QPR 1:2 Crystal Palace
A sub-par performance in the second 45 minutes of this game saw us throw it all away.
We got off to the worst possible start. Why boo Zesh Rehman? Come on guys, if we want to progress as a football club we need to know where we can help ourselves and that’s certainly destructive and to nobody but the oppositions benefit.
It was a pity we couldn’t hang onto our lead and take something from the game, but in all honesty we can’t really have any complaints about the result.
Despite amazingly counting 13 minutes on the clock before Scott Sinclair got his first touch of the ball, I thought we played really well on the counter attack in the first-half. We played some good incisive football that was intelligent and well suited to the attacking players we had on the pitch.
I thought Rowan Vine was excellent in this period and the centre of all our best attacking work. He dropped off into an advanced midfield position and found some great space to pick up the ball deep or from the channels. He was superb on the counter and caused Crystal Palace all sorts of problems with his dribbling runs and intelligent through balls.
After going 1-0 up thanks to a Damion Stewart header, we had a chance to make it 2-0 from another good move. Martin Rowlands won the ball in midfield and played in Ben Sahar who dribbled against his man before unselfishly squaring to Vine who’s shot was saved by Julian Speroni at his near post. Perhaps Vine should have worked the keeper more, but the angle was tighter than it probably looked and it was exciting attacking play with intent.
That was however as good as it got for us. Despite the quality of our counter attacks, we never got Scott Sinclair into a position to get on the ball and use his pace against the defence. He also seemed stuck out wide, whereas against Palace at Selhurst Park, he often came ever so slightly on the inside of his channel and was able to burst through. He missed a one-one-one that day and had a couple of other dangerous runs, but there was none of that from him this time around.
The full-backs were not bombing forward or supporting the attacking play like they had been in previous games. Bob Malcolm isn’t that sort of player anyway and we missed Michael Mancienne’s ability to get forward and his distribution. Mancienne had been doing well in recent games where Lee Camp was regularly throwing the ball out to him and he was able to advance forward and play diagonal balls with accuracy to the feet of Vine. That did not happen in this match, although Camp did throw the ball out to the defenders once or twice.
I actually noticed that Camp hurt himself somehow in the first-half. I saw him wincing at something and then I saw Jake Cole warming up. Later on Jake ran around to him and threw something his way when the action was on the other end of the pitch. Shortly after that, after kicking up field, he took a moment to stretch his leg. I feared for the worst, but he made it through in the end and whatever it was, it didn’t affect his kicking too much.
Akos Buzsaky looked sluggish as he tried to make an impact on the match. He played some really good passes from very deep in our own half throughout the first half, which surprised me because he kept doing it almost from a left back position, but as the game went on he looked more and more leg weary as he failed to control balls that you know he can, and was sloppy with drag backs as he tried to evade opposing players. Luigi De Canio made the right decision to take him off in the end.
Mikele Leigertwood didn’t really do a lot wrong, but even he looked like he was sapped of energy and didn’t get up and down the park as much as he has done in recent games. He was also a little sloppy here and there and didn’t really get his best work going.
After we went 2-1 down, we changed our shape. De Canio put Marc Nygaard up top with Ben Sahar and Rowan Vine sort of moved out to the right. We seemed to lose our width and shape as a result and the players seemed to be confused about who they should expect to see out wide and who they should be passing to. It went downhill from here because we lost all cohesion and rhythm, and we didn’t have much of that on the night in the first place!
The main problem I thought was the quality of distribution from the back. It was pretty poor in terms of not just hoofing the ball up the pitch, but whenever someone like Bob Malcolm tried to thread a pass into Vine’s feet, it was usually of a poor standard or the defensive players chose the wrong type of pass in the first place, or the wrong person to pass to when there was a better option available.
I just felt like there were a few times those guys at the back took the easy and safe way out by hitting a long ball into a zone and hoping the striker could do enough to win the ball and retain possession. That didn’t happen and apart from one good header from Vine in the first-half, he and Sahar really struggled to win stuff cleanly in the air and it made it hard for us to keep the ball and keep it simple. We really missed Dexter Blackstock’s qualities here.
Ben Sahar actually made some great diagonal runs in the first 45 and showed good off the ball movement. He struggled with everything else though and he just doesn’t look like he’s too happy. He was slightly more positive this evening but lacked the quality to really take the game to the defenders when he had the ball at his feet and at times, does seem disinterested, especially defensively.
Martin Rowlands is hit and miss for me at the moment. I really like the guy but his choice of passing sometimes irritates me. He plays too many percentage or zonal balls when the reality is he’s a lot better than that. I’d like to see him believe and trust in his ability a bit more and pick his passes with accuracy. Having said that, I thought he did a great job when he tucked inside in the first half as he won and intercepted a lot of balls and often managed to hook a ball into Vine’s path for the counter attack to start.
Zesh Rehman, well, he looks better and more comfortable at centre-back. He had a few hairy moments when he tried to bring certain balls over the top under control and then to deceive the opponent by feigning to clear the ball and then knock it and run past him. He got a couple of those wrong and probably because of a lack of confidence, but it was actually the right idea.
The problem for us though was our defence on the night were a certain brand of defender. The type that are not great on the ball and we needed them to be, especially for the style of game De Canio is going for. In that sense, I understand why Danny Cullip has been allowed to go, but if you’re still not left with anything that can do any better really, you’d have to say he’d have been as good a choice as any of those. I don’t think he’d have done any better than Rehman, Malcolm, Stewart or Barker in terms of his own actual defensive duties, but he can organise better than they can and you wonder if he’d have had them switched on more for the soft goals we conceded from set-plays.
I’m also concerned about Chris Barker. His tendency to foul the player he’s marking concerns me. He does get away with a lot of them, but he’s always pushing the player or showing his arm on the top of their back and nudging them forward. This strikes me as a lack of confidence in himself that he can win those high balls or maybe it is just a lack of ability and that’s his way of dealing with it. He’s a big lad, so although he’s not got a great spring he’s got a lot of body strength. If he flies in for the header he’s going to bully a lot of those wingers with ease and he just needs to go for that ball with 100% confidence that he’s going to nail it, and if he has to take someone out to do that and go through them, honestly, they will not want to be jumping up with him again. Giving away a foul is fine if you do it properly but at the moment, he’s giving away free-kicks that are petty and actually dangerous because they’re normally from wide positions and we’re not too hot at dealing with those as a team.
As for Scott Sinclair, I don’t think it’s really happened for him with us. Not in a bad way. Just his impact at QPR has been much less than Hogan Ephraim’s who is more of a team player at this time. He’s got plenty of pace and flair, but I don’t think we’ve done a good job of making use of that properly and at the same time, I think Scott himself is a little on the inexperienced side to know how to use his assets to their potential too and that’s fine, because he’s just a kid. He needs to work on that and also his defensive game, because he’s a little flimsy with his positioning when the opposition have the ball.
All in all, it was a frustrating end to what was a positive start. We lacked energy and a little bit of desire or belief in after the Palace goals went in, and that was disappointing. I don’t remember us having a single shot on or off target and when you’re at home and chasing a game, that’s unacceptable. Still, it was nice to see De Canio rewarding Angelo Balanta with his debut, but he must realise we are starting to wobble a bit and it’s likely to be a very long month indeed.
We need points from somewhere and fast!
