QPR 2:1 Fulham
Our last pre-season friendly of the season ended with an encouraging and pleasing performance as well as a win against a strong Fulham outfit.
Tonight I was looking forward to paying particular attention to our shape and positioning as well as the general fitness of the players. The actual free flowing football or even individual form isn’t really a concern to me at this stage, what with it being a pre-season friendly.
I wanted to see improvements in these areas because things haven’t gone well with our pre-season preparations over the past couple of seasons and I was excited that John Gregory has now had a chance to direct his first pre-season for the club.
I went to see us play in pre-season against Charlton during Ian Holloway’s last pre-season at for the club. I remember him stating the team hadn’t done any sort of (or very little) defensive or attacking pattern play. It was just a couple of weeks before the season started and at the time, I thought that was unusual and it felt like we were behind schedule.
With tonight’s game behind just over a week before the new season gets under way - we would surely be in better shape than on that occasion?
We looked sharp all over the park. I was really impressed with the way we pressed the play and how high up the pitch we did that.
I was surprised at the intensity of some of the tackles we were putting in. Simon Walton went in quite hard on Clint Dempsey around 13 minutes on the clock, which the American didn’t like and then he was involved in another two challenges, the last with Alexi Smertin which led to him breaking his leg.
It was a horrendously unfortunate moment, but I couldn’t help thinking at the time that it was an accident waiting to happen. As soon as Adam Bolder came over to the dugout I lip-read him saying that Walton had broken his ankle. I knew it was really bad at that point.
Stefan Moore put in a good shift from the right-wing. He chased back well but he still needs to work on the defensive side of his game. At times his positioning or the way he shaped his body and the angle he chose to try and close down players was incredibly ineffective. There’s a way to show people towards a certain direction, but he didn’t do that on occasion and in one particular instance, allowed Lee Cook to go either left or right with considerable ease.
Going forward he did okay. The delivery of his crosses were not great, but he attempted the crosses at the right times, including one with his left foot which he screwed up by skewing it out of play at the near post, which some fans groaned about, but he did the right thing and went for it with the left foot, so I was happy with that.
He still needs to work on his decision making as well and that’s a big reason for his inconsistent performances.
