What goes up, must come down. Queens Park Rangers were beaten by Sheffield Wednesday this afternoon, squandering a golden opportunity to pick up three points against a struggling team. A 49-point total would probably have been enough for survival, but now we’re just four points from the drop zone. Indeed, apart from Rotherham, who’ve been relegated, only four points separate the next eight teams from the bottom. Not great considering our last four games of the season are against Hull, Preston, Coventry and Leeds. If we don’t do any better than this against Plymouth on Tuesday, it will be squeaky bum time.
But first the good bit. Before the match, my entire family, minus my 18 year-old son, but including his girlfriend Yasmin, went on a 10-mile walk to raise money for the Tiger Cubs, QPR’s Down syndrome team. We started at the training ground in Heston at 8.15am and walked to Loftus Road, arriving in Hammersmith Park about 45 minutes before kick-off (in time for a dance recital by the Tiger Cubs themselves). My son Charlie and I have been doing this for several years, but this was only the second time my wife Caroline has come and the first time two of my older children have joined us. I got to chat with various members of the QPR family, including Lee Hoos, Andy Sinton, Andy Evans, Paul Finney and superfan Colin Clarke (who you can see on the far right in the photo above). It’s a great cause that’s well worth donating to.
Martí Cifuentes made five changes to the team he fielded against Swansea last Monday, with Kenneth Paal playing in place of Morgan Fox, Isaac Hayden instead of Jack Colback, Lucas Andersen in preference to Joe Hodge, Chris Willock rather than Paul Smyth and Sinclair Armstrong the alternative to Michy Frey. That meant we lined up in a 4-2-3-1 formation as follows: Asmir Begovic in goal; Jimmy Dunne, Steve Cook, Jake Clarke-Salter and Paal in the back-line; Sam Field and Hayden in front of them; Andersen, Willock and Ilias Chair as the attacking trio; and Armstrong up front.
From the off, it looked as if the Owls wanted it just that little bit more than us, dominating the first five minutes. We recovered quickly, but our first proper attempt on goal didn’t come until the 18th minute, with Willock trying to bend one in from 20 yards. Their best chance of the half came in the 24th minute, when Josh Windass was gifted a free header right in front of our goal. How he failed to score, I don’t know.
We put a surprising number of long balls forward, with Armstrong the target man, and the big centre forward got in behind more than once in the first half. But he typically took too many touches, seemingly unable to make up his mind between taking a shot or cutting it back for Andersen, Willock or Chair, and didn’t trouble the visitors’ keeper.
There wasn’t much between the teams in the first 45 minutes, but we were quite lucky to keep the score at 0-0. According to FotMob, we only had 32% possession and our xG was 0.22 to their 0.82. We had eight shots to their four, but both teams only managed one on target.
The second half looked set to continue in much the same vein, with the visitors no better at finishing than the R’s, but the footballing gods weren’t smiling on us today. Their opener came in the 57th minute and followed a goalmouth melee. Hayden, who wasn’t at his best, attempted to clear the ball with a big boot up the field, but it smacked straight into Djeidi Gassama and rebounded into the back of our net. Gassama celebrated in front of the Lower Loft as if he’d scored a worldy, but from where I was sitting it didn’t look like he knew much about it. That stroke of luck for the Owls changed the game.
At Swansea, Cifuentes was able to refresh the starting line-up with some of our stronger players, bringing on Armstrong, Andersen and Hayden in the second half. But with all three of them on the pitch and Frey nursing an injury, the manager didn’t have much firepower in reserve. His solution was to make two attacking substitutions, replacing Hayden with Dykes and Clarke-Salter with Smyth in the 69th minute, but neither made much of an impact. Our xG was a bit better in the second half – 0.78 to their 0.92 – but none of our eight shots were on target, whereas three of their four were. The closest we came to scoring was a shot from Andersen in the 66th minute that hit the underside of the bar.
The fourth official added six minutes – it should have been more, given the visitors’ time-wasting – and the repercussions of not even getting a point from this game began to sink in, with the hosts pressing for an equaliser. But in the 96th minute we left ourselves dangerously open at the back and a swift counter from the Owls saw them rack up a second, this time Anthony Musaba the goalscorer. That was an ignominious end to a poor performance, given that prior to this game we’d only conceded one goal in the previous three. The visiting fans – who’d been in good voice throughout – were absolutely delighted and started singing about ‘staying oop’.
One thing Andy Sinton said to me on the Tiger Walk is that we don’t want to be going into the last game of the season – Leeds at home – needing a point to stay up. Given that the three games preceding that are against teams that are currently 7th, 9th and 10th, we really need to take three points from the next game to avoid that fate. To paraphrase Godfather 3, just when you thought we were out, they pull you back in.
You can watch the highlights on Sky Sports here.