Hoop Dreams - QPR FC

The midweek defeat to Ipswich was the latest confirmation that all QPR's concerns now lie at the bottom of the table rather than anywhere near the top. With other results going against them, Rangers slumped to 17th, just two points outside the drop zone.

One of the sides to benefit from the Hoops' run of defeats is Coventry City who have more practice this season at scrapping in the bottom half of the table. Their win over Nottingham Forest lifted them to the relative safety of 14th, though still just five points from the bottom three.

Which side can seize the initiative in today's clash could have a massive bearing on their continued presence in this division then. A win for Coventry would confirm their upturn in form and give them even more breathing space whilst seriously damaging the perilously weak confidence of QPR. If the visitors snap out of their funk though and earn their first three point haul of the year, they could start out on the road to a more respectable league finish.

QPR Team News

To gain that victory, QPR will be without recent loan signing Marcus Bent. Bent made an awkward debut in the defeat against Peterborough United but in just his second game on Tuesday, he limped out after eight minutes. Though the initial signs are that the injury isn't too serious, he won't be back in time for this game.

Fellow loan signing Tamas Priskin, who came in from Ipswich Town less than two weeks ago, is available to play though. He had to sit out the Ipswich game in midweek under the terms of his loan but will likely partner QPR's top scorer Jay Simpson in attack.

Peter Ramage returns after serving his one match ban but Mikele Leigertwood has two more games to miss following his sending-off at Peterborough and Gary Borrowdale has been suffering with a calf injury but should be fit enough to make the bench.

That leaves Rangers' two long-term absentees, Gavin Mahon and Martin Rowlands. Rowlands is out for the rest of the season but Mahon is still on course for an April return.

Coventry Team News

The Sky Blues could throw new signing Freddie Sears straight into the action following his loan move from West Ham on Thursday. The transfer of Leon Best to Newcastle cut Coventry's striking options to just Clinton Morrison and Freddy Eastwood, who have 16 league goals between them.

The two doubts in their squad are midfielder Aron Gunnarsson (leg) and defender James McPake (back) who will both be given late fitness tests. 

Form

QPR's form before Mick Harford arrived was poor enough, but despite the best efforts of the new manager, results have really taken a turn for the worse, with just one point from 15. It's relegation form pure and simple and the club desperately need to turn it around soon. Their last league win came under Paul Hart on Boxing Day, a scrappy 2-1 victory over Bristol City. Prior to that, you have to go back to November 7th and a trip to Hillsborough for another QPR win.

Coventry on the other hand have solidly, if less than spectacularly, put together a four game unbeaten run, including some less than easy matches against Nottingham Forest and Swansea City. When the two sides last met at Loftus Road in November, a Richard Wood goal earned Coventry a 2-2 draw. In fact, they're unbeaten in five against QPR since Rangers' 1-0 win at the Ricoh Arena in April 2007.

Prediction

The previous encounter between these two sides could be taken as a good marker for this afternoon's game. Coventry were less than pretty on the day, tackling hard and quickly getting possession up to their strikers who were a handful, particularly Clinton Morrison who is rarely concerned about ingratiating himself with the opposition's supporters.

I also saw Coventry play against Doncaster over Christmas and again, they were second-best in terms of style and possession play, but lacked nothing in commitment, another late goal this time earning them all three points.

They will have few illusions about their aim for this season as well, simply staying in the league.

The key factor will be if QPR now face up to a similar goal. For too long the club have laboured under misguided pretensions of making into the Premiership but recent weeks have pulled down that facade. They still have players of a high enough quality to make relegation seem perverse, but if they aren't awake to the danger ahead of them, they could yet again come unstuck against a more hardened side.

The second half against Ipswich showed a new urgency and passion to QPR's play which they will need in bucketfuls but again, the fact it couldn't be maintained for more than 45 minutes ruined their chances. Lack of concentration at the back and lack of confidence in the attacking positions are currently strangling the life out of this side.

Look out for Rangers' performance levels in the first 20 minutes of this game; if they can come through them unharmed and without conceding they stand a chance. That said, I think home games are still their best chance of picking up the points they need and the squad's morale is still too brittle to pick up wins on the road just yet.

A draw is more than likely, but I think Coventry could just nick a win.

HOME WIN

One is a thirty-plus veteran striker with experience at over 10 football clubs. The other is a 20-year old rookie with just one professional goal to his name. One is injured after just arriving on loan; the other only signed for his new club yesterday and is eager to make his home debut.

QPR supporters will be cursing their bad luck at the moment, which has now extended from the football pitch to the transfer market.

They signed experienced forward Marcus Bent less than two weeks ago in a loan deal, hoping to have found the calm head who would bring goals back to a misfiring side.

But they may now be wishing they went for a younger alternative, such as West Ham's Freddie Sears (pictured above) who signed for Coventry City, Rangers' opponents this weekend, just yesterday.

Bent will miss tomorrow's vital clash at the Ricoh Arena after limping off the pitch ten minutes into Tuesday night's defeat to Ipswich Town, only his second game for the Hoops.

Sears, on the other hand, completed a loan move from West Ham United yesterday after already spending part of this season at Crystal Palace and will now compete with established Coventry strikers Clinton Morrison and Freddy Eastwood for a starting place.

Both teams are perilously close to the relegation area but again the omens seem to more greatly favour the home side. Rangers, just two points off the relegation zone, were leap-frogged by Coventry in midweek after the Sky Blues' surprise win over Nottingham Forest.

Bent (pictured below playing for Birmingham City) looked to have tweaked his hamstring during Rangers' dismal midweek defeat and the QPR medical team now await the results of a scan though the initial prognosis was not too serious.


It also means Rangers could start with a youthful front-line of their own.

Fellow loanee 23-year old Tamas Priskin can play again after missing Tuesday's game under the terms of his loan deal whilst 21-year old top scorer Jay Simpson is back in form after scoring Rangers' only goal in that game.

Sears will be keen to make the most of a loan move which lasts until the end of the season.

He signed for West Ham aged just 11, made his Premiership debut in 2008 aged 18 and has now been capped for England U-21s.

"He is a hungry striker who is really keen to impress and I like that in a player," said Coventry boss Chris Coleman.

"He is only a young boy so I am not going to put pressure on him but he is very exciting and I think our supporters will take to him immediately."

He could get his first opportunity to impress as soon as tomorrow afternoon and I'll have a full match preview before then.

When thinking of benefits to Flavio Briatore's ownership of QPR, one often cited is his bulging contacts books, full of movers and shakers across Europe in all fields, even sport should the need arise. Along with Gianni Paladini, Briatore was supposedly set to open up Loftus Road to a new level of star signings and exciting managerial appointments previously only imagined in west London at Roman Abramovich's Chelsea.

Cherry-picking of the cream of European talent hasn't quite materialised for QPR though as unsurprisingly even a man such as Briatore, with all his confidence and salesmanship, will find a struggling and under-supported side in the English second tier hard to pitch. Luigi De Canio had varied experience managing in Italy before taking on the Rangers job but I suspect the top clubs weren't knocking down his door whilst another Briatore appointment, Paulo Sousa, was clearly well-respected throughout Europe, though more for his playing achievements than his fledgling coaching career.

Wild rumours linking Zinedine Zidane and Pele to the club were probably no more than that so it's hard to know how seriously to take the latest whispers circling QPR that former Germany captain Lothar Matthaus could soon be stepping into the hot-seat. Matthaus (pictured above during his Inter Milan days) attended Rangers' 2-1 defeat to Ipswich on Tuesday night and if he is still on speaking terms with Briatore after watching that monstrosity, quite a few papers believe he will be forging a much closer relationship with the Italian as manager of the club.

In many ways, Matthaus fits the Briatore-type of appointment. His playing career was even more distinguished than Sousa's. He played in five World Cups, winning it as captain in 1990, won countless Bundesliga titles with Bayern Munich, Serie A with Inter, World Player of the Year in 1991...

His experience as a coach has been far less trophy-laden though, including stints managing Hungary, Brazilian side Atletico Paranaense and most recently Israeli side Maccabi Netanya. If there is a job going somewhere in the world, you get the feeling Matthaus would consider it so the idea of him pitching up in west London might not be entirely ridiculous.

Then again, Matthaus isn't the first coach to be the guest of Briatore at Loftus Road. Giovanni Trapattoni and even Fabio Capello have taken in the club's hospitality so we might as well say that Fabio will be joining the club if he fails to win the World Cup with England this summer. Now he probably could get Rangers promoted.

Volz Just Happy To Be Playing

A fellow countryman of Matthaus', Moritz Volz, had much firmer connections to the club as reported here last week but for now, he won't be signing on the dotted line as a fully paid-up member of the QPR playing squad.

With news about his potential transfer hard to come by, the one update is on Volz's own online diary in which he now reports his happiness at coming through last week's reserve outing after long-standing injury problems. But he goes on to play down his link to Rangers.

"Since I've been training with QPR there have been lots of reports in the media about me signing for them," he says.

"I've even had messages of congratulations.

"But as it stands I'm there just to train as I still have a little way to go to be at full fitness and therefore to be of full use to a team."

I watched last night's 2-1 victory for Roy Keane's Ipswich from the unsheltered cold of Loftus Road's West Paddock rather than the press box and paid £20 for my troubles, so by owner Flavio Briatore's rationale, I really should shut up rather than express an opinion about this game ("Some fans because they pay £20, they want to criticize").

Believe me, that would suit me fine as it's getting increasingly more difficult to find new things to say about QPR when they repeat the same mistakes on a game-by-game basis and offer little hope to their supporters that things are going to get better. Then again, Briatore reportedly only lasted until half-time for this one, so as I watched the whole 90 minutes, I feel at least better qualified than him to comment on the game. So...

1. Can Mick Harford be blamed for the team's current woes? It's clear that QPR were a struggling side even before Mick Harford stepped into the breach following Paul Hart's sudden departure. Going back even to Jim Magilton, issues over team morale and confidence were surfacing whilst the background noise of board interference and mismanagement was never far away.

But the run under Harford is really woeful. Five games played, one point, eleven goals conceded, just three in return. Will the board already be thinking about cutting their losses and appointing someone else before this run gets any worse?

Well, firstly, I think they would struggle to find someone with the relevant experience to step in straight away especially with uncertainties over Briatore's commitment to the club and no opportunities to change the playing staff.

Secondly, I think it would be a bad decision in itself anyway. Harford's long-term suitability for the job is debatable, but the chopping and changing of managers has been one of the most damaging aspects of QPR's recent history. Coupled with that, despite at first seeming relatively pleased with his side's efforts after taking the job, it is clear now that Harford is as angry as anyone about what he is seeing and is prepared to do all he can to rectify it.

After the game yesterday, he acknowledged that the club is now in a relegation fight. He is facing the hard truths around Loftus Road head on and for now, he is the best option to try and deal with them.

2. The first half was as bad as it gets. Which again the manager acknowledged after the game.

"As a professional club, that first-half performance was unacceptable," said Harford.

"It was totally inept and was lacking everything.

"It lacked effort and it lacked commitment, and that's what disappointed me more than anything."

Within eight minutes, Rangers were a goal down when the defence's unwillingness to confront players allowed David Norris the time to line up a shot which took a wild deflection off Kaspars Gorkss and into the net.

In fact, you sensed with every attack that Ipswich could score. Daryl Murphy was twice denied from close range before doubling Ipswich's lead with a rifled shot past Carl Ikeme on 38 minutes. Harford also got it right in saying the team deserved to be booed at half-time, though it will pain him bitterly to have to admit that.

3. Buzsaky and Taarabt could and should turn it around. Watching low down by the corner flag and with the game low on quality, my attention was often drawn to the subs warming up just in front of us (particularly as the Ipswich subs were getting some pretty comical abuse from one QPR supporter including "You're so rubbish I can't even remember your name.")

Akos Buzsaky and Adel Taarabt were in conference for much of the first half and cynically I first took this as them being disinterested in the game and more content to joke with each other. In truth, I think they were giving the game greater attention than I thought because when both came on at half-time, they looked to genuinely have their own game-plan and both attempted to rise above much of the mediocrity on display and salvage at least a point.

Work-rate and physical effort has at times been lacking from Buzsaky's game this season but you couldn't say that yesterday. When Gorkss went off the pitch to recieve treatment, he even dropped back to right-back and was frequently marshalling the defence to push up and play the offside trap.

Taarabt, on the other hand, finally began to ally his unmatched technique with a sense of urgency and awareness of others and was unlucky himself not to score the equaliser. Both players need to maintain such efforts to prevent a real relegation dog-fight.

4. Elsewhere... results really didn't go QPR's way. Coventry beating Nottingham Forest was surprising enough, a Freddy Eastwood goal allowing the Sky Blues to leap-frog the Hoops. But Derby's 3-0 win over Newcastle came from nowhere, ending Newcastle's run of 15 matches unbeaten, allowing Derby to also move ahead of QPR and showing that some teams are finding their form just as QPR lose all semblance of theirs.

Doncaster earned a point at Leicester to move ahead on goal difference, so by the end of the evening, QPR had dropped from 14th to 17th, just two points clear of the relegation area after Reading beat Plymouth 2-1. That win could have consigned Plymouth to the bottom three along with Peterborough, though with a game in hand on much of the rest of the pack, they won't give up the ghost. But the third relegation spot could feasibly fall to any of 13 clubs. Including QPR.

QPR - Ikeme, Stewart, Gorkss, Connolly, Hill, Quashie (Taarabt 46), Cook, Faurlin, Ephraim (Buzsaky 46), Bent (Vine 10), Simpson

Subs not used - Cerny, Borrowdale, Balanta, German

Goals - Simpson (66)

Bookings - Connolly

Ipswich - Lee-Barrett, Delaney, McAuley, Leadbitter, Garvan (Rosenior 65), Norris, Peters, Colback, Counago (Healy 65), Walters, Murphy (Stead 85)

Subs not used - Murphy, Balkestein, Edwards, Quinn

Goals - Norris (8), Murphy (38)

Bookings - Norris, Walters

Referee - F Graham

Attendance - 10,940