Hoop Dreams - QPR FC

After two undeniably tough fixtures to kick off his QPR managerial career (at Blackpool and Nottingham Forest), Mick Harford was unable to halt the team's decline in form at home to Scunthorpe last weekend and now faces the biggest banana skin of all against bottom side Peterborough United. Read on for a quick guide to The Hoops' next opponents, with all the QPR team news, a match preview and a dismally ill-judged prediction tomorrow.

Peterborough Team News

The Posh can call on defender Craig Morgan again after serving a suspension as new boss Jim Gannon, formerly of Stockport and Motherwell, takes charge for the first time. Ex-QPR player Tommy Williams, who played on loan at Loftus Road this season, is doubtful though as is fellow defender Gabriel Zakuani, who has a groin injury.

What To Expect

QPR or The Circus as they could soon be dubbed will be pleased to know that somehow, somewhere, there are teams, even in the same division, who have bigger problems than their own. Crystal Palace and Peterborough would surely rival The Hoops when it comes to singing the blues. Whilst Rangers will talk for a long time about the Dark Winter of 2009 in which they lost two managers in the space of a month, culminating in fan protests outside their own ground last weekend, they still haven't had it quite as bad as some.

Just as Palace were putting together a decent run of form, they find themselves on the end of a 10-point deduction which took them from the edge of the play-offs to the edge of the relegation area.

The Posh on the other hand could have been handed those 10 points as a type of mercy payment and you'd suspect that they would still be relegated. They've had a disastrous start to the year, swapping managers almost as readily as QPR, being lambasted publicly by their own chairman and contriving to lose every game in January include potentially life-preserving matches against Derby County and the unfortunate Palace. New boss Jim Gannon, appointed on Tuesday, is the latest candidate to try and breathe life into their ailing season.

All this comes after two back-to-back promotions built on a transfer policy of buying young and ambitious non-league footballers and playing dynamic, attacking football. Under former manager Darren Ferguson, now at Preston North End, The Posh flew up the leagues on the back of some astute signings from the lower leagues including strikers Aaron McLean (pictured below) and Craig Mackail-Smith, signed from Grays Athletic and Dagenham & Redbridge respectively and talismanic captain George Boyd, signed from Stevenage Borough.


After a slow start though, this season has gone from bad to worse. Peterborough were genuinely one of the best teams I've seen at Loftus Road this season where they earned a 1-1 draw back in September, fearlessly setting about the home side on the counter-attack, but a flaky defence has meant just three wins all season and they currently looked doomed, sitting 11 points off safety. The departure of Ferguson amid accusations that he was tapped up by another club didn't help, nor has the reaction of chairman Darragh MacAnthony who claimed that the team's spirit had been "destroyed by greed, skullduggery, tapping up and disloyalty from within"  in an explosive statement on the club's website.

Star Man


You can't go wrong with The White Pele and no, it's not Wayne Rooney. Again, going back to that 1-1 draw at Loftus Road in early September, one of the best players on the pitch was George Boyd, Peterborough's striker/winger/defensive midfielder/wherever you want him.

Playing just behind the strikers that day, Boyd had what few in the Championship have - complete composure. The ball seemed glued to his feet for much of the game and on top of that, he had a tireless energy, flitting between different positions with ease.

That work-rate and stamina has undoubtedly contributed to him breaking the club's consecutive appearances record - currently standing at 140 league games on the trot. But more than that, he is a genuinely skilful and dangerous player, named in the PFA Teams Of The Season in both Peterborough's promotion campaigns and even in this troubled campaign, he still has a healthy return of 12 goals in all competitions

Hoops TV - Peterborough United

Forget Bergkamp against Leicester City. Ignore Rivaldo against Valencia. The greatest hat-trick ever, as declared by glenposh on YouTube, was former Peterborough legend David Farrell's trio against Barnet which left Barry Fry gurning and swearing with joy on the touch-line.



Ten Year Record

2008-9 - League One - 2nd (Promoted)
2007-8 - League Two - 2nd (Promoted)
2006-7 - League Two - 10th
2005-6 - League Two - 9th
2004-5 - League One - 23rd (Relegated)
2003-4 - Second Division (now League One) - 18th
2002-3 - Second Division - 11th
2001-2 - Second Division - 17th
2000-1 - Second Division - 12th
1999-0 - Third Division - 5th (promoted via play-offs)

Lend Us A Tenner?

With a personally wealthy if controversial figure at the helm, Peterborough have jumped up the divisions on the back of modest transfers for non-league players under chairman Darragh MacAnthony.

He made his fortune in property, forming MacAnthony Realty International in 2000, selling overseas holiday homes and bought The Posh in 2007 for a nominal £1 fee from Barry Fry, taking on £1.7 million worth of outstanding debts and overdrafts and was estimated to have a personal wealth of £68m by the Sunday Times Rich List in 2008.

Undoubtedly ambitious, he will have to dig deep if Posh are to stay in this league and one day make it to the Premiership.

Moritz Volz is likely to be offered a contract with QPR until the end of the season after successfully coming through a reserve game against Reading yesterday.

The QPR reserves lost 3-0 but Volz played for 85 minutes, an important step in his rehabilitation after spending most of last autumn trying to recover from a serious groin injury in Germany.

Volz has been without a club since leaving Fulham last summer.

He spent last season on loan at Championship side Ipswich for whom he made 23 appearances but he hasn't played first-team football since last April, when he came on as a substitute in a 2-0 defeat against Sheffield United.

With his footballing appearances few and far between, Volz is almost as well known for his TV appearances, riding his fold-up bike around west London and his love of David Hasselhoff.

His website, which greatly outranks the often tedious official websites offered by a lot of players, is a shrine to his own eccentricities. The video below, taken from the site, suggests that he will be more than comfortable in west London with QPR. And what club couldn't do with a 'humourous Westphalian'?



Reserve team manager Keith Ryan also reported that striker Angelo Balanta made it through 90 minutes of the reserve game as he looks to increase his playing time in an injury-hit season.

The young Colombian striker has made just three appearances for the Hoops first team this season with only one start, against Blackpool on the opening day of the season.

"The result was disappointing, it always is when you lose but it was great to see Hogan Ephraim play 65 minutes and Angelo Balanta get a full match under his belt," said Ryan, speaking to the club's website.

Even though the transfer window has slammed shut, QPR aren't necessarily finished with additions to their squad.

Since last week, it has been reported that right-back Moritz Volz, formerly of Arsenal and Fulham, was training with the club.

The German, a big David Hasselhoff fan (the photo above is taken from his own website) was in line to start today for QPR's reserves in a friendly with Reading which kicked off at 1pm, allowing the back-room staff a better indication of his suitability for first-team football.

He has been without a club since leaving Fulham last summer and spent most of the autumn trying to recover from a serious groin injury at a rehab centre in Germany. At the start of this year, he resumed training with another former club, Schalke 04, at their mid-season break in Andalusia and was also linked with Hertha Berlin during the January transfer window.

The right-back position is under-represented in the current QPR squad. Peter Ramage is the only tailor-made right-back at the club, but he doesn't appear to be a first-choice pick under new manager Mick Harford and hasn't started a game since QPR were knocked out of the FA Cup on 12th January.

In Roy We Trust


New loan striker Tamas Priskin, signed yesterday from Ipswich, must have played a real stinker in The Tractor Boys' 2-0 defeat to Preston on Saturday.

On Friday, Ipswich manager Roy Keane told local press that Priskin was going nowhere and that he had a definite future at the club.

"He's staying at the club and deserves a chance," said Keane.

"Our fans have been very, very patient with the team so far and maybe we all need to be a bit more patient with Tamas."

No more than 65 minutes of patience though. That's how long Priskin stayed on the pitch at Deepdale before being brought off for Pablo Counago.

By Monday, he was west London bound.

Better Than Being On Channel Five


Trawling through Media Guardian to look for jobs (surprise, surprise, there aren't any) can result in unexpected surprises.

Apparently, the new Channel 4 chairman, Lord Burns, is a QPR supporter and boned up on his new channel's output by tuning into Celebrity Big Brother, allowing him to watch former QPR player-manager Vinnie Jones (pictured above) 24 hours a day. The Guardian recommend that programme-makers now start to look for QPR links when making their programmes.

Can I suggest The (Jay) Simpsons, Come Vine With Me and a remake of Shameless starring Flavio Briatore?

I'll get my coat.

QPR have added to the growing army of loan players at Loftus Road by signing striker Tamas Priskin from Ipswich Town.

The 23-year-old Hungarian international follows striker Marcus Bent through the QPR doors today as Mick Harford looks to add to his striking options.

Priskin signed a loan deal which will keep him at the club until May 31st and could feature in Harford's starting line-up for the trip to bottom club Peterborough United on Saturday.

"I wasn't getting enough games at Ipswich, but hopefully I will get to play more with QPR," he said to http://www.qpr.co.uk/.

"I'm here to score goals and I'm confident I will do that if I get a run of games in the side.

"I want to give everything I can to QPR. This is a crazy Championship - and if we can get a few wins, we can move right up the table."

He joins fellow countryman Akos Buzsaky at Loftus Road and has his own impressive international scoring record with seven goals in 24 starts for the Magyars.

"It's great to have Akos at QPR with me," he said.

"I've never played with a fellow Hungarian in English football, so this should be a big help for me."

He started his career with Hungarian side Gyori ETO FC aged 15 before moving to England in 2006 to join Watford and went on to make 82 appearances for the Hornets before signing for Ipswich last summer.

He went on to make 19 appearances for Ipswich this term, scoring twice but his appearance in their 2-0 defeat at Preston on Saturday was his first since November.

"Tamas is a player we have been chasing for two or three weeks, and Roy Keane has thankfully let us have him," said manager Mick Harford to the club's website.

"He is a very, very talented boy, has great technique and can create chances for himself.

"He can hold up the ball, link the play, and if we can get balls into the box I'm sure we'll see a good return of goals."

QPR have a growing contingent of loan players, with six potential first-team players all on short-term deals, in most cases until the end of the season; Carl Ikeme, Matt Hill, Adel Taarabt, Jay Simpson, Marcus Bent and now Priskin.