QPR made a dismal return after the international break, losing 3-1 to a team in the bottom four ahead of this game. Once again, Martí Cifuentes didn’t include a striker in the starting line-up – is he trying to send the owners a message? – and the attacking trio of Paul Smyth, Lucas Andersen and Karamoko Dembélé proved unable to muster more than two shots on target in the first half, neither of which troubled the keeper. Cifuentes brought on Alfie Lloyd for the second half, but he quickly demonstrated why he’d been left out of the starting line-up, failing to muster a single shot. Our only shot on target in the second half was from Min-Hyeok Yang, who scored in the 78th minute. At that point, we were three-nil down and we never looked like getting another. I think this may have been our worst performance of the season.
Martí was playing with a poor hand, with Steve Cook, Ilias Chair and Michy Frey all picking up injuries in the last few weeks and Koki Saito unavailable, having been red-carded in the last game. That meant we lined up in a 4-3-3 formation as follows: Paul Nardi in goal; Jimmy Dunne, Ronnie Edwards, Morgan Fox and Kenneth Paal in defence; Jonathan Varane, Jack Colback and Kieran Morgan in defensive midfield; and Smyth, Andersen and Dembélé in front of them.
We looked second best from the get-go, with even our more reliable players – like Jimmy Dunne – having a bad day at the office. In the first half, Dunne knocked the ball upfield at least four times, where it just rolled into the final third of the pitch to be collected by the keeper. It was as if he’d momentarily forgotten there was no one up front to run on to it. Morgan, too, kept giving the ball away and Andersen was so lackadaisical he might as well have been phoning it in from the beach. Cifuentes replaced him with Nicolas Madsen at half time and, if anything, he was even worse. Their third goal came from an unforced error by the hopeless Dane, although Nardi also made a mistake, rushing to intercept the onrushing Million Manhoef, who went round him easily.
They looked much more threatening than us in the first half, finding loads of space in the left and right-hand channels, and it was no surprise when they scored in the 21st minute, having hit the post in the 19th. They almost scored a second three minutes later and did score a second in the 44th minute. You just knew we weren’t coming back from that, with an xG of 0.19 in the first half and 0.32 in the second. Our first corner in the game wasn’t until the 57th minute.
Cifuentes made three substitutions at half time, bringing on Yang as well as Lloyd and Madsen, with Andersen, Dembélé and Morgan getting the hook. At least we now had a target man, but Lloyd wasn’t able to do anything with the ball whenever he received it, just getting his feet tangled up and, more often than not, tripping over before he could get a shot off. The only vaguely threatening QPR player was Yang, who ran at the Stoke defenders, put in a couple of decent crosses and actually scored, guiding the ball past the keeper with a well-placed daisy cutter.
That was met with a chant of “We scored a goal” from the fed up away fans. The closest we came to scoring before that was when Colback caught the Potters’ keeper off his line and tried to score from the halfway line, with the ball landing on the roof of the net. That led to a chant of “We had a shot”.
Martí made two more substitutions, bringing on Harrison Ashby for Paal in the 69th minute and Liam Morrison for Varane in the 74th. Neither made much difference, although, to be fair, the home side didn’t score another goal after their third in the 54th minute.
This was a truly terrible display from the R’s, as if the players just couldn’t be arsed. Stoke needed the points more than us and it showed, although we’ve only got 45 and 50 wasn’t enough to secure safety last season. Last season, we finished with 56 and if we continue playing like this in the remaining seven games we’ll end up with a lower total. Who would have thought that Martí would muster even fewer points in his first full season in charge than in the previous one, which he had the misfortune to share with Gareth Ainsworth.
Next up is Cardiff at home, which we need to win if we’re going to avoid a relegation dog fight. We’re only seven points above the drop zone. The Bluebirds are currently fourth from bottom, just as Stoke were at the beginning of this game, so no doubt we’ll make heavy weather of it.
You can watch the highlights on Sky here.
