A raft of changes and a whole load of square pegs in round holes brought a predictably disjointed display and defeat for QPR at West Brom on Monday night.

A long, tough, grinding watch. Chaotic casting, weird sidelining of popular characters, needless over complication. Something you once loved but now can’t really remember why you’re still investing your time. Not a good sign when you have to keep explaining the plot, nor when a table of eight in the pub beforehand can’t agree on what’s going on from the published script. I’ve seen Stranger Things than Sam Field starting up front, but not many.

On a ground where Queens Park Rangers haven’t won in a decade, losing five of seven visits including a 7-1 under Steve McClaren and a 1-0 here last season where the hosts played the whole second half a man light, there will be some repeat themes in this match report.

West Brom are not a good side this season. Far less than the sum of their parts and well beaten at Loftus Road just three weeks prior – part of a sequence of eight straight away defeats. Ryan Mason has come under significant pressure following a Boxing Day loss here to Bristol City from what is - relative to their rivals down the tramway - quite a tolerant and patient support base. The Baggies were here for the taking to such an extent even Tyler Morris dared to venture that opinion in the official club post-match interview with Julien Stéphan which – through no fault of Tyler’s, nor Nick London before him - has to be quite ‘on message’ because of the platform it’s aired on.

They are, however, still pretty decent at The Hawthorns. Albion have only lost here twice this season, and five of the last 30 games on their own patch. I’d certainly take that record at Loftus Road where QPR lost 30/69 league games over the last three campaigns. It’s a tough place to come, and not one where Rangers have ever really done well in my time following them (two wins in 18 visits, the defeats including a 7-1, a 5-1 and a 4-1).

Additionally, at the start of each season the naturally more pessimistic among our brethren will say things like “offer me fourth bottom now and I’ll bite your hand off”. This season it’s almost universally accepted that if Rangers were to progress from finishes of 20th, 18th and 15th into something more like 12th, while developing some playing assets and hopefully treating the FA Cup with more respect than we did its little sister at Plymouth, that would be a satisfactory season of steady, considered progress. But to finish fourth bottom, or indeed 12th, you are going to have to lose a lot of games like this one – 11th and 12th last season, Swansea and Sheff Wed, lost 37 times between them.

This is exactly the sort of fine-margins, single-goal, instantly-forgettable defeat which every midtable team in the world – but especially this division – clocks up by the dozen. Coventry made the play-offs last season, finishing fifth, while losing 17 times. To really emphasise that point, all three goals in this game were from set pieces – sloppily given away and poorly defended. This is the Championship, and this game was a fine genre piece.

Mikey Johnston had already thrashed one loose ball over the bar from a free kick delivered to the back post and poorly cleared – a carbon copy of the shambling Portsmouth goal QPR conceded last time out had the final shot been better executed – before the Baggies took the lead. Ben Hamer too busy with histrionics demanding a free kick he didn’t deserve, Richard Kone nowhere near strong enough at the back post, as George Campbell planted a firm header into an unguarded net from Callum Styles’ 24th minute corner.

The second, after half time, was an even weaker effort from the away side. Koki Saito’s tired, needless foul on a player going nowhere typified a performance which was that of a boy who needs two weeks off and a lie down in a darkened room. Nat Phillips was allowed to run unchecked to attack the delivery and Jonathan Varane, like Kone before him, was pathetic in his resistance to the aerial challenge – another free header, another highly preventable West Brom goal. Another beg to the referee for a whistle to cover your own shortcomings.

QPR’s equaliser in between those was similar. Referee Lewis Smith gave Saito an incredibly generous free kick when it seemed as if the Japanese winger had just collapsed under meagre contact (again) and Nicolas Madsen’s low delivery, headed goalwards by Jimmy Dunne, was eventually deflected into the net by Ousmane Diakite – gotta watch those Diakite’s, mad bunch.

Had Kwame Poku succeeded in chipping Joe Wildsmith with an audacious attempt at the start of the second half that bounced off the top of the crossbar then Rangers would have been 2-1 up, the natives would have got restless, and this exact same game could have travelled a very different direction.

Instead it drifted away to a defeat, as it often does when QPR are 10% off their best (as we know, and by the manager’s own confession) which you’re always likely to be at this ridiculous time of year when a fourth fixture has been crowbarred into an already hectic schedule and we’re either travelling to, playing, or travelling back from a game every day for two weeks.

Last season a fourth game was added to this quagmire for the first time. We played 26-29-1 for the previous two years and 27-29-1 the year before that. Suddenly, new TV deal, FA Cup replays scrapped, it’s this ridiculous four games in nine days. And who is this for? Who wants this? Did you want to go to West Brom last night? How much scintillating Championship football did the division produce for the Sky audience – one of them in a game kicking off at 2015? Not a single game with more than three goals in it, six of the 12 teams involved failed to score at all, QPR had their goal scored for them. Sludge.

Nicolas Madsen was far below his best here, apparently injuring himself duffing a second half corner in some sort of tribute to his countryman Lucas Andersen, and doing that weird thing where he drifts off and plays deeper and wider left than the left back for much of the second half. Jonathan Varane, who unlike Madsen hasn’t been playing well for a while, was also particularly poor. One second half counterattack with four options ahead of him for a pass and limited opposition in the way was derailed by his hesitation and desperation to only ever pass the ball backwards and sideways again. With his physique and passing angles he’d make quite a nice rugby league loose forward. Look forward to various ITK social media accounts suddenly telling you it’s time to move him on having previously penned him as the next £20m megastar. But Madsen has played 1,975 minutes of the 2,160 available and Varane isn’t far behind on 1,561. They could just be gassed. Madsen certainly looked it by the end. Amadou Mbengue (1,687 minutes) was left out entirely after a tired effort at Portsmouth. A squad that had big issues at full back and central midfield last season still does now, despite improved recruitment over the summer, and if you leave any of those three out there really isn’t much in reserve. Here Kieran Morgan played right back and Esquerdinha left with predictable results.

It happens. We lost by the odd goal in three, all scored off dead balls, in a midtable Championship game, at a challenging time of the year, at a ground we hate. We hit the bar at 1-1 when a goal our way could well have turned the home crowd and the game in our direction. It’s often the people who are most keen to rip your arm out of its socket for a 16th place finish in July who get most irate about the results that take you to exactly that destination. Like riding the Northern Line to Morden and moaning about how often it stops at Clapham.

To be fair though, I do think the Northern Line stops too often in Clapham. I rode that thing to work every bastard day for three years. You get on in Tooting, you fight for a seat, sometimes you have to queue outside the station for even that opportunity, you cram yourself into the armpit of some sweaty mess who thinks Right Guard is something to paint your shed, and off you trundle. Lurch, brake, moan about people obstructing the doors, and 20 minutes later you’re still in bloody Clapham. Common, North, South, Golf Club, whatever the hell it is. They should rename a couple of them, so you at least feel like you’re making progress. And if QPR want to do the same, they’re going to have to make changes too.

We were fabulous against Leicester. Couple of fluke goals against a Redknapp tribute act team, sure, but that was a statement piece from a team that should have been on the radar for the play-offs. In amongst the euphoria afterwards, we published the following…

QPR have four games in nine days coming up, which is daunting on a logistical level. Let’s not forget, though, that when the fixtures were released we had our first 12 games penned as pretty favourable, and our next 12 as very tough. Rangers have faced Ipswich, Southampton, Sheff Utd, Norwich, West Brom, Birmingham, Middlesbrough, Leicester - which was fairly terrifying when listed in June - and come out on the cusp of the play-offs. We’ve battered a couple of those teams as well. We now have games against 21st, 16th, 23rd and 24th before the cup game at West Ham. This is real opportunity to, as Neil Warnock would say, “dip us bread”. You’ve done the hard bit, just tap it in. Just give it a little tapperoo.

What have we done with that so far? One point, and lucky to get that. I started putting John Sitton quotes in the match previews a week or so back as a funny bit but, in amongst his televised nervous breakdown, there was that gem of “good players want to be good players all the time”.

QPR’s culture, for a long time, sadly, is to get an amazing result, maybe even a run of amazing results, and get very self-congratulatory with it. The socials get very active. We push up towards the top six and lose our minds with excitement. Do we then play well again? Rarely. And if you want to be a play-off team, or grow yourself into a sellable asset and Premier League player, that’s what you have to do. That has to be your mentality. “I never followed two good performances with a performance like that, I wanted to play well again.”

Who were the best players against Leicester? Amadou Mbengue, our man of the match, we said he was outstanding. What’s he done since? Rather got his arse handed to him by a lightweight 22-year-old on his fifth ever league start at Fratton Park, then been sat out of this one. Nicolas Madsen, dominated the Foxes all over the park, quick on the socials afterwards with a video of him supping an Estrella. His impact since? Minimal. Saito the same. Varane the same. Some of the best players in that game have been our biggest problem children since and that does irk me a bit.

It’s no use to anybody playing out of your skin because the former manager is in town and there’s a few grudges floating around, only to drop your level this far in the subsequent games against far worse teams. Portsmouth and West Brom are fiddly games, at an awkward time of the year, but were there at least three points here for us with better application? With the same application we showed against Leicester? Absolutely. Absolutely, 100%. And that’s what separates good teams, and good players, from teams and players who have booted around the middle of the Championship for ten years. I appreciate it’s a process and we are making progress, but at half time here it was seven West Brom shots on goal to none from QPR. Rangers finished the night with zero shots on target. Own Goal was easily our biggest threat. Against the 16th placed team, with the manager under pressure.

We should have been leathering into this game. It was all here for us. In the end West Brom should have won by more. One generously disallowed for offside after they’d walked through another pathetically weak challenge by Saito, a second tap in prevented only by a desperate improvised lunge by Ben Hamer.

Many of the failings were down to the team selection. Julien Stéphan is learning about us, learning about the league, grappling with a very difficult club to manage. We get it. We’ve given him a pass multiple times already this season. This was batshit crazy. I’m sorry, if Ian Holloway had tossed the cards up in the air and had them land like this he would have been crucified.

Kieran Morgan, a central midfielder, at right back. Liam Morrison, last action on November 5, in from the start. Esquerdinha, last start November 1 (and a disaster), also given a cold open. Three of the four at the back switched all at once, the replacements making their first starts for months. Kwame Poko, first start since August. Sam Field selected at ‘ten’. I get we’re not brilliant on strength in depth, I get it’s a hectic schedule, but we’ve got more than enough options to not be picking Sam Field as a striker. Paul Smyth, who I thought was playing well and would have been a great Saito replacement at half time, has been afforded 19 minutes of action this Christmas and remained an unused sub. Rumarn Burrell got the rest he was starting to look like he needed, but Rayan Kolli is his natural cover and was also left in his tracksuit. Better than standing behind us in the away end, as at Portsmouth, but still I struggled to understand the logic and the thinking.

QPR, belatedly, made four changes at once in the 73rd minute and it made things worse. Among many other tactical anomalies, Isaac Hayden did 20 minutes as right back. Harvey Vale came on and, bless him, not sure what’s going on with him at the moment, but he played like he’d put his boots on the wrong feet. I was amazed his pass completing was as high as 66% from nine attempts, it felt like he gave it to West Brom every time he had it. When Samson’s Delilah cut his hair while he slept, he lost his power, was captured, and blinded by the Philistines. Maybe Harvey’s had it in reverse? Someone get him a set of clippers.

I’m not sure what development Esquerdinha is getting out of our use of him. I’ll be honest, he doesn’t look up to this level at all to me. And Julien Stéphan’s record with young players suggests he knows what he’s doing. But would it not be better to bleed him into it with 45 minutes against Leicester while 4-0 up, or an outing in the corresponding fixture while we’re 2-0 up with half an hour to go? What, exactly, is he, or indeed we, getting out of being slung in against the best wingers in the league against Ipswich, torched, dropped completely, then dragged back for a first start in two months away at West Brom against Mikey Johnston and Iling Junior? He was a liability all night, giving the ball away high up the pitch for the corner that led to the first goal, but we’re not helping him here, are we? Change three of the four at the back, stick Liam Morrison in for the first time in two months, and you play left back alongside that with only a massively out of form winger ahead of you to help. Good luck, Art. It’s like all those 16-year-olds we performatively slung in for 45 minutes of cup shambles against Plymouth and have never seen again. What, and who, was that for? What has that achieved?

The team selection was wild. Some very, very odd stuff going on to begin with, and with the choice and timing of substitutions. Paul Smyth wasn’t worth 15 minutes here, no? It’s cost us a very winnable game and, once again, pissed off a lot of very loyal QPR fans standing behind the goal who’d travelled in great numbers on a day when the rail system was in meltdown.

Against an eminently gettable team, this was messy. Still, only three points from the play-offs, and the teams sitting 23rd and 24th coming to Loftus Road next. This does feel like a big moment in the season, for this team, and this manager. Win those, as we should, and then pile into West Ham and nobody will be talking about the annual narrow, forgettable defeat at West Brom in a couple of weeks. Slip up against Norwich or Sheff Wed, and then produce the annual cup flop at the Olympic Stadium, and there’ll be a lot of… guys, what are we doing here?

Links >>> Ratings and Reports >>> Message Board Match Thread

West Brom: Wildsmith 6; Campbell 6, Phillips 7, Taylor 6, Styles 7; Diakite 5, Mowatt 6 (Molumby 74, 6); Iling-Junior 6 (Mepham 84, -), Johnston 6 (Price 67, 6), Grant 6; Heggebo 6 (Maja 67, 5)

Subs not used: Bielik, Bostock, Dike, Dupont, Griffiths

Goals: Campbell 24 (assisted Styles), Phillips 55 (assisted Styles)

QPR: Hamer 5; Morgan 5 (Hayden 73, 5), Dunne 6, Morrison 5, Esquerdinha 4 (Norrington-Davies 73, 5); Poku 6 (Burrell 73, 5), Varane 4 (Dembele 73, 4), Madsen 5 (Vale 83, -), Saito 4; Field 5, Kone 5

Subs not used: Nardi, Cook, Smyth, Kolli

Goals: Diakite og 35 (assisted Dunne)

Yellow Cards: Dunne 37 (foul), Morgan 42 (foul)

QPR Star Man – Jimmy Dunne 6 The only one who’s maintained anything like a level through this Christmas period. Frequently having to bail out the chaotically assembled and fairly shambolic back four around him.

Referee – Lewis Smith (Wigan) 6 Looks a pretty decent referee to me this lad, but this wasn’t his best outing. The ‘foul’ on Saito that led to our first goal is a joke decision. And he needs to be much firmer, much quicker, in his indication of whether he’s actually given the goal or not. I think he went on player reaction a little bit for the first two goals in this game. It cast the outcome into some doubt and gave QPR and West Brom a chance to surround him and make out like they should have been disallowed. Neither should. I suspect the assessor will be advising a clearer signal and get your arse back to the halfway line double lively in future.

Attendance – 23,485 (1,503 QPR) Long way back to London when…

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Pictures - Reuters Connect