A familiar Christmas tale of woe for QPR at Brighton - Report Wednesday, 28th Dec 2016 12:43 by Clive Whittingham A sixth-straight defeat for QPR at league leaders Brighton wasn’t the biggest surprise this Christmas, but Rangers’ failure to learn from their own mistakes doesn’t bode well for more winnable games to come. That Queens Park Rangers lost comfortably, and keep losing comfortably, to Brighton and Hove Albion at their shiny new home on the South Coast should come as little surprise. Brighton is a club built steadily, on solid foundations, over time. Well managed on the pitch by Chris Hughton, well managed off it by chairman Tony Bloom, this is a club that was playing at the local municipal athletics stadium a decade ago, and Gillingham before that, but now has an enviable new stadium, a top-notch, purpose-built training facility and a team that has been carefully cultivated over several years, done its time and had its heartbreaks, and is now ready to step up a division. It will certainly do that this year, possibly even as champions ahead of ridiculously well-furnished Newcastle – the Magpies have lost six games this season, Brighton just two. Read the rest here ... http://www.fansnetwork.co.uk/football/queensparkrangers/news/44587
A depressing read indeed. While Clive is right to identify the lack of organisation at the back and the lack of... well, everything... up front he consistently fails to talk about our shortcomings in midfield for my money. He does pick up on our inability to retain the ball at throw ins but that is one example among many where we are being badly let done by the 'engine room' (sic). I know I have singled out Luongo before but on a day when Chery - his partner in under performing, non-creative crime was unavailable - I thought the weaknesses of the Australian were laid bare. Despite plenty of running and the occasional insightful pass, he never appears to be in the right place at the right time and manages to avoid or lose just about every challenge. His woeful tackling ability was in sharp focus yesterday of course as he naively conceded the penalty that effectively ended any slender hope we may have had. It worries me that when the manager tries to somehow get us out of this mess in January onward Luongo will not be one of the problems he is looking to fix.
Good report as usual. I've got to the stage where the results have become an irrelevance. I just do not see anything permanently positive happening to our club with the current ownership and we're stuck with them until OOC is resolved, hopefully in Car Giant's favour. I'll still go to whatever games I can and support the team but I've never felt so indifferent about the whole thing. Clive nails it here. "Brighton is a club built steadily, on solid foundations, over time. Well managed on the pitch by Chris Hughton, well managed off it by chairman Tony Bloom, this is a club that was playing at the local municipal athletics stadium a decade ago, and Gillingham before that, but now has an enviable new stadium, a top-notch, purpose-built training facility and a team that has been carefully cultivated over several years, done its time and had its heartbreaks, and is now ready to step up a division. It will certainly do that this year, possibly even as champions..." Read it and weep. And it's not just Brighton is it? I've lost count of number of sensibly well run clubs that have passed us going in the other direction, on and off the field, over the last five years. For example 2010/11, the season we pretty much walked the Championship, 15 of the 23 clubs we finished ahead of in that league now sit above us, 7 of them in the Premiership, one even winning it. From the division below Southampton and Bournemouth both now in the Prem soon to be joined by Brighton. In League Two Burton finished 19th and are now one point behind us with a much better gd. What a clusterfuck. I don't care how "nice" he is, this cretin Fernandes has driven us into the ground with his ineptitude and the sooner he goes the better.
I thought Clive let us off lightly there. We can't defend and we can't score goals, that combination usually equals relegation. Ollie now has the window to try to sort out this shambles of a team, I just hope he is up to it. That assumes of course that TF has cracked open the piggy bank!
I honestly can't recall a worse full-back performance for QPR having seen Chris Barker, Gary Borrowdale, that fat Scottish bloke we had for a bit etc. He should be third choice at best when Furlong is back. Just an awful footballer. He'll probably be in at centre-half for Wolves
