Hoop Dreams - QPR FC

Don’t worry about the glass being half empty or half full anymore? It’s been drained of its last dregs now and is being used in a bloody bar-room brawl.

Too dramatic? Where most QPR fans could have been quite evenly split into eternal optimists and doom-mongers before the Bristol City match, most will now surely be predicting gloomy months ahead for the Hoops. No wins from 3 matches and a continued inability to find the net or make reinforcements to the squad add up to a team struggling to stay in contention in the Championship rather than enjoying a blissful honeymoon with new manager Jim Magilton.

At any other club, such negativity would be completely ridiculous. The Championship is a particularly gruelling league; QPR still have 43 games to play between now and next May. They’ve started with 2 tough away games, particularly Tuesday’s match at Bristol City and a home game that they were very unlucky not to win. In every game they’ve played, they’ve dominated the opposition for long periods of the game and with Adel Taarabt and Wayne Routledge in particular, they’re beginning to show an abundance of attacking talent in their squad.

But on the message boards, supporters are already discussing whether Saturday’s match against Nottingham Forest is make or break for Magilton at Loftus Road. Such questions are raised not out of discontent with the new manager but due to a fear that the axe is wielded far more liberally at QPR than at any other club. That another manager will not be given enough time to turn things around. To even talk about sacking a manager this early in the season is ludicrous and there is no indication yet that the QPR board are anything less than pleased with Magilton’s progress, but it should be remembered that Iain Dowie lasted only 12 league games at the start of last season and he had managed two wins by this stage.

What will worry supporters and Magilton as well are that many of the key problems are exactly the same as when Dowie left ten months ago and some have got worse. QPR still have an inability to get results on the road; they still struggle to score more than once in a match and they still have an unbalanced squad and a number of injury-prone stars. At least Dowie could call on Dexter Blackstock to get a reasonable goal tally and QPR’s misery on Tuesday night was compounded by the sight of him notching his second goal of the season for new club Nottingham Forest. They will feel even sicker if he profits from the ‘old-club’ syndrome and bangs one in on Saturday at which point I wouldn’t want to be sat alongside Flavio.

What went wrong against Bristol City then? To even frame it in those terms suggests a skewed vision of what QPR should achieve as Bristol City are one of the league’s better teams and to expect a guaranteed win at their ground would be foolish. But again, looking at the players QPR had to call on and seeing the lengthy spells of the game which they controlled and the chances they created, it does beg the question of how they could suffer through another goalless game and come away with nothing.

Magilton can’t really win when it comes to team selection. If he changes it too much, he is in danger of losing ground in the league while he experiments with his team. If he doesn’t mix it up, how can he ever get a true idea of who his best players are and how best to play them. The defeat against Plymouth surely merited some kind of reaction from the manager as well and he promptly made three changes.

Damion Stewart returned to the side to partner Fitz Hall, which looked like a harsh reaction to Kaspars Gorkss own goal against Plymouth but I wouldn’t read it that way. Hall has done enough since the start of the season to merit inclusion and Stewart is arguably the best defender at the club so his appearance in the starting line-up should shock no-one. What will set off alarm bells is if the manager continues to change his central partnership at the back on a game-by-game basis. He is yet to play the same two central defenders in consecutive matches and when goals are hard to come by, defensive stability is paramount so Magilton should settle on his preferred partnership soon.

Alejandro Faurlin got his first ever start for the Hoops, replacing Gavin Mahon and thereby breaking up his holding partnership with Mikele Leigertwood which I’ve been moaning about recently. The final change saw the scorer of the only goal against Plymouth, Heidar Helguson, drop to the bench in place of Patrick Agyemang. Again, wisdom dictates that it’s best to leave a successful striker in the team, but Helguson is not the answer to QPR’s scoring woes. It’s just unfortunate that Agyemang isn’t either.

This also meant that Magilton was going with an admirably positive system, though with still only one recognised striker on the pitch. Leigertwood as stand-in skipper took his usual marshalling role in front of the defence with new boy Faurlin placed slap bang into the middle of the action just ahead of him. That left what in theory should be a roving trio of Wayne Routledge, Adel Taarabt and Akos Buzsaky, with each player more than capable of swapping positions and cutting in from the wing to add to the attacking options. That left a potential weak link though with Agyemang leading the line alone. This system ultimately didn’t work against Bristol City but it could be profitable in future if a deadlier striker than Agyemang can ensure it’s success.

For all QPR’s attacking promise, it was Bristol City who fashioned the first chance of the game, demonstrating that the pace of their strike partnership of Danny Haynes and Nicky Maynard would trouble the R’s defence. On this occasion, Haynes broke through on goal on the left of the area but opted to shoot early and cleared the bar by some distance.

At the other end, QPR were able to keep possession for spells in the first half, whilst failing to fashion too many clear-cut opportunities. An intricate passing move fed in Buzsaky on the edge of the area but he drilled a shot just over the goal. Not long after, Haynes missed the best chance of the half, once again out-pacing the Hoops defence before dragging a tame shot wide of Cerny’s goal. Despite Haynes' profligacy, Bristol City were clearly the better team of the half with Faurlin in particular failing to find the pace of the game. A debut start at Ashton Gate may have asked too much of him.

The Hoops responded well at the start of the second period with Routledge, as has so often been the case this season, the main instigator of their raids on the Bristol goal. He struck a low shot directly at Dean Gerken early on before providing a trademark slide-rule cross into the box, which Adel Taarabt could only guide on to the post.

Magilton shuffled the pack with 25 minutes to go, removing Agyemang and Taarabt for Rowan Vine and Alessandro Pellicori, with the two forming a more traditional strike partnership. With the club seemingly unwilling to head into the market to provide another goalscorer, Pellicori surely deserves an extended run in the team soon just to test his goal-scoring credentials.

Yet it was Bristol who broke the deadlock with thirteen minutes to go and in emphatic fashion. Maynard picked up the ball on the edge of the area, checked inside to leave Hall sprawling on the floor and belted the ball into the roof of the net. He struggled last season, his first for the club, whilst still notching 11 goals but he has three already this time round and is already justifying his club record fee of £2.25m. It could also be taken as another glaring example of the need to spend some cash to find a decent striker but I don’t want to labour a point. QPR’s combined outlay on their 5 strikers: £1.35 million.

Deep into injury time, it was another instance of the wrong player being in the right position, Leigertwood left completely unmarked in the box, only to procrastinate for so long as to leave Gerken with a simple save at his feet.

Sometimes a solution is so glaringly simple that when it doesn’t materialise, you can’t help but question your initial judgement. QPR don’t score enough goals, therefore they need to buy a striker who can score a lot of goals regularly. What could be more obvious than that? So when the management and Board say quite the opposite, who is misreading the game here? Is it the supporters who chanted Dexter Blackstock’s name after he left the club last season? Or is it the new boss, certain that the players at his disposal are more than adequate? Perhaps the supposed sackfuls of cash aren’t there and the manager’s hands are tied. But that won’t spare him a frosty reception on Saturday if they fail to hit the net again. Should that happen and should you-know-who net for Forest, the jewellery-rattlers seated next to Flavio, Bernie and company will be in for a torrid afternoon.

HIGHS: Still creating a lot; Routledge still standing out as greatly improved from last season; that's it.

LOWS: No goals, no points; tinkering at the back which could harm the defence; a steady start to the season in danger of turning into a very poor one.

Bristol City - Gerken, Orr, McAllister (Velicka 64) (Johnson 75), McCombe, Nyatanga, Elliott, Hartley, Skuse (Fontaine 37), Clarkson, Maynard, Haynes

Subs not used - Basso (GK), Akinde, Sproule, Wilson.

Goals - Maynard (77)

Bookings - McAllister, Fontaine, Hartley

QPR - Cerny, Ramage, Stewart, Hall, Borrowdale, Leigertwood, Routledge, Buzsaky, Faurlin (Helguson 84), Taarabt (Vine 66), Agyemang (Pellicori 66)

Subs not used - Heaton, Gorkss, Connolly, Mahon

Bookings - Stewart, Buzsaky, Faurlin

Referee - Phil Gibbs

Attendance - 14,571 (917 away)