The decision to loan Dexter Blackstock to Nottingham Forest has left QPR with just two fully fit strikers for the remaining six matches - but have QPR actually made a shrewd move here?

Alas poor Dexter, he scored us goals
When Kevin Gallen ruptured his knee ligaments stretching to score his second goal of the game at Portsmouth in our first season outside the Premiership it took him to three for the season and Rangers to the top of the league. Gallen didn’t play again that campaign, and QPR ended up missing the play offs altogether. By the end of October Gallen was actually still the club’s leading scorer with those three goals and only Stuart Houston signing John Spencer spoiled the black humour among supporters who actually thought it might be quite funny if the leading scorer at the end of the season turned out to be somebody who had only played the first two matches of it.

You didn’t have to be a rocket scientist to see that a striker was needed, and in Spencer Houston found a superb one. If Stuart Houston can see it, it must be bloody obvious. Fast forward to the present day and QPR’s top scorer is now Heidar Helguson with five, scored in three matches, followed by Sam Di Carmine and Damion Stewart with three. Angelo Balanta has five too, although three of them were for Wycombe on loan. Like I say, you don’t have to be a rocket scientist.

Helguson is now the top scorer because, as we all know by now, Dexter Blackstock was last week allowed to join Nottingham Forest on loan for the rest of the season with no recall option. This has caused much hand wringing and gnashing of teeth from some supporters who say it’s obviously ridiculous to allow your twelve goal leading scorer to join another club in the same division. As I said when we broke the story on LFW last week, to an outsider looking in it does seem a little strange that a team that has struggled to score goals all season would do such a thing. Have the club actually got this one right though? I think they might.

Yes Dexter Blackstock is our top goal scorer but he has scored only once since the turn of the year, against Coventry at Loftus Road. Immediately his supporters will point out that he has been in and out of the team since then, chopped and changed by Paulo Sousa to within an inch of his life in a way that is sure to have effected his morale and confidence and that explains the lack of goals. Fair point, you cannot score if you are sitting on the bench and no striker has ever enjoyed being in the team one week and then out of it the next.

However Blackstock was given five consecutive starts against Barnsley, Doncaster and Southampton away, Norwich and Sheff Utd at home and looked about as threatening as a field mouse in a tiny, hand sewn, pink satin dress. He spent the vast majority of his time sitting on the floor, shrugging his shoulders and miscontrolling the ball. He was awful, and has been whenever called upon for the last three months. Charlton away was the last time I can remember him actually looking a bit lively and posing a threat, he was even very poor in the Coventry game and saved from abuse only by his late scrappy goal and the idea that as long as you’re scoring every now and again your overall performance level should be overlooked. He may be annoyed at restricted first team opportunities and the way his contract extension offer was withdrawn before Christmas but surely the way to get in the team and stay there, and show Briatore and Sousa they are wrong about him, would be to play out of his skin when he is selected and bang a few goals in, not sulk and flop about like Kevin the Teenager.

In the short term with six games left and nothing to play for it does not really matter to QPR, but even if it did are we really losing a lot? An out of form player who posed no goal threat at all against a dire Southampton side in his last appearance? Blackstock was roundly criticised by fans after that match and then suddenly became a modern day Les Ferdinand when the club allowed him to leave. No we have not replaced him immediately and yes we are woefully short in attack for the final six games but, let’s be honest, these games are essentially glorified pre-season friendlies for next year.

One argument I have seen put forward is that Blackstock scored twelve goals up to January and would therefore have reached twenty had he played every match to the end of the season. I’m not sure I agree. Paulo Sousa is increasingly deploying a lone striker in his formations and as Blackstock has shown when picked by the new manager he struggles in that role. Blackstock, as I have often said, is in my opinion reactive rather then proactive. His anticipation is almost non-existant and he is often caught flat footed and seemingly thinking about other things when a defender makes a mistake near by. To play alone up front you need to have a nose for space, an awareness of where team mates running from deep are to pass to and a good first touch. Blackstock has none of these things. To play alone up front at QPR you need to be a bloody superb player because the support from the midfield is so dire.

Now is this Sousa’s fault? Should he be sacked? Or should we try to bring players in that fit the system he wants to play? If it’s not working, and it clearly wasn’t at St Mary’s, should we just leave Blackstock and Sousa together to try and find a solution or should we ship the player out and use the money to replace him with somebody who may do the job better? I’d say the latter. If Blackstock scores four goals in the next six games for Forest that doesn’t mean it was a mistake to let him go, it just means they play a system that suits him better - and they do in my opinion. We either play to his strengths and build an attack round him or we get rid and we’ve chosen the latter. Keeping him and trying to force him to do a job he’s not capable of would have been pointless.

Money for a replacement. There’s another thing. There’s a suggestion that should Forest stay up they will be paying more than a million pounds and if they don’t then there are other clubs sniffing around who will. Now, although loaning Blackstock out leaves us short, if there is a guarantee of some money at the end of it, especially a seven figure amount, then we are right to take it. Blackstock is out of contract at the end of next season and in an ideal world the money could be spent on a better replacement. Blackstock is still reasonably young at 22, but is he any better than the player we bought three years ago? I don’t think so. There’s only so long we can put up with months of mediocrity from him, interspersed with the odd purple patch, and put it down to his youth.

Having said all of that I do have some concerns. Firstly would the money be spent on a replacement? Will the replacement be any good? Our January signings have been a disaster so far with even the most eye catching, Wayne Routledge, terribly out of form of late. Whoever brought people like Liam Miller and Gary Borrowdale here should be held accountable and not allowed anywhere near whatever budget we do have to spend this summer. Secondly was Blackstock released because Sousa doesn’t rate him or because Flavio Briatore doesn’t? The outcome may be the same but the latter would be very bad news. Thirdly, while this season is clearly all but over for Rangers we have effectively given up six games early and while I understand and don’t really mind treating the next six games as preparation for next season some people who paid £600 for season tickets won’t appreciate the cue being on the rack in March.

Overall I wish Dexter luck at Nottingham Forest, he has scored some good and important goals for us and was a good signing for the £500k we paid. But I do think if we can get some good money for him in the summer than this was the right thing to do. He may go on to be a great success in the game but he has looked stale and unhappy at QPR for several weeks now so maybe a clean break is right for all concerned. Only time will tell for sure if we’ve made the right choice or a terrible mistake but I would venture to suggest that if it’s the top six we’re aiming for next season we need a better striker than Dexter Blackstock to do it with and the fact that he has joined a team in the bottom three only serves to highlight that more.

A season ticket returnable offence
I’m often asked, normally by astonished and irritated co-workers as I attempt to sneak out early on a Tuesday for a midweek game again, is there anything that would stop me going to QPR?

You would think that with some of the experiences I have had following Rangers, even at my relatively young age, I would have been put off by now. The cow hit by a train on the way to Norwich, the man hit by the train on the way to Coventry with such force that bits of him flew past our window, the dramatic buffet car fire and subsequent missed kick off at Burnley, the lost car on Moss Side after a game at Man City, the Man Utd trip where we ended up stuck in Edale for four bloody hours, the time we followed a man with a Blackburn scarf in his window trying to find the ground and ended up visiting his mum’s farm, the eleven hour trip back from a home game with Forest, the night I spent trying to sleep on a broken train in the middle of the Pennines surrounded by 500 Sheffield United fans singing, the two and a half day dash back from Milan by train to get to see us at Grimsby only for the referee to give two penalties against us in defeat, the season where I attended every away game up to March and then the first one I missed was the first one we won – at some point you’d think a sane person might have just chosen to spend the bloody day at home for a change.

However bad it gets though I have always recovered from the subsequent bad mood just about in time to set off for the next match with renewed hope. I get this from my father as most of you know and I can only ever recall one occasion when he threatened to stop going. When we lived in Hampton the morning routine would consist of my dad driving me to school at about half seven, and leaving me on the cold playground by myself for more than an hour before school started while he went off to work. The bigger boys from the older year groups would make me stand against the wall of the hall at Hampton Hill Junior School and pump footballs at me for sport, it’s where I developed my love of goalkeeping. Given the choice he would probably have left me there at 7am but mum told him he did so under pain of death so on the way we would stop at Dillon’s newsagent in Hampton Hill and pick up a selection of papers to read the sports sections together in the car to pass some time.

QPR were a Premiership side at that stage of course and it was not unusual for the likes of Bardsley, Sinclair and Ferdinand to be splashed on the back of the tabloids with alleged deals on the table from Arsenal, Tottenham and Blackburn Rovers. “George Graham always does his deals through the press” said dad, and who was I to argue? I remember one morning after the sacking/resignation/pushing of Gerry Francis a very large and excited looking man in a flat hat was pictured in the tabloids being linked with QPR.
“Who’s this Dad?” I asked.
“Gizit here…. Christ that’s Barry Fry son. Let me tell you, if they ever appoint that idiot as manager of our club we won’t be going any more,” dad replied.
“What, never? Not even the home games?”
“Never.”

We went with Ray Wilkins in the end of course and my dad seemed happy with that. I wonder if Fry would have made better use of the Ferdinand money than Wilkins did? He could scarcely have done worse with it. All academic now.

I often think about this incident because my colleagues at work sometimes like to play “what if” with me and QPR. “What if you ground shared with Chelsea?” “What if you went down to the Unibond League?” “What if you went out of business altogether and had to start in the same league as the Chessington World of Adventures staff team?” They are yet to find a scenario that would have me hanging up my season ticket and kicking the QPR habit altogether. The appointment of Barry Fry would, he said, have tipped my dad into the world of teletext support at least until Fry left although I’m not sure I believed he would follow through with it. The modern day equivalent is probably Bryan Robson and while I would die a slow and painful death and probably give the midweek games a miss should that miserable, sour faced, incompetent, drunken arse ever come anywhere near QPR in any capacity other than barman I don’t think I’d stop going altogether. I’d just go and abuse him until he left or was killed. Possibly by me.

So for the die-hards like me is there a scenario that would stop us going completely? I mean not one match, not even sitting and watching us on television on the rare occasions we are on. Well while we were all focussed on Dexter Blackstock’s move to Forest on deadline day I think Blackpool may have found it. You see in their quest to stay in this division for next season Pool have done a deal with the devil, they have signed Lee Hughes on loan from Oldham Athletic.

Lee Hughes, you may recall, was the ginger haired, mouthy, obnoxious tosser that played up front for West Brom in the mid-1990s and then flopped after a big money move to Coventry. He dived, he cheated, he scored a couple of goals against us, he did silly celebrations related to his love of curry houses and then while driving his expensive Mercedes he crashed into a Renault containing grandfather Douglas Graham. Mr Graham died, Lee Hughes fled the scene instead of offering help and then went into hiding for more than a day. For his crime Hughes served a pathetic three years and even had the nerve to appeal the length of the sentence. Upon release, although he assured people at the time that he had thought “long and hard” about it, he returned straight back to football. I have no idea what Oldham paid the then 32 year old but I bet it was a good wage – £1800 a week is the quoted figure.

Oldham said they weren’t making a moral judgement and looked at it as a “pure football decision.” Hughes justified their faith by scoring 18 times for them this season and they are on the brink of the play offs. So it paid off. Hughes has however now suddenly been loaned out shortly after a fight at a club night out at the dogs descended into a brawl during which he allegedly put manager John Sheridan, the man who took the risk to sign him after his release from prison, in a headlock. Nice fella.

QPR are short of strikers at the moment and may well have been in the loan market for one themselves last Thursday. I’m all for giving people second chances, but I’m afraid I draw the line at paying people like Lee Hughes the thick end of £2000 a week to play football after what he has done. I was disgusted that Oldham decided to ignore his past and bring him in anyway for their own selfish benefit and I’m saddened that Blackpool have now done the same. They may go down without his goals, but would that not be a small price to pay for retaining dignity. Should football, with all its bad press, not have made a stand and turned its back on this scum bag?

I think, had QPR gone anywhere near him, that may well have been that so far elusive ‘season ticket returnable offence’ for me.

Crystal balls - part two
Well at least one of my tips from last week, Southampton to be relegated, moved a step closer to coming true this week with the news that the Saints are on the brink of administration and a ten point penalty. So with the wind of potential success blowing in my sails, or out of my arse as the case may turn out to be, I am now going to have a glance at the bottom of the Premiership and the top of League One to see what new teams we may be getting in our division next season.

Upstairs it’s hard to look past a team that is in danger of becoming this decade’s Crystal Palace yo-yo side West Brom. The best team in our league by a street last season but found out in the Premiership once again. They got out of the Championship playing passing football and vowed to stick to that in the big time - the problem is most teams pass the ball in the Premiership, and they do it a whole lot better than West Brom too. The loss of Kevin Phillips was key, they would surely have been better offering him the two year deal he wanted just for his goals this season, it could have made all the difference.

It’s then a case of taking two from seven with Middlesbrough looking the most likely, four points adrift with eight to play, and Newcastle currently occupying the final relegation spot. Today’s shock appointment of Alan Shearer should provide Newcastle with enough momentum to survive and I fancy Allardyce to keep Blackburn up as well. Hull have probably done just about enough early on in the season to stay up although home defeats against Portsmouth and Stoke in the run in could drag them deep into trouble. All the clubs down there have a reasonable fixture list but starting four points behind may prove too much for Middlesbrough, although I still have this feeling they may get out. Stoke have attempted to bully their way into survival and I’m hoping they fail - I think they might, so I’ll go with Boro and Stoke.

Downstairs in League One thing are starting to look a lot more clearcut. leicester have had a little wobble recently but are all but there, Peterborough have come on strong at the right time and it’s between those two for the title with the other almost sure to be promoted in second. That will give QPR two trips that they have enjoyed on and off the field in the past against next season, and render my “last ever QPR league game watched from a terrace” themed Cardiff City preview from last month totally useless. Still, can’t win em all, or any of them in my case.

The play off places are starting to look more settled too although as usual Tranmere are making a late push. Scunthorpe are certainly the outsiders with the smallest support and budget - we could do with them coming up really because of the four teams in the play off places currently they would pose the least threat and offer the most easy points to us next season. I think it’s between MK Dons, Leeds and Millwall though and sadly, although I know I said this last season, I can’t see past Leeds.

Only Gary McAllister’s incompetence has kept them out of the top two. With Simon Grayson now in charge and the likes of Beckford, Beccio and Delph supplemented with shrewd loan signing Sam Sodje on deadline day I think they will be the ones to triumph. The thought of a Leeds v Millwall play off final amuses me, but then that’s because I’m not a Wembley resident or a member of the Met Police.

Photo: Action Images

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