Pre-season and Perpignan – Awaydays Sunday, 27th Jul 2025 16:33 by Clive Whittingham Stuff and nonsense from on and off the pitch as the QPR in Europe summer pre-season makes a welcome return, and Julien Stéphan gets stuck into shaping the Rangers his way. En FrancaisOnce governments had abandoned the idea of bankrupting their countries to pay us all to stay in our homes, the first place I reached for was France. I had a yearning desire for something that wasn’t the four walls of my house and a mandated period of exercise on the Barnet Greenway. I’d been asked for the third time in a week what Postman Pat’s surname was and knew if I had to sit through another Zoom “pub quiz” I’d become a danger to myself and/or others (it’s Clifton, by the way). It carried me to Lyon, where the Rhône meets the Saône and the local delicacy is a hare slowly braised in red wine and then coated in a thick, chocolate-like sauce made of its own heart, liver, lungs and blood. With chips. Lyon is a city built on gastronomy. It is littered with Bouchons - traditional wood panelled bistros serving only very slight variations of the same old school menu. They spend a lot of time here thinking about what to do with parts of the animal which really ought to have been thrown away. The formidable image of legendary chef Paul Bucose glares down from an enormous mural outside the city’s main food market, where trade is brisk and if it lives in the sea it’s available to eat with aioli and cool, crisp white wine. I loved the place immediately, despite its severe slopes, but to see more of it my friendly Spanish walking tour guide, Toni, told us we’d probably need to pick up a couple of masks because, well, certain death and all that was still in the air. Le Pharmacie swiftly located, lit up like Blackpool illuminations of course because France, in I trudged to purchase two face masks. Monsieur behind le counter was cheery with his bonjours and extra keen to help with my attempt to provide him custom. Normalement, the procurement of face masks would be pas de problème - would I like one, or a pack of 15? Well, ideally two, because there are two of us. Hmmmm. Breath inhaled through teeth biting lips underneath eyebrows of frown and doubt. C'est très difficile, as monsieur previously explained the masks are available only as one, or a pack of 15. Stand-off. Would I be able, perhaps to buy one of the individual ones, and then another one of the individual ones? Silent thought. Would it help if I bought one of the individual ones, left the shop, came back in and bought another one of the individual ones on my second visit? Pause. Nod. C’est possible. And lo, two face masks, in two separate card transactions, with two separate receipts, and two different foreign currency charges on my HSBC current account. Et, voila. This, perhaps more than anything else I’ve encountered in two decades of travelling around the urban and rural areas of this extraordinary place, is France to me. A beautiful country of inconsistencies and contradictions. A country that adores rules, and treasures bureaucracy, but will strike and riot at the drop of a hat. A country that will happily whack a high speed railway through a built up town without so much as a fence to separate hundreds of tonnes of fast moving electrified steel from the local population, because if you don’t want to get hit by the train don’t go on the railway tracks le dickhead, but simultaneously requires you to bring your marriage certificate with you if you want to buy a used car. There is a reverence for documents here so rabid you end up carrying a whole folder of utility bills and last will and testaments around the supermarket with you in case your national insurance number is required to operate the scales for your loose tomatoes. Swim more than ten feet from the beach in Collioure harbour and expect bells, whistles, lifeguards, coastguards… harpoons. But half a pound of mashed up raw meat and an uncooked egg yolk for lunch? Sure, just add tabasco and you’re good to go. It is, at times, an infuriating place. A language where every word is masculine or feminine, but there’s no rule, rhyme or reason logic to which is which. A table is feminine, la, and a cupboard is masculine, le. Because it is. And you’ll need to learn all that, one thing at a time, until you know whether every single thing in the world is a masculine or feminine thing. You need a walking guide in Lyon because the best way to pass from one street to the next is through a series of traboules – little alleyways, passages and tunnels that wind between the buildings. Problem is, all of these have a front door on them to make them look like any other house or shop. So how do you know which one is a traboule and which one is going to walk you into Madame Edith’s kitchen during a hectic lunch preparation? You don’t. It just, is. It's a place I’ve come to adore regardless, and the very second I’m done arguing with you lot over whether Kenneth Paal is a C or a D each summer I pack up my laptop and head back there, gliding from place to place and bottle of wine to glorious bottle of wine on double decker high speed trains with an actual fucking pub in them. Whizzing from Paris to Bordeaux to Toulouse to Narbonne in half the time it takes me to get from London to Preston and for a quarter of the price. Things the French do well – trains, the French do trains really well. A summer that began in Lyon and Marseille, included a pleasant afternoon or three in La Rochelle watching dolphins splashing around beneath my glass of wine waiting for the port gates to open for the evening, featured prawns the size of your forearm and waves as big as your house down the Atlantic coast through Moliets down to Biarritz, ended as it so often does in Perpignan where another of the weird little foibles of this country resides. In British rugby league your fixture list rarely takes you off the M62, especially since London’s recent demise. You can look forward to the glamour of awaydays in Wakefield and Castleford, Huddersfield and Leeds, Warrington and Salford, two separate trips to different bits of Wigan, two separate trips to different bits of Hull. Oh, and Perpignan. Wigan, Leigh, St Helens and Perpignan. Once a fortnight 1,500 Brits turn up here in bucket hats and Rab C Nesbitt vests for a league game against the Catalans Dragons, a team that plays in a stadium three-part stand to one part swimming pool. Rugby league in 37 degrees, under bright blue skies, and with a whole hog roast behind the posts. It is a glorious highlight of the season. And therefore, of course, the RFL would like to kill it off. A coup has been staged. Nigel Wood, a sort of Jabba the Hutt type mess with a northern accent, has been anointed the sport’s supreme leader by a gaggle of self-centred club owners. The first thing in their crosshairs is the Catalans club in the top division, and Toulouse who currently top the league below and are favourite for promotion. One would think the growth of the sport might be aided by a top division that includes two French sides and a London outfit, possibly extended to 14 teams to accommodate. But while the 14-team idea has supporters, the French do not. Apparently, it’s Bradford Bulls and York this thing needs. That’s what’s holding it back from gargantuan TV deals and an audience outside Yorkshire and Lancashire. You all miss Bradford, you just won’t admit it. Catalans are accused of not bringing any away fans when they travel, of not contributing any kind of significant television deal, and basically serving as nothing other than a nice holiday once a year for 1,000 pissed up northerners from whom the Dragons pocket all the cash. As opposed to Huddersfield Giants, who bring no away fans when they travel, contribute no kind of significant TV deal, and is a complete shithole for 1,000 pissed up northerners from whom they pocket all the cash. I must have missed all the exposure, TV deals and income Bradford were contributing to the sport when they went bankrupt three times in ten years and the RFL had to buy their derelict stock car racing track/stadium to bail them out (later sold back to the Bulls at a colossal loss to the sport). Catalans are accused of importing too many Australians, and not furthering the French national team. I must have missed all the success England/Great Britain have had internationally, and all the contributions the Hulls, Castleford, Wakefield, Huddersfield, Salford, Leigh etc have made to that. Back home, the RFL has increased the foreign quota to ten players, and Hull FC have responded by signing up a couple more 30+ jobbing Aussies. Catalans have built from scratch into a Challenge Cup winning, Grand Final reaching force. They have invested in the sport, their stadium, their club and their team. In return the Dragons have had their central funding cut, are made to pay a dividend to play in the Challenge Cup, are forced to pay for all visiting teams travel and accommodation, and are now being told even the income from their away ticket sales should go to the away team. Death by a thousand cuts. Choking them until they cannot breathe at this level. Disgraceful, small minded, bent self interest against the will of the sport’s entire support base, enacted by a group of northern blokes who hold board meetings in Batley. Nigel Wood, purely by coincidence, was until very recently the chairman of... the Bradford Bulls. Sport England are threatening to withhold the sport's funding over this flagrant stitch up. Australia's booming NRL has, unsurprisingly, cooled interest in taking over this farce. It was here, in Perpignan, at the start of the summer, while enjoying a very nice weekend watching Hull FC record a 36-0 victory, that news came through QPR would be playing a pre-season friendly against Toulouse, in Perpignan. And, which is more, we were all actually invited this time. Hardly seemed any point in coming home. So, I didn’t. Across la toucheA month later, behind the main stand in Canet Roussillon’s tiny Stade Saint Michel, it’s the thick end of 40 degrees. I’m self-consciously trying not to stand too close to a topless Amadou Mbengue, who looks like an early Michelangelo project. I'm also trying to disguise from the club’s player development coach Kevin Betsy just how much I’m sweating out of my head. Note to those losing their hair, or considering shaving it off, this is a most unwelcome, unexpected and unpublicised side issue of the whole thing. Turns out the hair soaks up a lot when it’s there, and when it’s not that lot looks to escape elsewhere. Into your face mostly. Or straight down the spinal highway into the crack of your arse. Just look Kevin straight in the eye, thank him for his time, and ask him what his job is. “Around two thirds of my role is really high focused on individual players and their development, taking a holistic view across all aspects on and off the pitch. Then there’s supporting the head coach on all aspects, opposition analysis, game plan scenarios, training design and practical application of the training sessions. Then the rest is the development of the wider project at the club, working with academy players and coaches, helping them improve, implementing individual development plans across the club and supporting them. There’s a small percentage involvement in the recruitment as well.” On the changes brought by Julien Stéphan… “Julien brings a wealth of experience in European football and development of young players. He’s first and foremost a fantastic person which is really helpful, when you’re working with new staff he’s been really good at creating an environment people love to work in and look forward to coming in every day. We all want to help him do the best job he can. Tactically there have been some nuances that are different and will look different at certain points of the season. He’s very aware of the Championship and the strengths and challenges it brings – many of the teams, and many of the players. He’s brought a lot of positivity to the group and calmness in the right moments.” On losing the first friendly in Spain 6-0, and what Betsy in particular looks for in these warm up games… “My main focus in every match is individual players, their details and ability to take on the game plan and apply the instructions. Are they picking up technical and tactical details around things we’ve talked about. Timothy Akindileni who’s joined us this pre-season has been a breath of fresh air, a real talent we have who we’re looking forward to seeing develop. Ridwan Hassan has done really well, a real threat, training very well. There’s lots to tidy up with him, and the senior players as well. Emmerson Sutton is a fantastic young player, great attitude, and looking at how he's developing, taking on information and applying himself. That’s my focus in these pre-season games. Results? First game against Stevenage we won 5-0, they’re a very good League One team with a good side out. We’ve been in football a long time, I’ve had pre-seasons where we’ve won every single game and then had a poor start and season, and vice versa. It’s about fitness, building togetherness, integrating new players, manager gathering as much information as he can. The training camp has been fantastic; we’ve just got to keep pushing and improving every day.” You can hear the full interview with Betsy, and our pre- and post-match poolside podcast from Perpignan, by subscribing to our Patreon. Over in the side stand, Mel Huckridge was more succinct. “You’re not writing a report on this are you? Anybody who reads anything into this is a fucking moron. A total fucking idiot.” Books are still available - unsigned copies worth a lot of money if you can find one. Mel would be the first to admit light ales had been taken – down at the Panama Beach Club we found Polish Paul relaxing in a pink Hawaiian QPR two-piece unbuttoned to the waist, I’m not sure Francis will be rushing to include the images in the club shop catalogue – but you could see his point. The pitch, sans-markings, played like a large green sponge, and started to cut up almost immediately. You’d have staged a second inspection before holding The Horse of the Year Show here. The heat, in the first half at least, was violently oppressive. In order to save five euros, and because we thought the “Tribune of Honor” sounded a bit much for a website celebrating 20 years of cock jokes, we’d gone for the general ground admission and open side. MIIIIISTAAAAAAAAAAKE. Respite provided only by the sprinklers occasionally giving the perimeter a soaking, sending us diving under the jets of water fully clothed for a few seconds of reprieve, dried out within minutes. The teams in both halves were a real mixed bag, though notably a few were left out for an hour this time rather than 45 as fitness builds. It was as much about who wasn’t there as who was, and the first big worry of the pre-season so far is it’s all the players you would expect to be absent who are absent all over again. Jake Clarke-Salter has a long term injury of course, but Rayan Kolli and Michi Frey needed big pre-seasons more than most after stuttering campaigns last time out and have once again been sidelined with a series of niggling bits of nothing much at all. Highly frustrating. Talk of Frey being given a second contract extension on top of the option we’ve already taken seems crazy to me for a player that only did 90 minutes six times last year, wasn’t able to play the game after on three of those occasions and hasn’t done a single pre-season minute so far. I like him when he plays, but he doesn’t play often enough, for long enough. The second big worry is that Jonathan Varane is linked with moves here there and everywhere around Europe despite a new contract and is also nowhere to be seen in the first team picture. The middle of midfield was a key issue last season, and as it stands two weeks out we’re going in with the same midfield minus its best player (Varane) and Jack Colback who was useful infantry when available. Stéphan, like Cifuentes, like the game model, wants to play two in there with Chair ahead at ‘ten’, and play out from the back. Every time we do it, teams walk through us when we don’t have the ball. When we do have possession Sam Field shows that he’s many things to many people but what he’s not is somebody who can take the ball off the centre backs and progress it – unless you count bobbling it straight back into our own goal as progression, which has already happened once this summer. I’ve no real desire to see us surrender possession, stodge up the midfield with three players instead of two, midblock our way to sixteenth again, but with the players we have currently it’s either that or you’re going to concede a lot of goals and lose a lot of games. An addition is needed there if Varane is staying. If he’s not then it's additions plural if we’re to play Stéphan’s preferred way. Likewise in the full back spots, where once again it’s Jimmy Dunne or trouble down the right and cover provided by Adamson who, like Santos before him, has shown some nice bits but is not ready for this level. Left back, like midfield, was an issue last year, and all we’ve done to correct that is get rid of the first choice without replacement. Ziyad Larkeche as a starter? A stretch, for me. Esquerdinha has looked nice in his appearances, but after Cardiff in the week was Tweeting words to the effect of “shall I come back?” before deleting. Owen Beck going to Derby on loan is a blow – a player we’ve been close to signing before and who’d be ideal in there. Those are the negatives from pre-season so far. The positives are led by Kwame Poku, who so far looks everything we thought we’d bought out there and more. Very exciting player. Mbengue, shorts rolled up charging around, has that Diakite vibe about him, and got worryingly skinned a couple of times by Heerenveen’s Maxence Rivera close to the byline, but looks like he’s going to be great value. It transforms our team when we have a defender who can come out with the ball and beat the initial press, which is why we look so much better on the rare occasions Jake Clarke-Salter graces us with his presence and when Ronnie Edwards was here last year. Mbengue loves doing it, and it’s transformative when he bursts away down the middle of the pitch, as he did a couple of times on Saturday and frequently against Toulouse – both top division sides in their own countries remember. Mbengue’s Diags™ could be a nice resurrection too – the thing about repeat jokes is you have to repeat them. The Castellon game was a troubling disaster. However, they’ve since knocked over Carlos Corberan’s Valencia 2-1 and drawn 1-1 with Championship favourites Southampton so perhaps the biggest takeaway from that one is can we get a few quid on them for their own league title this year? There has been progress into Stéphan’s style through the two games since then. There was still far too much fart-arsing around at the back against Heerenveen, and at times Jimmy Dunne and Steve Cook gave off an aura of outright despair with it, but when the “one touch” we hear the new head coach talk about all the time, and the “can we play forwards” that was the repeat theme of Steve Bould’s pleasantly barmy mic’d up training session was in evidence, it did work and look good. Alfie Tuck always looks the best at this to me, but Kieran Morgan and at times Nicolas Madsen did it well over the two games I’ve watched live (Madsen, like so many of them, still a defensive liability for me though) and Harvey Vale impressed in the Stevenage game. It did break Heerenveen and Toulouse’s press well on the occasions it worked, as did the draw-them-on-and-spring-it-over-the-top technique which you would think will only improve in its success rate with the surprise addition of Rumarn Burrell this weekend. Karamoko Dembele is fit, and once again showing that for all his defensive frailties he has great end product. He’s run his own goal of the summer competition, culminating in a lovely strike into the top corner against the Dutch. Can you accommodate him, and Chair, and Poku, and Madsen (and Vale, and Burrell, and Ba)? I doubt it, but it’s been a strong summer for Kader so far. We have got better from game to game. It’s an ambitious, risky style of play Julien Stéphan wants. I’m unconvinced we have the players for it currently, and the team is short in key areas with a month of transfer window still to go – woefully so in midfield if Varane isn’t going to be available, Sam Field will be badly exposed and quickly get set upon as this year’s boo boy if we don’t do some surgery there. It’ll be interesting to see who and what we add to the centre of the park and left back over the coming weeks, and how steadfastly a manager who has been super pragmatic and adaptable in the past sticks with this if it doesn’t work. The idea of shoving aside Paul Nardi for a nervous looking Joe Walsh, sidelining Steve Cook, not renewing Jack Colback, all fine in principle, but they’ve played key roles in keeping us in this division in recent times. Not everybody can be a development prospect. You have to have game smarts and Championship nasties in there – I did like how aggressive we were in the Toulouse game by the way, the first half nearly booted off on several occasions. You’ve got to be careful not to run before you can walk, not to try to do too much too soon. Starting Walsh ahead of Nardi from the get go feels like a lot, particularly with all the other changes around the club, rather than perhaps sticking to the status quo for now and aiming to get 20 starts into him by May depending on circumstances. Stéphan made an interesting comment post Heerenveen. He said: “We’ve spoken a lot with the players after Cardiff about the mentality. It’s very important that sometimes you make mistakes on the pitch, in football there are always mistakes. After mistakes you are lucky because in football a few seconds later you have the ball at your feet and you can do well and create danger immediately after a mistake. Mistakes are mistakes, if you don’t want to make a mistake you don’t take risks and you don’t take initiative. It’s not my philosophy, I accept mistakes, no problem with mistakes. I don’t accept players not trying after a mistake to restart a good movement and trying to build a pass or move with the ball, I don’t accept that. We correct and do better the next time.” Again, while I understand the logic and principle of replacing Nardi with Walsh, of releasing Jack Colback, of ushering Steve Cook towards retirement, of selling Charlie Kelman, I also know what the Championship is like and what QPR are like in that Championship. I totally understand what Stéphan is saying here, and I love it – in the middle of July. Are we going to love it if we concede the type of goals we did against Heerenveen, against Preston and Charlton? Or if we’re still conceding them in December? And how much patience is out there in Rangers land at the moment? Social media has drunk the Kool-Aid, Cifuentes is a snake who was never that good in the first place, but that’s not the prevailing attitude among the travellers I’ve interacted with this summer. You sack a popular manager doing his job, and the expectation that places on you is you’ve got to improve and get better. Among the home and awayers there’s a deal of arm folding and “go on then”, whereas before there was understanding about budgetary restrictions. The reaction to some of the team selections this summer, to the first half performance against Cardiff, to some of the play-out-from-the-back we saw against the Dutch side, has not been positive, or patient. QPR have a very favourable start fixture wise, no parachute payment team on the list until November. I’m intrigued to see not only how this goes, but how tolerant people are of it. It’s a bit runny, sirBack at Le VIP in Perpignan, where Madame Propriétaire speaks with a voice of a life well lived, they served Simmo a duck breast introduced to the oven from such a long distance away and for such a brief time that it came out still quacking, flapping and laying. By way of “vegetables” a bed of warm potatoes cooked in a bucket of full fat cream was provided. A pastry parcel, neatly tied, adorned the top of the bird by way of garnish, spilling half a melted brie across the breast when provoked with a knife. It’s quite a journey we’re having to gout. Or a big, fuck off heart attack. For a team that has resided in the Championship for a decade, this is what this stuff is really about. There’s only so many times you can go to Preston and pretend you’re enjoying it. Only so many fixture lists with a midweek winter night at Blackburn you can smile through and wrap up warm for. I’ve got relatives I’d sacrifice in exchange for a Europa Conference League group campaign. With the prospect of that as far away as ever, an easy win is to reward the people who still follow you regardless with a trip like this. Everywhere you looked last week there were Rangers. We even managed a You R’s from a young lad in the red and black hoops as far south as the Valencia food market on Wednesday afternoon. You go to Collioure, widely tipped as one of the most beautiful towns in France, where Henri Matisse said no sky in all of France is so blue, and you find it’s all true. But, also, Mel’s here. "Beer?" A well briefed club DJ played the hits as QPR fans danced on the roof of the bar. We drank Canet dry and provided a nice little seasonal nest egg to that local non-league club – the chairman couldn’t believe his luck and told us he would definitely welcome a second date as staff rushed to set up a club shop table so us geeks could procure baseball caps and replica shirts. The sun shone, we came up with some new songs, we got bitten to pieces round the swimming pool, and there was a terrifying moment where I woke up hungover to Finney’s voice in my ear after it turned out his Airbnb was a work of fiction and he ended up kipping on our sofa. There’s plenty of time to read into the team and the games later, it’s this stuff that it’s all about really. Togetherness with the club, team, players and fans, reward for loyal support, and just allowing us – for once – to have nice things. It was a naive mistake to lock us out of it all last summer, and very welcome to have the experience return this year. 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. Photo: Action Images Please report offensive, libellous or inappropriate posts by using the links provided.
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