How a(nother) tactical reset kickstarted QPR’s season after Coventry catastrophe, but is it game model approved? LFW's resident analysist Andrew Scherer crunches the numbers from QPR's contrasting season openers.

There’s something about conceding seven goals that is significantly worse than six. It might be based on how infrequently it happens, it could be some inherent sense of the natural order of things, or perhaps it’s just the residual memory that even the vidiprinter would register its shock – 7 [SEVEN - what the hell are you doing?!].

Our heavy defeat to an (admittedly very good) Coventry side seemed to be the realisation of our worst fears for this season: we’d binned off a manager at least parring the course, brought in a new guy with no experience of the Championship, and left the same people who thought a front-line of Zan Celar, Michael Frey and Alfie Lloyd was going to cut it in the Championship in charge of the transfer window. And perhaps more than that, we were making the exact same mistakes we’d made at the start of 2024/2025: trying to be a possession-based passing side with a high-press…and failing miserably.

Had we taken a mediocre side and, having spent decent money, actually made it worse?

QPR 24/25: a distinctly lower-mid-table team

To measure where we are now, it's worth quickly reflecting on how last year panned out. Despite the threat of relegation seemingly always hovering over our shoulder last season, on every key measure QPR looked very much like the lower-mid-table side they ended up being.

No surprises there. But it’s perhaps more useful to dig into the different ways we were playing across the season and how those stylistic shifts contributed to our streaky form.

We have previously covered how much more joy Queens Park Rangers Football Club have had without the football in recent years. It was a similar tale last season, but we can also add in a couple more measures to demonstrate just how that manifests in terms of team set-up out of possession, with the season split into thirds.

As you can see, in our awful start to last term we had a little over 46% average possession and did very little pressing, as gauged by passes per defensive action (PPDA). PPDA measures how often the opposition can play the ball without an attempted defensive intervention, so the lower the number the more active the pressing (for reference the league average for this measure was 12.43). Previously we have had some success sitting in a low block but here our share of game control (a mix of on-ball attacking data and off- ball defensive data) was low and teams were just carving through us at will.

As we moved into our purple patch (and it should be noted this coincided with our easiest run of fixtures), we had even less of the ball but our pressing increased. This combination – sacrificing possession but adding more intelligent pressing – gave us much more control of games and positive results naturally followed.

Then for the final 15 matches we sought to keep hold of the ball more, pressed with even greater intensity…and our ability to control games fell away again, taking our form with it.

We were, in short, a side that didn’t really know how it wanted to play from one month to the next. Press or sit off? Dominate the ball or play reactively? It’s just not clear – and hints at different views behind the scenes as to how things should be done.

The great reset (part one)

Regardless of the circumstances of Marti Cifuentes’ departure, a change of head coach and a summer transfer window with the iron grip of FFP a little loosened certainly gave the club a chance to reset things and set its stall out more clearly.

Against Preston, Watford, and Coventry, that reset looked very much like one focused on controlling the ball, with average possession of 52.2% and 20 separate sequences of 10+ passes. Unfortunately, having lots of the ball and knowing what to do with it are very different things: our new approach led to a grand total of seven shots on target (second worst in the league) and a (frankly dreadful, league trailing) xG of 0.06 per shot – i.e. creating a quality of chance that would on average require 16.67 shots to score one goal.

Perhaps even worse, this translated into a game control share of 24.1% – we didn’t have a grip on any of those three matches. And although the xG we allowed Coventry has frequently been cited as a demonstration of what a freak result the 7-1 was, our game control share in that match was just 6.5%. Comparable recent matches include the 3-0 Boxing Day drubbing at Swansea (7.99% game control share) and the 2-0 defeat away at Leeds which they breezed through at walking pace (8.45% game control share).

Last season we took what felt like an eternity to shift our style of play, with the underlying issues arguably masked by the early and impressive (at the time at least) win away at Luton. In contrast, this season it wasn’t so much death by a thousand cuts as one massive knife in the front delivered by Fat Frank’s ozempic-stained fingers. But in decisively killing off any pretence that we are a ball-playing team, has he ultimately done us a favour?

The great reset (part deux)

"I just want to promise that next week it will be completely different and you will see a completely different team." - Julien Stéphan, after Coventry 7 [SEVEN] - 1 QPR

“Credit to their manager, they went against everything that they've done through preseason, through the first three games of the season, and, you know, were very direct in terms of what they did. Didn't risk possession, sat off, had a 4-4-2, and we didn't show enough quality really to break them down.” - Nathan Jones, after QPR 3 - 1 Charlton.

Say what you want about Nathan Jones (and believe me I often do) but the guy is a canny, effective manager at Championship level. And it was patently obvious to him, as it was to many of those in attendance, that the QPR approach which brought our first win of the season against Charlton was a complete step change from what we were doing before.

Julien Stéphan’s “completely different team” has now gone six matches unbeaten, scored 1.67 and conceded just 0.67 goals per game, and put 14 points on the board – enough to take us into the top six. So, what does this change look like in the numbers?

Structurally, the two different styles bear a remarkable similarity with last season’s poor finish and the productive middle third: in one (unsuccessful) set of matches we want possession and press intensely, in the other (much more successful) set we let the opposition have the ball and do not press so aggressively that we get pulled out of shape.

We can see the direct impact less pressing has had when we look at our off-ball pressure per match (which includes forcing opponents out of the final third, keeping their possession deep, and intercepting passes).

Initially, we tried to press teams more aggressively but struggled to put pressure on the ball when opponents got into our final third and conceded a shed load of goals as a result. Subsequently, when we've sat off and only engaged more actively when teams threaten (with Sheffield Wednesday and Oxford the obvious outliers where we had to force the running), the end result has been just four goals conceded in six matches.

This has also unlocked attacking improvements as our newfound ability to get up the pitch quickly, particularly when counter-attacking, has been unleashed. We now progress the ball towards the opposition goal faster than any team in the league and rarely are we caught knocking it around aimlessly.

Essentially, because we sit off a little more and jump into the press more judiciously, we are able to spring the ball forward more quickly when we do win it. That, coupled with greater physicality in the form of strength and pace up-front, has had a very clear impact on the quality of attacks we have been able to carve out, with our xG per shot now much more in line with the league average.

So let’s summarise the changes we have seen take place from the first three games to the next six.

We have less possession and we press less. Yet we are far better at keeping the opponent away from our goal, have significantly more control of games, and score a lot more goals. This feels quite…exciting? There’s certainly a lot to like and also plenty of scope to improve further. We have work to do on keeping pressure up when we have the ball. And we haven’t got into our performance at set-pieces, which is average: we are broadly level on expected goals from dead balls – i.e. we are creating as much threat from them as we are conceding.

But the last six games appear to represent a clear identity starting to form – albeit one that was not evident in our pre-season preparations and our first three games of the season.

Won’t somebody think of the game model?

The giant elephant in the room amid all of this is the club’s much-feted game model, spearheaded by Christian Nourry and Jon de Souza. The fact we have significantly changed how we play is patently obvious both to my eyes and in the data. Is this shift at odds with the game model? If so, are we likely to return to our failed attempts at dominating the ball, as we did last season at significant cost to our results?

To assess this it would be useful to refresh ourselves as to exactly what the Queens Park Rangers game model entails. There is no shortage of mentions of the principle of a game model in interviews with senior staff but concrete details are thin on the ground (perhaps for competitive reasons, though I don’t think the broad strategies at successful clubs like Liverpool, Man Citeh, or the various Red Bull franchises are particularly hush hush).

After digging back through a lot of media, the only tangible information of note comes from an old piece in the (sadly now defunct) South London Press from September 2024, in which Christian Nourry reaffirms the club’s commitment to the game model despite our poor start to that season. Their website looks like it has been abandoned so lots of stories are no longer accessible but fortunately an archived version is available here.

In the interview Nourry is clear on what he sees as the core principle of the strategy:

“Back in October before I officially started [as chief executive] we identified the fact that we needed to play some form of 4-3-3, possession-based, mid-block/high press football.

“We’ve got to be consistent at club level with how we want to play – this is where the game model comes in. We have that as a football club and then we are able to be really clear about how we want to play from head coach of the women’s team to youth coaches.”

The data says head coach Julien Stéphan has found what could be a winning formula with this squad. His non-pressing, non-possession-based 4-4-2 works on the pitch – perhaps the pertinent question now is whether it works off it too.

More from this author >>> Destroyer of optimists >>> Light at the end of the tunnel? >>> A season in three thirds >>> Has the Marti Express been derailed? >>> Keeps going short, refs walking tall

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Pictures - Ian Randall Photography

Hunterhoop added 19:55 - Oct 13 Superb, Andrew. Thank you. It seems pretty clear that the intended game model hasn’t worked for us (last season or this season), and what Stephan has moved us to is working well. What does this mean for the club? Should our game model change? Do the youth teams all move to this? If not, what is Jon De Souza actually doing? Personally, I think it’s clear football is changing. The era of tikki takka is over. The Prem is a lot more physical and direct this season. If that is the market we want to sell to (regards our Player Trading profit objective), then our game model should suit that.

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Myke added 23:16 - Oct 13 Thanks Andrew, usually any hint of a chart gives me a headache, but you made this very easy to follow. Basically the data is confirming what our eyes have already told us. One thing I haven’t managed to grasp is how you measure ‘control’ in percentages. It it easy when you quantify it as possession, but as we know, we are much more in control without the ball, so how do you gauge that exactly?

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