Apologies for the lateness of this match report. Been super busy. Last night I went to see QPR v Brentford at Loftus Road in the final of Premier League Cup, which is a tournament that development squads, academies and under-21 teams compete in. The Hoops youngsters managed to beat Leicester, West Brom and Burnley’s under-21s to get to the final, for which Paul Furlong, the team’s manager, deserves some credit. The club gave away tickets to the match, clearly thinking a decent home crowd would lift the team, and there were over 7,000 fans at Loftus Road, who made a decent fist of creating an atmosphere. I don’t know if it helped, but we won quite emphatically, dominating for large parts of the game, particularly in the second half.
Most of the names in the line-up were people I was only dimly aware of, if at all, with the exception of Kieran Morgan, Daniel Bennie, Emmerson Sutton and Esquerdinha, whom I’ve read good things about. Does including some players who’ve appeared more than once for the first team in your ‘development squad’ count as cheating? Presumably not.
I won’t give a blow-by-blow, just record some observations:
It was striking how good 19 year-old Kieran Morgan looked at this level, easily the best player on the pitch – and he scored a decent goal in the ninth minute. The fact that he looked significantly better than he does when playing in the first team was a useful reality check. Even though some of our players looked pretty decent, you had to factor in that they probably wouldn’t look anything like this good playing against more senior players.
With that caveat in place, I thought Harry Murphy (who scored a blinder in the 38th minute), Alfie Tuck (the Sam Field of this team), Emmerson Sutton (a pacy attacking midfielder), Jack McDowell (a left back who looks like he might be a useful replacement for Kenneth Paal), Alex Wilkie (who scored a good header in the 90th minute to seal the victory) and Esquerdinha all looked capable of playing in the first team.
The fact that our youngsters won this contest means the future’s bright and that, in turn, will make QPR more attractive to a prospective buyer. Earlier this week, the owners of the club converted the debt into shares, which could be a prelude to a sale. Something’s clearly going on and I expect big news soon.
A victory in this competition means the club is doing something right, which is encouraging when it’s obviously doing a lot wrong. This was a well-drilled side playing attractive, attacking football, which is a tribute to Paul Furlong and his staff.
We won, which was great. I joked to Freddie and Charlie that we had to stick around to see the team lift the trophy because this might be the only opportunity in their lifetimes to see QPR win silverware. I hope that was a joke.
Anyway, I’m glad I went. It was great to see the players, the manager and his staff celebrating after the final whistle. In a season in which we’ve had very little to celebrate, this was a much-needed tonic. And imagine how awful it would have been if we’d had to watch Brentford lifting the trophy at Loftus Road.
Excellent!
Hope for the future....this matters and again a great report Toby!