QPR 0:0 Sheffield Wednesday
It may have ended goalless, but it was a really good game of football between two sides who went out to win.
I love nil-nil’s, even the really boring ones because it’s usually due to the teams cancelling one another out, which I like to try and understand from a tactical perspective. Some years ago now, a televised match that ended 0:0 between Aston Villa and Liverpool was my favourite game from that season, even though it was slated for being one of the worst!
Today though, we had a really entertaining nil-nil between two teams who wanted to take all three points. I couldn’t decide who deserved to win it by the end, so perhaps a draw was a fair result.
I really admired Sheffield Wednesday’s approach to the match. They had done their homework on us and poor old Bob Malcolm was on the receiving end of their dirty work. He really couldn’t have asked for a more difficult debut and The Owls’ brutal approach towards him will have hit his confidence for six.
In Marcus Tudgay, Akpo Sodje and Jermaine Johnson, they have a powerful trio who are all blessed with pace and a lot of it. Johnson has to be the quickest player I’ve seen at Loftus Road for a long time and it’s one thing being fast, but another being smart and knowing how to use your pace effectively.
The secret of their success was not only exposing Malcolm, but also Chris Barker, who is equally not the quickest of blokes. Wednesday concentrated their attacks down our right-hand side and worked the ball in areas where they could hurt us. They did this when they had the ball in possession or when they looked to counter, and the results were devastating every time.
I felt a bit sorry for Malcolm, because at one point Johnson also toasted Michael Mancienne and left him for dead, and Mancienne’s no slow coach. So it made it look a lot worse when Johnson gave Malcolm a 15-metre head-start and still waltzed past him as if he wasn’t even there. Lee Camp made a decent stop to keep the scores level from that one.
Wednesday were relentless in the opening 20 minutes and had managed to hit the bar from a corner early on and had a period of about five or six successive corners as they piled on the pressure. Malcolm, probably already nervous on his debut, had a serious bout of the jitters as the Wednesday trio launched several attacks in his direction, exposing him to one-on-one encounters or dragging him out of position and isolating him to the point that a rash tackle on Johnson got him into the referees book. He and Barker struggled to deal with their pace or with them in the air.
They were all over us and I was concerned that we would eventually collapse, but Wednesday themselves didn’t look comfortable at the back either, so you sensed that if we gathered some momentum and possession that we’d eventually carve out some chances and we did.
I really like the fact that we are working on some moves.
I was slightly surprised to see Dexter Blackstock’s name in the starting eleven. I hoped they were not rushing him back into first-team football and suspected that he may only get about an hour under his belt and hoped that would be the case. In the end though, he played for most of the match before being replaced late on by Marc Nygaard. Blackstock got through okay and although he’s not quite yet 100% sharp, he still showed some excellent touches, including the take from Vine which led to a marvellous save from Lee Grant.
Blackstock controlled the ball and then beautifully put it in his stride as he burst through on goal. It was on high right-foot, which is his weaker foot, but he still connected really well and when he hit it, I was sure it was heading into the back of the net and was amazed that Lee Grant pulled out the stop. That really was a stunning save and top-quality goalkeeping. I applauded the save as much as I did the move that led to the chance. It was outstanding.
It’s positive to see that the team have clearly been hard at work on the training ground. Lee Camp is regularly rolling the ball out to his players rather than opting for a long kick all the time. In particularly, he’s playing in Michael Mancienne who is able to advance up the pitch and slot in Rowan Vine who drops deep to pick up the ball. It’s a lot more effective, especially seeing as Vine can turn on the ball and run at players, which is one of his biggest assets.
We didn’t look like we were in the game at all for those 20 minutes and I couldn’t see anything other than a Wednesday win, but to our credit, we slowly eased ourselves back into the game and created chances.
Quite how this match finished goalless will remain a mystery for a long time to come.
