Paal in the back line; Sam Field and Varane in defensive midfield; Ilias Chair, Karamoke Dembélé and Paul Smyth in attacking midfield; and Celar up front.
I was relieved to see Marti had abandoned his experiment of playing with five at the back and reconciled himself to starting with Jimmy Dunne at right back. It was also good to see Dembélé restored to the CAM role, with Chair and Smyth on either side. Varane, too, could hardly be any worse than Madsen. And Clarke-Salter was back. My only quibble with this starting 11 was the absence of Frey, who wasn’t even on the bench. Did he pick up an injury in the game against Portsmouth? Maybe that’s why he was slapping the ground in frustration at the final whistle.
But my optimism proved to be misplaced, with the visitors scoring in the fourth minute. The move started with a strike from Chair, which the keeper palmed away, triggering a counter-attack from the Sky Blues. Nardi saved their first attempt, but we failed to clear our lines and Haji Wright left-footed it from the centre of the box, beating not just Nardi but also Cook, who was standing on the goal line. What a miserable start to a must-win six-pointer.
Shortly after that, Paal came off, having picked up an injury, and was replaced by Koki Saito. At this point we shifted to three at the back and four attacking midfielders, a formation that actually worked pretty well, enabling us to dominate for long periods in the first half. True, we didn’t come that close to scoring, with our best chance arriving in the 16th minute when Saito picked up a long ball on the left, took it to the byline, beat his man, then cut it back for Field. But he couldn’t hit the target. All told, we had 10 shots in the first 45 minutes, three of them on target. We didn’t piss about too much trying to play it out from the back and we passed it around less in our own half. Positive signs, although we were still a goal down when the whistle blew for half time.
We didn’t start the second half very well, with the opponents almost scoring form a corner in the 51st minute, and Cifuentes switched things up shortly after that, replacing Chair with Lucas Andersen and Dembélé with Morgan. My initial thought was: “Who’s going to score now with our two best attacking players off the pitch?” But five minutes later Morgan got the equaliser.
The move started with Smyth collecting the ball on the right-hand side. He put in a decent cross, which Morgan got his foot over, hammering the ball down into the turf so it bounced high over the goalkeeper’s head. Charlie, who was watching the game on Sky on his phone at another football match, thought the keeper should have done better, but from where I was sitting in the Lower Loft it looked like a pretty good strike. (You can watch it on X here.) I thought Morgan was the one bright spot in an otherwise dismal afternoon on Saturday and he impressed again last night in a more forward role.
With half-an-hour left to play and the momentum with us, I thought we might go on to win the game, but their defence proved too difficult to break down. The closest we came was in the 79th minute, when one of the Coventry players was guilty of a handball in our area. But the ref didn’t see it, so our players’ demands for a penalty fell on deaf ears.
In the 80th minute, Ashby came on for Smyth and Alfie Lloyd for Celar, but even though Lloyd was better than the Slovenian, he couldn’t make anything happen. We had a big let off in the 88th minute when Ellis Sims, who was in on goal, failed to spot a team mate in acres of space to his right. Our final chance came in the 95th minute, when Saito put it in the air in front of goal and Andersen got his head on it. His attempt was on target, but the keeper managed to save it without too much difficulty.
The players didn’t look nearly as disheartened at the final whistle as they had done on Saturday, and this time they stuck around to applaud the fans instead of scurrying off down the tunnel. I imagine they were relieved not to have lost after four defeats on the spin. We’ve got third-placed Burnley on Saturday and Charlie and I are going to meet up with Ludo, my eldest son who’s just started at Manchester, and head over to Turf Moor together. Charlie is strangely optimistic, saying we play better against teams in the top half away from home than we do against teams in the bottom half at Loftus Road. There may be something in that. (Paging Jack Supple.) At least we’re no longer at the bottom of the table – we’re second-from-bottom.
You can watch the highlights on Sky here.
