Hoop Dreams - QPR FC

How quickly things can change in football. A month ago, QPR lost to bottom-side Peterborough, just a week after supporters demonstrated outside Loftus Road to voice their displeasure with the way the club was heading. In the four weeks since, Rangers have acquired a new chairman, a new manager and a new outlook on life. If you can beat the second-placed team in the league, surely you can beat most others.

The logic of Championship football is probably not so straight-forward and the Hoops face a very different challenge tonight when they welcome Plymouth Argyle, a side clinging on for dear life to stay in this league. The Pilgrims are seven points off safety and need to accrue some points quickly before they are consigned, as Peterborough surely are, to League One football next season.

Manager Neil Warnock is certainly convinced that his side face a tough challenge.

"They're fighting for their lives, as are a lot of teams for one reason or another, so we'll have to produce the goods again to get the result we want and need" he said.

"They'll come to keep it tight and hit us on the break unlike West Brom who came here and were very open."

He also hinted that QPR looked like a team who weren't used to winning on Saturday. The extent to which he has cured some of their psychological gremlins will be revealed this evening.

QPR Team News

Lee Cook is doubtful for Rangers as he struggles to get over a cold which kept him out of Saturday's memorable win and will be given a late fitness test. Apart from that, there aren't any fresh injury concerns.

The biggest selection headache for Warnock against WBA was getting the right number of loan players in the squad. The manager rather honestly revealed after the game that he originally had Marcus Bent down in the match-day squad and the player himself had to remind Warnock that he had too many loan players down - only five can feature in a squad of 18. In a case of shooting the messenger, Bent was promptly dropped.

Argyle Team News

Plymouth's main concern is over midfielder Craig Noone who is doubtful after picking up a knock in the club's weekend 1-1 draw with Preston.

Form

Despite the heady rush of optimism around anyone associated with QPR, one win isn't enough to banish memories of QPR's form for much of this season, though they now have two wins in their last six league games.

A sore subject as mentioned before on this blog is their defensive record this season which is staggering for its lack of clean sheets. Their last league shut-out was against Preston on October 17 so if Warnock can inspire the team to keep Argyle at bay tonight, he might be hailed as the messiah.

Argyle's form is little better than QPR's which is why of course they have occupied a position near the foot of the table for the majority of the season. They've won only one of their last eight games though they are becoming increasingly hard to beat with 1-1 draws with Swansea City, Leicester City and Preston in their last four games and they were close to a miraculous draw in their 4-3 defeat at Bramall Lane.

Prediction

Plymouth really are hanging on by a hair's breadth and some of the results mentioned above show that through sheer will they are desperately trying to stay in contention to stay up. At the same time, it also shows that they lack enough imagination and attacking potential in their team to actually start winning enough games.

Warnock is right to warn of the test ahead tonight. But he showed on Saturday the value of man management and personality in inspiring footballers to raise their games. The confidence should still be coursing through the team and so the league position could look slightly better tomorrow.

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