QPR tried that trick of winning Championship football games while surrendering midfield at Watford on Saturday, with predictable results.

A new head coach can bring a new approach, fresh ideas, renewed impetus to a tired and jaded dressing room. I don’t think anybody would pretend the football played by Queens Park Rangers last season, even when they were achieving positive results, was anything to aspire to. Taking that base and building a more attractive, expansive, attacking side on it would seem very attractive to anybody who slogged through those late season trips to Portsmouth, Middlesbrough, West Brom and Stoke.

A change in that role does also present a couple of potential problems, though.

The first is that you’re giving up the learnings of the previous head coach about this squad and the players within it and starting again afresh. For some players the previous gaffer didn’t fancy that clean slate and fresh start can be very welcome – see Chris Willock after Gareth Ainsworth departed. But it does mean there’s going to be a settling in period and some teething troubles while the new manager works out exactly what he’s got at his disposal and what the respective strengths and weaknesses of his players are. By bringing that head coach in from abroad, with no EFL experience, you’re also surrendering two years of learnings from the previous continental head coach about this division and what’s required to compete in it.

To fans who have sat through the previous seasons and know the squad and this league back to front, this can be very frustrating.

Julien Stéphan will certainly already know you don’t win many games of football while losing midfield. What he perhaps doesn’t yet know, but will soon come to learn, is that with this QPR squad that is basically guaranteed when you start with a two rather than a three in the middle of the park, if one of those two is Nicolas Madsen (especially away from home), and if you ask Sam Field to do anything other than pretty basic and rudimentary defensive work.

QPR started last season with momentum and optimism, they wanted to open up and be more expansive, they wanted three creative players behind a striker, they wanted Lucas Andersen and Ilias Chair and Koki Saito and Karamoko Dembele, they wanted a high press… they won two of the first 17 games. They then stodged up the midfield with a three, brought in some legs with Kieran Morgan, went deep tight and narrow at the back and midblock through the centre of the park, and started to grind out results. Unattractive, but effective. Later in the season, albeit while beset with injuries, they opened up again… and went on another seven-match losing streak.

Stéphan was treated to this lecture in stark technicolour through a dire first half against Watford at Vicarage Road on Saturday.

The Hornets swiftly surged into a richly deserved two goal lead inside 23 minutes. Three unmarked and unchallenged Watford players completed two simple forward passes down the left channel allowing Irankunda to run into space onto Kayembe’s ball and square for Kjerrumgaard to sweep home his first goal for the club. Not a tackle in sight, nor anybody within any sort of distance to attempt one.

Then, when Sissoko strolled through the centre circle unopposed and fed the unmarked Irankunda once more, it appeared QPR had got away with their insipidness when his through ball was overhit and off target. However, instead of allowing it to roll into his box and pick it up, rookie goalkeeper Joe Walsh panicked and smashed a mishit clearance straight back at Irankunda. This set in motion a move that shifted the ball from Irankunda to Kayembe, who crossed to Louza on the far side of the penalty area and he used the space afforded to him to chip a delicate cross up to the back post where Kjerrumgaard headed home from barely a yard out. Paul Nardi got some deserved grief for the manner of the Plymouth goals in midweek – all three scored from crosses – I don’t see a lot of difference in Walsh here, glued to his line while a delicate lobbed cross lands a yard out. Still, it would have been worse still had Walsh not saved with a strong left hand down in the bottom corner from Kayembe after just two minutes. Or had Ngakia not skied over from close in when opposite full back Bola found him at the back post with a deep cross.

The main theme, rather than the goalkeeping, was just how embarrassingly easy all this was. In that second move Irankunda, Kayembe and Louza are able to control, pick their option, manipulate the ball and execute without a QPR player ever going within eight yards of any of them at any point. Watch the replay through. Look how pathetic the QPR resistance to it all is. Look at Mbengue’s effort to stop that cross coming in. Does somebody want to fucking hit somebody, or what? Engage.

I did have some sympathy with a head coach already missing key players to injury right down the spine of the team. I think with Mbengue moved to left back and the more defensively adept Paul Smyth selected ahead of him they’d clearly planned to try and mitigate the threat of Kwadwo Baah who’d played down that side on the opening day at Charlton and is a monstrous threat at this level. The idea of Esquerdinha playing just a second game of Championship football in his career and trying to mark that guy was not one that thrilled me greatly and I did wonder pre-match whether Mbengue would be utilised over there. Rangers made that move… and Baah didn’t start. When he did come on later they stuck him wide left against Kieran Morgan. Best laid plans and all that. It had knock on effects in the centre of defence where Steve Cook, I’m afraid, looked miles off it on his 500th career appearance, and then into midfield where Mbengue could have helped out had he been more centrally placed.

That said, it very quickly became that midfield numbers game we remember so well from last season. QPR put two men in there against a three-man Watford set up. Sissoko played in a dinner jacket, Louza absolutely ran the show bar a late red card for a horrible reckless lunge on Varane, and Kayembe dominated around the pair of them.

There are lies, damn lies and statistics but some of the WhoScored.com numbers from this certainly pass the eye and the smell test: Nicolas Madsen and Sam Field one tackle between them and two interceptions while Sissoko, Louza and Kayembe managed five of each collectively; those three also gave away five fouls, while Field and Madsen managed none; with the ball Field and Madsen had two shots, including Field dragging a really presentable chance across the face of goal from the edge of the box late in the second half, while the Watford trio managed six; Field and Madsen attempted 59 passes between them (32 from Madsen with 68% accuracy, 27 from Field at 74%) while Louza did more than that by himself (69 passes, 94% (!!) accuracy), Sissoko 22 at 95.5% and Kayembe 35 at 85.7% (126 passes attempted out of central midfield, more than double our total). Even with Varane fit and available, we need further recruitment here most of all. It's difficult to see how we ever play with a two in there without at least one more new addition.

This was a beasting, and it was worthy of a far greater half time lead than the 2-1 the Hornets ended up with thanks to the tireless Kieran Morgan walking onto a ball on the edge of the box in the fourth minute of first half stoppage time and planting a fierce strike into the top corner that stayed hit.

Having got away with that rather, it was fairly mindblowing to me that we’d start the second half with the same midfield and the only change being Rayan Kolli on for Paul Smyth. One of those amazing how little you know about the sport you’ve watched all your life moments. But Rangers had a better attitude in the second half, stepping onto their opponent and engaging them higher up the pitch with the odd tackle or two. When Jonathan Varane was belatedly summoned from the bench for Madsen and Esquerdinha slotted in at left back the team looked more confident, competitive, balanced and effective.

For a while, Rangers dominated proceedings. Watford started to get ragged and give the ball away in their own half. Marc Bola cleared one scramble out from under his crossbar. Richard Kone stepped up for his eagerly awaited QPR debut and might have scored with his first touch had Steve Cook not taken a near post corner off his head. When the Ivorian did connect with a set piece the ball bounced down in the six yard box and was hacked away amidst a scramble.

It felt like our match preview prediction of 2-2 with a Kone goal might be on, one delicious Esquerdinha cross just out of his reach, but sadly serious shots on target to test excellent home goalkeeper Egil Selvik remained elusive. More frustratingly still, the obvious lack of fitness and endurance in this QPR squad to start the season took hold. Karamoko Dembele cramping up in front of the away end again, booked for giving away a free kick to deliberately stop the game so he could exit. There simply weren’t the legs in the visiting team to press on and launch a big push for a late equaliser. Rather than a grandstand finish in front of the packed away end, play started flowing the other way again with substitute Baah tormenting and running the remaining legs off an exhausted Kieran Morgan – he shot just wide twice in quick succession, Dele-Bashiru then shot over after more forceful Baah approach work.

Afterwards Stephan said he’d been angry with his players at half time for their passiveness. "Two completely different halves. The first half was too poor, honestly. It was not good enough. The second one was completely different, with more intensity and quality. I'm very happy with the second half but very disappointed with the first. It's hard to imagine getting a good result when you only play 45 minutes. We need to react more quickly. We want to play like that (in the second half) and want to see the team like this. I hope quickly we will be able to play like this for 90 minutes and not only 45. This is the challenge."

The second potential problem with a new head coach, however, is if he’s replacing a popular predecessor. This is not John Hollins stepping in for Stuart Houston and the crowd singing “we’re not Arsenal any more”. You’ll be told otherwise online, but Marti Cifuentes remained popular among the match going QPR fans until the end and the manner of his removal has left a lot of people cold. I picked up this vibe on the pre-season tour in France and when I reported it in our write up from Perpignan was accused of pedalling a false narrative. Well, even I didn’t expect things to turn quite as quickly as that away end did in the first half yesterday.

As Watford cruised into their two-goal lead and QPR responded by repeatedly giving the ball away in their own half and, frankly, chickening out of challenges against a physically stronger side, there were very quickly audible boos and criticism for the team rolling down from the 2,000+ travelling faithful. Madsen’s eventual mercy killing was met with a smattering of ironic cheers.

Booing our own team half an hour into league game two? Even I thought there’d be more of a grace period than that, but these people have been put through a lot by their club over the last three years, I think they feel quite patronised at times, there is a lot of frustration out there and after three years of frankly remarkable, steadfast support through some absolute clusterfucks under Beale and Ainsworth there is not a lot of patience left in the tank. The replies to the club Tweets at full time were even more extreme.

I get it, believe me, but we’ve all got to try and keep a lid on that. With a very tough game to come next week at Coventry it’s likely this will get worse before it gets better at the start of this season but it’s important the crowd takes a breath and stays with the team. What are the other choices, turn it completely toxic before we’ve even got a full team on the pitch? There have been passages in both league games so far where you’ve seen the potential the team has got when it gets on the ball.

It’s a young side, for a start – youngest average age in the Championship last week, down from second oldest two seasons ago. It’s a new look side with players stepping up to this level from the division below (harsh lessons for Rumarn Burrell against those centre backs yesterday, for example), from Europe, or from injury hit seasons. It is a new head coach, still learning about his players and league and trying to get his ideas across. There are still two weeks of transfer window left, with potentially some Ebere Eze money due imminently, that may see us address those glaring central midfield issues with a new arrival or two. There are vitally important players to this team currently missing – Dunne, Clarke-Salter, Varane only able to do half an hour, Kone only 20 minutes, Poku we await news. And the squad as a whole is obviously a long, long way short of match fitness. Whether that was a wise strategy given our situation and our fixtures is a debate for another piece, but you only need look at the second half against Preston when you’d have hoped as home side we’d be pushing for a winner, and the last 15 minutes yesterday when, instead of searching for an equaliser, we were clinging onto Baah’s coattails trying not to concede again, to know we’re miles off it currently.

If we still look like this on the other side of the international break and into October then I get it, but it’s only game three…

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

Watford: Selvik 6; Ngakia 7, Abankwah 6, Keben 7, Kyprianou 7, Bola 6 (Andrews 74, 6); Sissoko 7, Louza 7, Kaymebe 7 (Dele-Bashiru 86, -); Irankunda 7 (Baah 54, 7), Kjerrumgaard 8 (Doumbia 74, -)

Subs not used: Alleyne, Baxter, Ince, Vata

Goals: Kjerrumgaard 19 (assisted Kayembe), 23 (assisted Louza)

Red Cards: Louza 90+2 (serious foul play)

Yellow Cards: Kayembe 65 (kicking ball away)

QPR: Walsh 5; Morgan 6, Morrison 5, Cook 5, Mbengue 5 (Esquerdinha 61, 6); Madsen 4 (Varane 61, 6), Field 5; Dembele 5 (Celar 81, -), Chair 6, Smyth 5 (Kolli 46, 6); Burrell 5 (Kone 70, 6)

Subs not used: Adamson, Bennie, Nardi, Vale

Goals: Morgan 45+4 (unassisted)

Yellow Cards: Mbengue 40 (foul), Dembele 81 (foul)

QPR Star Man – Kieran Morgan 6 Obviously got a good going over from Baah after he came on, but stuck to his task, ran hard yards, played out of position, at least looked fit enough to do 90 minutes, and scored a great goal which, in the land of the bald, is enough hair to be king.

Referee – Tony Harrington (Cleveland) 6 Some maddening inconsistencies where he’d flip from being very passive and letting things go to giving free kicks for absolutely nothing, often within the same minute or two, and to say those two halves were both worthy of identical amounts of stoppage time is just another example of how the time wasting, clock running and time keeping in this league is now just a complete farce. But the red card is right and he was fine overall. Pretty safe, reliable pair of hands in our recent games with him.

Attendance – 19,517 (2,200 QPR approx.) Patience wearing thin.

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Pictures - Reuters Connect

Sittingbournehoop added 19:27 - Aug 17 An excellent match report and I was shocked just how poor we were in the first half, absolutely abysmal. Just like last season, a slow start, injuries and players out of position and just completely out of sorts. 20 games in we will be bottom 3 and just relying on 3 worse teams than us come end of season. Persevering with Madsen is like starting with 10 men, midfield non existent, far too easy for Watford. I was enjoying my Saturdays more during the break, I need another sport to follow!

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WestonsuperR added 19:42 - Aug 17 Many including JS seem to be clinging on to a ‘great’ second half, reality was it was a good 25–30 mins, Watford far the better side in the last 15 and really should have scored at least 1 more but for poor finishing.
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Oxfordhoop added 20:09 - Aug 17 Thanks Clive. Didn’t see the match but watched the highlights. Very worrying to see the lack of team spirit and togetherness shown after Morgan’s goal.
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joolsyp added 20:35 - Aug 17 @oxfordhoop - I wonder whether that was just a team reaction to the fact they knew they'd been beasted first half and the lack of a celebration was by way of an apology to the fans?
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Lblock added 21:57 - Aug 17 In from 4/1 to 5/2 for relegation It tells a story At this stage I cannot see us staying up Yes, yes, yes… it’s matchday 2; as has been said year on year though…… when does what you can see in front of you mean you press the “concerned” button? This squad looks ill prepared, unbalanced, unfit, devoid of spirit and actually worse than it’s predecessors plus is run by a bunch of novices. Hold me

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qprninja added 21:58 - Aug 17 Quite how we start the season without the players being fit enough to run for 90 mins is beyond me. That's proper basic stuff, right? Maybe get Gerry Francis back in to sort that? He always ran the players ragged preseason and it worked. A bizarre situation.
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CateLeBonR added 23:41 - Aug 17 Thanks Clive a great report. I was thinking that you had maybe underplayed the goal and performance by Morgan but then gave him MOM and rightly so. Isn’t that the goal that we’ve all grown up dreaming about scoring for QPR?
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royinaus added 03:53 - Aug 18 I'd looked forward to that all week!
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PastCaringNW2 added 09:55 - Aug 18 Excellent report, as always. As 2-1 losses on the road go not the worst but the travelling fan reaction reminded me of another, robustly attended 2-1 defeat at Watford back in the Harford, VInnie, Sheron era. So many of us went up for that one I am not sure I got in the ground until 20 minutes into the first half. That was a core fan base far more primed for revolt and while it was no surprise when the "one Gerry Francis" chant went up that was about as helpful as "lino you're a a chorus or two of ****" when it comes to giving the team a gee-up. That was 1998 and game 17 of a winless run in the league stretching back IIRC to the 5-0 'Boro game the previous March (pre "VJ Day", Mark Kennedy playing his last game yet still potentially sign-able etc). This under an at-best semi-detached management team whose public face makes Neil Critchley look like Bill Shankley at his more fearsome. Still, the vibe was not dissimilar. Anyway, point being we might be getting ahead of ourselves here and in danger of an uncharacteristic collective head-loss given that we sat / stood through months of the Ainsworth debacle without barely raising an eyebrow. Speaking of detachment and raised eyebrows the manager's tone is perhaps a bit too emotionally disengaged and ironical in tone for his own good. I get not wanting to scare the passengers (the cabin crew aren't crying so all's well, probably) but those pre and post match interviews remind of the ironic detachment of serial podcasters Julien Laurens and Philippe Auclair. Maybe something gets lost / added in translation but I am in no hurry to find out what the French equivalent of "shit but local" might be.

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TwoHalves added 11:29 - Aug 18 Definite signs that Julien is starting to get the hang of it though: “It is what it is” deployed at approximately 1m 49sec of the Post-Match Interview.
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Loft1979 added 16:52 - Aug 18 'When Jonathan Varane was belatedly summoned from the bench for Madsen and Esquerdinha slotted in at left back the team looked more confident, competitive, balanced and effective' I waited to see THIS report as all other are simply SHIKATE to me. after the first 25 min I actually enjoyed the game, particularly Kieran's hit. Sam had 2 chances the one you referenced and a header wide which spoke to great build up play and the lagging midfielder getting opportunities. Not unlike the lead to the goal Kieran scored. The other chance was a set up by Kolli which Dembele was not the best target man for. I think 2-2 would have been the right outcome. I see alot to be optimistic about but Dembele to me is too light weight, Madsen a non prescence defensively, and like Kelman, Celar does not run or press well. Celar's addition took away any momentum we had at that point. The Watford midfield, when pressed resorted to outright physicality, largely getting away with it. I do hope that opportunities for all 3 are found elsewhere and a little more force is added to the midfield options. Question. Alluding to your use of Esquerdinha and Mbengue. Could the best back line be a 5 with Kieran/Cook and Esquerdina wide and Mebengue then more central?

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Myke added 21:29 - Aug 18 Thanks, Clive. The thig is, you say the supporters all know the drill, having watched Marti's team over the past 18 months. But the majority of the players do too. Surely they, especially the senior players - Dunne, Cook, Field and Chair - must have a say? Surely they know that two in the middle - especially when one of those is Madsen - means we will be over-run and they allowed an input during training, when formations are being tried. I know injuries have played a big part both directly and indirectly. Dunne's return frees up Morgan and Varane should be free to start against Coventry and both are a significant up-grade on Madsen. But again, IF he only plays two in there, then ANY two will be out-numbered and struggle against a three man midfield. It hasn't worked in the past, WE know that, but the PLAYERS do too. Similarly, playing out from the back, doesn't suit us. That is one of the main reasons why Dunne's conversion to a full back has succeeded. Not so much for his defensive capabilities (which are adequate) but because he provided a vital 'out-ball' up the right channel, when we had finally finished piss-balling around the edge of our box and the keeper had to hoof it. There was a certain (albeit perverse) logic to us trying to work our way up the pitch (painful as it was to watch at times), due to our well-documented lack of pace up front. This has been addressed this season, with Poku, Burrell and Kone all much speedier than what we had at our disposal last season. But we are not taking advantage of this, thus far anyway. Once again, the PLAYERS know we struggle playing out from the back. How many games doe Stephan have to lose before he decides 'ok let's go a bit more direct and stretch the oppos defence with our speedy attackers' I get he's learning on the job, but most of the players already know what works and what doesn't. Don't they have a say?

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