5 and 5

A look back at Saturdays wine over Leicester and a look ahead to Tuesdays visit to Millwall

5 Thoughts on Leicester

* Substitutions change games. Never has this been truer than Saturday where three players became the protagonists for the drama witnessed inside Loftus Road. After the inevitable Fitz Hall Hamstring Injury ™ most R’s inside the stadium would have not batted an eyelid at Matthew Connolly’s introduction, what a difference two weeks makes. The biggest compliment that you can bestow upon Connolly is that during most games you hardly notice him, always the sign of a centre back playing well. He never has to atone for mistakes with a last minute lunge and is always in the right place at the right time. On Saturday that player was gone, and another substitute, Martyn Waghorn, should really have bagged the opening goal of the game after Connolly inexplicably allowed the ball to drop and generally played like the love child of Zesh Rehman and Bob Malcolm. Of course the substitute who made the biggest impact was Ismael Miller. If he never does anything else in the Hoops again it won’t matter after Saturday.

* Streaming is hard. Frantically trying to find a working link to watch the game for exiled R’s such as myself adds a whole new dimension to the game. Trying to match up commentary from BBC Radio and pictures from Denmark is as futile as trying to cure the Fitz Hall Hamstring Injury ™. Halfway through the first half my stream died, luckily there were still 2 options available, a poor quality but English language stream and an Arabic stream. The Jew in me pumped for the English language stream. Inevitably that died too leaving only the Arabic stream as an option. Arab commentators find absolutely everything in football exciting. They scream about throw in’s, foam at the mouth at a header and ejaculate furiously when a player blinks. However on 89 minutes when the commentator was screaming ‘Miller Isamel!!!!’ ‘Miller Isssssmmmmmmaaaaaeeeeellll!!!!!!’ I joined in with his enthusiasm by screaming it too, running around the room and high fiving my previously sleeping girlfriend.

* A one man team we are not. All the talk of Q.P.R is always about Taarabt and when his substitution came it was greeted by cheers from the away end. At that moment my mind was cast back to 2003 when Q.P.R fans ironically applauded Rob Earnshaw’s substitution in the play off final. His replacement was Andy Campbell…. We all know what happened next. Those foolish enough to focus all their attention on Taarabt seem to forget that in Kenny, Shittu, Derry and Helguson we have steel to compliment the flair of Faurlin, Routledge and Taarabt. It’s a team built for one purpose… Promotion. Six players over the age of thirty started on Saturday thus furthering the idea that Warnock has built a promotion machine.

* Taarabt is still POTY. Yes Kenny is class, yes Derry is playing out of his skin, yes Clint Hill has surpassed expectation but Taarabt…. Taarabt is something else. Saturday wasn’t vintage Adel, it didn’t need to be. His mere presence scares the shit out of the opposition. His withdrawal on Saturday led to our goal after Leicester relaxed. Even when not on the pitch he influences proceedings. Assists and Goal chart leader for the division, quite simply there’s nobody else like him and I hope we honor him accordingly at the end of the year.

* Woe betide anyone who faces Leicester in the play-offs. Saturday was a clear indication of why we need automatic promotion, because should Leicester make the top 6 then they will go up. The best centre backs in the league, the best potential striker in the league and the best wing backs in the league. They will take points from our rivals because quite simply the only reason they aren’t challenging us is thanks to Paulo Sousa’s incompetence earlier in the season. It’s the best thing he ever did for the club.

5 thoughts on Millwall

* Who partners Shittu? There are options, one of them is a patched up Fitz Hall, one is a rapidly declining Connolly, one is bringing back Gorkks, one is moving Hill across to accommodate Chimbonda, the other is Chimbonda himself. Even the worst option isn’t as glaring as the back 4 we have seen at times this season with 3 out of 4 in front of Kenny were out of position. Ideally Hall will be fit, if not then Gorkks option is my preferred. The Latvian international would probably benefit greatly from not being the senior partner in the centre of defence, a role he never quite seems comfortable with.

* The pressure is off. To an extent this couldn’t be more true, after Saturday’s win a draw would be a good result. We would have 10 games to go and have a healthy lead and goal difference over our rivals. One shouldn’t underestimate the 0-0’s we have achieved at Burnley, Forest, Hull and Swansea this season, grounds where points are hard to come by. I fully expect another 0-0 on Tuesday. The pressure on the Hoops comes from within, the carrot of securing promotion at Cardiff on St. George’s day should keep the intensity high.

* Millwall will be up for it. Both on and off the pitch that couldn’t be more accurate. On the pitch a season of consolidation has petered out to an early bore where individual games provide joy as oppose to an overriding target. A derby win against the league leaders would provide such joy, expect to be kicked and roughed up both on the pitch and off it… The corresponding fixture earlier this season saw pathetic scenes outside Loftus Road. Silly boys on message boards decided to stir up trouble with notorious thugs. Poke a snake and it’s going to bit you, we poked the Millwall fans. Lets hope this game goes off with minimal arrests, the last thing we need is to be top of the ‘Millwall Fan Grudge’ table.

* Can Helguson make it? The Icelandic international is key to our play, he is the best link up man we have and would start every game were it not for the fact he is cut from the same cloth as Fitz Hall. The physio’s at Q.P.R should be praised for eeking out double figures from HH this season in appearances, let alone goals! Let’s hope the magic sponge has been out in full force since 5 P.M on Saturday because with Rob Hulse up top we just aren’t the same team.

* Grafting is O.K. Before the Middlesborough game my Grandfather bemoaned the fact that we don’t annihilate teams anymore like we did earlier in the season the truth is we don’t need to. You play your football early on to get into a healthy position and then you fight to stay there. We’ve played our football and came out of a tough fight on Saturday as victors, time to mop up the blood and get back in the ring.