QPR 2011-12: upset and upsets

Here, finally, is the much-delayed this is my england look back at QPR's first Premier League campaign for what felt like a zillion years. No insightful match analyses. No in-the-know stuff. Just the usual personal ramble, more impressionistic than accurate. If that's not your cup of tea, do not read on. If it is, here goes... 

That our club had a funny old season is beyond dispute. Our first campaign back in the top flight after a long, long absence was fraught with upset and marked by upsets...

Just another shit ref

Upset? Plenty of that. Consider the performances we saw from some teams of match officials. We saw serial controversialist Joey Barton sent off for a phantom head-butt, the officials conned by Norwich City’s sneaky cheat, Bradley Johnson. We saw a vital match up at Bolton spoiled by the linesman failing to spot that Clint Hill had stabbed the ball some distance over the goal line. Had the Rangers not eventually avoided the drop, that incident would surely have been one to moan about for years to come. As it was, Bolton’s handy failure to register more points in their last couple of games felt like poetic justice to QPR fans (if not to Patrick Barclay).

Another memorable outrage came at Old Trafford, where another cheat tumbled to the ground when only breathed upon, winning a penalty and getting the tough-but-honest Shaun Derry sent off. That the cheating Ashley Young was offside when the supposed offence happened - well, that just compounded the sense of frustration for all Rangers followers watching the match. Sure, this was not a game that the visitors would have expected to win, but the terrible mistake on the part of the ref ruined it as a contest very early in the first half. Any QPR fans who had travelled up to Manchester must have felt particularly aggrieved, having paid through the nose only to be robbed of a meaningful spectacle. That the club's attempt to have Derry's red card overturned was dismissed out of hand by also caused some of us to suspect that incidents involving current members of the England team are treated differently by the FA than is the case with other contestable dismissals.

Enough with the queasy provincial love-in

Also unsettling for some of us was the protracted media wankfest around the two other clubs promoted into the Premier League at the end of our successful 2010-11 campaign.

The slow, tedious wannabe tika-taka of the division’s Welsh interlopers was applauded by many commentators. This, we were told, was how the game is meant to be played. Well, those of us who schlepped our Christmas hangovers up to the architecturally sterile and curiously small (why build a brand new ground with a capacity of only 20,000?) Liberty Stadium would beg to differ. Swansea seemed a dull side. What’s so interesting about watching the ball move around between the goalie, the fullbacks, the centre halves and a holding midfielder?  Over and over and over again? Until all of the oxygen is sucked out of the occasion?

Norwich, meanwhile, did offer better entertainment value, scoring more freely and not needing to rely on boring their opponents into submission. So it is harder to complain with proper justification that media interest in the Norfolk side was over-the-top. But it still rankled. It was still irritating to hear the Canaries widely praised as a good example of a promoted club making a real go of its first season back in the top division. Because those sort of plaudits were simply not directed at the Rangers for much of the season. Which is fair enough, really. Because QPR did make heavy weather of finding decent form.

Shopping on the cheap, followed by a mad splurge

That QPR failed to perform as well as the other two promoted teams is due in no small part to the inauspicious circumstances the club was facing at the beginning of the season. Though we have ended up with a hugely popular and ambitious chairman who now seems set to lead the Rangers into exciting new territory, the timing of his takeover was not conducive to a well-ordered 2011-12 campaign. The poisonous troika of Briatore, Ecclestone and Paladini did not relinquish control until the season was already underway. Clearly intent on selling the club, they were not minded to give then-manager Neil Warnock a sizeable transfer kitty. His spending constrained, then, Warnock shopped around for a ragtag collection of bargains. Then when the Fernandes takeover was finally concluded, the manager was left with a very short time in which to go on a quick spree of panic buying. While some of the players acquired both before and after the change of ownership went on to make decent contributions, it seems very doubtful that Warnock would have picked up precisely the same collection of new additions if he’d had time to plan his purchases more carefully.  So while some supporters will find fault with the Yorkshireman’s tactics and team selections and whatnot, we can only speculate about whether he would have found better form and lasted the season at QPR had it not been for the unhelpful conditions with which he had to operate when putting his side together last summer. It remains the case, after all, that QPR occupied seventeenth place in the Premier League table the day Warnock was dismissed and were still in seventeenth place when the season drew to a close.

But it’s probably overly simplistic to suggest that Warnock’s replacement has not been an improvement. Mark Hughes may never be a warm, charismatic character when interviewed. He may always come across as a tad straight-laced, even humourless. But as a former Manchester United player and as someone previously trusted with a job as significant as managing Manchester City, he seems to be better connected around the game’s upper echelons than was the case with Neil Warnock. Over time, it is likely that this will continue to work in the club’s favour, raising its profile and making it a more attractive destination for higher calibre new players.

Explosions of joy

So we have had a quick look back at the upset and heartache – the terrible refereeing; the unpleasant feeling of being seen as second best to Swansea and Norwich; the chaotic start to the season. A turbulent and sometimes traumatic season, then – and this time we’ve not even dug over the bones of Joey Barton’s idiotic season finale and its consequences, a matter given fairly thorough treatment in an earlier article. For the sake of brevity, we’ve also elected not to dissect the numerous individual disappointing matches that the Rangers should have won – the draws at home to the division’s less accomplished sides. Anyway, given that the season ended on a high note and given that we are looking forward hopefully to an easier second term of this latest stint in the top flight, it seems more fitting to move on from the upset and celebrate a few of the upsets – the games in which our lads took all three points against the odds.

The first of these came in October. Registering their first league win of the season, the R’s managed to find themselves on the back foot for much of a tense fixture with that horrible lot from down the road in SW6. On the back foot and struggling to win back the ball against just nine men for much of the time. But who cares? Because all that huffing and puffing came after the only goal of the game, a tenth minute penalty from dear old Heidar Helguson. Not only because of Chelsea’s two red cards, this was a famously fiery affair, still smouldering all these months later and still emitting a horrible stink – the stench of bile and bad feeling arising from the allegation that Pensioners’ skipper (and all round piece of shit) John Terry racially abused Rangers defender Anton Ferdinand during the match. Terry gets his day in court tomorrow. We wait with interest. We wonder what sanctions the Chelsea man will face from his club and from the FA should he be found guilty of the racially aggravated public order offence of which he is charged. We look back at the further abuse Ferdinand has faced from Chelsea supporters. Abuse for simply being a witness in the case, the Rangers centre-half not having been the one to report the incident to the police.

Oh, to have been at Loftus Road the day a much needed three points was grabbed from the Pensioners! But no such joy for this correspondent. Word of the humdinger at the Bush reached my ears via mobile phone, prompting a little jig of joy at the baggage carousel of Abu Dhabi airport. What a fixture to have to miss! But never mind. A few more memorable upsets came along, never to be forgotten.

Of these, one of the finest was the recovery from a two-goal deficit to beat the visiting Liverpool. We do remain indebted to the arrogant presumption of Kenny Dalglish. Thinking he had victory in the bag, the cranky Scotsman replaced the unplayable Luis Suarez with the lumbering, ineffective Andy Carroll, instantly nullifying Liverpool’s attacking threat. The Rangers prospered and it was such sweet joy to celebrate that late winner in close proximity to the stunned Scousers (and Surrey boys) in the School End. The bruises to the shins? Worth it. The hoarseness lasting several days? Worth it. The sense of walking around for the rest of the week on a massive adrenaline come-down? Worth it. Another great Loftus Road memory. As is the home fixture against Spurs. What fun to have been part of that magnificently hostile home crowd.

Onwards and upwards

It wasn’t a perfect season by any means. It started with players of doubtful value joining the club. A year on and we still haven’t seen much to suggest that Shaun Wright-Phillips was an astute signing. We haven’t seen a lot of end product from forwards Bothroyd and Campbell. We barely saw Kieron Dyer at all. We also ended up relying on the poor form of rivals, praying for bad results for both Blackburn and Bolton in the latter stages of the season. But we survived it, and so did QPR. This summer feels very different from the last one. Tony Fernandes continues to inspire confidence with his relentless positivity. Mark Hughes has time to make sensible changes to the squad, and while we won’t all agree on the value of every new signing, some of the new additions do look very encouraging. Rob Green should be an upgrade between the sticks. Park Ji-Sung will offer boundless energy in midfield.

Can it really be the case that we will start the 2012-13 season with relatively few worries? Let’s see. It’s hard to believe. Plain sailing at QPR? It doesn’t happen, right? Either way, this off-season feels long and dull.  Not because of a lack of excitement about what's going on at the Rangers. On the contrary, developments at the club are just causing some of us to wish away the next few weeks, such is the keenness to get back to following the Rangers. In the meantime, we’re not even getting any decent summer weather to offset the lack of football. Roll on August 18th. Bring on the Swansea. Come on you R’s.