QPR return to Loftus Road on Tuesday night looking for their first win in five games against a Norwich City side starting to fear the worst at the bottom of the table.

Queens Park Rangers (11th) v Norwich City (23rd)
Coca Cola Championship
Tuesday March 3, Kick Off 8pm
Loftus Road, London

Although some of the more optimistic message board posters are still clinging to the idea that this game is make or break for Rangers in all probability we’re already broken. We played our way into contention with consecutive wins at Blackpool and Derby but haven’t won since and are now further away from the top six than when we started. We could actually fall below Doncaster Rovers a week tonight should results go against us in the meantime which should give you a clue as to just what our play off hopes are this season.

They say be careful what you wish for – I always used to envy Aston Villa, Everton and other clubs that safely sat in the middle of the Premiership every year without ever threatening to qualify for Europe or get relegated after a run of bad luck. The second half of seasons at clubs like that, I suppose Wigan and Fulham would be the modern equivalent, must be so relaxed. No danger of anything really, just a football match to watch and enjoy at the end of every week. Well, unless you are still in the club that believes we are suddenly going to string five wins together, it seems that we are now there ourselves.

I have got to say I prefer it to biting my nails while we cling onto a one nil lead against Preston while all the time fretting and sweating over how Barnsley are doing at Cardiff but it is somewhat disappointing having moved up the table and looked so good after Christmas to be silently falling away. We are building for next season of course, that has always been the aim of this campaign, and I just hope that Sousa is left alone to do that. The tide turns quickly against a QPR manager whose results and performances dip even slightly and last weekend’s capitulation against Ipswich, live on Sky and in front of a collection of Briatore’s biggest chums, will have done Sousa’ long term prospects no good whatsoever. Like I say, be careful what you wish for – we’ve managed to land ourselves our dream rich owners who have since made it their business to rip the supporters off and fire managers.

Still they also say, still got no idea who this ‘they’ is by the way, there is always somebody worse off than you and even with a trip to Southampton to come we will face few teams between now and May in such dire straights as Norwich. They have taken an unwelcome departure from the important business of hating Ipswich Town to battle relegation this season and when I say battle I mean it in the French military sense of the word. With time fast running out there does not appear to be the urgency or ability at Carrow Road to get them out of their current predicament and there is a very real chance that League One will kick next season off with four founder members of the Premiership among its number.

While tonight is make or break to QPR in the eyes of only a handful of people it is vitally important to Norwich and the Canaries will be desperately hoping that QPR do what they usually do in these circumstances and roll over charitably and die.

Five minutes on Norwich
Norwich City are in big, big trouble. With the Championship increasingly a graveyard for failed Premiership clubs (seventeen former members at the last count) it is inevitable that one or two of them will start to slip even lower still and with Leicester and Leeds currently enjoying the delights of midweek trips to Hartlepool there is a distinct possibility that three more teams that recently graced the top flight could be joining them come May. Charlton are all but doomed, Southampton are showing signs of life but it may be too late and Norwich, well like I say Norwich are in big trouble.

City have struggled since relegation from the Premiership in 2005 largely due, in my opinion as an outsider looking in, to poor managerial appointments made by the board and even worse decisions made by those managers. Norwich should have stayed in the Premiership. They bought well in the January transfer window and started picking up impressive results at Carrow Road, Man Utd were vanquished 2-0 for example, but they failed to win a single away game all season culminating in a final day 6-0 defeat at Fulham of all places. If you could pick a game for the last day of the Premiership season with you needing to win Fulham would be fairly near the top of the list I would suggest, especially so back then in their pre-Roy Hodgson days.

Nevertheless Nigel Worthington probably deserved a chance to take them back to the top flight at the first time of asking having got them there in the first place. Norwich never looked like doing so. The Canaries rarely threatened the play offs and by the time Gary Waddock’s QPR side arrived there in April there were petitions outside the ground calling for Worthington to be sacked. QPR did their bit, blowing a two goal lead to lose and keep the silver fox in the dug out for another week at least. That was a bizarre match not only for QPR’s kamikaze defending but also because a large portion of the home crowd was actually as disappointed as we were. To lose and lose comfortably at home to a side as bad as QPR were at the time, as looked likely for seventy eight minutes of the game, would surely have been a blow too far for Worthington and the reception for a thrilling come back win for the home side was somewhat less vociferous then you may have expected.

That result contributed to Worthington being allowed another summer of squad dismantling and the first ten games or so of the following season. Disaster. With decline now terminally setting in Norwich bummed him off after an embarrassing televised thrashing by Burnley at Carrow Road and having delayed that decision too long they then made the cataclysmically bad call of making former midfielder Peter Grant, he of snapping Paul Murray’s leg infamy, the new boss – his first ever managerial job. Fast forward twelve months Norwich were back at Loftus Road – insipid, lifeless, disorganised, lacking ability and application, as wet as an otter’s pocket. They lost to QPR, the first team to do so after twelve matches of the 2007/08 season, and sunk to the bottom of the table as a result. Grant was shown the door.

Once again faced with the possibility of relegation and needing to appoint a manager to take charge of a squad put together by somebody else and still some two months short of another transfer window Norwich turned to former QPR centre half Glenn Roeder. A terrific player and superb academy director at Newcastle Roeder has nevertheless proved himself to be a wholly inadequate manager several times. He was poor at Gillingham, worse at Watford, relegated a West Ham team that had Joe Cole, Jermaine Defoe and Paulo Di Canio in it, became the latest in a long line of managers to do sweet FA with Newcastle United and then got another crack at Norwich City.

He did well to keep them up last season, safety secured with a thumping 3-0 win over a typically farcical QPR side in April, but the success was achieved largely because Roeder was able to loan in several Premiership youngsters he knew from his time with the Newcastle academy. When the likes of Ched Evans headed back to their parent clubs last summer without adequate replacement a struggle was always on the cards and sure enough Norwich have been in and around the bottom three all season.

They are a poor team, you have to be to lose at home to a ten man QPR side - a product of five years of piss poor management by a succession of clueless gaffers. Roeder was sacked after they unforgivably lost at home to an even bigger heap of mismanaged stinky stuff Charlton Athletic but rather than point at the state of the team and results for the decision Chief Executive Neil Doncaster blamed Roeder’s attitude towards fans saying he was “arrogant, rude and dismissive” when talking to supporters and any potential replacement would need to understand, and I cannot quite believe I’m typing this, “the Norfolk way”. God only knows what the hell that is, although one suspects tractors will be involved somewhere along the line, but I would think some tactical nouse and motivational ability may be slightly more important in a deepening crisis than being nice to supporters and knowing what the chuffing ‘Norfolk way’ is when it is at home. Incredibly there was even a story at the time of Roeder’s dismissal that Norwich had asked permission to speak to (you might want to swallow any hot drinks you may be dealing with before reading on) Nigel bloody Worthington again. You couldn’t make this up.

Norwich have subsequently appointed one of their club legends and easily one of the nicest and most likeable men in football as their new gaffer. Bryan Gunn has done everything in Norwich from keep goal and run the club’s lottery to being the town’s Sheriff (seriously what kind of town still has a Sheriff? Maybe the ‘Norfolk Way’ means not moving out of the seventeenth century?) but to throw him into these choppy waters with this group of players at his disposal and asking for a miracle is tantamount to cruelty. Norwich have won only one of eight games since Gunn took over and now sit four points adrift in the relegation zone with only eleven games left to do something about it.

I still think they will probably get out of it, and we’re highly likely to treat them to some points on Tuesday night in the time honoured fashion, but really you’d be a foolish man to stake much money on it. With Bryan Gunn in charge they will get the neutral vote because it is impossible not to like him and wish him well but I’m not sure Arsene Wenger could do a great deal with this squad of players.

Still, before you feel too sorry for them remember our old mate Mick Dennis is a staunch Norwich fan. You may recognise him tomorrow, he’ll be the one twittering on about the lack of hot drinks at Loftus Road a decade ago and the wonderful work Norwich do in their community while his team stares League One in the face. Fiddling while Rome burns, and he’s not the only one at Carrow Road guilty of that.

Men to watch
Like somebody buying a twenty five year old mustard coloured Mini Metro (they’ve re-badged it you fool) for two hundred quid hoping to use it as a means of getting to and from work with some degree of reliability Norwich have been left to scrape the barrel as their situation has worsened. Last season they turned to John Hartson who struggled to fit into a pair of City’s shorts and subsequently gave up altogether because, and if there has ever been a more disgraceful reason given for throwing the towel in as a professional footballer then I haven’t heard it, "I have been fighting my weight for twelve years. I can't have a burger without putting on half a stone."

This year’s project-doomed-to-failure is the resurrection of Carl Cort’s career that had drifted into some strange form of premature retirement after a failed spell with Leicester City last season. Cort is injured again this week, I know I know shocking isn’t it, but should he manage to recover in time for our game then stick a tenner on him to score first because, well, he always does against us. Cort scored 32 times in three years at Wolves and six of those came against QPR – in just five matches.

Cort was partnered in attack at the weekend by our own former charge Jamie Cureton whose career is starting to wind down now. Cureton had a terrific goal scoring record at Bristol Rovers and Reading before joining QPR but coming back from a difficult spell in Korea he never settled into the Holloway style of play at Loftus Road and only managed six goals in his time with us – four of them against Coventry. Cureton enjoyed a terrific season at Colchester United in 2006/07 and got a move back to his first club Norwich as a result but earlier this season Roeder had him out on loan at Barnsley and only the appointment of Bryan Gunn has seen him given a second chance.

Gunn has Scotsman Alan Gow on loan from Rangers at his disposal as well – Gow impressed during the first half of this season on loan at Blackpool but failed a medical when Wolves had an offer accepted for him in January. He then joined Norwich on loan where presumably you don’t need a medical and he has made one start and two sub appearances so far.

Further back the ammunition for these forwards is provided by Lee Croft on one side and Wes Hoolahan on the other. Croft can at best be described as ‘portly’, at worst a fat git, but the former Man City man is a decent bet for the Player of the Year award in this part of the world apparently so he must be playing well. Hoolahan was a summer signing from Blackpool, pinched under the same cut price deal that we got Kaspars Gorkss on, but Hoolahan hasn’t been nearly as successful at his new club as the big Latvian has at Loftus Road. Still, like Cureton, the departure of Roeder seems to have breathed new life into the diminutive attacking midfielder and he scored two good goals in Gunn’s first two matches in charge against Barnsley and Southampton.

Hoolahan was much sought after in the summer, as was Northern Ireland midfielder Sammy Clingan who joined on a free from Nottingham Forest. Norwich, with their fan base and history, do still have pulling power and in Hoolahan, Clingan and Cureton have nailed the signings of some of the hottest properties n the football league over the past two years but all to no avail.

The further back you go in this team the easier it is to see why they are struggling. Yes, that’s right, Gary Doherty is still playing at centre half. I remember writing about how poor he was for this website two whole years ago and he certainly has not improved with age. Painfully slow with he turning circle of an articulated lorry he is one of the worst centre backs in this league and an obvious weakness for QPR to attempt to exploit.

Jonathan Grounds, on loan from Middlesbrough, has three goals in his last six games despite being a defender and full back Jon Otsemober was a transfer target for Ian Holloway and QPR during his time at Crewe. Scottish goalkeeper David Marshall has played well against us in the past.

Previous Meetings
QPR have a chance to register their first double of the season on Tuesday night thanks to a 1-0 win at Carrow Road back in September. Things did not start well for Iain Dowie’s men when Matt Connolly was sent off in the first half for two bookings – the first one was harsh, the second could have been a red on its own. Despite the numerical disadvantage Rangers went in at half time in front thanks to Martin Rowlands’ thrice taken free kick. On the first two occasions and Norwich player rushed out of the wall to block the bal despite it being a direct free kick and the QPR captain was therefore given a second and third chance to find the back of the net which he duly did. It could have been so much better had Ledesma and Blackstock finished gilt edged chances before halftime. The second half was inevitably a backs to the wall effort but Kaspars Gorkss really ‘arrived’ as a QPR player and only a very late header from Antoine Sibierski really had Rangers fans worried.

Norwich: Marshall 6, Omozusi 6, Kennedy 5 (Grounds 62, 6), Stefanovic 5, Pattison 7, Fotheringham 7, Russell 6, Bertrand 7, Hoolahan 6 (Cureton 66, 5), Sibierski 7, Lupoli 6 (Croft 46, 6)
Subs Not Used: Nelson, Koroma
Booked: Fotheringham (encroaching at a free kick), Lupoli (nobody seemed quite sure)

QPR: Cerny 7, Ramage 7, Stewart 9, Connolly 5, Delaney 8, Rowlands 8, Mahon 8, Leigertwood 8, Cook 5 (Gorkss 30, 9), Blackstock 7 (Agyemang 77, 7), Ledesma 7 (Buzsaky 82, -)
Subs Not Used: Camp, Parejo
Sent Off: Connolly (two bookings)
Booked: Connolly (foul), Connolly (foul), Blackstock (repetitive fouling)
Goals: Rowlands 33 (unassisted)

Match Report

QPR beat Norwich 1-0 at Loftus Road in October 2007 to secure their first win of the season at the 12th attempt. In front of the Sky cameras Martin Rowlands bagged the only goal of the game from the penalty spot after a foul on Rowan Vine – referee Peter Walton had typically waved away two better claims for spot kicks before this. The result was too much for Norwich manager Peter Grant who left a few days later with the Canaries joint bottom with the R’s by the close of play.

QPR: Camp 7, Rowlands 8, Stewart 7, Cranie 8, Barker 6, Ainsworth 7 (Jarrett 86, -), Bolder 6, Leigertwood 8, Ephraim 8 (Timoska 90, -), Sahar 6 (Moore 68, 7), Vine 8
Subs Not Used: Cole, Bignot
Booked: Vine (dissent)
Goals: Rowlands 67 pen (assisted Vine)

Norwich: Marshall 8, Otsemobor 6, Shackell 4, Dublin 7 (Murray 46, 4), Drury 4, Croft 4, Russell 4, Jarvis 5, Lappin 3 (Strihavka 63, 3), Martin 4 (Brown 76, 5), Huckerby 4
Subs Not Used: Gilks, Chadwick
Booked: Dublin (who knows), Croft (foul), Huckerby (foul)

Match Report

Head to Head:
QPR wins – 38
Draws – 32
Norwich wins – 41

Previous QPR v Norwich results:
2008/09 Norwich 0 QPR 1 (Rowlands)
2007/08 Norwich 3 QPR 0
2007/08 QPR 1 Norwich 0 (Rowlands)
2006/07 Norwich 1 QPR 0
2006/07 QPR 3 Norwich 3 (Rowlands 2, Smith)
2005/06 Norwich 3 QPR 2 (Ainsworth, Cook)
2005/06 QPR 3 Norwich 0 (Furlong, Santos, Nygaard)
2000/01 Norwich 1 QPR 0
2000/01 QPR 2 Norwich 3 (Carlisle, Wardley)
1999/00 QPR 2 Norwich 2 (Kiwomya 2)
1999/00 Norwich 2 QPR 1 (Wardley)
1998/99 QPR 2 Norwich 0 (Murray, Peacock)
1998/99 Norwich 4 QPR 2 (Sheron, Peacock)
1997/98 Norwich 0 QPR 0
1997/98 QPR 1 Norwich 1 (Peacock)
1996/97 QPR 3 Norwich 2 (Peacock, Dichio, McDermott)
1996/97 Norwich 1 QPR 1 (Impey)
1994/95 QPR 2 Norwich 0 (Ferdinand, Gallen)
1994/95 Norwich 4 QPR 2 (Barker, Gallen)
1993/94 Norwich 3 QPR 4 (Barker, Penrice, Peacock, White)
1993/94 QPR 2 Norwich 2 (Sinclair, Ferdinand)
1992/93 QPR 3 Norwich 1 (Ferdinand 2, Wilson)
1992/93 Norwich 2 QPR 1 (Allen)
1991/92 Norwich 0 QPR 1 (Bailey)
1991/92 QPR 0 Norwich 2

Team News
Lee Cook and Hogan Ephraim are apparently back in the QPR squad after injury although as our club never thought to tell us either of them were injured in the first place who knows what is going on. There is still no news on a return date for Rowan Vine either. Akos Buzsaky, Martin Rowlands and Patrick Agyemang are long term absentees while Matteo Alberti, Wayne Routledge and Heidar Helguson all avoided fifth bookings of the campaign on Saturday and are now safe from suspension under the February amnesty.

Norwich have two main injury doubts. You won’t be surprised to know that Carl Cort is one of them – he picked up a foot injury at Preston ten days ago, played after a fitness test at the weekend but is now doubtful again. The other is Jason Shackell who was kicked on the ankle by Leon Best at the weekend and has been receiving treatment since. Both are expected to be fit to take part.
Injury List

Referee
For the second time in a week QPR have a rookie referee in charge of their match. Following Roger East’s impressive handling of our game at Cardiff on Wednesday we now have Graham Scott in charge of the Norwich match. East had at least done nine Championship matches before our trip to Ninian Park, Scott is yet to referee at this level at all and this game represents his first chance to referee in the second tier since joining the list in the summer. We wish him good luck of course.
Details

Elsewhere
There is a full programme of action this midweek as the Championship starts to heat up – ten games on Tuesday night and two on Wednesday. All the top three teams were beaten at the weekend and none of them will have it easy trying to get back to winning ways on what is forecast to be a wet and windy evening across the UK. Reading, beaten at home by Forest at the weekend, have Sheff Wed away with Andy Hall refereeing. Wolves, Plymouth’s weekend victims, go to Crystal Palace without a win in five games and then on Wednesday Birmingham follow up their defeat at Sheff Utd with an awkward home game against Bristol City. At the bottom things are critical for Charlton at home to in form Doncaster and desperate for Southampton who go to Ipswich.
Tony’s Championship Preview

Form
QPR’s season is in grave danger of petering out and while many fans and possibly even Paulo Sousa himself are happy to experiment and look forward to next season the tide turns quickly against a QPR manager whose results dip even slightly – especially at home in front of Briatore and his bum chums in the C Club. For those that only watch QPR at home it is five games going back to December 20 since they saw us win – against Preston 3-2. Four of those five games have been drawn. The R’s are without a win home or away in five matches since the 3-0 victory at Blackpool lifted us right into play off contention. Tuesday had turned into a bad night to watch QPR at Loftus Road but this season, including a cup game against Carlisle, we have won three and drawn one midweek home game.

After starting life as Norwich manager with a thumping 4-0 win at home to the Barnsley side that passed QPR off the pitch on Saturday Bryan Gunn has found things tough going. City have not won at all in their last seven matches and that Barnsley win is their only maximum point haul in their last eleven matches. It is nine away matches since they tasted victory on the road – a 2-1 success at Nottingham Forest before Christmas has been followed up with defeats against Sheff Wed, Watford, Reading, Palace, Sheff Utd and Preston and draws with Charlton, Wolves and Doncaster. Overall this season they have won just twice away from home and drawn four out of 17 matches. They have scored 15 times away from home that, while still better than our road record, is rank. Plymouth were their other victims by the way – back in August.
Form Guide

Prediction
As pointed out in the Barnsley match report my predictions are notoriously awful and getting worse – not one right this season – so my first piece of advice is ignore everything I am about to say. A big part of me thinks we are due a performance and a result and that we will turn up ready to play and dismiss a poor Norwich side 2-0 however a Tuesday night with little to play for in front of a small and grumpy home crowd against a side fighting for its life on a long winless run is normally a recipe for a monumental balls up on QPR’s part. I’ll go for draw, hope for more and expect less.
QPR 1 Norwich 1

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