CITY 1 QPR 3
This was a dreadful match between two dreadful teams, both rightly involved at the wrong end of the Championship table.
The pre-match omens were not good with McAuley and Porter both unavailable. As it turned out the absence of the former was pivotal in the nature of City's defeat and Levi's absence simply showed that although he is physically disadvantaged at this level he is a much better prospect than Yeates.
The first half was a continuation of the second half against Leeds. We had the vast majority of the possession but never really looked like scoring. Hume, our best player by a long way, was lively throughout but could not break them down on his own.
A free kick was well saved by Camp, on loan from Derby; a fortieth minute effort during our best spell of pressure was blocked by the QPR defence and an earlier long shot was comfortably saved. Apart from this we only threatened when Horsfield failed with a poor header from an excellent Yeates cross, which unfortunately turned out to be his only major contribution.
Horsfield was almost anonymous throughout and clearly has no part to play in next season's promotion push. I hope this will be from the Championship but if we continue to play so badly it could be from Division 1. We have a tough run-in and will not gain many more points with the current squad. When we are bad we are very, very bad and the frequent, deserved chants of 'What a load of rubbish' showed how bad we were.
There was a big clue just before half-time when City's defence panicked and after a spell of pin-table richochets the ball inevitably fell to one of their strikers, the gigantic Nygaard. He had been hopeless up to this point and in keeping with his earlier play he hit the best chance of the half well wide. Who would have thought that in the second half this most limited of players would turn out to be the most influential player on the pitch?…..
Three minutes after the re-start Nygaard initiated a bout of unchallenged head-tennis deep in City's penalty area as our central defenders showed what can happen when playing together for the first time. The final header from Idiakez looped into the net whilst they played a game of statues.
In games like these where the home team is a soft touch the first goal is crucial – and we gave had given it away. QPR were inspired by the gift and penned us back in our own half. They were however unlikely to score another goal unless a similarly stupid mistake was made.
Well it duly was- this time by the referee. Overall he had a 6 out of 10 game but the decision to give them a penalty when Hughes gently made the slightest contact with one of their players as they both jumped innocuously for the ball near the penalty spot was strictly 0 out of 10. If that was a penalty referees would give 10-15 penalties every game.
How could Hughes commit a foul when trying to head the ball. He finds it very difficult to tackle with his feet let alone make a headed challenge. Nygaard scored easily from the spot and decided to his own amazement as well as ours that this must be his day.
Less than 20 minutes later he found himself all alone, level with the penalty area but halfway between the area and the touch-line. You could see his brain working from the other end of the pitch. It said – 'I am normally crap, but so are these defenders and this is my big day so I reckon that if I just hoof this towards the goal it will probably go in to the top corner like a rocket'. It did! Shades of Sheffield Wednesday.
A significant section of the crowd left at this point having suffered enough. Those who remained passed the time by estimating how many of these 11 players would be worth keeping next year. I came up with 3 definites, Henderson, Kisnorbo and Hume!
I am afraid to say that the way we are playing at the moment the admirable Rob Kelly's position as manager must also be in grave doubt. For what it's worth the opinion of a life-long friend who follows City's fortunes from afar but came with me to this game was that he liked the look of Hume but wouldn't bother much about the rest.
Rob Kelly has plenty of reasons to shout at his players (Picture courtesy of Raymonds/lcfc.com)
From 0-3 down there was no way back even though Nygaard reverted to his normal anonymity. We pressed as we always do without threatening, other than when a thumping header form Kisnorbo was equally well headed off the line.
We all knew that the referee would feel obliged to give us a penalty if we could actually penetrate into their box and so it came to pass. Hume forced his way down the right and his cross was adjudged to have been intercepted by the defender's hand. I will only say that it was 50 times a better penalty decision than theirs and at least it gave Hume the chance to add to his goal tally.
Shortly afterwards the referee's whistle was the signal for another crescendo of booing and chanting as we struggled to cope with the pain of defeat to a rubbish team.
My personal pain would be eased if Kelly promises never to play Hughes as a central midfielder again nor Hammond as a striker. I am fed up with reminding the manager that Hammond is worth trying as a wide right midfielder where he can do the one thing he does well – run!
City: Henderson, Maybury, Kenton, Kisnorbo, *Johansson, Newton, Jarrett ( Wesolowski 76), Hughes ( Tiatto 76), Yeates, Horsfield (Hammond82), *Hume
QPR: Camp, Mancienne, *Culip, *Stewart, Bignot, Ainsworth (Smith 88), Bolder, Idiakez (Lomas 63), Cook, *Furlong (*Jones 84), Nygaard
*Booked
The views expressed in this report are the opinions of the Trust member nominated to file the report only and do not represent the views of the Foxes Trust organisation