The fourth and final part of our annual statistical deep dive into the QPR squad takes us through the army of short kings behind a collection of mostly injured strikers, some of our brightest and best youth prospects, and asks whether Charlie Kelman is coming to save us.

If you want to hear the LFW panel, including stats man Jack Supple, debate the marks for this year’s report you can do so via all three subscription tiers in our Patreon. Part three, strikers, is live now.

7 – Karamoko Dembele C

Karamoko Dembele was arguably the most exciting of last summer’s intake when he arrived, initially on loan, from Brest (stop it).

At Celtic he’d played U20s football aged just 13 and made a first team debut just after his 16th birthday. Given his size there was plenty of debate about the physical and mental element of too much too young, but it also marked him out as one of the brightest prospects in European football at that time. Champions League outfit Brest (seriously, grow up) gave him a four-year contract when they picked him up in 2022. Perhaps more relevant to his chances of success at QPR, he’d already had a season in the rough and tumble of the EFL at Blackpool – a bloody tough gig in a poor League One side for a player of this profile. They loved him there. And, if nothing else, it would give us the chance to sing “you’re just a shit Karamoko” at his brother Siriki, a regular tormenter of us in his Peterborough and Birmingham days and now plying his trade at Oxford.

First impressions were very good indeed. He came off the bench in difficult circumstances at Sheffield United, 2-0 down at Bramall Lane against a recently relegated parachute payment team, and helped turn the game back in Rangers’ favour. Tricks and turns and spins and forward motion and momentum as the game flipped from 2-0 down and miserable as sin to 2-2 and a fantastic day out. We gave him 8/10 man of the match from the bench and asked, “what have we got ourselves into here?” Last time we said something like that it was Ebere Eze’s second start in a 3-1 away win at Aston Villa.

Never shy of swinging a dick when they’ve got a dick to swing, QPR then rolled Dembele out as one of their three Fans Forum announcements, inviting you to believe that after just six starts and two substitute appearances Dembele had triggered a clause which made his loan move permanent.

What’s happened since has been a tale of two very contrasting sets of statistics, one very positive and one very negative.

The bad side of Dembele’s numbers this year are the stats the team posts when he’s in it - we never win when he plays.

QPR only won three of the 25 games Dembele featured in all season – a 13% win percentage the worst in the team bar Zan Celar’s record breaking 5%. Rangers won only one of his first 19 appearances for the club, away at Luton. Although he got a nice assist off the bench for a game-sealing Min-Hyeok goal at Oxford, he went from Luton in August to Preston in April without winning as a starter – and even at Deepdale he’d been taken off at half time after an ineffective first 45 minutes losing 1-0. When you compare his impact on the team to, say, Sam Field, without whom we’ve only won five times in four years, and have double the PPG average when he does play, it’s pretty stark.

It could lead to the conclusion this is a luxury player. When he’s picked on the wing he does absolutely nothing to dispel that because, as we saw in the late season home games against Bristol City and Burnley, he doesn’t have a defensive bone in his body. He doesn’t do the other side of the ball work at all well. You play full back behind this guy, you on your own. He’s a different beast at ‘ten’, but then we’re not short of ‘tens’ and even there you lose out in a high press because he can’t do that. I watched him on the final day at Sunderland, where a shambolic season of soft tissue and muscle injuries for the club as a whole concluded with a hamstring pull, and he was just constantly motored down, caught up and physically wrestled out of possession, not necessarily by what you’d class as quicker players, just bigger boys with longer strides and broader shoulders. A puzzle to be solved – where exactly do you play him, and what do you have to put around him for that to work?

People have pointed to individual success stories like Nardi, Edwards, Morrison, Saito etc and said our recruitment has been good, but our recruitment has so far been focused entirely on the individual and whether they might grow into a sellable asset, not how it all might fit together into a cohesive team. Nourry said to supporter reps after the fans forum that he’d signed Dembele and Saito because he “wanted some players who were fun for the fans” and I get that, I enjoy watching both of them. But it’s no fucking fun losing six games in a row constantly, going months without away wins, standing behind the goal at Portsmouth or Derby and watching a team with every single one of our budget constraints crawl all over the top of us.

Can you really afford, in the Championship, as a lower budget club, to be this small and weak as a team? Can you have Dembele if you’ve also got Saito, Chair, Smyth, Yang…? Can you have Dembele if you’ve already got Andersen and Madsen? You have to win tackles in this league, you have to win headers, you have to defend your own box. Even Sheff Utd rarely pick Hamer and O’Hare together, and they’re two of the best players in the league, in one of the best teams in the Championship. This seems to have been entirely overlooked when we went shopping last summer. Even the 6ft 4ins tall bloke you did bring in doesn’t even hit his weight.

The positive side of Dembele is even in a season badly hampered by injury, in a largely struggling side that rarely won with him on the field, his personal numbers in attack are great.

Three goals and four assists is a goal contribution every 179.5 minutes. The end product is there already. He basically scores or assists for QPR every other time he’s on the field. Some really silky moments among them as well – his run and ball through for Michi Frey’s equaliser at home to Millwall, his chip over the Portsmouth goalkeeper when Frey returned the favour in that game. He even scored a bloody header against Bristol City at the end of a flowing move that had Nicolas Madsen involved as well. I guess when we talk about “game model” that’s what it’s supposed to look like and gives hope for the future against a team that made the play-offs. We’re about to launch into a fairly full-throated defence of Paul Smyth and why he’s in the team, but he has a goal involvement basically every 500 minutes in the same position – Dembele has outscored and out assisted him in less than half as many appearances. Only Rayan Kolli and top scorer Frey have better goal involvement stats per time on the pitch.

We’ve spent a huge chunk of these end of termers stressing not everybody can just attack, not everybody can be small, not everybody can be a development prospect. You have to do the dirties in this league, you need Field, Colback, Cook types. But you also need to score goals as well. You need to create, you need to challenge teams, you need to entertain. It’s meant to be fun this. You go to football to be excited and entertained, not to talk about Sam Field’s tackle percentage or Paul Smyth’s doggies up and down a wing. You can hang Dembele for what he doesn’t do, or you can accept those limitations and come up with a better-balanced team that allows him to do what he does while not costing us at the other end. That balance was out of whack this year, hence we rarely won when he played, but that’s not his fault.

Whichever side you land on it’s important to remember this is Dembele’s first season at this notoriously physical level, he’s still only 21 years of age, and he’s had to contend with a nasty knee injury requiring surgery that basically wrecked his year. Paul Smyth, who he most often gets compared to by both critics and fans, is basically at his ceiling now. There’s no more growth in him. Dembele, you would hope, still has plenty of room for growth – metaphorically, if not physically.

Plenty of benefit of doubt to be afforded here.

In numbers…

Interactive Ratings — 5.57

10 – Ilias Chair C

When Paul Nardi finally decides he’s too old for all these saves up in the top corner and bouncing around to Silver Lining he will return to France to live off a no doubt very handsome pension after 15+ years of very decent goalkeeping service across Europe’s middling leagues. Not all, particularly in rural France, will be as blessed and so in addition to the usual safety nets – state pension, workplace pension, sell everything you’ve got and live out your days in a care home – the French have come up with another system called ‘en viage’ (for life).

It works a little bit like this. You retire cash poor but asset rich in a nice €600k chateau in the Dordogne. To pay for whatever you have in mind next – golf, cheese, my children need wine etc – you could sell that chateau at well below the market rate, say €350k, which is paid to you immediately in a nice, handy lump sum. In return for selling it so cheaply, one of the conditions of sale is you are allowed to continue living in the house until you die. The rather morbid gamble the buyer is taking is that this will be quite soon. For the opportunist speculator they’re potentially getting a €600k chateau for €350k that might well be worth €800k or more by the time they get their hands on it, five to 10 years from now. Tidy investment. No cheating and pushing anybody down the stairs now.

Which brings us to the story of Madame Jeanne Calment, born in 1875 and an early love interest of van Gogh. She was a keen cyclist, but a keener smoker, and so when she placed her apartment in Arles on the market 'en viage' at the age of 90, a local lawyer in his 40s saw a killing to be made – not literally, your honour. Ten years later Madame Calment saw in her personal century, still regularly out on her bicycle. Another ten years further on she was still going strong. At 117 she made a concession to her old age by packing in the fags. And when she finally croaked, in 1997, at the age of 122 she was the oldest person in the world. The lawyer had died the year before, aged 77.

From almost the moment Ilias Chair burst into the team under Ian Holloway as the tiny lad with the ever-changing haircut, we have been eyeing this up as a sale. Next Ebere Eze, next cab off the rank, next commodity off the production line, next lifeline for our manager, next bit of breathing space on the relentless FFP three-year cycle... Development model starting to pay dividends. All hail Chris Ramsey. It was textbook. Get plenty of minutes into him before he’s 20. Get him a good lower league loan – he ran his own goal of the season competition at Stevenage and made their team of the decade. Get him in that FourFourTwo best players outside the Premier League list. Let the pound signs roll round in our eyes. Ker-ching.

Ilias Chair, though, remains in situ. The incident with the girl in the green bikini didn’t help – potential suitors understandably put off by the spectre of time in a Belgian prison. He’ll turn 28 before the second international break of next season and has just had his worst season of his career so far for injuries. Starting the year with a back problem which meant no training of any sort was possible, he missed almost the whole of pre-season and came back noticeably heavy. A knee injury at home to Middlesbrough wrecked his winter, a hamstring injury away to Middlesbrough ended his spring, and even a little run out in a dead rubber at Sunderland looked to have ended in a nasty Achilles injury.

Since 2019/20 Chair has played in 221 of QPR’s 245 league and cup matches. It doesn’t say much for our well-staffed performance department that a player with that appearance record has this season been struck down with a series of non-contact muscle and soft tissue complaints. I mean 29 starts and eight sub appearances is still decent going – it would be the best season of Jake Clarke-Salter’s career – but it’s below Illy’s levels. Twice, including that Sunderland game which had absolutely nothing riding on it, he was allowed to go back onto the field to try and run off the problem. Just get him off for goodness’ sake.

Two goals scored, both at home to Derby, is also his worst total since he became a first team regular. The first was a sumptuous strike, struck purely on the turn, arcing beautifully away and over the goalkeeper’s despairing dive and into the far sidenet. A goal of outstanding natural beauty. He’s still got it. Still got it and, even in this truncated season, a provider of seven assists, the most in the team. Most notably for Jimmy Dunne’s last-minute winner against Preston at home. It’s all still there, but only Clarke-Salter needs a good summer more than Ilias right now.

The market for the Moroccan now is surely as weak as it’s ever been.

Is that such a bad thing? With a new contract of REDACTED length in the bag we’re fast approaching testimonial territory for the tiny tot who came here from Belgium as a teenage triallist desperate for any chance he could get – “with Eze, there was a faith it would all work out from him, with Chair, that lad would crawl over his dead grandma for a game of professional football” as it was once put to me at the training ground. Financially it’s not quite a disaster, but it's another asset we thought we could sell as part of the development model now slipping in value. Football wise, it’s perhaps that rare and beautiful thing in the modern game – a one-club player. A leader in the dressing room. Chastened by his recent life experiences, with wise counsel to pass on. He spoke really well on his recent W12 Podcast appearance, which is worth a listen.

Modern football turns football fans into cynical, pragmatic bores. We want our club to sell its best players, we talk about balance sheets and rolling accounting periods. It’s sick, really. If I’d wanted to spend my career poring over sets of accounts I’d have got myself a proper job with a proper salary. It might be a nice throwback to just enjoy one of the fixtures in your team as a lovely little footballer, turn up every week expecting him to be there, cutting in for that three-point jump shot, holding onto the ball too long. Release it Illy, oh, top bins, 1-0, shut up Clive. Even with sub-30-starts and four different injuries, Chair registered the most assists, the most chances created, and the highest quality of chances created (xA) in our squad.

Write this season off. He’s been due one, and he’s not the only one who’s suffered under whatever strength and conditioning regime we’re currently operating. Raise a glass to a potential career QPR player, and all those beautiful goals he’s going to score for us in the future.

Big summer needed. No kayaking holidays.

In numbers…

Interactive Ratings — 5.64

11 – Paul Smyth C

The next time any football fan tells me all they want are players who try, players who care, “as long as they’re giving 100% that’s all you can ask”, I shall point them in the direction of the online discourse around Paul Smyth.

Paul Smyth gives absolutely everything of himself every time he steps out onto the pitch. He’s been desperate to play games for QPR from the moment he walked through the door from Belfast, so much so that he returned here at a point the team was on its knees and the finances were completely buggered for a wage reportedly less than Leyton Orient had offered him to renew and stay at Brisbane Road. A very likeable, very humble personality, who travels to games on the tube, and can be found chatting to fans at events like the kit sponsors’ day long after every other player and exec has cleared off (or not even bothered in the first place). He loves playing for QPR and puts the absolute maximum into every second he’s able to do so. And yet his other half has to put statements out saying the abuse he and his family receive on social media is becoming too much. Does not compute. Should not compute. Should not be happening.

Nothing buries your Twitter in replies more than saying nice things about Paul Smyth but one thing we’ve got to be careful of, and have perhaps been a little bit guilty of through these end of term reports, is mistaking the loudest, most persistent voices as a consensus. There are a handful of prolific, aggressive posters who absolutely despise Smyth and can happily put dozens of Tweets out about him at a time, and there’s nothing Elon’s algorithm rewards more than angry boys piping a steady stream of rage bait into your phone. The discourse about him in the Crown & Sceptre, on the train, at the games, among the home and awayers, is very different. Even online, even on Twitter, when the Up The R’s account, which one would think attracts a different demographic to this website, put a poll up asking whether Smyth should stay or go next season the vote ran almost 9:1 in favour of him being kept at the point I voted in it. A lot of us are wired up to listen to the one horrible comment over the 100 nice ones.

The legitimate criticism of the Northern Ireland international is writ large in the stats. Two goals and four assists from 45 appearances as a winger is pathetic. That one of the goals was against Cambridge, the second worst team in League One, and the other at Bristol City, while spectacular and a worthy Goal of the Season winner, was something of a freaky fluke, only makes this worse. My God, if we need more than five goals from Field and Varane as per our last report then we certainly need it from one of our actual bloody wingers. That paltry number of assists comes despite his final ball, for me, actually improving a bit this year after extensive work with individual player coach Kevin Betsy. As we’ve already said, Karamoko Dembele outscored and out assisted Smyth in less than half as many appearances, and Lord knows this team needs more goals and creativity. There’s no denying, no doubt, that Smyth’s ceiling is his end product.

That doesn’t make him useless though. Far from it. If there is such a thing as a defensive winger then this is it. I suppose it fits quite nicely with Harrison Ashby, the full back who can’t defend – amazing, really, it took until the final day of the campaign to effectively swap those two over. Smyth gets up and down that line relentlessly, doing his doggies all day. He covers and protects his full backs better than our other wide attackers, which is one of the reasons managers like him. He made 44 tackles last year and won 30 of those, roughly one every 60 minutes (Dembele 17 tackles, nine won, fewer than one a game; Madsen 17 and 11). Hard work beats talent when talent doesn’t work hard, and if we are going to carry these ‘luxury’ players we do need somebody to do the ugly stuff – piano carriers, as Ian Holloway used to define them.

Smyth pushes attacking opponents back and makes them defend, he runs hard yards against full backs and wears them down. He’s a relief player, an outlet, and a lot of his positive effects don’t show up in trendy metrics. There isn’t really a stat for being a pain in the arse but Smyth has the most carries into the final third and is our most fouled player (some of the dives are dreadful, mind). He does put teams on the back foot , he does take a full back on, and some teams in particular - Bristol City, Watford - really do seem to struggle with him. We’ve got a real lack of players willing to do that, looking to get to the byline. When you’ve got somebody who puts opponents on the back foot like that it is valuable.

He's one of the very few players we’ve got with any genuine pace. It blows my mind that since Bright Osayi-Samuel walked out the door we’ve placed almost no emphasis whatsoever on injecting some speed back into our team, focusing too much on easily-bullied technical ball players for a team that frequently doesn’t have the possession for them to do anything with. What do opposition players fear more than anything else? Speed. We struggle desperately to get ourselves up the field, Smyth is one of the few who can carry us there with his legs.

One of the big problems, similar to Morgan Fox, is this is a decent, jobbing squad player who we have to use far more often than we should. Smyth made 32 starts and 15 sub appearances – don’t knock that sort of availability in a squad as fragile as this one but, ideally, you’d want those numbers the other way around. Impact sub. A lot of the posts I see online slagging Smyth off are from the same accounts who tell me the recruitment has been really good. Riddle me this, if we’ve recruited so well, why is Paul Smyth having to play 47 times? He’d have clocked up 50 matches this year but for a retrospective ban picked up when referee Jeremy Simpson lied about not seeing him strike an opponent in the Easter win at Preston. If the recruitment’s so good, why is Smyth the only one we’ve got who could beat Thora Hird over 200 metres?

If you put Paul Smyth and Karamoko Dembele together you’d have a beautiful Championship winger. A beautiful Championship winger who we likely wouldn’t be able to afford. On our budget, somebody with Smyth’s skillset and availability, on his wage, is good value. Honest, hardworking, humble, and the manager, who knows far more about it than us, picks him every week.

At his ceiling - no doubt. Ideally wouldn’t be playing as often - totally agree. Largely awful end product - I’m right with you. But a role to play here all the same.

West London Sport says he’s getting a new contract. Good. He deserves one.

In numbers…

Interactive Ratings — 5.98

12 – Michael Frey B/C

If you’re unfamiliar with the plot of 2023 comedy horror Cocaine Bear then, don’t worry, it doesn’t take much to catch up. A 200lb American black bear gets its hands on a city CEO-sized portion of cocaine and has a lovely old time charging about the forest spreading general merriment and grizzly results. It’s actually based on the true story of a bear they found dead from a cocaine overdose in a Georgia forest after it happened upon a backpack of the stuff which belonged to an ex-paratrooper and police narcotics officer-turned drug dealer who’d died jumping out of a light aircraft on a smuggling mission when his parachute didn’t open.

And if all of that sounds horribly far fetched then let me introduce you to the merriment and grizzly results that saw Michi Frey receive yellow cards this season. Norwich H, booting the ball far away; Watford H, booting an opponent far away; Portsmouth A, repeatedly kicking people; Leeds H, a foul which he had to slide through the back of the referee to execute followed by an angry scream; Burnley H, repeatedly kicking people; Sunderland A, got angry after being elbowed in the head and went around smashing people up for a bit. I demand a sequel, and I demand a call with the casting director. May I suggest that you remove the sign saying situation vacant and replace it with one saying situation full. Michi’s your man.

I was torn on the mark here, hence a rather cowardly and bleh B/C call. I love seeing Frey play. When he’s fit and firing and interested, he’s a fun watch. Luke O’Nien deciding to elbow him in the face on the final day of the season reminded me of that old story Tony Gale told about being a 17-year-old at West Ham keen to make an impression and somebody telling him the Luton striker that afternoon wouldn’t want to know for the rest of the day if he put a reducer on him early doors, which Gale promptly did – turns out it was Mick Harford, who just got up, said “it’s like that is it?”, and proceeded to physically dismantle him into a bloody pulp over the next 80 minutes. Frey was terrific at the Stadium of Light, bludgeoning O’Nien about and generally having a lovely time. I’m afraid you leave me little recourse. When he’s like that – Leeds home and particularly Luton away where he smashed in a winning goal about five feet in front of my face and was a clear man of the match – he’s great. Even when he’s not, you can’t fault his effort.

Nor his output really. A nine-goal top scorer is bleak, but QPR haven’t had anybody in double figures since Andre Gray, and bar the odd glaring miss – Coventry away chief among them – Frey’s finishing has been pretty reasonable. Could we have expected a lot more of him? I don’t think so. Scores every two and a half games, goal contribution better than one in two, feels pretty decent to me in this team. Not exactly blessed in this department are we? In the land of the bald the big Swiss bastard is king. His effort levels are off the scale. I watched him in that Leeds home game and he drained every drop from the fuel tank that day. He’s one of the only ways we can get up the pitch and stay there.

Frey’s physical conditioning has improved from the end of the previous season, where Swansea fans were in open hysterics watching him try to lumber around an Easter fixture at The Liberty Stadium and he looked like an old lorry in need of a full gearbox change, but he’s still an odd looking footballer. He moves about like the top half of his body and the bottom half are having an argument with each other. He makes you wonder whether a good splash of WD40 might be in order. At Norwich between Christmas and New Year we got a message from our mate Luke in the home end that just said, “what the fuck is this you’ve just brought on?” He’d fit in very well among the 40 somethings in my Monday night sevens team – and I bet he’d be great value in the pub after. Big idiot.

The Swiss striker has a weird habit of scoring at the School End (five of his nine) but then I realised that’s because we usually kick that way first half, before he gets knackered. He was only able to complete six 90 minutes all season, on three of those occasions he wasn’t able to play at all in the next game and one of the others was Sunderland on the last day where there obviously wasn’t a game the week after. As ever, your best ability is availability and QPR have far too many players who spend far too long sitting at the front of the South Africa Road stand.

Like Fox, like Smyth, the biggest issue here is we’ve put together the squad in such a way that we have to rely on Frey as much as we do. If this was option three in a competent set of four you’d be alright. Starts at home against the division’s weaker sides, useful off the bench for the last 20 minutes of games to keep you high up the pitch and bully tired centre backs, periods of action and inaction to manage his loading. Instead, he’s essentially striker one of one. He’s covered by two kids and a bloke who was injured from November and absolute dog shit before that. He’s made a reasonable fist of that very difficult situation and I’ve got a lot of time for him as a result.

Luton away he was exceptional, Portsmouth away he was woeful. His touch ranges from the sublime to the stag do, pulling the ball out of the air and doing keep ups with it one-minute, orphaning children in the family stand and slide tackling the referee the next. That’s us. That’s where we are. Sticking around for another year and I don’t hate that.

Looks like the muscle in a big-man-little-man nightclub bouncer combination, but spends his time looking up pictures of Coventry Cathedral to design his own little promos of the next game for his Instagram.

Cult. Eccentric. Weird. QPR.

In numbers…

Interactive Ratings — 5.87

14 – Koki Saito B

In the early 1990s my family uprooted from Grimsby and moved to West London. It was quite the culture shift. My mum went from teaching primary school to 30 white kids in a mobile classroom at the end of the playground in Cleethorpes, to overseeing a multicultural group of children in West London. Toto, I’ve a feeling we’re not in Kansas any more.

Among that cohort was a little Japanese boy who for the sake of this piece, and because I think that was his actual name, we’ll call Ake. Just to give you an indication of where education fits in the priorities of your average Japanese family, and what sort of reverence teachers are held in that country, we still to this day get a letter every Christmas from Ake detailing how his career and family life has developed over the last 12 months. He’s head of electrical engineering at Toyota I think, something pretty small fry like that. No great surprise given that, aged six, he was fluent in both Japanese and English, and almost certainly smarter than most of the faculty at that school. My mum had to ask him whether he wanted to play with The Flintstone Phone as reward for finishing ten minutes before all the other plebs so they could catch up. He said he’d probably leave it, thanks.

Anyway, Monday morning, regular date in the carpeted area, gather the kids together for “weekend news” where anybody with anything exciting to say about what happened Saturday Sunday gets up and tells the class about it. Confidence, public speaking, presentation skills, etc. You get the picture. Where a young Mick Beale honed his craft. One Monday, Ake sticks his hand up and takes the floor with weekend news that his mother (who I would give a comedy name but fear this piece is already skating worryingly close to the line) was expecting another child. Ake was to have a little brother or sister. Wonderful news. Everyone’s excited. Mum asks whether they’ve got a name picked out for the new sprog and, it turns out, yes they do. Great, another five minutes burned off before morning break, love this kid. Ake tells the class that the new baby shall be called Cunta.

The children are enraptured with this idea, my mother less so. And so began the long, five-week drag up to parent’s evening. Do we say something? Can we say something? Do we write to them? Do we call them in? Staff meeting after staff meeting. Furrowed brows among the heads of year. Is it any of our business? Do we just leave it? Is it out responsibility? Do we have a duty here? Mum didn’t sleep. What are we going to do? What would you do?

The day of parents evening dawns. Mum’s in bits. Bags under her eyes. Stress writ large across her face. We wished her luck as she pedalled her Ford Fiesta up the A316 to doom/public embarrassment. Mr and Mrs… Ake, sit across the table from her to receive the progress update for their treasured first born. It’s glowing, obviously it’s glowing, which is good because, as I understand it, quite a big deal in that household if it’s not. Everybody’s happy. Firm nods between parents and teacher, firm nods between parent and parent, satisfaction all round. Well done Ake, you little bloody genius. Deep breath, time to broach the prickly subject. Woman clearly pregnant, mum offers congratulation, asks when it’s due and that sort of woman stuff, says Ake had brought it up as ‘weekend news’. Lovely. “He did say you’d picked out a name already,” ventures mum. “Yes of course, yes of course”. Lovely. “He’d mentioned perhaps you were thinking of calling the baby Cunta, and I’m sorry, I feel I have to say, just to help you guys out, language barrier and all that, this would be quite problematic, culturally, in Britain to send a child to school with the name Cunta.”

A hush descends on the table. A moment of quiet contemplation.

Mr Ake - who let’s be honest wasn’t in London in 1993 because he’d got a job in a petrol station was he? – says very calmly: “I don’t know where he’s got that idea from, we’re calling the baby Steve.”

And so, look, I’ve come this far, I’m going to press on, don’t go all Ange Postecoglou on me about how all Japanese people are different mate. Take this in the wonderful, loving spirit it is intended. I obviously just wanted to tell that bloody story didn’t I?

The first thing I’ve learned is I’ve never met a Japanese person I didn’t like immediately. I’ve been there several times now, and I take every opportunity to go that presents itself. The food, the trains, the cities, the people, the culture, the food, the friendliness, the welcome, the respect. The food. Koki Saito has been a terrific representation of that. What an absolutely top lad. All the new country, new city, new club, new language, notoriously difficult physical league excuses we’re going to use to excuse some of the other failures, and he’s serenely taken the whole thing in his stride. Played 42 times, missed games only because of a bad red card tackle v Leeds and then his shoulder fell out at Preston, had an enormous smile on his face the whole time, and just seemed to embrace and enjoy the whole challenge and experience. The J League has expanded out from an initial ten teams to now more than 60, the national team has shed its lightweight reputation to impress with a uniquely attractive, entertaining and effective brand of football at recent World Cups. Forward thinking European teams are increasingly turning to players from there. It’s fantastic to see us right at the front of that trend, and we couldn’t really have picked anybody better or more likeable for our first go could we?

Second thing, craftiness. You think Ake, the bi-lingual six-year-old, didn’t know exactly what he was doing teeing up Helen from Scunthorpe with that line? She’ll probably bring this up at parents’ evening, you watch. Koki Saito shows you what he’s going to do, then does it anyway. That ball on the right foot when actually he’s going to take you on left down the byline should fool nobody, the amount of times he’s done it, but it works more often than not and it’s exhilarating when it does. His goal at Hull was a masterpiece, a privilege to be there for. His interview afterwards a genuine season highlight. The little “finish?” on the end a comic timing which, like Ake, betrays him knowing far, far more than he’s letting on. The shame is it took 30 games to arrive (he ended up with three which isn’t enough) and there were only three assists on top of that (again, shy of what you’d want) hence the B grade – goal contribution every 418 minutes, Paul Smyth levels. Having come on as a sub at Luton in the 83rd minute (too late to register a mark) it was 16 games before he won one for QPR. It was always going to take time to settle though, and settle he did – goals fairly flowing by the end, with a beautiful strike against Leeds and a composed finish against Derby.

Third thing, there is a strong Japanese culture of team and group over self, and work rate, that fits very well in not only British football but also particularly at QPR. Fans love a player here that keeps going regardless (not you, Paul Smyth). We gave Koki Saito eight star man awards last year, more than anybody else in the team, and of those games we lost seven and drew one. The only one we didn’t lose was a draw at home to Coventry where Kenneth Paal’s early injury pressed him into service as an emergency left wing back and he did it brilliantly. The others – Hull H, Boro H, Leeds A, Millwall A, Coventry A, Portsmouth A, Sheff Utd H – were all games when we were distinctly second best, and often very well beaten, but Koki Saito maintained his standards through to the end regardless. Did the hard yards, ran his doggies, kept his levels while others dropped theirs around him. His defensive stats are up there among the best in the team – only Varane and Dunne have more than his 72 tackles. Sadly this ended up with him dislocating his shoulder at Preston, which finished his season.

I’d love him back and this is where the club’s new communication strategy of telling you as little as they possibly can as late as they can possibly tell you for fear of giving up some perceived “competitive advantage” let’s them down again. We were told we had “an option” to make the deal permanent but weren’t allowed to know what that option was. Saito has been a relative success, most of us have fallen in love with him, people are very excited about the prospect of him coming back permanently. There is, to this point, no sign of that happening. Nor has there been any opportunity to bid him farewell. The rumour is said ‘option’ was a permanent signing if we win promotion. Like me having an option to take Jennifer Anniston to the first game of our Premier League season. Be honest, early, set expectations. Instead here we are, crowd favourite seemingly disappearing into the ether.

A shame if so, I think he’s been great. Would love a second date.

In numbers…

Interactive Ratings — 6.15

18 – Zan Celar E

Can we talk about Koki Saito some more? I enjoyed that.

Two things QPR are not very good at – spending money, and developing strikers.

All of our best recruitment through the 60s, 70s and 80s was done on the cheap, much of our best stuff in the 90s and 00s was when people like Don Howe and Bobby Gould, or Ian Holloway and Mel Johnson, had their backs to the wall and had to grift their way out of it, the best signings we did spend money on were often budget buys having sold a better player for more money. As soon as we turn on the taps - chasing Mike Sheron-types with Chris Wright’s money, letting Paladini run amok with Briatore’s chequebook, bringing in Bosingwa, Barton and Park signings for Tony Fernandes – it goes to shit.

Up front, Charlie Austin was a mega buy, but had already well proven himself at Swindon and Burnley. The nearest we’ve come to replacing him since he left was when we brought the actual Charlie Austin back again, older and noticeably heavier round the waist. There have been occasional flashes from Loic Remy types, Dexter Blackstock did a nice steady job. Paul Furlong, Kevin Gallen and Tony Thorpe were terrific, but that was mostly the division below and all three were known quantities. This club has not had a fabled 20-goal-a-season striker since Andy Thomson, and that was now 25 fucking years ago. A quarter of a century. You look at clubs like Scunthorpe who churn out Jamie Forrester, John Eyre, Steven MacLean, Billy Sharp, Martin Paterson, Gary Hooper, Paul Hayes, Andy Keogh, Sam Winnall. Or Blackburn, a dreadfully run club, from which Sammie Szmodics, Adam Armstrong, Ben Brereton, Rudy Gestede and Jordan Rhodes have all been able to score prolifically, flourish, and move onto bigger and better things. We are not a striker factory. We’re a graveyard. It is tough to make a go of it here.

Maybe Zan Celar will still be the one. I like, even through all of his struggles, that he still kept putting himself in the position to score. I like, even though he spaffed them all into the Loft, that he wanted to take the free kicks and the penalties. He didn’t hide. There was no Madsen point here; he wanted the ball. He’s not a coward, and all the stuff about new country and expectation brought by price tag apply, but I do worry he’s just not very good. His xG versus actual G is in the negative, whereas Frey and Kolli score more positively. Tamas Priskin, with worse eyesight. We won just one game, 5.56%, of his 22 appearances.

It was emotional for him, and the away end, when he got off the mark at the 20th time of asking away to Cardiff. One of the highlights of the season, seeing him run onto that Ashby through ball and draw the keeper right in front of us. The quality of those goals – the first an instinctive turn and hit from a long throw up into the top corner, the second a deft and composed flick over an advancing goalkeeper in a pressure situation right at the death – breathed new life and hope into his QPR career. Sadly, he blew his hamstring clean off the bone about 20 minutes later and was never seen again. That sort of redemption arc that Jonathan Varane went on after early struggles, and Nicolas Madsen was potentially just starting as the season came to a close, denied by a bad injury. He struck the inside of the post with an attempted winner at Watford which I reckon goes in 99 times out of 100 and would have been three goals in a week and well and truly up and running. Let’s be honest though, Cardiff are not only the worst team we played this season, they’re the worst team anybody in the Championship played this season.

We hope he comes back fit and firing, more relaxed and with our support, in the new season. Our team needs to get so much better at playing not only to his strengths, but the strengths of whoever it is playing up front. How many times are we going to go through this – not serving him right, not using him right, not playing him right, can’t play as a lone striker, needs a partner, give him time, play to his strengths… Every bloody striker we have, and we now enter a fourth season since one of them even made it into double figures.

It may only have been fleeting, it may have been against a dreadful team, but we did see that Celar can perhaps do it. Got to be honest though, I don’t see why he should be starting ahead of Charlie Kelman come August as it stands.

In numbers…

Interactive Ratings — 4.70

26 – Rayan Kolli B/C

Now here we might be onto something. Rayan Kolli may only have started ten times and come on as a substitute on another 11 occasions – more on his availability issues later – but there’s a standout stat from the games he did play. QPR win nearly every other game Kolli is involved in. A team that finished 15th in the Championship, laboured to 14 wins from 46 games scoring more than two in match on only four occasions, suddenly jumps from that 30% win average to 47%+ when Rayan Kolli is involved. That’s an enormous leap.

The reasons are pretty obvious when you watch him play, or rather when you watch him play compared to who else we’ve got. Can you imagine Paul Smyth putting a cross like that in for Lucas Andersen’s headed opener against West Brom? Out of his feet, boot back, ball delivered, whip, bend, curl, right on the money, teammate doesn’t even have to break stride to nod into the top bins. Can you picture Zan Celar cutting across the line of the Norwich defence to net that diving header at the Loft End? And would it look as good if he did, without the Sideshow Bob haircut parachuting out from the back? His movement, his instincts, where he stands, it’s all a cut above most else we’ve got other than, perhaps, Charlie Kelman (again, more later). The finish for the goals at Leicester and Plymouth were made to look simple, because he’s a good player, but the rest of our team miss those chances time after time after time – and that’s on the rare occasions they get into those positions. More goal involvements in a season than any teenager since Ray Jones.

He got pelters for a high, wide and handsome shot over the bar at home to Bristol City when he had runners in support, blowing our final chance to turn another home draw into a rare Loftus Road victory, and it’s right, he should have passed the ball… but, I don’t necessarily mind it. He wants to score goals. He’s shown that he can. He wants to win you the game. He wants to be that guy. At least somebody does. You could never accuse him of hiding. I’d like a bit more.

There is still so much to work on, as you would expect of a boy who’s just turned 20 and started ten games of professional football in his life. When picked as a lone striker in our system, particularly away from home, he’s struggled very badly. Most notably at Bristol City before Christmas, and then Hull afterwards where even Alfie Lloyd was able to come on and make a better fist of that fight. Difficult to work out what his position is in this ‘game model’. His defensive work, tracking back, covering his full back when he plays wide, was non-existent at the start of the year – yes the assist against West Brom was glorious but the Baggies had their way with him after that. We have seen improvement there though. At Sunderland on the final day he put in a huge effort on the wrong side of the ball, tracking back, tackling, bringing physicality to an effort to protect a one goal advantage away from home. That was really impressive and shows growth.

We need to see that in other areas, particularly around his strength and conditioning. He’s already had four different multi-month injuries since breaking into the first team picture – recurring theme, we don’t need any more fragile players in this squad, your best ability is your availability. When he does play he’s frequently gassed early, on his haunches blowing, sitting down, requiring the trainer. He collapses to the floor looking for free kicks you’re never getting off Championship referees far too often – at Norwich over Christmas it became a bit of an embarrassment to be honest. He’s an odd shape, heavy legged, and walks with a waddle, feet pointing outwards – whether this is what’s causing his injuries, maybe we can get a Zoom booked into Dubai and ask the club. He’s still young though, growing into his frame, a complete novice in professional football. All this can and hopefully will come.

Just as importantly, the noise around him needs to stop. I can’t really recall a player so young, with so few appearances, with such little pedigree, generating quite as much rumour, counter rumour and chat as this. Loans to Saudi Arabia, mouthy family members, hyper active agent, questions at the fans forum, minute by minute Twitter updates about his fitness status leaked prior to games. Even a week before he signed his contract it seemed highly, highly unlikely that he would do so – the club didn’t expect him to. Sign it he did, so he’s here now, and all of that has to stop. Under hype, over deliver.

Contract signed. Leave the lad alone, let him breathe, let him grow. Lots of raw attributes here. A very exciting player. Needs to get his head down, get fit, and get 30 games into himself next season.

In numbers…

Interactive Ratings — 5.58

28 – Alfie Lloyd C/D

What, we’re giving marks out for being a nice kid now are we? Yes, yes we are. Bite me.

Puppy-like Alfie Lloyd is a lot of fun to watch, and to listen to, and to have around. QPR can be a gruelling place, that grinds you down, and saps your spirit. It’s good to have people around who retain their enthusiasm an-OH MY GOD A BEE!!!

The equalising goal at Sheffield Wednesday could have been scored by anybody up to and including Paul Nardi – given they were all in the six-yard box at that time and just about everybody who wasn’t deliberately sitting on Wednesday’s defenders had a swing at the ball. But it could also only have been scored by Alfie Lloyd. I can’t think of a first professional goal more befitting of a personality than that one. Afterwards, taking deep breaths to try and regain some composure, he told Tyler Morris it was “factually, the best moment of my life”. How can you not be romantic about baseball?

Inject it🤣🤣🤣 pic.twitter.com/413AcMKpG7— UpTheRs (@UpTheRs) September 14, 2024

Unbelievable content🤣🤣🤣 pic.twitter.com/4vnrXcwGDD— UpTheRs (@UpTheRs) September 15, 2024

Marti Cifuentes was clearly very taken with him. Perhaps for the same reason he liked Paul Smyth – he’s one of the few we’ve got you and I wouldn’t beat in a race. He has the physical traits to get by, and that goes a long way with managers. As does attitude, and Lloyd’s is first class.

An early start away at Luton did not go well though, despite the result. Anybody who’s watched him has to have strong doubts about whether this is really a Championship-standard footballer, or ever likely to become one. As raw as a newborn steak tartare, you do wonder whether he knows where the ball is half the time. While that does bring Paolo Wanchope-like benefits - how can a defender get a read on a player when he doesn’t know what he’s going to do himself? – when we talk about how awful our strikers are and you go to object, ask yourself which other Championship team is giving 31 appearances to Alfie Lloyd last season? Seriously, which club? He’s got a first touch that would make Zesh Rehman blush. The fouls he gives away, the circumstances he gives them away, the frequency of them, blow my mind. So dumb. You know there’s a long way to go when even the placid amongst the fanbase suck their teeth and say “needs a loan”.

That said, in the return league fixture against Luton he was a ball of energy off the bench and singularly unfortunate to hit the base of the post with a great shot. He’s had two off the post this year, with a surprisingly clinically taken goal at Millwall that might have been four goals off five starts and a clutch of sub appearances which would have been respectable. He followed that up with a man of the match display off the bench in a win at Hull where Rayan Kolli – rightly rated as the better prospect and player – had laboured badly in the same role. The physical attributes are there; can they be moulded into something useful? That’s Kevin Betsy’s role here and he’s done good work with Varane and others so far. It’s some task but we’ve given him a new contract now so let’s get to work.

Those turning up to the LFW tables in the Crown & Sceptre at the development squad’s cup final found Lloyd had beaten them to it. Celebrating a cup win in there afterwards with the players is one of the finest, old school QPR traditions. I like his personality. No shame in his efforts this season, I’d like to see him get a good loan to show what he can actually do. A good sort.

In numbers…

Interactive Ratings — 5.68

47 – Yang Min-Hyeok C

Bit of a strange January addition this one.

We’ve been categorically told the club don’t see any value in loaning players there’s no hope of signing permanently at the end of their spell. Given Spurs spent £4mish and handed a six-year contract to Yang Min-Hyeok last summer (he remained on loan with Gangwon FC to conclude their 2024 season before switching) there’s no chance of that.

Giving the same goal away twice, against Sheff Utd H and Boro A, with Min-Hyeok caught flicking and tricking out on the wing while we tried to play out from the back felt like the epitome of a Premier League kid learning his trade and making mistakes on our time. Maximum benefit to Spurs, none whatsoever for us. Perhaps we see him coming back for a full season in 2025/26? Or it was an attempt at relationship building with Spurs, laying some groundwork for better, more productive loans, or more Kieran Morgan-type signings? Maybe we just did it for the clicks and Far East advertising revenue - his winner at Oxford has been viewed 79,000 times and is the 14th most clicked video the club has ever done.

If you’d asked for priorities for the team in January you’d have probably said centre backs to cover the Cook and Morrison injuries (Ronnie Edwards was quickly shipped in to great effect) and strikers, to cover for all our strikers being injured and not very good in the first place. Fairly near the bottom of the wish list would have been another tiny boy who’s not quite a winger, not quite a central midfielder and not quite a striker but might do you a few nice bits and pieces if you can get him on the ball at ‘ten’. And yet, here he was. Aged just 18, fresh into English football from South Korea. Chuck him on the pile with the rest.

To be fair we’d been heavily reliant on Paul Smyth to that point, on whom enough has been said already but was dong big minutes at the time of Min-Hyeok’s arrival, and did wonder just how slow our team would become if he were to get injured. And perhaps the intention was always to use Yang as a striker himself. Apart from Derby at home, where he contributed to the 4-0 destruction of a lousy visiting side from a deeper position, his most noticeable moments did come when he was pressed into service up front at Stoke and Oxford – nicely finished goals of varying importance and value in each.

For now, though, off back to Spurs and, much like the poor Korean couple bravely huddled together under their national flag amidst the travelling dozens in the away end at the Riverside Stadium, a general feeling of what was the point of that?

In numbers…

Interactive Ratings — 5.49

Others >>> While Lyndon Dykes’ big farewell in the last minute at Bramall Lane before departing for a year on Birmingham’s bench is worthy of mention (the Blades didn’t concede another goal at home for nine games across four months), and Emmerson Sutton’s little cameos aged just 18 were a rare bright spark in a pretty dire end to the season, there’s really only one place this section was ever going to go.

Kelman has earned the right to come here and start ahead of them. We should be brave enough to do that.

Links >>> Keepers >>> Defenders >>> Midfield >>> Attack

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Pictures - Reuters Connect, Ian Randall

Myke added 00:14 - May 23 Cheers Clive. RE Kelman, a lot depends on who becomes the next manager and how much they are influenced by Nourry
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Northolt_Rs added 12:33 - May 24 It’s easily the worst collection of strikers in the Championship. Kelman HAS to be given a chance.
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timcocking added 12:42 - May 24 Spot on with all of that as usual
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7374Ranger added 13:45 - May 26 I think QPR should offer Kelman a 2 year deal with a 1 year option (hopefully he would sign). Then play him for 10 games and judge him from those games. If he co tiniest to score, great. If he struggles, we can look to see L him in January as I'm sure there would be takers in League 1 for him for £500k prevention the £1m we got fir Dykes. I see it as a win/win for QPR.

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Loft1979 added 16:23 - May 27 'He is all shoulders and chest now. Shoulders and chest and thighs and a big arse. His performance in the FA Cup against Manchester City’s defenders should make everybody sit up and take note, he was incredible. You don’t move him off the ball, he moves you. Hench. Hench and eyeing international honours with the US, who he qualifies for through his father. He’s not messing about any more.' THIS! The back scoop is what makes this read exemplary. Based on this alone, Charlie is worth the effort. Kudos also to your review of Kolli. I might have injected that prior to his first start we were languishing, hopeless...then he waddles in and dismantles Norwich. Next thing we are talking play offs...

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7374Ranger added 17:14 - May 27 I think QPR should offer Kelman a 2 year deal with a 1 year option (hopefully he would sign). Then play him for 10 games and judge him from those games. If he co tiniest to score, great. If he struggles, we can look to see L him in January as I'm sure there would be takers in League 1 for him for £500k prevention the £1m we got fir Dykes. I see it as a win/win for QPR.

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