QPR 0:2 Derby County
When I saw the starting eleven I felt that we were probably asking for trouble. It was practically the same team that had won so fantastically well against Aston Villa earlier in the week to secure an easy tie at Old Trafford against the Premiership and European Champions. 
The Villa game wasn’t really as physical a battle as it could have been, but it was definitely a mentally exhausting one for the players. We were up against better class opposition, on their home patch and it was a cup tie so we had to ride our luck once or twice and put in a really disciplined and focused display.
We did that really well, but in that match, we didn’t actually create a great deal in the final third and that’s fine. What does one expect us to do against a team who are now sitting in third place in the Premier League? We did what we had to and needed to do to get a result.
In this match however, we started with the same 4-5-1 formation and played it like a real 4-5-1 which is what we did against Villa. In some of our other games this season, this 4-5-1 system has often turned into a 4-3-3 due to the personnel and that’s allowed us to be creative. Today though we played it like it looks, 4-5-1 and that led to many of our problems.
The play seemed congested from the off and was far too condensed with little width. This was a problem for both teams, but we didn’t seem as keen as normal to spread the ball wide and that played into Derby’s favour. They kept it nice and packed in the middle and this led to lots of challenges, misplaced passes or moves breaking down with nobody having the space to play.
We never really got going or took the onus to really take the game to Derby, when we should have being the home team and with so much creative talent on show. At the same time though, the players didn’t look like they had the legs to do it and I wonder whether we could have done with some fresh legs in there. The sun was out as well and that didn’t help us in the first-half as it appeared to be causing us difficulty when attempting to deal with high balls. It did annoy me when Radek Cerny got stick from the fans for missing and easy catch which bounced off his chest… he quite clearly couldn’t see it at all… I had to tell a disgruntled fan who effed and blinded about it to give it a rest, but then he started going on about how he kept punching the ball against Villa so I put my fingers in my ears (I didn’t really, but I wanted to!)
The system didn’t help poor old Damien Delaney either or the entire defence actually. Whenever they had the ball the middle looked so rammed (see what I did there?) that none of them felt comfortable to play a short ball in fear of losing it, so they pumped it long to Dexter Blackstock, who had little or next to no service and just couldn’t get himself into the game.
I had hoped we’d switch to 4-4-2 at half-time, or early in the second-half, but it wasn’t until just over 10 minutes to go that we made this change, but by then, we got suckered into conceding two goals from set-plays and the game was dead and buried.
I didn’t really think we deserved to lose, but by the same token, I didn’t think we deserved to win. Derby seemed to get the basics right and better than we did and they did a perfect smash and grab by taking their chances when they came… a bit like what we did to Villa on Wednesday.
Oh well, it wasn’t disastrous and had we drawn I would have been happy with the point considering the performance. I was still pleased with Damien Stewart and Fitz Hall. In my book, good old Stewpeas has two Man of the Match performances in a week and he should be really pleased with his current form. Long may it continue.
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Album 1
