QPR 1-4 Middlesbrough
It seems a long time ago now that Charlie, Freddie and I embarked on a road trip to Britain’s North East to see QPR play first Hull then Middlesbrough. We won both of those games, but the victory over Borough was particularly sweet as we went down to 10 men. (You can watch Charlie and me talking about that Middlesbrough game here.) That was in August 2021 at the start of a season in which we finished 11th, which turned out to be our best finish in the nine consecutive seasons we’ve spent so far in the Championship. Since then we’ve got progressively worse, finishing lower each time, and yesterday’s 1-4 loss to Middlesbrough feels like the nadir. Shipping four goals at home, just when it looked as if the manager had sorted out our defensive problems, was a humiliation the team and the fans didn’t need. Last night’s defeat means we haven’t won any of our first eight home games this season – a new record for the club. The last time we won a league game at home was on April 27th, over six months ago. We’re second from bottom and four points from safety. Relegation is looking increasingly likely.
Martí Cifuentes had a problem going into this game – the unavailability of Kenneth Paal and Jake Clarke-Salter. Actually, he had more problems than that, with Karamoko Dembélé and Michy Frey also being unavailable, but the lack of defenders who can play on the left is probably his biggest. Against Sunderland, he played Harrison Ashby out of position at left back and Sam Field out of position at left centre back, but Ashby went off injured just before half time, to be replaced by Hevertton Santos, who seems out of his depth at this level. Cifuentes must think Santos, for all his shortcomings, is still preferable to Morgan Fox, who was at fault for both of Portsmouth’s goals two weeks ago. So he started Santos at left back last night, which turned out to be a mistake – although who’s to say Fox would have done better?
The only other change to Saturday’s starting line-up was playing Koki Saito instead of Paul Smyth on the right wing. That meant we lined up in a 4-3-3 formation as follows: Paul Nardi in goal; Santos, Field, Steve Cook and Jimmy Dunne in the back line; Kieran Morgan, Jonathan Varane and Nicolas Madsen in defensive midfield; and Ilias Chair, Van Celar and Saito in attacking midfield.
If we hoped to build on our last three performances – which were pretty decent by this season’s standards, particularly last Saturday’s – we were in for a rude awakening.
The first calamity was that Chair went down clutching his knee in the 28th minute, after losing the ball and trying to win back possession. He seemed to be in real pain, flopping about like one of those cellophane goldfish you get in Christmas crackers. After receiving medical attention on the pitch, he limped over to the dug out then came back on, but didn’t look himself, giving the ball away with his first and second touches. It was as if we were down to 10 men and it wasn’t long before the visitor’s capitalised.
The assist was provided by Ben Doak, who’d been giving Santos a torrid time on the left all night. Again and again, he beat the Brazilian and in the 31st minute he skipped past him to the byline, cut it back for Riley McGree, who then right footed it into the top left hand corner.
That was dispiriting enough. Given that we’d only scored once in the last three games, what hope was there of levelling the score? But four minutes later, Borough got a second. This time, the player providing the assist was Finn Azaz and the defender at fault was Sam Field, who slid in to block his cross, but arrived too late. Tommy Conway received the ball in the centre of the box and stuck it in the bottom left hand corner. Two-nil to the visitors and only 35 minutes played. It was going to be one of those nights.
To be fair to the R’s, we improved a bit after that and had a good spell in the last five minutes that on another day might have led to a goal. Kieran Morgan had a shot from outside the box in the 42nd minute that needed saving. Seny Dieng, formerly of this parish, put it out for a corner and, given how out of sorts Chair was at this point, Koki Saito took it. It fell sweetly for Madsen, who steered the ball towards the bottom right hand corner, but Deng managed to save that, too.
Out it went for another corner, Saito took it, and this time Jonathan Varane got his head on the ball and directed it towards the bottom left hand corner. But Seny was good for it again, pulling off his third spectacular save in the space of what felt like a minute. There’s a lesson here: let Koki Saito take the corners from now on.
So, we went in at half time having failed to pull one back, but at least ending the half on a positive note.
Predictably, Cifuentes gave Santos and Chair the hook, replacing them with Lucas Andersen and Paul Smyth respectively. That meant Saito dropping into the left back position, with Smyth taking over right wing duties, and Andersen replacing Chair on the left. I don’t recall ever watching a QPR team in which so many players were playing out of position and for the first 15 minutes of the second half the visitors were all over us.
But we recovered and enjoyed the best spell of the game, with a shot on target from Celar in the 59th minute and a goal from us in the 69th. It came from a well worked corner routine involving Jimmy Dunne on the near post heading the ball across the goal to Steve Cook, who got a decent shot off. But it still needed help to get it over the line and that was provided by Anfernee Kijksteel. In other words, Middlesbrough scored a total of five last night, it’s just that one of them happened to be an own goal.
Still, a goal’s a goal and I held out hope that we might get a point from this game, just as we’d done from the previous three. But the substitution of Rayan Kolli for Morgan in the 76th minute wasn’t a success, perhaps because playing yet another footballer out of position – Kolli in defensive midfield? – was the final straw. Cifuentes followed this with the same trick in the 85th minute, replacing Madsen with Alfie Lloyd, at which point the house of cards collapsed and Borough scored two minutes later.
We had no midfield to speak of at this point, with Kolli and Lloyd constantly trying to get forward, which made it easy for the visitors to counter-attack. McGree put in a good through ball which Emmanuel Latte Lath latched on to. Nardi came out too quickly, was beaten by Lath, then fell on his arse twice as he tried to get back to protect his goal. A rare error by the French keeper.
But 1-3 wasn’t enough for Borough. After Cifuentes had made another bizarre substitution, this time bringing on Elijah Dixon-Bonner for Jonathan Varane in the 91st minute, the visitors scored again. Daniel Barlaser took the honours this time, with Paul Smyth providing the assist. If that sounds like an error, it was, but it’s not a reporting error. Smyth really did pass it to the Borough player.
As we walked back to Acton in the cold November night, Charlie lamented that the position we find ourselves in after 14 games in this season is actually worse than last season – and he doesn’t just mean we’ve got fewer points. Last season, we could blame the manager for our failings, meaning there was light at the end of the tunnel. All we needed was to replace Gareth Ainsworth with someone decent and we could escape the death spiral. This season, we can give ourselves no such comfort because Martí is a pretty good manager. If he goes – and let’s face it he probably will – the chances are we’ll replace him with someone worse. If he can’t get a tune out of these players, who can?
I fear Charlie’s right. Our best hope – our only hope – is that Cifuentes starts winning some games. But even the most optimistic among us isn’t expecting that to happen next Saturday when we’re away to Leeds United. I’m not going to that game and won’t be able to watch it either. I’ll see if Charlie can do the honours, but the mood he’s in, I doubt he’ll want to. Unless we win, of course.
You can watch the ‘highlights’ on Sky here.
