Despite His White Boots

Football, football, football and, if the mood takes me, more football.

Saturday, January 10, 2009

QPR 1 Coventry 1

QPR looked set for a third goalless draw on the spin at an arse-numbingly cold Loftus Road today until both sides popped up with a goal in the last 20 minutes. Rangers had a fair amount of possession even before City were reduced to 10 men but, despite Wayne Routledge impressing on his debut, created very little with Heidar Helguson in particular having a real, let's say off-day to be nice. When Stephen Wright lunged in on Helguson just before half time, I thought a straight red might have been a little harsh, but given that (as I suspected at the time) he had already been booked he was definitely walking either way.

City then parked the bus, pretty much, not that I'm blaming them and I'm sure we'd have done the same. Out of nowhere though, they took the lead when Radek Cerny gave free-kick expert Daniel Fox far too much space to score with one of those near post free kicks that bounces before going in, that never looks good for a keeper. Emmanuel Ledesma came on for QPR and did quite well IMO, but thanks to woeful shooting all round, the visiting keeper was not tested until a long punt forward was helped on by Samuel Di Carmine, and Dexter Blackstock nipped in between the hesitant defenders to nod home. A point isn't really much help but it would have sucked to watch that oik Clinton Morrison dancing around celebrating a victory so at least there was that.

I see that Paulo Sousa has acknowledged that it was a mistake to change the system (to a flat midfield four) when players have been unable to train much because of the weather, but frankly it's what I'd have done and what I'd like to see us do when Cook returns and he and Routledge can stretch teams on both wings. Rangers are in a kind of odd position at the moment, we are struggling to attack cohesively but I don't see this as a long term problem because Vine and Buszaky will improve the forward play no end when they eventually return. In the meantime I'm happy to cut them some slack and watch a gradual process of putting a team together for next season.

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