As much as things change… - preview Saturday, 14th Dec 2013 00:33 by Clive Whittingham A week that began with Yossi Benayoun signing and included the surprise unveiling of plans for a new stadium at Old Oak Common finishes in the frozen north at Blackpool. Blackpool (7th) v Queens Park Rangers (3rd)Old First Division, Old Old Second Division >>> Saturday December 14, 2014 >>> Kick Off 15.00 >>> Bloomfield Road, Blackpool One thing you cannot fault Tony Fernandes for is lack of ambition. The man who lived over a chip shop on the Uxbridge Road and made a fortune in low cost airlines after a brainwave in the departure lounge at Luton Airport now wants to transform the West London skyline, and the dynamic of the city of London, and QPR holds the key for him to accomplish it. The scale of the proposed development at Old Oak Common, situated just shy of two miles north of Rangers' present Loftus Road home on a patch of land that, when viewed from the upper platforms at Willesden Junction railway station, looks like a nuclear fallout zone, is colossal. Flats, apartments, an arena, a high-speed rail station, 50,000 jobs, 8,000 homes, and a stadium at the heart of it that will ostensibly be the home of our own, humble Queens Park Rangers. Not so humble, and perhaps not ours, any more. While the size of the project has raised eyebrows higher than a surprise birthday party at Matt Murray's house, the fact that QPR are looking to move is inevitable. Fernandes plays the PR game well, and is certainly more interested in the football side of things than his predecessors Flavio Briatore and Bernie Ecclestone - or most of the rich foreign football club owners in this country for that matter - but he's not at Queens Park Rangers for want of something better to do with his time or the love of the sport. The idea that the Tune Group would allow money to be tossed into the black hole that our club currently is indefinitely while it potters about in the second tier in an 18,000 seater stadium on the White City estate with limited hospitality facilities and zero other-use potential is as fanciful as the idea that Philip Beard was hired as CEO because of his experience and adeptness at running a professional football club. When Fernandes, and the previous rich owners Rangers have been blessed/saddled with, talk about the potential of the club they're not talking about welcoming European opponents to Loftus Road thanks to a cash injection of £50m a season from their back pocket. No, the potential at QPR lies exactly where the club has now confirmed it wants to move to — as a vehicle to get planning permission and an anchor tenant for a very large sports, conference and music venue built among retail, residential and rail developments in the heart of West London. Without it, QPR will only ever be what they are now: a League One club capable of extended spells in the Championship, or a Championship club capable of occasional forays into the Premier League if a rich idiot wants to throw a bit of money at it. As clubs like Swansea and Hull better themselves and overtake, QPR will fall further behind. Brentford are accelerating fast, with planning permission already in the bag for their own new stadium, and a football operation far more settled and sensible than anything in place at Loftus Road. Rangers can only ever stand still in their current location, and they'll need a big chunk of cash every season just to do that. For Tony Fernandes it's an absolute no brainer. For the rest of us, the waters are perhaps a little muddier. One cannot help but look at Southampton and feel a pang of jealousy. A world class academy system chucking out international quality players who are fast tracked into a first team that plays attractive football in a new stadium at the top end of the Premier League. Who doesn't want that? Who doesn't want to put an England match on when they get in from work on a Friday night and see three QPR players, two well scouted from lower leagues and the other a graduate of the club's youth set up, winning caps? With the best will in the world, it's not going to happen at Loftus Road, just as it couldn't have happened at The Dell. But then one cannot help but feel a certain emptiness and boredom when sitting in Southampton 's St Mary's Stadium. To badly re-work a Beautiful South classic it could be Leicester, or Derby, or Middlesbrough, or Coventry . One design fits all, one tier of seats all the way round, a vast gap from the front row of seats to the touchline, only the colour of the seats distinguishing it from half a dozen other stadiums. The Dell was even more unfit for purpose than Loftus Road currently is, but when leaving such an iconic stadium it's the British way to just whack up any old drab, bowl-shaped monstrosity as quickly and as cheaply as possible. On the continent - in Genoa , in Turin , in Munich , in Porto at Boavista - they understand that you're not building a venue or a stadium, you're building a home. Their new stadiums are built with football and football supporters in mind — rather than any consideration of where One Direction might set up their sound equipment. Only Brighton in this country have really grasped the concept of a football stadium for a football club and football fans and done things properly. At Loftus Road a crowd of 11,000 people can create an atmosphere unrivalled anywhere; in most of the other new stadiums built in this country the noise drifts aimlessly away even when the place is filled by three times that many people. Fernandes has been at pains to state that designing a unique football stadium, which helps generate atmosphere rather than helps to extinguish it. This has to be priority one. If you're leaving an iconic, atmospheric, historical home then make damn sure you're building an iconic, atmospheric new home to be proud of — not the same as anybody else's, and not something that doesn't have football right at the very heart of every design decision made. One Direction can work around QPR or sling their STD-riddled hooks. And then — stop groaning at the back — there's a question we've tossed around on this site for some time, about exactly what it is you want from your QPR. As recently as 15 years ago a new stadium development and significant boardroom investment could bring a league title to Blackburn Rovers. These days you need a Sheikh to turn up to elevate you into that bracket and the rest are left to compete for cups — which they universally try to duck out of at the first given opportunity for fear of it affecting league form — and in a division where the best they're ever going to be able to do is sixth. Sixth qualifies you for Europe , which is a dream for many QPR fans like myself, but comes with the caveat that a European campaign is also perceived as a threat to the precious league form, and should also be avoided at all costs and dropped out of early if possible. QPR need to move grounds to get to the point where they can kick around in the Premier League regularly, making early cup exits, while fans pay £52 for tickets at away matches. Is there a danger that in 20 years’ time we could all be sitting among 10,000 empty seats in our Air Asia sponsored Uber Enormadome beating West Brom 2-1 to secure eighth place in the Premier League and wondering just what the point of all this is? When it's written like that, is it not better to stay where we are and as we are now, capable of occasionally punching above our weight and bloodying the noses of the big clubs, but mainly spending time in the two divisions below? Probably not, but then I'm biased and unreasonable on this issue. The idea of leaving a place with so many personal memories and ghosts, to play in a new build with a Wagamama next door and a Michael McIntyre gig booked for the day after, thrills me as much as extensive root canal work. Even when Bolton Wanderers were Premier League mainstays, which bit of the matchday experience at their soulless, empty, isolated Reebok Stadium - or their yearly quest for midtable mediocrity and early cup exits under Sam Allardyce and Gary Megson - was so appealing? I'm wrong, but I don't care. And while it's certainly true to say QPR cannot compete regularly at the upper end of the Premier League in their current home without significant inputs of free cash from an owner/idiot, it's also true to say that moving to a new stadium to cure that isn't a guarantee of success. Once upon a time a rich owner guaranteed success, now everybody has a rich owner and guess what? Three teams still get relegated at the end of the season. QPR will go to Derby this season, who also couldn't feasibly have stayed at the Baseball Ground but haven't found that their Pride Park home — situated a 20 minute walk through a retail park full of car show rooms and lousy microwave meal "restaurants" — has helped them spend any more time in the top flight, or be any more successful, than they were previously. The chance of playing in exactly the same division as we are now, against exactly the same opposition, with roughly the same attendances, but 25,000 empty seats and an atmosphere akin to the Wembley Ikea is a very real one. Simply put if you go to the football for the football you'll be in favour and if the football stopped being the most important thing for you a while ago, you'll be dreading this. I count myself in the latter, minority, category. In the meantime, QPR continue their quest for an immediate return to the Premier League with the short term signing of 33-year-old Israeli midfielder Yossi Benayoun. It's the third time Harry Redknapp has been allowed to add an experienced international footballer to his squad since the transfer window closed, and I dare say Phil Beard and Tony Fernandes are just as keen as Benayoun to make sure that this one features a good deal more than Oguchi Onyeweu and Javier Chevanton have so far. For the rest of the division this must seem like greedy, gratuitous, decadence. Adding Benayoun to a squad that already has big earners like Niko Kranjcar, Jermaine Jenas, Luke Young and others kicking around - sometimes starting, more often not - doesn't exactly give the impression of a level playing field. Rangers have done their bit to make it look like a fair fight by playing some of the most drab, uninspiring and boring football that such a decent group of players could ever possibly produce, but really if this squad cannot win promotion from this league there should be a steward's enquiry. All a far cry from the summer of course, when avoiding a Wolves-style free-fall was job one, but the signings made and the results so far have shifted the expectation goalposts somewhat. The question about whether QPR should be pushing so hard, with such short term measures, to get back to the Premier League while the problems with ethos and infrastructure that undermined their last spell in the top flight largely still exist is probably a moot one. Financially, Rangers need to be back in the big time as soon as possible, so in comes Benayoun, and out goes Tom Hitchcock, Max Ehmer, Michael Harriman and others on loan. The question about whether QPR should abandon their home and improve said infrastructure to the extent discussed this week, simply to give them a chance to bounce around in a league we never have any chance of winning and nobody enjoyed very much the last time we were in it, is, this week, much more valid. See you all on the 08.30 from Euston tomorrow. Links >>> Opposition Profile >>> History >>> Podcast >>> Referee >>> Travel Guide >>> Betting
Matthew Connolly celebrates his spectacular equaliser ten minutes from time in the last meeting between these two sides back in 2010. The R’s, under the charge of Mick Harford following Paul Hart’s resignation, drew 2-2 thanks to Connolly’s wonderful volley and an earlier chipped penalty from Adel Taarabt. Quite what Wayne Routledge is up to in this shot is anybody's guess. SaturdayTeam News: Yossi Benayoun isn’t fit enough to feature for QPR next so the R’s will pick from the same squad as they had at their disposal for last week’s draw with Blackburn. That means Nedum Onuoha likely on the bench again covering Richard Dunne and Clint Hill, and Little Tom Carroll starting in midfield. Bobby Zamora and Ale Faurlin are the long term absentees. Blackpool are running out of bodies. Ricardo Fuller serves a three match ban and Neil Bishop is also suspended following a spate of recent red cards. Gary MacKenzie is out of the Christmas fixtures with a bad hip which leaves the defence light on quality and numbers. Kris Broadfoot is back from a ban and Craig Cathcart is fit to return to the defence after a knee injury. Elsewhere: With just six months, and 752 rounds, of Championship action remaining, it’s hard to underestimate the importance of this weekend’s meeting between Leicester and Burnley — currently the top two in the Championship. By the time Sky’s live coverage has finished on Saturday lunchtime you’ll believe that the victors are home and hosed, the losers lucky to make the play offs, and QPR ready to swoop in and feast on the carcass of whatever remains. In truth, at this stage of a 46 game season, a result in such a game means very little — but such talk doesn’t sell set top box subscriptions so let’s go with it. Similarly, five and three quarter miles down the league table, Barnsley host Yeovil in what we’re no doubt deeming a “six pointer” with the loser facing not only relegation, but some sort of fiery oblivion. Charlton’s circle of hell, if they descend to it as they’re suggesting they might, will surely be a room where they’re forced to watch videos of Charlton matches — each one more tedious than the last. In form Derby aren’t ideal visitors for the Addicks this weekend. Middlesbrough fans apparently burnt a copy of the Koran in the car park outside Birmingham City;s ground last weekend for shits and giggles. This week they’re staging a march against racist behaviour. What better team to welcome into the bosom of confliction and confusion than Brighton and Hove Albion. Fun to be had by all, tombola drawn at 14.00. Donny v Leeds sounds northern and grim, and Big Fat Phil Dowd has been manoeuvred into position by a forklift truck to keep an eye on what Danny Dyer might term “a proper naughty tear up.” Danny Dyer might also back Millwall to “stick one across the canister” of any passing Blackburn Rovers fan up at Ewood, but frankly if anybody is still watching Rovers with any degree of regularity they’d probably welcome the pain just to make sure they can still feel anything at all. Udinese are on for five successive home defeats for the first time since dinosaurs roamed the earth. Can Sheffield Wednesday be the team to inflict it? Well, since freeing themselves from Dave Jones and his various monotone stories about how he’s guilty of nothing other than tricking that Welsh netball player into bed while his wife was at Asda they’ve won one and drawn one so who can tell? Bournemouth v Birmingham is a fixture between two teams from places starting with the letter B. Huddersfield v Reading sounds exciting doesn’t it? Nottingham Trees v Ipswich also takes pace this weekend. Then on Sunday it’s the fifth biggest Lancashire derby on the Football League calendar with the Globetrotters hosting the actual Trotters as Champions Elect Bolton travel to Wigan. Referee: What you don’t need after five red cards in two matches is a referee like Stuart Attwell pitching up for your next match, but here Blackpool are and here Atwell is — fresh from six red cards in his last 12 fixtures and two in his last two. Attwell has never really recovered from being promoted to the Premier League far too quickly and far too young and now fluctuates wildly between carding nobody for anything and sending off everybody for everything. Not good news for ill-disciplined Blackpool, but not great for QPR either who have been on the receiving end of this official’s lunacy in the past. For a full QPR history and all his recent stats, please click here. FormBlackpool: As has been well documented, Pool lead the league for red cards with eight already this season and five in their last two games. It was the sending off of manager Paul Ince in an away win at Bournemouth in September that appears to have had most effect though. A 2-1 win that day, when Ince was said to have verbally and physically abused the fourth official after the game, made it five wins and a draw from the first six but Ince was subsequently handed a five match stadium ban and Pool have won just three of 13 since and lost the last two. At home only Ipswich have won here in nine matches s far this season, but again form has dipped from wins over Reading and Watford earlier in the season to just two wins from the last six including three draws. Pool have only ever beaten QPR three times in 25 meetings through history. QPR: Rangers are dividing their home and away form pretty starkly at the moment. The R’s began with three wins and a draw from their first four road trips — including wins at Leeds and Bolton — but have gone off the boil since with no wins from five away matches and defeats at Doncaster and Burnley. At home the R’s have won eight, drawn two and not lost, while conceding only twice. Away from home they’ve won just three of nine, scoring eight and conceding eight in the process. Their only two defeats of the season so far have both come in northern away games at Burnley and Doncaster. The R’s have conceded a division leading ten goals in all matches so far this season. Betting: Professional odds compiler Owen Goulding tells us… “QPR travel to Blackpool looking to put right their last away trip up north. An all-round lacklustre performance at the Keepmoat led to a late winner for Doncaster and Harry Redknapp will be looking for a lot more from his troops. QPR's away form has been poor since Yeovil though, failing to win any of their last five away games. “Blackpool on the other hand, have seemingly been on a mission to change the term 'early bath' simply to 'bath' as they have accumulated five red cards in their last two games alone. Discipline is a definite concern for the Tangerines and that makes this week's midfield clash of Barton v Ferguson all the more interesting. In truth, if you look past their recent ill-disciplined performances, Blackpool boast a very decent home record, taking 18 of a possible 27 points. Six of the nine teams who have travelled to Bloomfield Road have also failed to score, so don’t kid yourself into thinking this will be an easy match. Fuller and Bishop will be missing, with the unpredictable Fuller especially a big loss. “QPR away games have averaged 1.77 goals per game, and Blackpool home games have averaged 2.33 goals per game, so this is likely to be a low scoring affair. At an average of 2.05 goals per game taking both into account, the under 2.5 goals price should equate to around 4/7, however the market is currently trading at around 8/11 so it is apparent the number of goals for this game is being slightly over-estimated by the bookmakers. However, with so many teams drawing a blank on their travels to Bloomfield Road and Blackpool missing one of their most likely goal sources in Fuller, it looks like being a very low scoring affair. Therefore my recommended bet for this game is going to be Under 1.5 goals at 12/5 (Boylesports).” Prediction: Reigning Prediction League champion Mase says… “Is now a good time to be playing Blackpool? The five red cards they've collected in their most recent two matches hints at a troubled player/manager relationship, denied consistently and robustly in public. Manager Paul Ince has attributed the indiscipline to fatigue but the miasma many have so readily identified has yet to translate into a lower league position. Despite the recent issues, they should rightly be pleased with their opening months of the season. “An already-small squad will therefore be tested even further by the absence of those suspended: Fuller, Martinez and Bishop. Blackpool are more than capable of beating anyone - a win at the City Ground against Forest stands out but there have been successes against teams with lofty expectations and budgets to match, in Reading, Watford and Wigan. Peculiarly, all have those games ended 1-0, a scoreline Rangers are well accustomed to this year. I can see Saturday being another tight affair, and don't expect Blackpool to be unduly affected by their suspensions. I would happily take a point from this one, and I expect that the wary set-up's we've adopted away this year to continue here. “Rangers' recent performances have been patchy and this is never an easy game. I think we'll be back to playing Austin alone up front. Yossi Benayoun likely won't be ready until next month so it should be a familiar (and slightly too predictable) team that takes to the pitch.” Mase’s Prediction: Blackpool 1 QPR 1. Scorer: Austin LFW Prediction: Blackpool 0 QPR 1. Scorer: Austin Tweet @loftforwords Pictures — Action Images, QPR FC Photo: Action Images Please report offensive, libellous or inappropriate posts by using the links provided.
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