Match Thread: Queens Park Rangers FC v Luton Town

[Rbee]

Not least with Sir Les's inability to recognise a decent striker.

[UxbridgeR]

A lot of people on here defend LF but I think he's been poor. A string of idiotic decisions which he helped influence early in his tenure has cost us dear. Hoos has done a little better because he has to handle the money which we all know was not helped by the pseudo FFP.

I think Ferdinand and Hoos did a very good job of steadying the ship financially after relegation, while keeping us competitive and away from danger in the Championship. That was no small thing, and they deserve a lot of credit for it, and for the financial management of the club since then. You only have to look at how many bigger clubs than ours are struggling in this league or the one below to know that it’s not a straightforward task. However, we’re seven years on now. They can’t live off that forever. We have the nucleus of a good team, but we seem absolutely clueless about finding decent strikers for this level, and that’s a huge problem. I don’t know who currently makes those decisions, and it seems obvious and maybe lazy to assume it’s LF, but whoever it is, they need replacing sharpish.

[Systemsguy]

Embarrassing.... fans have no belief especially when I swear it felt like Chair was booed off when being replaced....

Surprisingly looking forward to Utd on Monday as I have no expectations of us getting a result and maybe Critchley will have a better idea of setting the team up now after the rubbish we watched today

[SuperHoopsa]

Embarrassing.... fans have no belief especially when I swear it felt like Chair was booed off when being replaced....

Surprisingly looking forward to Utd on Monday as I have no expectations of us getting a result and maybe Critchley will have a better idea of setting the team up now after the rubbish we watched today

I noticed that booing too, I can only assume and hope that I am right in thinking they were booing the decision to take him off, not his effort. He was one of the better players last night. When Willock was warming up I was hoping he would come on for someone else and we'd have them both on the pitch.

Maybe NC is still trying to work out which plyers work well together, have to give him the benefit of the doubt for now, he's not been here 5 minutes.

[QPR_John]

A genuinely humiliating evening from my perspective, I try not to get too het up about individual results, and I can accept being thumped by Burnley and beaten by the likes of WBA,.clubs who've been in the Premier League recently and for significsnt periods. But Luton ? Yes, they're a good team, but one working with (significantly ?) fewer resources than we are, so to be so comprehensively beaten at home by them properly sticks in the craw. Somebody really needs to accept responsibility for the fact that the new manager has only Dykes to choose from as a genuine striking option, while they have Morris, Woodrow and Cornick, all of whom surely cost less together than Bonne, let alone Dykes.
We're a team that is almost entirely reliant on a handful of players performing, and when they're not, we look very ordinary indeed, to say the least.

NC has been here for five minutes, so clearly bears no responsibility for where we are at this point, but it does feel as if Ferdinand and / or Hoos ought to be questioning themselves at this point. Thoroughly hacked off tonight.

I agree with all you say. Was going to post last night but thought better off it. After 60 years of supporting this club it’s the first time I have left the ground wondering if I should give up. Of course I will not but at the time it seemed a good idea. Still wondering whether to bother Monday. We are painfully slow both physically and in thought. How many times does it happen where the opposition have oceans of space with the ball but we seem to get surrounded when we have it with no let out other than to go sideways or back. 35 points 15 away from the magic 50 can anybody see where we get them after last nights performance.

[ZENITH R]

A genuinely humiliating evening from my perspective, I try not to get too het up about individual results, and I can accept being thumped by Burnley and beaten by the likes of WBA,.clubs who've been in the Premier League recently and for significsnt periods. But Luton ? Yes, they're a good team, but one working with (significantly ?) fewer resources than we are, so to be so comprehensively beaten at home by them properly sticks in the craw. Somebody really needs to accept responsibility for the fact that the new manager has only Dykes to choose from as a genuine striking option, while they have Morris, Woodrow and Cornick, all of whom surely cost less together than Bonne, let alone Dykes.
We're a team that is almost entirely reliant on a handful of players performing, and when they're not, we look very ordinary indeed, to say the least.

NC has been here for five minutes, so clearly bears no responsibility for where we are at this point, but it does feel as if Ferdinand and / or Hoos ought to be questioning themselves at this point. Thoroughly hacked off tonight.

I agree with all you say. Was going to post last night but thought better off it. After 60 years of supporting this club it’s the first time I have left the ground wondering if I should give up. Of course I will not but at the time it seemed a good idea. Still wondering whether to bother Monday. We are painfully slow both physically and in thought. How many times does it happen where the opposition have oceans of space with the ball but we seem to get surrounded when we have it with no let out other than to go sideways or back. 35 points 15 away from the magic 50 can anybody see where we get them after last nights performance.

Hopefully, NC is having an in depth analysis and discussion this morning which might see us going in a different direction.

Playing the ball across the back four, or to our goalkeeper is fine if we are 2 or 3 nil up and there are literally a couple of minutes to go. Doing it when you are losing the game is both pointless and counter productive. It may be the fancy dan way that the elite teams play, but we are not at that level.

Any news on when Johansen, Balogun or Clarke-Salter might be fit? The first two have been out since before the World Cup - Johansen since we played Norwich two months ago.

Our two best players are Chair and Willock. Together they have given us some magical moments over the past few seasons. They actually play well together too. So, I'm a little disappointed we haven't seen them on the pitch at the same time since NC took over.

One other observation. NC in my view is leaving his substitutions too late. A player coming on after 75 minutes will struggle to get up to speed and influence the game. Also, the substitutions have all been like for like, so no change or evidence of a plan B. This is very worrying.

[Wegerle]

I agree about the striker situation but at the same time we need a reality check. Even in the Championship we are one of the smaller clubs. We've won 1 cup worth mentioning in 140 years and our fan base is smaller than quite a few League One clubs.
A 20 goal a season striker has at least 30 or 40 more interesting options than QPR. And that's in England alone.
Once in a while we'll get lucky and uncover a gem or someone completely dedicated to the club and/or the area but we will always be way down the pecking order and have difficulty finding and keeping good players.
Unless of course, big, big, money comes our way.

[ZENITH R]

I agree about the striker situation but at the same time we need a reality check. Even in the Championship we are one of the smaller clubs. We've won 1 cup worth mentioning in 140 years and our fan base is smaller than quite a few League One clubs.
A 20 goal a season striker has at least 30 or 40 more interesting options than QPR. And that's in England alone.
Once in a while we'll get lucky and uncover a gem or someone completely dedicated to the club and/or the area but we will always be way down the pecking order and have difficulty finding and keeping good players.
Unless of course, big, big, money comes our way.

We also need to consider the FFP fine. We are paying just shy of £2,000,000 a year for 10 years. We will hit the half way mark next summer. That is a huge hole, and will be seriously restricting our recruitment strategy.

[Wegerle]

I agree about the striker situation but at the same time we need a reality check. Even in the Championship we are one of the smaller clubs. We've won 1 cup worth mentioning in 140 years and our fan base is smaller than quite a few League One clubs.
A 20 goal a season striker has at least 30 or 40 more interesting options than QPR. And that's in England alone.
Once in a while we'll get lucky and uncover a gem or someone completely dedicated to the club and/or the area but we will always be way down the pecking order and have difficulty finding and keeping good players.
Unless of course, big, big, money comes our way.

We also need to consider the FFP fine. We are paying just shy of £2,000,000 a year for 10 years. We will hit the half way mark next summer. That is a huge hole, and will be seriously restricting our recruitment strategy.

Very true as well.

[UxbridgeR]

I agree about the striker situation but at the same time we need a reality check. Even in the Championship we are one of the smaller clubs. We've won 1 cup worth mentioning in 140 years and our fan base is smaller than quite a few League One clubs.
A 20 goal a season striker has at least 30 or 40 more interesting options than QPR. And that's in England alone.
Once in a while we'll get lucky and uncover a gem or someone completely dedicated to the club and/or the area but we will always be way down the pecking order and have difficulty finding and keeping good players.
Unless of course, big, big, money comes our way.

I don't think most fans expect us to sign a 20 goal a season striker for millions of pounds, but we need to be smarter in our recruitment. The top four goalscorers in the Championship this season are Chuba Akpom, Viktor Gyokeres, Carlton Morris and Zian Flemming. None of them were big money buys, and three of them play for clubs that are smaller than or a similar size to ourselves. It's not just about the money.

[Wegerle]

Of course recruitment is very important, certainly for clubs like us. I find it difficult to assess if we are lacking in that department or if players just choose other clubs with higher wages, higher signing fees and a more prolific club stature.
Clubs like Luton will, just like us, strike lucky once in a while when it comes to unveiling good strikers but I don't think we are in a position at the moment to expect to have and keep the most wanted asset in football every season: a top striker.
Another question would be why nothing has come through our youth ranks lately?

[Andy_N19]

The recruitment approach from the club is worrying, again I have to mention Bonne and Dykes who were brought
at the same time, need I say that neither are a resounding success. The lack of pace is something already mentioned on here,
but I've noticed it for the past 4 seasons and we continue to get in players who cannot go past their markers with any quick
movement, some are competent players (Field, Johannsen) some not (Amos, Dozzell, Dykes, Bonne, etc).

I've pondered often who heads up the scouting, coz it aint working and Ferdinand in particular must be under pressure I would have
thought.

Again where is Armstrong?

[bigbobb]

Firstly, as one who was there, believe me the booing when Chair was taken off was for that very reason - he may not have been having much success but at least he was trying things and we were all certain that Roberts would be taken off to allow Willock on to play alongside Chair.

Willock was ready to come on earlier and then told to sit down again - the logic was beyond me - and Roberts, who was extremely poor all evening, was allowed to stay and carry on with his efforts achieving nothing other than causing attacks to breakdown as he lost possession time after time.

Is Roberts really seen as a Premiership player because anyone analysing his performance for us last night would be hard pressed to find any evidence to back that up? Before this game I was assuming it was just that he had been carrying injuries and needed time to get up to speed but the total lack of quality in his play leads me to conclude that is not the case and he needs a total reboot to find whatever it was that he presuambly had at some point in the past.

Tactically we got it vey wrong last night. Luton were working hard and aggressively keeping to a structure based around playing in lines across the pitch so what did we do? We played slowly across the pitch instead of trying to play quickly forward to break down their lines.

I should also mention the disgrace of a referee - Gavin Ward was also "in charge" when we played Huddersfield and again had no idea how to control players or their time wasting efforts. I had really hoped that after the World Cup, where big efforts were made to add time on to games to at least get somewhere close to 90 minutes of play, that we would see at least some efforts made in our league.

As usual for Sky games there was only 1 minute extra in the first half (co-incidence this is always the case on Sky - I think not) but in the second half there were 7 substitutions made and I thought the guidance was 30 seconds would be added for each sub so with blatant time wasting, goal celebrations etc did he only mange to find 4 minutes extra?

Don't get me wrong we could have played another 90 minutes and still not scored but time keeping really needs to be taken away from referees.

End of year rant over - Happy New Year to all R's fans

[QPR_John]

Firstly, as one who was there, believe me the booing when Chair was taken off was for that very reason - he may not have been having much success but at least he was trying things and we were all certain that Roberts would be taken off to allow Willock on to play alongside Chair.

Willock was ready to come on earlier and then told to sit down again - the logic was beyond me - and Roberts, who was extremely poor all evening, was allowed to stay and carry on with his efforts achieving nothing other than causing attacks to breakdown as he lost possession time after time.

Is Roberts really seen as a Premiership player because anyone analysing his performance for us last night would be hard pressed to find any evidence to back that up? Before this game I was assuming it was just that he had been carrying injuries and needed time to get up to speed but the total lack of quality in his play leads me to conclude that is not the case and he needs a total reboot to find whatever it was that he presuambly had at some point in the past.

Tactically we got it vey wrong last night. Luton were working hard and aggressively keeping to a structure based around playing in lines across the pitch so what did we do? We played slowly across the pitch instead of trying to play quickly forward to break down their lines.

I should also mention the disgrace of a referee - Gavin Ward was also "in charge" when we played Huddersfield and again had no idea how to control players or their time wasting efforts. I had really hoped that after the World Cup, where big efforts were made to add time on to games to at least get somewhere close to 90 minutes of play, that we would see at least some efforts made in our league.

As usual for Sky games there was only 1 minute extra in the first half (co-incidence this is always the case on Sky - I think not) but in the second half there were 7 substitutions made and I thought the guidance was 30 seconds would be added for each sub so with blatant time wasting, goal celebrations etc did he only mange to find 4 minutes extra?

Don't get me wrong we could have played another 90 minutes and still not scored but time keeping really needs to be taken away from referees.

End of year rant over - Happy New Year to all R's fans

Agree 100% about Ward time keeping was non existent. The delay after the first goal was well over 1 minute and not difficult to allow for. It’s not unreasonable to expect officials to grasp one the fundamentals of the game. As you say the connection with Sky is interesting maybe that is all that is allowed when games are televised. Of course that did not affect the game but added to the frustration