Queens Park Rangers visit Saint Mary’s tonight, and again that we really have to win after our failure to do so against Charlton at the weekend. Rangers arrive off the back of a very good away win at Hull, but without a few of the players who you would normally expect to cause us problems. Burrell and Chair are both injured, but the replacements obviously did a good enough job on Saturday. Also in the team at the moment, of course, is Ronnie Edwards, who joined from Saints in January, and this is the first time that that particular decision has a chance to come back and bite us on the arse.

Edwards is a player of obvious ability who we basically gave up on without really giving him a chance to shine. His loan spell at QPR last season, when we were in the Premier League, was fair enough from my point of view, and by all accounts, he did very well—well enough for QPR to want to sign him permanently, both in the summer and in January. The problem with Edwards when he played for us this season was the fact that he got bullied around by centre-forwards who had a bit of meat on their bones, and this was particularly evident in the first game of the season when Kieffer Moore pulled directly onto Edwards and smashed him about all game. Ronnie panicked and needlessly gave away a penalty with a two-armed shove in the back. That weakness against physicality is something that we certainly should be targeting this afternoon. I have a feeling, though, that in the longer term his physicality will improve, and with his natural ball-playing, he would probably have turned out to be the ideal replacement for Taylor Harwood-Bellis, who is, in my mind, almost certainly to leave this summer regardless of what division we find ourselves in next season. For now, though, whichever out of Ross Stewart and Canada Cyle is up against him needs to try and bully the fuck out of him.

Tonda’s pre-match press conference saw him asked if Shea Charles and Leo Scienza’s substitution on Saturday was tactical or fitness-related, and he replied by not replying, saying that they would be available for tonight’s game. I would have so much more respect for him if he answered the question and admitted that he messed up. I do have confidence that he does learn, but I would have more confidence if he said the quiet bit out loud from time to time.

For me, Saints should be starting with more or less the same team tonight. I would argue that Matsuki is the most likely to break into the team for this particular game, and if that happens, it will be in place of Tom Fellows. In the event that is exactly what happened, with a couple of other changes, with Larin starting in place of Stewart and Jander surprisingly coming back in for Charles.

Saints are the lively team from the start, and after a laughable dive by Mbengue which goes unpunished by the referee, it doesn’t take long for us to start threatening the QPR goal, with Scienza picking up the ball on the left and finding Manning infield. His pass forward is controlled by Azaz, who moves away from the QPR defender and then uses him as a screen and bends the ball around him from the edge of the box, and it flies past the keeper, Walsh, who manages a token dive as it whistles past him. 1-0. As we all know, it’s feast or famine with Azaz, so hopefully this sets him up for the rest of the game.

Rather than getting on the front foot and trying to put the game to bed, Saints seemed to go into a type of malaise, and it becomes apparent that tactically, we have set up to try and be too clever again. Matsuki keeps finding himself in the wing-back position, and Bree is pushed infield, which means that the whole team is deeper than it needs to be, which in turn means that when we win the ball, we’ve got a hell of a long way to go to threaten the QPR goal, and when we haven’t got the ball, we are dropping off and just letting them have it. It’s not brilliant.

QPR are encouraged by this and Vale runs through midfield pursued by Jander, before hitting a shot about 5 yards wide which clearly comes off of Jander‘s boot, but the referee in linesman have a mare between them and give us a goal kick. We wake up a bit as we approach half-time and a deep free kick from Manning comes into the mixer and THB is once again a magnet for this and gets up and heads it down and it beats the dive of the keeper and hits the outside of the post.

Canada Cyle is beginning to get involved after a quiet half so far and he holds the ball up well before finding Jimmy Bree who passes it onto Matsuki, who cuts in and sees his shot deflected behind for a corner. Another attack and another corner on the opposite side as Scienza gets tackled by QPR captain Dunne. In it comes from Scienza on the left and it looks to be going straight to the keeper but the keeper has an absolute fucking mare and waits for it to land in his gloves but one of our massive guys steams in and has other ideas and gets in front of him to nod it into the empty net from a yard out. Who was the giant who got in there? Matsuki. A more pathetic exhibition of goalkeeping you would struggle to see.

Two at half-time and to be perfectly honest, we haven’t played very well. QPR have been absolute shit and we’ve got to expect them to come out better in the second half and as long as we can withstand that, which will obviously happen in the first 10 minutes, then we’ve just a little bit more intensity we can see this game out quite comfortably.

The expected QPR raising of their game, doesn’t really happen with Jack Stephens bringing the ball out of defence and playing a lovely ball in front of Manning which forces him to go forward and he switches it infield to Scienza, who goes for the for post, but Walsh gets down to save it but pushes it straight into the path of Matsuki who drills it into the net for a second goal and this game is done.

QPR are so bad and they still can’t raise any sort of response and we nearly get a fourth from our next corner as Scienza once again whips it to the far post and it eventually arrives at James Bree with a free header which is heading in but Walsh actually makes a save this time and shovels it over the bar.

Matsuki looks like he’s on for a hat trick as THB sends a lovely ball through the entire team to pick up his run at the goal, but his first touch takes it away from him and onto the goalkeeper, but that still doesn’t excuse the QPR defender Dunne just taking him out with no attempt to go near the ball. It should be a penalty but the refs never going give that. Back in the day that would be given as obstruction but that rule has kind of disappeared from the game. Straight from the penalty appeal, QPR break up the other end and we are a bit all over the place as they work an opportunity for Vale to shoot from the edge of the box again, but Peretz parries it away easily enough. It’s about keeping a clean sheet now.

Having actually been up our end of the pitch, QPR have eyes on getting a goal back now which of course gives us opportunities when they lose the ball, and following some good hold up play by Cyle, Azaz sends Scienza galloping into the QPR half on the left-hand side and with Cyle making a huge ground in the middle, which he uses as a decoy before sending a defender for a hot dog and then going for the far post again and the keeper makes an almighty bollocks of it by going down in instalments and it bobbles through his hands and then in off the far post. Fucking hell he’s shit. Four nil.

Another attack and it’s Scienza again on the left and he switches onto his right foot and aims for Matsuki in the middle but a defender gets it first but can only chest it down to Jimmy Bree and it sits up very nicely for him to smash it and see it flick off of Ronnie Edwards arse and go spinning into the net. There’s a message in that for Ronnie somewhere.

The Rangers fans who started the game with the predictably dull chorus of “is this a library”, are now doing an impression of a library themselves, a closed library with no people in it, as more and more of them join the hoards that disappeared when the third and fourth goals went in. Weird how the same starting line-up can beat Hull away three days ago and then produce this. They are probably fearing us putting seven or eight on them, but it doesn’t transpire that way and the game peters out. Daniel Peretz has enough time to further make a good impression as it’s plainly obvious that he wants is clean sheet as he refuses to be distracted by the chance for him to give them a wave at the Northam End and he comes out with some proper lunatic goalkeeping in the last couple of minutes diving at the feet of a forward well outside his box, head first. We have cameos from Ross Stewart and Cam Archer up front, with Shea Charles getting a run out for a few minutes in midfield. He has a token lash over the bar from twenty five yards as the game descends to walking pace.

Final whistle, job done, five goals, clean sheet. Tremendous stuff. I mean, you can only be what’s in front of you and what was in front of us was absolutely pathetic. Rangers confounded my halftime logic in the I thought they would get better at the start of the second half and they couldn’t possibly be that bad again, but they were in fact they were probably worse in the second half. It was one of those games where if we had wanted to score eight then we could’ve done as they were embarrassingly bad.

It has to be said that after making some somewhat questionable decisions on Saturday, Tonda got this one exactly right with all of his big calls being proven correct. It was surprising for me to see Caspar Jander start the game because he has been horribly out of form in his last couple of appearances but after a slightly shaky opening ten minutes whilst he got up to speed with the game, he put in a performance of drive and discipline, especially as he got booked in the first half and had to manage that.

Canada Cyle struggled to get involved in that dead period in the first half but as we got towards the end of the half and throughout the second half, he began to impose himself on the central defenders and allowed us to get up the pitch with his hold up play. The highlight for me was him busting a gut to sprint from halfway to the edge of the penalty area waiting for a pass from Scienza that never came and then collapsing after Scienza’s effort went through the keeper and into the net for the fourth goal.

Kuryu Matsuki was the spark that lit up everything. It’s hilarious that a player of his relatively small stature could score a header of from six inches out direct from a corner and the second goal was his reward for following up and being in the right place at the right time. The choice between him and Tom Fellows is becoming very interesting on that right hand side. Whilst Matsuki is not a winger and is unlikely to beat people for pace, he has more quality and is certainly a bigger goal threat. The last part kind of goes without saying as Fellows has yet to score this season and pretty much has failed to even get close.

Elsewhere, Daniel Peretz emerging is a really big character in goal with a constant drive to keep clean sheets, bellowing at his defenders for 90 minutes and always looking to affect the game. He has, predictably, got better as he has played more and I’m certainly reaching the opinion that I would be perfectly happy for him to be in goal for us going forward after this season finishes. I love the lunacy of the bloke, literally throwing himself headfirst into the spokes when we were 5-0 up with just a few minutes to go.

There was some interesting quotes from Tonda after the game, especially about how he listened to something Leo she said at halftime to get him infield more so he could be more of a threat. The way this was achieved by getting Manning further up the pitch and wider and you could see in hindsight where that was a problem in the first half because Manning positionally, wasn’t really on it. The main point of interest is that the manager listens to his players, which is basically a good thing if the player has a good idea.

I don’t usually have any need to mention the kits that the teams are playing in but there was a bit of a colour clash out there today. Saints red and white shirt obviously can look a bit pink from a distance and the pink and black half kit of QPR did play tricks with the eyes a few times, especially when the pink half of the kit was facing towards whoever was looking at it. Wearing black shorts like Saints were as well, also didn’t help. It’s amazing that in these days of all teams having three kits, that QPR couldn’t find one that didn’t clash and the referee allowed it. I’d say it probably wasn’t too bad for the players at pitch level but certainly from the stands, it wasn’t great.

Ronnie Edwards probably didn’t have a great day in his pink and black kit. He used the colour clash to hide a bit. Some nice possession when he stepped into midfield a bit in the first half but that was about it. The game seemed to go on around him in defence when the goals were flying in, apart from the fifth, which nicked off him as he turned his back. I still think there’s a player in there but he has to toughen up and be more assertive. There will be a crossroads at some point where he either does that or becomes a midfielder.

Next up is an away game where the home team will be wearing blue and white stripes and we will be wearing black as we got to Hillsborough to play Sheffield Wednesday. Having charged up to 7th place today, it would be somewhat spectacular if we let that slip against the team on -7 points, on a run of ten defeats in a row.