FAN’S VIEW: 24/25 – No.45: QPR AT HOME

Tuesday night’s results weren’t bad for us at all even though we ended up one point closer to the bottom three. Briefly the best odds around on us getting relegated lengthened from 7/2 to 9/2 but soon dropped back to 7/2 meaning money had been placed on us being in L1 for the 2025/26 season.

Yes we may be fighting relegation but we were doing just that two years ago and that was in L1. We’ve now played 40 games and have 45 points. Then we’d played 40 and only had 40 points and were in 20^th place two points outside the bottom four. That league table makes very interesting reading and shows how quickly the fortunes of clubs can change. Although looking at the size of the clubs at that level that season it doesn’t take a genius to work out the likely direction of travel each were going to take. Forest Green Rovers were bottom. They’re now in the National League, albeit in a play-off slot. Second bottom Morecambe look destined for the drop into non-league this season, dragged down by their owner. Third placed Ipswich Town are of course experiencing the delights, whatever they may actually be, of the Premier League this season. They’re coming back down but should perhaps take a tiny bit of comfort from the fact they’re not as inept at that level as Southampton and Leicester. Then of course there’s the parachute payments they’ll be getting.

But back to the Championship and the battle to stay there.   

OXFORD UNITED 1 QUEENS PARK RANGERS 3

For most fans football is a series of ups and downs. Over the years and often within each season they mostly tend to even themselves out particularly as expectations change. The more successful a team becomes the more a supporter will expect his or her team to win. The other side of this is the worse it becomes those supporters then become resigned to the defeats as they mount up. Almost punch drunk so that it doesn’t hurt any more. And unless you’re already at the very top of the pyramid proper success brings promotion and a vastly stronger challenge after that. That’s where we’re at.

So not really a surprise that immediately following the massive high of beating Sheffield United we’ve been dealt a low in the form of this defeat. The Blades were top before we beat them having won eight, drawn one and lost one of their previous ten games – and that defeat was to Leeds. Rangers on the other hand had lost six away games in a row before they did a job on us here.

The way we play and with the squad Gary Rowett has at his disposal I’m not shocked one little bit that this happened. The reason we beat the Blades was that the defence was superb and we didn’t make mistakes, along with a goal from one of Will Vaulks’s many long throws. We’ve not got the fire power up front to score many ourselves and put very little together in the final third so if we cock up once, twice or more we ain’t gonna get a thing. And we did make mistakes to help QPR get their goals.

The stats show everything just about even but I don’t think we were able to set down a statement of intent as we had against the Blades. We went at them from the off for a few minutes and got the crowd well on board. Here QPR seemed to boss it from the start. They looked quite smooth in the way they were playing and we were doing nothing. Seemed to me we could hardly string a pass together.

Our first half display, which included more errors than after the break, was really bad. That is what ultimately cost us the game.

We did have a spell in the second half when we looked like we may have been able to salvage something after we’d pulled it back to 2-1, but the visitors’ game management put paid to that. Fair play to referee Elliott Bell who added 11 minutes on at the end of the 90. What else could he do? But continuous breaks in play stop momentum and that’s what Rangers achieved after the introduction of Stan Mills had given us a much needed boost with a goal one minute after his arrival.

The team that scored in added time was of course them, not us. Game over. There were still ten minutes of the added time remaining when that happened. By now my grumpy old man mood had largely kicked in. On Saturday the crowd had been phenomenal in its helping of the team get over the line. Here I was really disappointed as I witnessed the exodus. No doubt there will be the view that it’s up to me when I leave, it’s a free world, I’d seen enough, we were crap and we obviously weren’t going to turn it around along with the need to beat the traffic queues. That doesn’t wash with me, not when so many left. At the final reckoning goal difference could be crucial. Look how close we are to Cardiff and Pompey in this regard.

Going a goal down so early didn’t help the cause obviously but that gave us plenty of time to rally and turn things around. Unfortunately no rallying was done before the break.

The first conceded came from a corner to the near post. That’s not where most corners are delivered to these days. Did it confuse us? Given the height we have at the back we shouldn’t get beaten like that but it has to be said that those in the hooped shirts were quite big lads too. We had four players who all converged towards the ball yet still didn’t win it. That said, Jamie Cumming should have kept it out. Flapping wasn’t what was required. Plenty of times we’ve praised our number one for keeping us in games and winning points and because of this have forgiven him for errors as we know all goalkeepers make mistakes. But should we be asking is he making more than your average stopper at this level?

The second just before half time also came after a QPR corner. This one was cleared but as we had everyone back it was so easy for them to return the ball into the penalty area. They again won the header and got it back across the box. Ole Romeny bundled into Cumming and scored an own goal. It was a 100% cock up. Romeny was the wrong side of Sam Field who might have scored anyway but if he’d just left it to Cumming we would probably have been okay. I’d like to see much more positivity from Cumming in such situations, a loud yell of “keeper’s ball” and making sure it is indeed his.

It wasn’t only the score at half-time that had us feeling down. Ciaron Brown’s departure in the 12th minute after damage was done following a meaty block tackle was really bad news. There’s talk of knee ligaments being the issue which would mean we’re not going to see him again this season. For most he’s our player of the season. Losing him for the run in will be a massive blow but thankfully Joe Bennett is fit again. A different type of player though.

Romeny didn’t emerge for the second half, Tyler Goodrham coming out instead. I’ve watched Romeny’s international goals which he scored against Australia and Bahrain and thought he looked a player. He has not looked a player for us other than in tiny glimpses. A big disappointment to be honest. I’m pondering the difference in standards between bottom half of the Championship and international level playing for a country ranked 123^rd in the world against opposition ranked 26^th and 84^th?

There was improvement in the second half and this mostly came after Stan Mills came on for the possibly concussed Hidde ter Avest. Losing him was another set-back but Mills made us look a much better team. He scored almost immediately and a good goal it was too proving that we can score from open play. Shame putting a move together like this is such a rare occurrence. Shemmy Placheta received the ball from Cameron Brannagan and he hooked an unconventional but highly effective pass to Siriki Dembele whose first time delivery as the ball rose on the bounce was met by Mills’ head in the style of a proper goal scoring centre-forward.

We now had our tails up. In the 75^th minute Vaulks and Mark Harris went off and Tom Bradshaw and Ruben Rodrigues came on. The latter nearly converted a Placheta cross to the far post but the ball ended up in the side netting the wrong side of the goal.

Pressure was being applied and Frenchman Paul Nardi had to go down low to stop another decent Brannagan effort.

An equaliser didn’t come but the announcement of the added minutes brought hope. Unfortunately we produced another error and it was QPR who extended their advantage. Our Dembele, whose brother had by then come on for the visitors, lost the ball in the centre-circle. Suddenly they were attacking us but we had a 3v2 advantage. They ran at us, worked it well and created a chance which resulted in a goal that went in off the post. We don’t do that to teams.

It could have been a different outcome but taking the game as a whole we did not deserve to come away with anything. More evidence that we have players who are not Championship standard. To get anything from games we have to be at our absolute best defensively and that’s not going to happen every time.

We scored three against Luton when we won on 21 January but in the 13 subsequent games have found the back of the net only nine times. Five times not at all, seven times once and on just one occasion twice and that resulted in a defeat by the odd goal.

Our shooting recently has been poor but Brannagan was making clean strikes of the ball once again. The rest of his game wasn’t up to the standard we know he can reach but he is managing an injury.

His midfield partner, long throws aside, also wasn’t as effective as he can be. So no control of the centre of the park but that’s been the way of things throughout the season. I don’t think that’s what we’re setting out to achieve anyway given what we’re facing.

Mills got the sponsors man of the match. Sponsors usually give the goal scorer man of the match. Even though he was only on the pitch for just over half an hour he deserved it. So purposeful compared to what had gone before.

On that performance I’d argue that he’s the best of our wide men. He didn’t look like a luxury player which both Placheta and particularly Dembele do a lot of the time.

Placheta didn’t have a bad game but I was perplexed in the first half as to why he didn’t try and put the ball straight back into the goal after he’d been gifted it by Nardi (yes, other teams do make mistakes too). Instead he set off on a dribble to the right. I’ve not seen a replay of this incident so may have misread what could have been.

Dembele infuriates. Loses the ball too often. It can be so costly. But in his defence he did provide the assist. Does the bad outweigh the good? Do we have better alternatives? Just because we’ve paid a significant transfer fee, by our standards, for a player that doesn’t mean they should be picked week in week out.

With both Pompey and Plymouth suffering defeats at the same time as us it was mostly a case of as you were at the bottom of the table. Thing is though this was a game along with the one against Watford that most of us had down as the most likely sources of three points. Expectations were three points from the last two home games but not the way round they came.

Walking back to the car I declared to Mrs FV that we will beat Sheffield Wed on Saturday. There might have been an element of forced optimism involved in that prediction but not totally so. Unibet are offering 23/5 on an Oxford win. That appears very generous to me. Wednesday have the second worst home record in the Championship. Okay we have the second worst away record but surely we’ll get another win before the season is over won’t we? They have not won in the last four. They couldn’t even beat Blackburn who have only picked up two points in their last eight games. Wednesday are one of the four teams who are safe but too far adrift to make the play-offs so we should have much more of an incentive to win than they have. The players were paid their March wages late due to cash flow problems. They’ve been slow in the past in paying tax over to HMRC. As long as owner Dejphon Chansiri, the canned tuna man, remains the only way is down for Wednesday. I wouldn’t wish that on any genuine football club with a rich tradition but I’ll suspend that for a few days as all I want is three points. The more disarray they are in the better.

Many football chants get on my nerves. “How shit must you be, we’re winning away” is one of them. When the Rangers fans sang that it obviously pissed me off because we were losing. Truth hurts. If Oxford fans sing that at Hillsborough that would signify we were winning which would be marvellous but whenever I hear such things from our lot I think shut the ***k up you’re just tempting fate.

And continuing my grumpy old man mode, even though it didn’t affect me I have to question the logic of blocking off the second roundabout on the Grenoble road south for vehicles exiting the Science Park. I’ve never witnessed a problem in the past. Cones have been put out. Cars have been driven through them and they’ve been moved. Not a problem. This time a vehicle had been parked to block that way through the obstacle. Which meant cars just went a little bit further towards the Kassam then did a U-turn. I hope the idiots who come up with this type of thing are allowed nowhere near traffic management at the Triangle. By then it goes without saying I will either be on the bus or the train. Public transport should rule. Happy to be correct if there is something obvious I’ve missed in all of this. I’m no expert.

A couple of other things before I sign off.

Oxford United Walking Footballers crossbar challenge – I must admit I only saw all five participants having one attempt. I was told that was all they would have. So off to the toilet I went after that. A few of us had been discussing beforehand who was the most likely to achieve the feat of hitting the crossbar. No disrespect to the others but we agreed on Barry Coote and indeed he did deliver whilst I was on the concourse or in the pisser. Well done Barry.

The Catherine Wheel. Not been in there for a while because they’ve either not had real ale on or if it had been it hadn’t been particularly good. This time it was. And I’d forgotten what good company there is in there. Bar staff were friendly too. Even when I said why have you charged me £21.70 for two and a half pints? They politely pointed out it was £12.70. I confessed to being an idiot.