Credit to QPR

[sirpineapple89]

Today we were beaten by a better team. Whether that's something to worry about as they're 15th, I don't know but they deserved their victory today although maybe the scoreline was a little harsh on us.

In the first half we afforded them way too much time and space and they were picking us off from all angles. There seemed to be a huge gap on our right side and their centre midfield pairing were excellent, spreading the play with ease. Their first goal was one of those that, if you hit it well it nestles in the bottom corner but if you mis-hit it, it ends up closer to the corner flag. Sometimes there's nothing you can do to stop a goal. The second goal stemmed from another decent move but the defending was atrocious - Cort or Griffin should've sorted the aerial situation out between them and NOBODY from midfield bothered to track Leigertwood's run leaving him unopposed 12 yards out.

Then came the real killer for us - the absolutely appalling decision (possibly one of the worst ever seen) to send off Griffin for nothing more than a whole-hearted ball winning challenge. I'll leave it at that otherwise I might smash up my keyboard in anger. Soon after Fuller bobbled his shot against the post and, from then, you could kind of guess it wasn't going to be our day.

So, we came out for the second half and took off Sidibe, which was an interesting one. We went for the 4-4-1 and we the pressure was still being applied by QPR and I thought we were going to concede a hatful. We then brought Gallagher on and after about 30 seconds we were three down following a poor free-kick from the usually excellent Liam Lawrence. It was a good counter attack by them but I still felt we had an opportunity to get a foot in and we almost seemed reluctant to do so.

After the third went in we seemed to realise that we needed to go for broke and we actually played some decent stuff without creating anything clear cut. Whelan hit a couple of decent shots and Ricardo Fuller who, for me, was by far our best player both for effort and skill was a constant menace to the QPR back four. Obviously having 10 men and pushing on meant we were susceptible to the counter attack although I think for the majority of the second half we looked comfortable at the back. I also thought that Buxton did a good job when he was introduced.

Although we did have 10 men I thought the balance looked good with Gallagher out on the left looking sharp with Whelan and Pugh in the middle and Cresswell out wide right.

For the next game we definitely need to make changes. Gallagher needs to start as do Dickinson or Buxton (never thought I'd say that) and Riggott so that we can try and stop the wave of goals we appear to be conceding.

This defeat isn't the end of the world and hopefully it's just one of those days where everything conspires to go against us and we'll move on and win next time out but fair play to QPR they out-battled and out-played us for alot of the game and they deserved what they got.

[luke45]

I think the fact that there 15th doesn't resemble the quality there team has now, there's no two ways about it, next season they'll be amongst the chasing pack for promotion, they a tough side to beat, and it was never going to be easy.