From Sky Sports """""""""""""""""" Queens Park Rangers assistant boss Mark Bowen insists there is a feeling of bemusement at the club after the poor start to the season. Rangers, who signed 10 players during the summer transfer window, have taken just two points from their opening five fixtures in the league. The west London club suffered another setback in midweek when they were knocked out of the Capital One Cup by Reading, despite twice leading in the match. And as QPR prepare for Monday's visit of London rivals West Ham, Bowen admits the time has come for the team to deliver. "The overall impression among the fans, the players and staff is that we are all frustrated," Bowen said on QPR's London call-in. "We have been saying: 'our season kicks off here' for the last couple of games. We have to start winning. "We keep saying that we have been playing well for long periods against tough sides, but everyone knows we have to put a win on the board. "It's ridiculous to look at a club with the quality we have got and see where we are in the table. It has been difficult, but we have to get some points on the board." Any win will only come if the QPR defence sharpen up their act, Bowen claims. "We have to cut out silly defensive mistakes," he added. "When we came in to the club last January I thought we were good at defending set plays. This year we have been a bit off. "We aren't getting to the second ball and it has cost us dearly. We have to work on situations to make sure that the lads keep their concentration until the ball is cleared." Bowen, who used to ply his trade at left-back, is also unhappy at the club's full-backs for their lack of discipline. "At times we have let ourselves go defensively. Our full-backs have bombed on too much at the same time," he said. "One of them should be holding while the other one goes forward. We will work on those things. "At times we have got excited and we have ended up chasing games. We have to remind the players that they have defensive duties at times." QPR's sixth attempt at recording their first Premier League win of the season will come on Monday night against the Hammers. Bowen raised hopes that two of the club's key players - Adel Taarabt and Alejandro Faurlin - will be fit for the game. Taarabt has missed the last two games with a hamstring problem and Faurlin came off during the Reading game with a leg injury. "Ale Faurlin took a nasty bump on his leg but we are hopeful that it will settle down and that he will be able to play," Bowen said. "We are very hopeful about Adel. He has done a lot of intensive work with the physios so I would imagine he will be working with the main group of players over the weekend. I am sure he is putting his name forward for Monday." """""""""""""""""""
This was on London Calling last night, i'm impressed with how honest and open Bowen is! (it's pretty long, but you can listen to it again here, http://mixlr.com/officialqpr/showreel/london-call-in-270912-2/ )
Bloody hell! Pretty basic stuff though. "Both full backs shouldn't bomb forward at the same time" - "Make sure the lads keep their concentration till the ball is cleared" - "We have to remind the players that they have defensive duties at times." That's what you tell U14s!! Surely our lot should KNOW all that. Stop the talking and get on with winning some games..............please!!
"When we came in to the club last January I thought we were good at defending set plays. This year we have been a bit off." = 14 goals conceded in 7 games.
If you want to be absolutely sure that both full backs don't bomb forward at the time, just play Onuoha as one of our two full backs. Chance is a fine thing.
With Bosingwa and Fabio both crocked,I dont think we will be seeing to much 'bombing forward' with Hill and Onouha!
He will be our 'caretaker' manager when Hughes gets the chop in November. Honest, decent but too nice to be a PL manager.
That is exactly what I thought. I was slightly flumoxed by that response. ^ This. ^ ^ And This. ^ I'm not sure about this, but I think I like him more than Hughes. We don't really hear much about Hughes. He keeps his cards very close to his chest. I think I would prefer it if he came straight out and said how he would like the team to play. Sparky doesn't send out the signals that we can all buy into. That would be a start. If he did, then maybe it's something we could all buy into and get behind him. But for now, he doesn't seem to care what we think or the tradition of football we would expect as QPR fans. As a traditional QPR fan, I would rather this and go down than seemingly stumble cluelesly from season to season and barely staying up playing un-guided football. I just hope that the legendary late start Sparky football kicks in soon.
What I'm really "bemused" about myself, is that we are a smallish Club, but with huge potential in the biggest League in the World, in it's biggest City, with both mega rich owners and extremely aggressive Direction. But our Football seems to be Managed by small, cautious, pedantic Management, with assistants apparently struggling to convey football basics to many players who by now should do this on auto-pilot, with teams set up to get a 0-0 away, or a 1-0 home, with over-cautious defensive football, where even our forward players need to be better defensively than they are at getting the ball in the opponents net. Our Club needs Management that reflects our Directors - Young (probably), Aggressive definitely, Reaching - Certainly, Creative - Yes. Ambitious- Yes, Attacking - Yes. Newcastle United under Keegan in the 90's - Closer. This is not Mark Hughes and his huge team of ageing experts, Colin was the type, but not the long term solution, Harry is perhaps a stop gap, but we need more than that now. The opportunity for QPR is Now. We must move on, we can't wait to Gel! TF won't be that patient if we are relegated this season, or quite possibly just struggling. I hope he is already looking hard for a Management that reflects his so far, far reaching aggressive Direction, and our History of a Club playing Football the way it should be played to entertain, in an expansive, attacking, creative new modus. What we have now is not doing it.
The honesty is a bit scary from bowen! As Col says, very basic instructions! I think Hughes over coaches his teams to the point of being like robots hence Adels lack of games. You can't coach for every scenario that appears in a football game! These are professional players for Christ sake and are not going to improve as players without being able to express themselves!
The bloke just doesn't seem to have any personality and i think that is one of the reasons i don't like him!
And I wonder if the players feel that way too? Must be hard to feel motivated, although none of us can be sure what their perception of MH really is.
That is as they say Sir, pretty damn spot on. Nice one Oslo. I'll be surprised if anyone on this board can disagree with any of that. Quality post.
I disagree with pretty much all of it! It's well written, but is pretty much a long winded way of saying that oslo wants us to get rid of SWP/Park and our defensively minded players and bung Cisse/Taraabt et al. in the side. "But our Football seems to be Managed by small, cautious, pedantic Management, with assistants apparently struggling to convey football basics to many players who by now should do this on auto-pilot, with teams set up to get a 0-0 away, or a 1-0 home, with over-cautious defensive football, where even our forward players need to be better defensively than they are at getting the ball in the opponents net." This is just all just patently untrue and not reality based. Why are the management cautious and pedantic? How has the football in recent games been over-cautious and pedantic? We pinned spurs back in their own half for large swathes of the game, and we hardly set up two bank of 4 V chelsea or City. Are you saying we didn't utilise any attacking play at all to do this? I'm confused by this mystical intangible notion of "attacking play" that is apparently unobtainable by our side, regardless of whether they've been attacking or not. I don't think there's necessarily been a struggle to convey basics, just simply on a number of occasions during the Reading game(which is what bowen was referring to), we didn't do the basics well enough. That can hardly be said of the games preceding it. Mentioning "the basics" is a football platitude that shouldn't be read into too much. We were outmuscled by reading on the day, who offered a completely different challenege to anything we'd faced so far. How have the team been set up for 0-0's away? We could have been 0-3 up at HT v spurs if it wasn't for friedel. And at home, even in the Reading game we didn't look like we were going for 0-1, and certainly not the chelsea or swansea or Walsall games. The comment about our forwards needing to be "better defensively than they are at getting the ball in the oppositions net" originates from a number of us sayign the likes of cisse don't offer enough in defense to justify being in the side at the moment. This isn't a controversial viewpoint. We don't want them to be better in attack than defence, we just want them to chip in with everything. We're a struggling side, we can't be carrying passengers at this stage. How do you know Mark Hughe's team are "ageing experts?". They all seem relatively young for football staff to me. I don't see what Colin provided that Hughes doesn't. And what's this about Harry being a stop gap?!! Why can't we "wait to gel"? This is a building process, it sounds like you have the "immediatitis" mentioned in a different thread. What's the alternative to waiting for the team to gel? Sacking Hughes? "expansive, attacking, creative new modus.", exactly the way we played against spurs/city/chelsea for long periods. You're suggesting TF look for a replacement for Hughes. It sounds like you're longing for our attitude towards managers under Flavio to return! Having been to chelsea/spurs/reading i just find it frustrating to be told by someone who wasn't there that we set up for 0-0's 0-1's in these games! It's just simply not true! ( i don't mean to be disparaging to your fandom OS, obviously Norway isn't ideally located for trips to LR! I won't be able to go for 6 weeks or so myself after the WH game) Anyway Os, no hard feelings, i do enjoy your posts, and they certainly offer a different perspective/spark debate I'm rushing back to Arsenal V Chelsea now so i've probably missed some stuff out, but i'll revisit this thread later!
What Oslo and some others are saying is that Hughes has selected hard working formations, epecially SWP, which aren't creating an awful lot. To ever select SWP ahead of Taarabt/Hoilett in a home game is simply ridiculous. I could accept your arguments more if we were actually winning games.
You're ignoring the fact that SWP has been playing well and contributing to the side. I'd far have preferred him on wednesday to Mackie. Taraabt has been injured for ages. Like i say, we could have been 0-3 up in our last league fixture, so we're hardly creating nothing? Arguably we should have won the previous two games. Hughes only has control over the performances, not the rub of the green. edit: We're slowly phasing in our less defensive creative players. At the start of the season post swansea(in which they all played), we badly needed some solidity. So we included more consistent performers in lineups for the following few games(SWP). I don't think the likes of taraabt/cisse can be put into poor sides, there needs to be a pre-existing solidity for them to be effective.
