My friend and fellow Sunderland supporter Pete Sixsmith is the main reason Salut! Sunderland, the fan site I launched in 2007, was so good (and why it is so sorely missed after the new owner let it go to rot). If Pete commends another football fan site, it is likely to be worth a visit and he ordered me to look at this piece by Clive Wittingham, whose Loft For Words is the must-go web place for QPR fans.
Just now, they’re having a miserable time, an experience Sunderland followers know only too well. Our club is doing rather well and last week heaped more unhappiness on QPR by winning 3-0 at their place.
Normally I would have been there. Loftus Road is the second nearest senior ground to me, just two bus rides away (I can walk to Brentford’s dinky little new stadium). My younger daughter played for the QPR women’s team, joining just one year too late to take part with the other girls as super-extras in Bend It Like Beckham. I had friends in the home end on Tuesday. But I couldn’t go and made do with the substandard Sky red button option.
Clive’s report may have hurt to write but was a joy to read, especially if you support Sunderland, of course, but perhaps also if you just appreciate top-quality, wholly irreverent football writing. It had Pete and I laughing out loud.
For the full works, excellent photos included, go to the LoftforWords link: https://www.fansnetwork.co.uk/football/queensparkrangers/news/59613/something-about-a-massacre-on-february-14--report
Here are chunky extracts ….
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SOMETHING ABOUT A MASSACRE ON FEBRUARY 14
As I’ve said a couple of times, if you cannot beat this Cardiff City team, this Huddersfield Town team, this Fleetwood Town team, at this point in time, then you’re not going to be beating anybody without significant changes in personnel, performance, tactics and attitude. Certainly not Sunderland, who last lost away from home way back in October when we were winning at Loftus Road for the final time, possibly ever – nine unbeaten on the road, and about to break into the top six in the division on their first return to the Championship after three years downstairs.
[Sunderland] brought a bright, young, creative, attacking team to Loftus Road, furnished by a clever and purposeful recruitment operation that’s brought together an exciting group of promising prospects from Premier League academies, Europe and Latin America. QPR brought a big bucket of shit and a whisk.
For Rangers, just keep adding one to everything bad. Now one win in 17, one win in 11 under Neil Critchley, no wins in ten, no wins in eight home games, thirteen scoreless games in 32 played in the league, a fourth 3-0 defeat in 12 games (three of those at home)…
If you’re one of those glass half full/straw clutcher types who like to tell me I’m exaggerating, things aren’t that bad, LFW trades in hyperbole, we should have got a point from Millwall at the weekend and so on then, I guess, you did at least have the first 20 or so minutes to cling to. Chris Martin got a first start in attack, and was targeted with a long ball good and early – he nodded it down, Rangers won a generous free kick from stand-in referee Peter Bankes, and wasted that. Perhaps Bankes felt sorry for us, another couple of free kicks followed, both hung up to the back post for visiting goalkeeper Anthony Patterson to come out and catch – one of those he needed two attempts to grab, oooooooooh....
Whatever fragile belief and confidence there had been about Rangers in the first 20 minutes now completely disintegrated on the pitch and in the stand. The team died on the vine in front of our eyes. It was a painful spectacle. Rob Dickie, like a dog on fireworks night, lost one challenge that was 70/30 in his favour, and then found himself backed up to his own byline by a series of ill-advised and poorly-executed passes in a dangerous part of the pitch – he, quite literally, gave up, and just punted the ball out for a throw in ten yards away.
The dinner bell rang on 21 minutes and the carve up began in earnest. One short goal kick to the right from Patterson, one long ball down the line from Luke O’Nien, and that was all it took. Jimmy Dunne, caught hopelessly under the ball, was roasted so comprehensively by Joe Gelhardt I thought we’d need a priest to scatter him around a garden of remembrance. The Leeds loanee, somehow, contrived to blast into the side netting from six yards out when clean through on goal – an absolute sitter, and it wouldn’t be the last....
If you felt like a goal was coming, you were right.
It’s time to play count the mistakes again, come on down. Thirty two minutes played, a throw in to Sunderland on the Stan Bowles side of the ground, midway inside the QPR half. The two Sunderland players nearest to the taker are unmarked, because Rangers’ two central midfielders – Tim Iroegbunam and Andre Dozzell – are scratching their pubics thinking about something else, and Ilias Chair is only walking back down the line to get involved rather than running. After a quick one-two, Iroegbunam and Paal are then both drawn back into the taker Patrick Roberts, who’s consequently able to pop the ball in behind them to an unmarked player who’s moved into their vacated space. Roberts then moves beyond the QPR players, unchecked, because of course, to receive the ball back. At no stage yet has a tackle been made, or even attempted, and Iroegbunam’s effort at doing so on Roberts is so utterly pathetic and limp that I’m not going to count that as one either. Don’t get fucking hurt will you darling, whatever you do. Ba’s intelligent flick around the corner now has Gelhardt and Roberts beyond the final QPR defender, and into the area for a clear sight of Dieng’s goal. There have been five visiting players involved to this point, not one of them has been marked or tackled at any stage. Roberts took the responsibility on himself, aimed for the bottom corner, and Dieng saved well to his left. What did you do during the war daddy? From the corner, Daniel Ballard neither blocked nor marked, a free header straight at Dieng, which the keeper spilled amateurishly – maybe a bit more concentration and practice and a little bit less time acting the clown flashing your Rolex and diamond necklace around Sumosan of a Saturday evening eh mate? – and O’Nien tapped into the empty net from no range at all. And so began the now weekly mass appeal of the QPR defence to the linesman for a flag to rescue them from their own ineptitude. It was, to be fair, unlike at Huddersfield and against Millwall, at least a marginal decision this time....
Having not forced a save from Patterson all night, Rangers had a golden chance to do so much more than that as the game entered its final third. Chair stood a cross up to the back post, Alese naively jumped with his hands in the air and ended up fisting the ball away – an obvious handball, a clear penalty, referee Bankes pointed straight to the spot. Ilias Chair, whose last penalty was at this end of the ground against Sunderland in last year’s League Cup heartbreak and is due to re-enter the earth’s atmosphere sometime around 2045, stood with the ball on the spot and allowed himself to be eye-balled and talked to by Patterson for the entirety of O’Nien’s treatment for a non-existent injury in the six-yard box. Walk away, do something else, think about something else, change the taker, don’t stand there for that long and let him do that to you. Do you? Is it just me? The camera behind the goal shows Chair then give the bottom left hand corner a less than furtive glance, and Patterson had set off that way so early and dived so far that he actually ended up going most of the way past the ball and saving the bloody thing with his legs. Ye Gods.
A little word on O’Nien at this point if I may. His antics were an obvious attempt to delay the taking of the penalty, and they worked. The referee was weak, allowed himself to be conned, looked stupid, and damaged his authority in the game – you tell him to get up, you tell him to move five yards to the side, or you book him, you do not allow the physio to come and treat something you all know is fictitious in the six-yard box before a penalty. It wasn’t the first time he outright cheated on the night either, and it’s a particularly unbecoming part of the game for an intelligent young lad who spends all his spare time recording long winded podcasts about mentorship and attitude and behaviour – he’s basically Ben Pearson, with a radio show, and sparklier eyes. But… He was brilliantly effective in this game. Moved into the centre of midfield he covered every blade, tackled every player, got forward and posed a goal threat, scored an actual goal, kicked people, broke the play up, passed the ball… He can play full back or wing back either side, he can play central midfield, he’s played as one of three centre backs sometimes this season, he writes the theme tune, he sings the theme tune, he absolutely dominated the whole middle of the park all night. You hate him, because he behaved like a little twat on occasions, but you’d love him in our team, and you could have had him at any point between 2013 and 2018, for a couple of lousy bob, when he was playing for Watford (12 miles away), Wycombe (30 miles away, strong relationship, frequent loan deals, Gareth Ainsworth) and Wealdstone (fucking Wealdstone) (nine miles). Instead he goes to the other end of the country, for £150k, and we sit here watching Andre Dozzell, who cost nigh on ten times that. For shame.
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It got better for us and worse for them - two more Sunderland goals after that missed penalty and a dire second half for the home team. And it got better still for readers of Clive’s blog. Give yourselves a treat and read it in full.
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