Four games in ten days
with Christmas in the middle and it all kicks off today at Loftus Road, in the
first repeat fixture of the season as we take on QPR.  It isn’t the first repeat of two managers
setting up against each other though, because Gareth Ainsworth, he who looked
like he came straight from the set of Lord of the Rings, has been sacked by QPR
and replaced with the very little known Marti Cifuentes, who up till now had
only managed four clubs in Scandinavia. Rumour has it that after
Ainsworth got sacked, he was still waving at QPR fans trying to get them to
make more noise to deflect away from the fact that he’d been sacked. Strange
bloke but I’m sure he’ll turn up somewhere.

Under Cifuentes, QPR have showed signs of life and though still in the relegation
zone, have got themselves back in touch recently with three wins in a row
against Stoke, Preston and Hull.  However,
in the last couple of games they have drawn at home to ten man Plymouth and
lost to Sheffield Wednesday so maybe the new manager bounce has happened and
now they are reverting to type.



Anyone who thinks this is going to be an easy away game needs
to give their head a bit of a wobble though because QPR haven’t lost at home
since Leicester beat them in October so there’s no way that this is a gimme.
QPR caused us a lot of problems at St Mary‘s and we were somewhat fortunate to
stumble over the line with a win.  Ilias
Chair and Sinclair Armstrong were both particularly dangerous and in Lyndon
Dykes, they have a striker who is so good that he occasionally keeps Che Adams
out of the Scotland starting lineup. You probably can’t hear the sarcasm in the
way I wrote that.



Russell Martin’s press conference today revealed that we had
a fully fit squad to choose from, apart from long-term absentees Ross Stewart
and Kamaldeen Sulemana. I was calling Ross Stewart a long-term absentee when I
thought he was going to be back in January but now it appears that his
hamstring injury is worse than feared, which means he has gone from “long-term
absentee” to “who knows when the fuck he’s going to be playing again”.
Estimates now say the start of next season, which is sad news but he’s now nearing Agustin Delgado status.



With the transfer window about to open, I would suggest we
need more goals to be signed by the Sport Republic cheque-book, especially if
the aforementioned Adams departs and that seems likely. There will always be a
Premier League club stupid enough to ignore current form.



Around the time that Russell Martin was announcing a
completely unchanged starting 11 and bench from the Blackburn game, words came
through that in the early kick-off, Leeds had won 4-0…. Booooo! … and it was
against Ipswich… Yessss!  So, a bit more incentive for today.



Today at Loftus ‘Restricted View’ Road and QPR start the game really well and press Saints
into errors which then allows them to break through Chair on the left hand side
and carries the ball forward before firing in a low the cross which Baz
dives out and collect well.  Bree
is going to have his hands full out there.


Aribo, who is playing at 20 mph, while everyone else is
playing at 100 mph, gets tackled just inside the QPR half of the ball squirts loose
to Chair, who looks up and properly goes for it from just inside our half,
smashing the ball towards goal and there is a brief moment when it looks like
he’s done a Beckham but it drops about a yard over the scrambling Baz and the
crossbar.



Saints show up in attack straight afterwards, with Bree
getting  in a cross and it’s half cleared
to Smallbone at the edge of the box but his effort is blocked and was going wide
anyway. Edozie then attacks from the other side and dances across the top of
the penalty area past couple of players, before taking aim and putting it just
wide of the far post.  I was hoping for a throwback to the home game against QPR when Skate Begovic dived over an effort from a similar place.

Chair vs Bree resumes on the QPR left and he gives a full
back twisted blood before scuffing a shot through Smallbone’s legs and Baz
pouches it easily enough. 
Bree
seem to pull up halfway through chasing back down the line and he tries to play
on for a few minutes but it’s no good and down he sits, to be replaced by Ryan
Manning.

Manning gets up and running straight away and feeds into Stuart Armstrong, who junks inside a player
and plays a lovely ball into Smallbone on the penalty spot before he can get a
shot away, Paal comes across and clears out everything.  Great tackle by the left back. 

A common complaint about Smallbone is that he doesn’t sprint anywhere but he
puts in a bit of a burst which takes Dozzell by surprise and he brings him down
out on the right.  Ryan Manning swings it
in, flicked on by Adam Armstrong and at the back post THB has manhandled his
way past his marker and cushions a volley past the Skate Begovic to make it 1-0
just before half-time.  Get in.

And we’re off to Stockley Park:

“Hi – can you wait five minutes and check exactly how Harwood-Bellis got completely free and his man ended up on his arse?”

“Saints are going up”

THB Points at the Guy That Was Supposed to be Marking Him

The talk at half time probably said something along the lines of not having our usual flat start tot he second half but we ignored that and After ten minutes of the second half it looks like QPR are
getting on top and Russell Martin goes pro-active and calls it early, with
Downes, Smallbone and Edozie replaced with Charles, Adams and Fraser.  Suddenly, we don’t look like we are going to
have our backs to the wall for the rest of the game and with QPR attacking with
getting no shots on target, Saints are always a good bet on the break and the
referee ignores Adam Armstrong being taken out off the ball and Aribo knocks a
short pass in to KWP, who takes on five players dribbling into the penalty area
before he gets crowded out.



Apart from Chair, the only decent QPR attacking player is
Willock and he had a chance on the left but when composure was needed, the
lashed it wildly over the bar. The same player then turns up on the right and
gets in a shot from the edge of the box which again is straight at Baz.



Stuart Armstrong is having another good game but then has a beast of a moment when he picks up the ball in the centre
midfield and inexplicably passes it straight to QPR player forcing Shea Charles
to do what no one did up at Coventry and take the guy out and get a yellow
card. Paal’s left-footed free-kick flies off the wall and goes for a goal-kick,
to much hilarity.



Under pressure, Saints play some superb football out from the
back with Manning playing it along the line to Adams, who (proper centre
forward play klaxon) holds the ball up really well before knocking it round the
corner to send the Wee Man scampering into the QPR half. He gets his head up
and picks out Charles on the edge of the box, whose side footed effort is well
saved and Aribo’s follow-up is blocked.  We are not settling for 1-0 and are trying to put this to bed
and down the left again with Manning and Fraser eventually setting up Stuart
Armstrong to step inside and drill the shot straight at the Skate.


Che Adams then take centre stage as we build down the right
and work it across to Adams on the left and he has a choice of shooting or sliding
it along the ground for Adam Armstrong to tap in but in the event does neither
and chips in across which misses everybody.


The intention to see out the game is signalled with one captain being replaced
with another – Adam Armstrong replaced with Jack Stephens and we are back with
Che Adams, who does brilliantly to close down the QPR defender as he’s about to
smash the ball long and the ball bounces through but onto his least favourite
of his two week in feet and instead of smashing it left-footed he tries to get
his right foot around it and chip the goalkeeper with the outside of his boot but
can only knock it back to him at knee height. It’s beyond pathetic it really
is. I don’t think there’s a striker in the top two divisions of English
football who would’ve tried to do that and failed so badly.



As we approach 92 minutes, we get a bit intricate with our
passing on the left and we lose it and QPR look to break and Shea Charles
absolutely wipes him out with an arm across the neck. That’ll be a second
yellow then and off you go.



QPR are still trying to play out from defence even though they
are not very good at it and after a horrific attempt to control a throw-in by
the QPR centre back, Adams picks it up in the penalty area and gets absolutely
trashed but the referee is blind or stupid or both so that’s not a penalty.

94 minutes and as always happens, QPR win a corner in the
94th minute and up comes bloody Begović from the back, looking for his second
career goal against Saints and it’s swung in from the right hand side and it’s
an excellent delivery to the back post and there is Stephens rising above
everybody to flick the ball out knowing full well that he was going to get
completely clattered and ultimately that’s the last action of the game.



And with that masterful defensive header from Jack Stephens,
the game is over and three points going back down the M3, probably via Bracknell
because M3 junction closures always spring up out of nowhere.  What a game that was, in the second half
especially. At 1-0 up, we still went for it and created loads of chances to
score a second but couldn’t manage to do so. This of course gave QPR the odd
opportunity but in all truth, they didn’t really test Baz at all.

I do however think QPR will comfortably survive as they looked decent and worked
really hard.  They pressed well and played some good
football but just lacked any sort of cutting edge. The big donkey Dykes was
exactly the big donkey that we all kind of knew he would be and so any good
work by Chair or Willock, was ultimately for nothing.



Saints had a few players who put in nothing performances in
the first half with the usual suspects, Aribo and Smallbone not remotely being
at the pace of the game.  Smallbone
had a strange match. Ultimately, it was his burst of pace that caught the
defender off guard that led to him being brought down for the free-kick from
which are winning goal came from. On the other hand, the rest of the game, the
lack of pace and intensity that he showed meant that he was almost identified as a
pressing trigger for QPR, losing the ball multiple times and putting us on the
back foot.  It was no surprise when he
was taken off on 55 minutes.  Aribo on
the other hand, really grew into the game in the second half and the likes of
Stuart Armstrong and Ryan Fraser came to life. The back four was solid
throughout with Ryan Manning having a very good game against his former club
when he came on as a substitute for the luckless James Bree.


One player who was unlucky today was of course Shea Charles
who picked up two yellows, basically covering for other people’s mistakes. He
took a yellow card after a Stuart Armstrong mistake and then took another after
we over-committed in the 90^th minute. One word of advice though is
that if you just step in front of a player the referee might not see it but if
you clothesline them, even the referees at this level are going to see it and
give you a yellow card.  What the referee didn’t see was a ridiculous challenge and
the penalty area on Che Adams which of course should’ve given us a penalty but
as I say every week in this wonderful non–VAR competition that we are in this
year, we win some, we lose some.



Today was one of those days when fouling Che Adams in a
penalty area was a complete waste of effort because you might as well just let
him out the ball because there’s a 99% certainty that he will fuck it up.  I can’t get over that chance he missed.  OK, anyone can miss but to miss like that is something else.


It was a really good day for Russell Martin in that he learned
the lessons of the Watford and Huddersfield games and we went for it after going 1-0 up. The
substitutions he made on 55 minutes were spot-on, as was the change to
introduce Jack Stephens for Adam Armstrong. It wasn’t long after Stevo came on
that Shea Charles got sent off, after which Stevo went to right back to allow
KWP to pressure QPR in their own half.  Regardless of the superb last minute header by Stevo, he is
going to have to wait because not only did THB scored the winning goal, his
partnership with Bednarek was absolutely faultless and goes a long way to
explain why QPR were never really a threat on our goal.


One down, three Christmas and New Year games to go. Next up
is the Boxing Day visit of Swansea in the Compensation Derby. Bring it on,
Merry Christmas and Up the Fucking Saints.