Danish midfielder Lucas Andersen shrugged off a poor personal campaign to blast home a spectacular last minute winner for QPR at Preston on Good Friday.

This is why you don’t compile your goal of the season shortlist until after the last match.

Three minutes and sand into stoppage time at the end of the game and Lucas Andersen decided he’d had enough. Preston, who’d started poorly and fallen away from there, played much of the second half like a team with a QPR win on their coupon. They were there for the taking and Andersen, tired of the mediocrity, decided he’d be the one to do the taking. Possession generously donated by Frokjaer-Jensen’s wayward pass, body shape note perfect, Andersen moved the ball out of his feet, stuck a firm boot right through the back of the ball, started it out wide of the goal, and drew it back and around beautifully into the top corner. David Cornell in goal wouldn’t have reached it with the use of a ladder. QPR are developing a taste for spectacular last-minute winners on Good Friday – it’s a year on since Jimmy Dunne had a look over his left shoulder and pulled out into traffic against Birmingham City.

They’ll study Andersen’s drop off this season in textbooks. A hugely influential part of last season’s recovery, his arrival in January was hailed as a key factor in the escape from relegation. When he rose to head home the opening goal of this season at home to West Brom we looked forward to a sparkling year ahead. The three goals Josh Maja scored in riposte, and 3-1 defeat suffered as a result, came to rather resemble Andersen’s personal journey too. Be it injuries, age or the cliched ‘legs have gone’, the Dane has been pretty dreadful when called upon through this winter. I remember watching with some degree of alarm as he tried to ‘sprint’ after a ball at the speed of the church clock in front of us at Norwich over Christmas, a distance of some ten-15 yards which I think he might still be there trying to cover now. Fair enough, Preston passed the ball straight to him here, then opened enough space to fit him and HMS Ark Royal should it happen along, but it was a sumptuous strike, drawn back into the top corner like he had it on the end of a piece of string. That lad who played Champions League football for Ajax away to Barcelona is still in there somewhere.

Startling in nature and late in the day the goal may have been, but it was little more than QPR deserved.

Out of their latest seven-game winless funk with a five-point week to steady the nerves, Rangers were the better of the two sides through a largely forgettable first half. Andersen’s fellow Dane Nicholas Madsen continued his own recent redemption arc with a creative performance behind lone striker Yang Min-Hyeok. Still poor without the ball, which becomes problematic when you’ve got Karamoko Dembele who also doesn’t have a defensive bone in his body out there at the same time, Madsen nevertheless created four chances with it here to go with three in each of the prior two games - maybe there’s life in Shirley Temple yet.

It was Madsen who twice cleverly chipped Min-Hyeok through beyond the last man before half time but the South Korean forward dragged presentable shots across goal from opposite sides on both occasions. Rangers had already drawn two saves from Cornell by this point – Jimmy Dunne’s first minute header from Madsen’s wide free kick tipped over, Min-Hyeok’s 12th minute one-on-one after Saito’s industrious approach work brilliantly repelled by the keeper with his shins.

Harrison Ashby, another who’s been in lousy form since the turn of the year, chucked himself into two big, crunching sliding tackles in quick succession, the second of which brought the rewards of a goal kick. It just felt like Rangers were more ‘on it’ in this game than they have been, bar Thordarson’s early free header which he directed straight at Nardi and a long range speculator from the same one-time-QPR-transfer-target which flashed wide.

Of course, you could question the mentality of a team that’s suddenly popping the ball around and looking halfway decent now the pressure is off, but can’t find its own arse with both hands whenever the going gets remotely tough. This is very much QPR’s scene, sunny end of term games with nothing riding on them, as opposed to the dog days of winter when the relegation zone looms and people are starting to panic.

If you wanted to travel that narrative there was plenty for you at the end of the first half. Koki Saito left the field in agony with a dislocated shoulder (somebody used to the Japanese healthcare system in for an educational afternoon/evening/Saturday morning over at The Royal Preston Hospital) and in an extended period of first half stoppage time QPR contrived to turn a positive start to the game into a 1-0 deficit that could so easily have been two.

Liam Lindsay was able to head home unchallenged as QPR switched off entirely from a Preston throw, Robbie Brady curled a corner directly onto the post with Paul Nardi thinking about other things, Liam Morrison hacked a lazy bouncing back pass at his goalkeeper which the Frenchman dealt with well – do that to Asmir Begovic a year ago and it would have been 2-0 on its own. Whether we thought we’d done enough and switched off, were marking time expecting the whistle, or perhaps, if we’re being kind, disturbed by the sight of a popular teammate picking up a bad injury and potentially leaving the field in QPR colours for the final time, it didn’t speak very well to the team’s powers of concentration. A game we should have been leading, now into half time trailing. A lot of ball watching, and Lindsay only too happy to oblige with punishment.

The impact injuries to key players have had on this season cannot be denied though. If you needed convincing of that, the second half here served as a handy reminder. QPR brought on Kenneth Paal, but more importantly forwards Andersen, Paul Smyth, Rayan Kolli and Michael Frey, from the bench, and got better for each substitution made. Smyth's industrious value down that side, particularly away from home, over the more luxurious Dembele shown again. If Marti Cifuentes was able to regularly get 90 minutes out of both or either of these two strikers, things would go a lot better for him and his team. Kolli could and should have equalised right at the start of the second half with an improvised near post hook from Paul Smyth’s cross that looked in for all money but flashed wide.

If you thought Preston were poor before half time at 0-0, they had news for you in the second with a lead to protect. It was difficult to see how this was a team beaten only twice at home all season and on an unbeaten sequence of 14 games, albeit ten of them draws, with the way they approached things in the second stanza. Not just the lack of ambition to do anything more than hold what they had, nor the usual antics where the goalkeeper randomly sits down and we all collude in the illusion he’s about to explode into a thousand pieces, which is all now sadly standard Championship issue, but just the complete lack of care and attention with the ball. North End had a ball-playing attacking midfield player here, Sam Greenwood, with pass completion stats little more than 60% - effectively giving the ball back to QPR every other time he had it. Emil Riis' shambolic backheel into touch under no pressure and Frokjaer-Jensen’s mindblowing pass straight to Andersen for the goal were the headline acts in a woeful second half in which they barely crossed the halfway line and Paul Nardi was a virtual spectator.

The midfield was dominated by Jack Colback, rolling back the years with a vintage performance full of energy and game smarts, not giving the opposition a moment of peace and frequently winning the ball back high up the field for his team. Liam Morrison, perhaps ball watching a little for the first goal but now unbeaten in 13 QPR career starts, and Ronnie Edwards, immaculate again and across with a strong block when Ashby played Dunne into trouble with a 20 yard back pass laid up some 17 yards short, snuffed out what little danger the home side did offer. Morrison volleyed one Varane cross just over, Varane headed a corner over the top, both might have scored on a different day.

The home crowd, many of whom left before full time, were booing their team long before that final whistle. Afterwards manager Paul Heckingbottom fumed with his side. “I've just been having a conversation with Peter (Ridsdale, club director). I don't need to wait until tomorrow to calm down. Why would I want to do that? It's obvious what needs to happen. Change or be changed. That's it. How much is possible won't be determined by me. Right now, how I feel, I'd throw a bomb under the lot and start again. That's what I'd do but I don't think I'll be able to do that, so it's going to be hard work,” he said. Ouch. Not wrong though.

QPR’s main opposition actually started to come from commander in queef Jeremy Simpson, a veteran Championship referee who the EFL’s website tells us earned his stripes in the North Lancashire and West Lancashire Football Leagues – which is nice, if you’re in charge of the PGMOL’s petrol receipts I suppose.

Simpson had previously sent off two Rangers players in the same game on this ground, and gave a peculiar second half performance in league with his assistant on the main stand side of the ground whose decision making was, at times, perverse. Rayan Kolli was booked straight away for not much at all, while Paul Smyth was allowed off with a warning for striking out at Frokjaer-Jensen off the ball. When Simpson did get a decision right, waving play-on through a nothing foul on halfway, he then allowed himself to be overruled from the sideline despite being ten feet away from the incident himself. It’s a shame, literally a shame, with the money washing around in the sport in this country, a tiny portion of which could transform the recruitment and retention of officials to vastly increase and improve the talent pool, that blokes like this are still chugging around the second tier.

When QPR did finally get a free kick, all round nice guy Milutin Osmajic walked away with the ball and refused to give it back. He laughed, Jeremy Simpson laughed, Osmajic laughed, Jeremy Simpson laughed, and it took Jimmy Dunne to come across and ask just whatever the fuck was going on before we were able to get the ball and take the bloody free kick. Farcical. Not right, not right at all.

A poor referee, refereeing poorly. Harrison Ashby eventually booked in exasperation. Which only increased irritation at the score staying so rigidly at 1-0 for as long as it did. The possibility of being ground down into a ball aching defeat growing with each passing minute. Preston, though, have let 25 points go from winning position this year, and when Andersen got to the byline and cut a cross back the clearing header was only partially away and straight back into danger. The ball then turned back into the net by Michi Frey at the head of a queue of willing suitors at the back post but probably the best man to take on the shot – Cornell, beaten for power, will think he should have done better, and he’d be right.

They’re weird goals to celebrate these ones. You’ve stood there for the whole second half, watching Preston deteriorate from a low starting point, and QPR pass up the opportunity. You’ve seen the time wasting, and the pretend goalkeeper injury, and the refereeing. Your players have been booked for things theirs have been allowed away with. Jeremy Simpson laughed, Milutin Osmajic laughed, Jeremy Simpson laughed. Ha ha ha. Jolly japes. The clock has drained away way faster than it ever does when you're leading. You can feeeeeeeel the frustration and injustice building up inside you, pacing around at the back of the away end, like a captured bear on the end of a short chain. Stomach churning enough acid to burn a hole in the hull of a ship. Don’t lose the plot, don’t lose the plot, don’t lose the plot. Don't yell. Don't make a spectacle of yourself. Savage amusement, no way to spend your time. Like forking over 200 sheets for Secret Cinema then when you get there it’s Cats with James Corden.

The goal, the equaliser, if and when you do score it, is that frustration escaping and leaving the body more than anything else. Celebrations are delivered in punches and swear words, rather than hugs and congratulations. Again, Michi Frey probably the perfect man for that job - he celebrates goals like that in pre-season friendlies. Take that you fucker, won’t be time wasting now, will you? Cue much angry gesturing to people you’ve picked out previously in the side stand. You, yes you, fat bastard, suck that out of my arse and tell me you’re still hungry.

A winning goal, however, is pure joy. Nothing and nobody else matters. Last minute, last kick, 25-yards out, into the top corner, right in front of you, never going anywhere else, no time to restart. Trambampoline. Reward for the hard yards travelled through a trying and testing 50-game season. Pure, unadulterated joy.

Bit early for a resurrection though, his look-a-like waited until Monday.

Links >>> Ratings and Reports >>> Message Board Match Thread

PNE: Cornell 6; Storey 5, Lindsay 6, Hughes 5; Whiteman 5; Kesler-Hayden 5, Greenwood 4 (Riis 75, 4), Thordarson 6 (Keane 85, -), Brady 5; Osmajic 5, Frokjaer-Jensen 4

Subs not used: Evans, Carroll, Gibson, Mawene, Meghoma, Porteous, Stowell

Goals: Lindsay 45+5 (assisted Brady)

Yellow Cards: Whiteman 52 (foul)

QPR: Nardi 6; Dunne 6, Morrison 6, Edwards 7, Ashby 6 (Frey 74, 7); Varane 7, Colback 7; Dembele 5 (Smyth 46, 6), Madsen 6 (Andersen 75, 7), Saito 6 (Kolli 40, 7); Min-Hyeok 6 (Paal 66, 6)

Subs not used: Fox, Bennie, Morgan, Walsh

Goals: Frey 80 (unassisted), Andersen 90+3 (unassisted)

Yellow Cards: Kolli 48 (not much), Ashby 70 (dissent)

QPR Star Man – Jack Colback 7 Dominated the midfield for his team. Everything QPR needed in an awkward away game, everything the Preston midfield wasn’t. Nice partnership with Varane in what's been a problematic area of the pitch this season.

Referee – Jeremy Simpson (Lancashire) 4 A poor referee, refereeing poorly. An at times peculiar display, particularly in the second half, from an official who previously sent off two QPR players in one game on this ground. Aided and abetted by the assistant at our end who gave some frankly bizarre nonsense all afternoon. Particularly enjoyed the referee making a correct decision on halfway, an incident that took place no more than ten feet away from him, only to incorrectly reverse it on the advice of either the assistant or the fourth official who were both 30 yards away. Penalised Paul Smyth with a free kick for striking an opponent off the ball, then didn't issue a card. Bizarre.

Attendance 14,922 (987 QPR) Very surprised we’re still taking this many people, this far, at this expense, for games as meaningless as this one. Those who did travel got a great reward for their efforts at the end. (If you lost a set of keys in the celebrations, back right of the away end, I've got them and will have them with me Monday).

If you enjoy LoftforWords, please consider supporting the site through a subscription to our Patreon or tip us via our PayPal account loftforwords@yahoo.co.uk.

Pictures - Reuters Connect

062259 added 15:27 - Apr 20 Thorderbolt
2

Oxfordhoop added 00:18 - Apr 21 The best football report headline of all time?
0

Stevenpetercox added 06:42 - Apr 21 Hi Oxfordhoop, Just agreeing with your statement, Best football report headline ever. WHAT A GOAL. Great report once again oh mighty scribe, thank you
0

kingfisher6404 added 09:19 - Apr 21 Thanks Clive - always easier to report a win! Two things: 1. Can a side afford to have a Dembele in the side who does not defend and leaves an area so exposed as a result; and, 2. how come Andersen, Madsen and Ashby are now (at last) playing as we hoped (what should Marti have done before to get this to happen)?
0

Blogs 31 bloggers

Derby County Polls