My dad reckons he could’ve been a football commentator. “I could’ve been a football commentator,” he says as Andy Sinton comments on Bright Osayi-Samuel’s unusual lack of wing play, seconds after Dad’s said the same. There were a few such moments, but I don’t think it was just Dad and Andy Sinton – pretty much everyone watching this match came to the same set of conclusions.
Today’s performance was agonisingly similar to last week’s Barnsley embarrassment. When play began, it was tempting to believe that Warburton had worked the same magic that pulled us out of numerous downward spirals earlier in the season. Chair looked especially nippy, managing to dart around Lockyer at Charlton’s corner flag, and our attempts at Warburtonball looked especially strong as the team calmly worked the ball back to Rangel, allowing him to produce a couple of defence-splitting passes that were miles ahead of his performance against Barnsley. All in all, in the first few minutes this side seemed fitter and better-prepared for post-lockdown football than last week’s (reflected in the fact that we actually managed to fill the subs bench with a bunch of Under-10s players).
Then Charlton took the lead in an all-too-familiar way, and I immediately became deeply embarrassed by the praise that I had been generously heaping onto the team. What followed was around 80 minutes of the same old story, accompanied by me becoming both too confused and too embarrassed to write anything meaningful in my match report notepad. All the while, the Charlton speaker system was pumping out a sickeningly constant ALLEZ ALLEZ ALLEZ and Nick London continued to be unable to figure out how to pronounce the name “Barbet.”
When Chair was taken off despite being properly decent, Bright’s refusal to run out wide prompted Rangel to go “stuff it, I’ll do it myself” and Shodipo’s attempts to show his pace flopped, the side’s commitment to playing out from the back began to take its toll. A lack of confidence and creativity led to moves being constructed carefully but with no urgency, and breaking down before they’d begun.
Where was Hugill among all this? I do tend to side with him, and he did his usual thing of charging at defenders like an over-excited spaniel, as well as making enough trouble to give Eze a couple of chances to blaze the ball high and wide of the goal. The issue is, when a usually creative side like QPR only manages to plant a couple of chances in front of a striker per game, he needs to be scoring them. The main takeaway here for me is that Oteh must be really rubbish in training if he’s not earned a proper chance to prove he’s any better than this. He looked fine when he came on, and no more uninspiring than Hugill. He even gave the concerns about his physicality a good showing-to, putting his entire being into the few aerial battles that he faced. For my money, give him a run in the side along with Shodipo. I’m yet to be convinced Clarke deserves the same, but I’m happy to be proven wrong.
Our opponents looked organised, adequate, and honestly a bit bored of QPR trying repeatedly and fruitlessly to bully their way through the dead centre of the defensive line – rather than, God forbid, knock it out wide. Among the general lack of formation and composure on show today, Cameron deserves a shout-out. He did a lot to prove that his age hasn’t gotten the better of him, and came across as calm, collected, and competent. The advantage of his experience was especially clear as he anchored the midfield alongside Dom Ball (who has continued to be irritable to his own detriment), Luke Amos (still baffled as to whether he’s good – I still think he might be?) and Faysal Bettache (largely anonymous despite showing some promise).
There reached a point where we had two strikers, three attacking midfielders, two attacking-minded central midfielders, and two wingbacks on – we’d thrown everything at the wall, and nothing had stuck. As the last 20 minutes of the game were left for Charlton to nibble away at the scraps of a disjointed and timid QPR side, I realised that I’d much rather be watching QPR lose 0-1 in person, thus confirming that I didn’t begin supporting this club under any illusion that I’d be witnessing good football. There’s something about the familiarity of being sat in my seat at Loftus Road with a cup of generic warm drink in one hand and a copy of AKUTRS in the other that makes me feel naively able to compel the team to make a comeback.
I just hope that, however dismal this run gets, Warburton is still given a chance over the summer. It would be all too cocky to suggest that many managers would do better than him with a squad that made it clear today why they were tipped for relegation at the season’s start. Give him a transfer window with whatever we can scrape together by selling Eze, and see what he can do with that. In the meantime, it would be quite nice to maybe see a goal during lockdown. Just one, please. Not even an Eze solo masterclass – I’ll more than settle for Barbet accidentally trundling the ball over the line due to a goalkeeping error – please?
Players of the match:
- Kelly: A few good saves in him, showed real passion and was confident to come off his line when needed.
- Cameron: Cool, calm, collected, and mopped up where others failed to.
- Shodipo, Chair, Oteh: Lumped in together because neither did quite enough alone, but showed real drive and skill when they got the chance.
Must try harder:
- Hugill: Sort of – another chronic miss, but he can’t be faulted for effort.
- Ball: Decent when he kept a lid on it, which was quite rare – temper tantrums need to stop.
- Kane: Did very little except lose possession. Being honest, I’ve never been impressed by him.
Ben Summer 