Watford 3:0 QPR
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.
