Match Day Thread Queens Park Rangers Deepdale 17/12/2022

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Might be important

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LAST TIME OUT

Neil Critchley

Critchley retired as a player aged 24 and became a coach at Crewe, working under Gradi and Steve Holland,[4] and being appointed joint Academy director in 2007, before joining Liverpool as under-18s coach in 2013.[5]

Liverpool
Due to fixture congestion of Liverpool's first team during the 2019–20 season, Critchley served as their stand-in manager for their EFL Cup away match against Aston Villa on 17 December 2019.[6] The congestion was caused by Liverpool's participation in the 2019 FIFA Club World Cup in Qatar, which overlapped with the EFL Cup quarter-finals.[7][8][9] Liverpool, fielding a team made up exclusively of under-23s, were beaten 5–0.[10][11] Critchley again served as Liverpool's stand-in manager for the FA Cup fourth round replay against Shrewsbury Town on 4 February 2020, as the first team were on a mid-season break.[12] The youthful Liverpool team won 1–0 via an own goal.[13]

Blackpool
On 2 March 2020, Critchley was appointed as head coach of Blackpool on a three-and-a-half-year contract.[14] After a curtailed regular season due to the COVID-19 pandemic in the United Kingdom, Blackpool finished in 13th position after standings were amended to reflect a points-per-game ratio.[15]

In Critchley's first full season in charge, 2020–21, Blackpool finished third at the conclusion of the regular season, going on to win promotion via the EFL League One play-offs.[16]

On 19 November 2021, Critchley signed a four-year extension to his contract, keeping him at Bloomfield Road until 2026.[17] The following week, Critchley was named Manager of the Season at the annual North West Football Awards, beating Manchester City's Pep Guardiola, Blackpool's former captain and now Bolton Wanderers manager Ian Evatt, and former Morecambe manager Derek Adams.[18]

Aston Villa (assistant)
On 2 June 2022, Critchley departed Blackpool after accepting the role of assistant head coach to Steven Gerrard at Aston Villa.[19] He had told Blackpool's owner Simon Sadler that he was keen to work again with Gerrard and "pit himself against some of the best coaches in the world".[20]

On 21 October 2022, Critchley departed Aston Villa, following the sacking of Gerrard the day prior.[21]

Queens Park Rangers
On 11 December 2022, Critchley was appointed head coach of Championship club Queens Park Rangers on a three-and-a-half year deal.[22]


In The Dressing Room

With several players having missed last weekend’s victory over Blackburn Rovers through injury, Ryan Lowe is hopeful of at least one returning to the fold.

He confirmed in his pre-match press conference that one or two would be taking part in training on Thursday or Friday, and that their progress would be assessed ahead of the game.

Troy Parrott will definitely miss out, with the manager expecting to have the Irish forward back for the Huddersfield Town FA Cup game.

A Look At Our Visitors

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It’s the start of a new era at Queens Park Rangers on Saturday afternoon, with head coach Neil Critchley set to take charge of the team for the first time since his appointment last weekend.

The former Blackpool and Liverpool U23 boss goes into Loftus Road following the departure of Michael Beale to Scottish side Rangers, and Critchley is tasked with getting the R’s back on track.

After an impressive start to the campaign, things haven’t gone as well in recent games, as they head into the weekend winless in six – with five of those matches ending in defeat.

Going Head To Head





Games played: 49
PNE wins: 19
Draws: 17
QPR wins: 13
Last meeting: PNE 2-1 QPR, 9th April 2022

One To Watch

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Attacking midfielder Chris Willock is often a man QPR turn to for inspiration, and he regularly comes up with the goods.

Following an impressive 2021/22 campaign, which saw the Arsenal Academy graduate directly contribute to 18 goals, so far this season he’s been involved in seven.

With fellow attacking spark Ilias Chair still away with Morocco at the Qatar World Cup, skilful dribbler Willock could have a big part to play as he looks for his first goal since the start of October.

Match Officials

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After officiating the last fixture at Deepdale – a defeat to Millwall – Oliver Langford is back in Lancashire this weekend.

It will be the third time this season which Langford has refereed a North End fixture, after taking charge of the Rotherham United and Millwall matches.

He has been the main official for 17 matches in total this season, showing 65 yellow cards and one red so far.

MACS VIEW

Like our last opponents the hapless plastics from Blackburn, Rangers play us fresh from a 3-0 to Burnley, so hopefully we will follow with another 4-1 victory
However they have the new manager syndrome which will probably give them a bit of lift after being demolished by the Dingles. Best keep an eye on the weather -7 tonight frost covers will be down so hopefully will get the go ahead for Saturday.
The last game before we start a run of playing Huddersfield at Deepdale.

 

Good to see you keeping this board aliive

 

Still the two of us

 

A story about frost/snow bound grounds. A brother-in-law of mine was a trade unionist and he sat on the board of trade in South Ribble. It was the time Baxi owned PNE an Brian Gray was CEO of Baxi. One meeting of the board was during a very cold period and many games were being cancelled. My brother suggested to Mr Gray that Baxi should invest in underground pitch heating for Deepdale. He was met by a non-committal perhaps frosty response.

 

In the play off season under Moyes, at the turn of the year we had a poor spell, hadn't won in about 5 games, we were due to play Wolves, bitterly cold week leading up to the game and worst kept secret we forgot to put the covers on, won the rescheduled game 2-0 last game in front of the old Town End

 

Preston North End 0 Queens Park Rangers 1 Dunne

PNE line-up: Woodman; Storey, Lindsay, Cunningham (O’Neill, 85); Potts (Diaby, 90), Whiteman, Ledson (Cross-Adair, 68), Fernández; Johnson, Woodburn; Evans. Subs not used: Cornell, Bauer, Slater, Mawene.

QPR line-up: Dieng; Laird, Dunne, Clarke-Salter, Paal; Field, Dozzell (Dickie, 90+1), Iroegbunam; Adomah, Dykes, Willock (Shodipo, 78). Subs not used: Archer, Kakay, Thomas, Richards, Armstrong.

Attendance: 14,534 (504 away fans).

Referee: Mr O Langford.

Back to earth with a bang after last weeks win at Slackburn, in truth deserved nothing and that is what we got, second best for the vast majority of the game against a side who passed it about better than us, ran at defenders(we didn't) and heaven forbid we ever do it had shots from distance..
All the danger in the Hoops side came from players who had the number seven on their shirts, Willock(7) Dozzell(17) Laird (27) Albert (37) Ireogbunam (47)
It was a miracle we managed to get to half time level, having been battered for a large part of the half, there was a period of about five minutes were we couldn't get out of our own penelty area, bodies were put in the way of goalbound shots apart from the one from 30 yards by Ireogbunam which hit the inside of the post and bounced clear.
In their resplendent black and burgundy hoop shirts(classy I thought) they gave an object lesson on how to play on a pitch which was probably slightky worse than it looked, appeared to be some icy patches on it.
Willock very decent player ran out our defenders caused them problems. Dykes battle with Lindsay was fascinating although Dykes may have been lucky to avoid a second yellow.
We offered litte in the first half inability to find a white shirt and a tendency to welly the ball skywards which played into the hands of the Rangers defence as Woodburn can't head a ball
Second half more of the same, this time Rangers added a goal, great corner, not hgreat defending and Dunne fired home from close range off the underside of the bar.
We woke up from this setback and actually had a shot Woodburn easily saved by Dieng.
End to end in the latter stages except when Rangers players seemed to have been hit by a mystery disease which caused them to collapse all over the pitch, they wasted a few hours on dead ball kicks and managed the game well with the help of Mr Langford or to give him his Spanish name Juan Kerr.
Potts was unlucky with a first time shot narrowly wide and a Rangers defender nearly own goaled but that would have been harsh on teh visitors if we had equalised late on.
Ah well never mind our next home defeat is on Boxing Day against Huddesrfield cannot wait

Preston boss Ryan Lowe told BBC Radio Lancashire:

"After the Lord Mayor's show last week [at Blackburn], we knew we weren't going to get quite the same performance. It's very hard in the Championship.

"It's an opportunity missed. After winning away last week, it would have been nice to replicate that and get the six points going into Christmas.

"But we lacked a bit of quality. You've got to take your chances, and Queens Park Rangers have done a job on us.

"I've said to the lads in there 'don't be too down, these things happen' - we'll lift ourselves and step it up again next week."

QPR head coach Neil Critchley told BBC Radio London 94.9:

"Coming to a team in form - and we're out of form - I said to the players 'we're not coming here to take a point, we're coming here to win. We're not going to be on the back foot, we're going to take the game to them'.

"We did that. We didn't score when we were on top but thankfully we did in the second half. We scored from a corner routine that we worked on.

"It was a lovely delivery and thankfully he [Jimmy Dunne] hit it a bit better than the ones he hit on Friday. We got the reward for that and then had to show a real different side to our game. To come here and keep a clean sheet, I'm really proud of the way the players played.

"There are such fine margins but we were deservedly on the right side of that."