Before tonight’s match, all I wanted to see was the sign of progress and that would have satisfied me whatever the result. I wanted to see something visual that would tell me more about Paolo Sousa and what he wants to achieve with the team. By the end of the night, I got the answers I was looking for and came away from Loftus Road encouraged.

Sousa made a lot of small adaptations to our formation, shape and style and had clearly spoken to the players about certain basics and principles he wanted us to follow.

We played with a diamond formation and I liked how that put Daniel Parejo nearer the two strikers and Mikele Leigertwood nearer the defenders, creating a clear role and responsibility for both men. The two out wide were instructed to tuck in tight. At first, I thought Damiano Tomassi kept drifting inside because he’s naturally a central midfielder and not a winger, but as the first half panned out, I realised this was tactical.

Hogan Ephraim was doing the same, and more so after receiving instructions from Sousa from the side. It worked well too, we kept the ball and passed it around better and it helped us win the possession in that area. At times however, it was also counter productive because Parejo or Dexter Blackstock on occasion had no outlet to pass two once we’d won the ball and attempted to hit Charlton on the break.

The other major point, and a plus point at that, was how often Radek Cerny was taking short goal-kicks to his defenders or throwing the ball out to them so they could build the play before playing it upfield. The defenders themselves also stopped pumping free kicks forward into zonal areas, instead opting to pass to another defender and building the play from the back.

This is a radical shift in style and a brave move considering it’s not easy to switch to such a new method because any mistakes could have been catastrophic for us. Mikele Leigertwood however showed terrific discipline in his role to sit in front of the back four and provide a simple wall for his players to pass to so he could either set directly back or to another person in space.

One can hope that over time, this will improve further as the players understand and learn what’s being asked of them. During the first half, we created some nice situations but lacked a little bit of pace up top to get behind the Charlton defence. On the one occasion we turned them around, Tomassi got a cross in and Blackstock was able to finish well.

Daniel Parejo got a little bit of stick but I thought he played relatively well. He kept popping up on the left, the right and in the centre, so he got about okay and although one or two passes went astray, he was fine in there.

I think Pat needs a run in the team now too. He’s been playing pretty well in his cameo appearances and deserves more than just a start in the side. I like his strength, I like his pace and I like his movement. He worked the channels really well in the way that I’ve been wanting Dexter to do in recent weeks.

I was also pleased for Kaspars Gorkss who looked a lot more comfortable than the last time I saw him. Considering he’s not played for a while, he should be pleased with those 90 minutes and will have caused some selection headaches for the manager.

The majority of the players put in a decent shift though and can be pleased with a performance that’s still a work in progress, but a very good starting point for the coaching staff. I think if we played our strongest eleven, you’d see better results already from playing this way.

What pleased me most was a strong 10 minute period in the second half when we had a lot of the ball and were beginning to pile the pressure on Charlton’s defence. We had several chances and it’s been a while since we’ve been able to build momentum up like that and sustain it. I’m hoping that we can do more of that over time and if we can build on this performance, surely there’s only positives ahead and these players, despite their critics sometimes, are capable of playing well and winning well, as Luigi De Canio proved last season.

Much better Rangers, much better.

Just when you think watching QPR couldn’t be any worse or leaving you wondering where your passion has gone, there’s always those blooming ladies around to cheer you up!

This was a pulsating match from start to finish in trecherous conditions that made for a thoroughly engrossing encounter by two very good football teams.

Despite going a goal down, which was somewhat soft and just about against the run of play, we showed real guts and determination in tricky conditions to turn it around. At times we were smart and intelligent and willing to fight for the cause to maintain our unbeaten run in the league.

I’ve only been involved since the summer, but I’ve already seen some good teams in ladies football, but I have to say that Yeovil are so far for me the best opposition I’ve come across at this level. They’ve got a lovely style that suits their strengths and some terrific players, so they’re going to be a real handful for most teams and the fact that we’ve now done the double over them this season shows just how good we are too.

Credit must go to their staff who have clearly done a good job of organising them and getting them to play a certain way which is also pleasing on the eye.

We proved what we’re made of though with a quick-fire double at the end of the first-half to go in 2-1 up and then I thought we adapted superbly in the second against their main threats. Their wide players were a real nuisance, but their system was tailored to simply create scenarios where either winger was released. But we did a much better job of nullifying the source and the threats in the second period and had we had just a bit more composure in the final third, we may have fashioned out more clear cut opportunities to kill the game off.

In the end, Cherrelle got a splended hat-trick with a fanstastic goal right at the depth to seal the points. It’s been a long time since I celebrated a goal from the QPR mens team like I celebrated all three of these today and for the entire second-half the match had that tense and fascinating plot of who was going to get the all important next goal? Would Yeovil equalise or would we be able to kill them off?

Thankfully it was the latter, but what was more special about today is it felt oh-so-QPR  and was a performance full of desire, commitment, passion, spirit and a resilience that makes for winning teams. It’s a priviledge to be able to work with them and a real pleasure and honour to be in their company and on this journey.

Well done you ladies, it’s the perfect finish to what had been a pretty dismal weekend concerning the Hoops!

Team: Jess Devoti, Ceryl Guard, Niki Crump (Caroline Barker), Simone Dwyer, Mel Bidewell, Amy Murphy, Susannah Abott, Suze Wylie, Hannah Curnow, Carla Williams (Camilla Ray) & Cherrelle Albert

Subs: Caroline Barker, Camilla Ray & Danielle Clare-Richards

Have you ever, ever seen anything like it? Gosh, miserable doesn’t even go close to summing up this abject and inept display.

It’s not often I come away feeling deflated, but that had to be one of the worst performances I’ve ever seen from QPR in all my years following and we’ve been treated to some pretty dire ones in the last decade or two!

But, there’s no point going berserk or mental about it. We didn’t turn up and sometimes that happens and it’s fascinating how it can go that badly.

Reflecting on the game I don’t recall so many poorly under-hit or dangerously placed back-passes to a goalkeeper before. Poor old Radek Cerny was being put under immense pressure early on and we just didn’t seem to be able to clear our lines in any shape or form. It was as almost as if the ball was made of stone. We couldn’t lift it, couldn’t get any accuracy and couldn’t get any distance on our clearances.

To be fair to Watford, they overloaded our flanks really well with their full-backs pushing high up whenever in possession and we just didn’t deal with it. We looked a bit clueless and when we did get the ball we were often surrounded by a sea of yellow and proceeded to just pass it, or rather poorly clear the ball and give it right back to them in dangerous areas.

We were not even second to every ball. We didn’t even go after it at times. I was amazed at the slow reaction to anything all around the pitch and even before the penalty, which was incredibly soft, we didn’t look at the races despite a bright start in the opening 5 minutes. It was an accident waiting to happen.

As the game wore on and got into the second-half, I was wondering if we could raise our game a little or at least not lose those second 45 minutes. I think that’s the only main positive we can take away but it was a morale sapping display that is very concerning and on the surface, appears to have arrived without reason.

I was half expecting to see a team of players looking to impress the new man in charge, but instead, they put on a performance that was much worse than the one we witnessed at Bramall Lane earlier in the season. What an eye opener for Paolo Sousa!

I think he would have learned that we play a lot of percentage based football that is too geared towards us losing possession. There’s been too much of balls going into zonal areas for people to chase around like headless chickens. 

When you can’t even get that long ball right, and you can’t pass that well over 5 yards, it’s no wonder we couldn’t string two or three passes together and then you get an inevitable collapse. We’ve got a lot of basics to go back to and reintroduce.

I’m not one for laying into the players, but I do think we have a serious issue with balance across the team. The full back situation on either side is starting to worry me greatly as I’m a believer that the basis of your play stems from the defence.

There’s a saying that defence starts in attack, but it’s equally true the other way around that attack starts from defence. It’s here we’re lacking the quality and guile to play effectively and build a platform for us to mount attacks.

In attack, it just seemed like today and in other games before, that the players are reluctant to cross the ball let alone even shoot. It’s a confidence thing but what about just a basic game plan out there?  A simple message to the ones within 30 yards of goal to adopt a shoot on sight policy may just yield some success and momentum moving forward. We need to gamble a bit more.

Defending the players for a minute though, I was disappointed with the condescending nature of the crowd today. Sure, everybody has the right to air their frustration and with this performance, perhaps more justifiably so.  But, it doesn’t help us and it doesn’t help when it’s prolonged over a long period of time… let’s let them know the once and then make sure we get behind them thereafter as we’ve got to lift our team too.

The shame for Sousa is he doesn’t have a great deal of time to really work with the players properly ahead of Tuesday’s match against Charlton or next Saturday’s game at Palace. He’s right and he needs time, so let’s give him some as it will need a while to sort this current situation out.

I liked the way he openly said it was a bad performance and that he feels there is a need to change things. I think it’s needed and I’m really interested to see what he’s going to do over the next few weeks.

A lot of fans around me were complaining why the player’s weren’t getting stuck in, but they probably didn’t understand that it was very difficult for our men to get close enough to the United players.

At times United passed the ball around superbly. It was slick and incisive and designed to pull us about and create space down the sides. They did this really well throughout the match, but we were equal to their final ball when we had to be for the majority of the time.

I was trying to work out United’s pattern of attack and it looked like they operate in quartets in specific zones of the pitch that link into other quartets at certain points. This gives them many passing angels and opportunities as well as allowing them to shift play from one side to the next and pull defenders out of place or suck them into having to make a decision on whether to come out and challenge or hold and give the opposing player time and space. I think the secret to dealing with this is to press their defensive players actually and the defensive midfielder, although that is a risk in itself and would lead to a much more open game or being stung by quick one touch passing moves which United are more than capable of.

Matthew Connolly was a little bit exposed playing out of position at left-back. He’s a top footballer and at Championship level I think he’s good enough to adapt and deal with the majority of players he comes up against. But here, against a side as good as this, his nerves showed. He wasn’t comfortable passing with his left foot and he was reluctant and scared to pass inside with his right incase he gave the ball away in a dangerous area. So his weaknesses and fear neutralised his strengths.

I kind of felt that it would have just been better to put Damien Delaney on and having a bit more of a natural balance there would have been better, despite Delaney not being in the best of form. But, Connolly still did okay and it would have been a terrific learning experience for him.

We did panic at times when we had possession and I really felt sorry for Daniel Parejo because it caused him all sorts of problems. Sometimes the ball was being hurried into his path because the person passing was scared of making a mistake and costing a goal. As soon as it went to Parejo, at times, he had that same problem and tried to set the ball once or twice to other players, expecting them to venture out of their defensive shell but communications and wires got crossed leading to misplaced passes. When he did get the time, there was very little support going forward giving him so few options that he really had to be accurate to make sure the ball got to the person he was aiming for.

Gavin Mahon’s experience however really shone for us. There were times he got on the ball where others would have panicked and rushed, and his extra touch or patience often paid off and gave us a glimmer of hope with retaining possession.

We didn’t really do enough to win the game in the sense that we didn’t make the most of the dead ball situations we created. In a match like this, when both teams are having to be patient for different reasons, it’s important you have the quality to try and take advantage where possible.

It was only in the last 10 minutes when we were finally behind, that we started to gamble and it was courageous of us to do so. But we wasted most of our deep free-kicks and our corners didn’t really bring us any joy either despite some decent enough deliveries.

And to be honest, it may have been a blessing in disguise that we didn’t go into extra-time. I never felt like United really ran out of ideas, because they didn’t look frustrated, rather patient and content to continuously launch attacks and keep the ball moving. Radek Cerny also made several top saves and it was very pleasing to see the fans acknowledge this at the end of the match by chanting his name.

Had we nicked an equaliser at the end, we may have gone on to be beaten by a few goals due to tiring in extra-time against superior opposition and we wouldn’t have deserved that.

On a closing note, I’m still worried about the way we’re going about attacking teams. We can forgive not being too creative against United because we had to keep ourselves in the game for as long as possible, and we did a good job of that here.

However, if you’re playing one up front and need to relieve pressure, then the men up there need to work hard and know what to do. Dexter Blackstock was so slow and ponderous moving wide that he could never really get hold of the ball and sometimes didn’t even look interested, but that’s his job in a one-up formation.

If I was playing up front alone I would be expecting to move into the channels as quickly as possible to offer an outlet. I’d be looking to get on the ball on the half turn and inviting my midfielders to run beyond me so I could lay off or come inside with the ball. It’s one easy way to retain possession and help get your team up the pitch. If you stay up top and very central it’s like having to pick out a needle in a haystack, and even if you do that, that needle is still on his own in the haystack, so something’s got to change here.

I don’t want to lecture the players for the performance because it was an important three points over a solid side at this level, but we really could have made life a lot easier for ourselves had we applied a few basics and played with a plan.

I think we should have done a much better job of keeping our width on the night, and the secret to playing against 10 men it to keep the ball moving fast from one side of the pitch to the other, which forces them to continuously have to adjust their shape and helps drain them quicker both physically and mentally.

But I noticed on several occasions, even when Cardiff had 11 players, that Emmanuel Ledesma was coming off his flank and into central positions. I watched when he was choosing to do this and I still couldn’t work out whether he was under instruction or whether it was a natural tendency. If I was in charge, I’d have told him to get chalk on his boots and stay out as wide as he could.

If I couldn’t work that out, I thought the situation was even more bizarre when Akos Buzsaky replaced our little Argentine in the second-half. Buzz practically played in the centre and only came out wide on occasions, which seemed ludicrous to me given that Cardiff were playing 4-3-2. It really made my eyeballs pop out - the space he vacated and occupied only served to suffocate the middle further and gave us no proper outlet out wide.

It was no wonder Cardiff never really looked like they had less players than us, because we didn’t take advantage of the space properly. It seemed like an insane thing for him to do, but surely he was under instruction from the dugout?

What it did allow for was a license for Peter Ramage to creep into this space. He was operating almost like a wing-back, but with the greatest respect to the lad, he’s not really the man you want on the ball in those situations and having to deliver crosses. It annoys me when we have so much talent in the side who can deliver, but we can’t seem to get them in the right areas and on the ball to hurt the opposition.

To be fair to Ramage, he came up with the cross for the goal, but he did over hit his delivery and we got some fortune in the sense that it was a really magnificent header by Gavin Mahon. A great, great finish! And poor old Ramage fell over himself as he punched the air in celebration which I thought was ironic and made me chuckle. Let’s hope his career at Rangers really kicks off now.

Our choice of passing on the night was poor too. There’s a difference between making the right and wrong decisions and actually making a poor pass in terms of its quality. We did a bit of both, but it was the habit of going from A to C and skipping B that led to a lot of our play breaking down.

I saw on many occasions when the correct pass was the 5 yard one to the player standing nearest, who could then lay the ball on and invite pressure and build up momentum on Cardiff. But instead the person on the ball went from A to C and often meant we moved the ball in straight lines as a result and that the pass itself became 5-10 yards too long. As the quality also wasn’t there on the night, it meant we were prone to silly errors that cost us possession or made the move break down.

It’s irritating when you see that happening non-stop, especially when the ball is played into the channels and into no-man’s land. The striker or whoever has to chase a ball that is 50-50 at best, then somehow win it and get it under his control and then turn around and try to pass it to someone else. When we do that, it gives the other team the time to get their shape and positioning right which is what you don’t want.

When we did get success on rare occasions, it was then frustrating to see such little support for the front men. I counted a few times where I saw one of our players get onto the ball down the channel and yet there was nobody supporting from midfield, which against ten and nine men seemed slightly unusual.

To sum up the display I felt that the players didn’t really know or understand what their roles were supposed to be. It was the little things and the breakdown in communication on the pitch that made this clear to me and might have been the result of Cardiff having players sent-off, but in my opinion, it’s about their lack of preparation and plan. And when basic plans like “get chalk on your boots and stay wide” is not happening, or players are bickering with each other over why one didn’t come short or the other didn’t go long which I saw a lot of, then in for those situations it’s a little bit of a concern really.

But there were positives too. We kept another clean sheet and did well enough at the back and we won while not playing particularly well. If Akos is now match fit, we’ve got to find him a place in the team because he’s looking creative and playing with more confidence than the others.

We might need to find a solution for wide-right though as something tells me Ledesma wants to have a crack at playing centrally and I actually think he’s worth a shot in there coming off the bench, or even over on the left where it might be more natural for him given that he’s left-footed.