[themaclad]

Queens Park Rangers Football Club, commonly abbreviated to QPR, is a professional association football club based in White City, London. The team currently plays in the Championship, the second tier of English football. Their honours include winning the League Cup in 1967, as well as the Second Division in 1983 and the Championship in 2011. QPR were also triumphant in the 2013–14 Championship playoffs and were winners of the Third Division South in 1947–48 and the Third Division in 1966–67. They were runners-up in the First Division in 1975–76, and reached the final of the 1982 FA Cup.

Queens Park Rangers were founded in 1886 after the merger of Christchurch Rangers and St. Judes Institute. In the early years after the club's formation in its original home of Queen's Park, London, they played their home games at many different grounds, until finally the club settled into its current location at Loftus Road.

We have not won in London this season, drawn three out of three Saturday would be a great time to get our first three points in the capital this season. We take on a Rangers side who have been inconsistent in recent weeks, have had some heavy defeats but have scored four in their last two home games against Norwich and Wednesday. After last Saturday's hammering on Humberside, Holloway was less than impressed with his team obviously the bollocking worked going four up against Wednesday.
The Hollowhead has experimented in recent weeks blooding a few youngsters to supplement the experienced lads such as Smith, Luongo and our ex Alex Baptiste.
Close to a 1000 will be at Loftus Road from the North West, train taking the strain this week.
Should be more or less same eleven for us although Johnson could be back in the squad after illness. Win or bust nothing more nothing less.

We have not won in London this season, drawn three out of three Saturday would be a great time to get our first three points in the capital this season. We take on a Rangers side who have been inconsistent in recent weeks, have had some heavy defeats but have scored four in their last two home games against Norwich and Wednesday. After last Saturday's hammering on Humberside, Holloway was less than impressed with his team obviously the bollocking worked going four up against Wednesday.
The Hollowhead has experimented in recent weeks blooding a few youngsters to supplement the experienced lads such as Smith, Luongo and our ex Alex Baptiste.
Close to a 1000 will be at Loftus Road from the North West, train taking the strain this week.
Should be more or less same eleven for us although Johnson could be back in the squad after illness. Win or bust nothing more nothing less.


Stat Attack: Queens Park Rangers

Two of the very few EFL clubs with a three word title face each other at Loftus Road this weekend.

North End will be squeezing themselves into the compact home ground of the Super Hoops for the 19th time, hoping to add to our record of only four victories to date, in addition to seven draws.

The vast majority of our meetings have come in the last half century, with only two games both home and away before 1967 and ten since 2000.

We first ventured to west London in 1949 and secured a goalless draw before recording our biggest win to date 15 months later as we triumphed 4-1. In a superb example of the fixture planner’s art, that game took place on Christmas Day and was made even worse for players, officials and fans alike as both teams had to face each other again the following day here in Lancashire. Not considering the fans is clearly far from being a modern phenomenon!

We then went our separate ways for 18 years before starting a run of seven games without a North End win, although we did secure four draws.

We visited twice in 2005 and won both before last season’s 2-0 win brought another six game winless streak to an end. Scorelines have been generally tight, with our 18 goals (one a game) not much exceeded by Rangers’ 24 goals and there have been four goalless draws. Our 4-0 defeat nine years ago was our heaviest loss and we have also conceded three times on three occasions.
Gareth Ainsworth is one of a number of attacking players to have featured for both clubs and of course, Gareth also spent a spell in charge at Loftus Road before taking over at Wycombe Wanderers where he faced us earlier this year in the FA Cup third round. QPR were the eighth of his nine league clubs and he is almost a fondly regarded there as he is at Deepdale.

Others to have scored for both clubs and gained a place on the affections of both sets of fans include Danny Dichio, Paul Magee, Brett Angell, Akpo Sodje and Michael Robinson.

At the other end of the pitch, Clark Carlisle, Marlon Broomes, Wayne Brown and Alex Baptiste have worn our lilywhite shirt and the hoops of the Rs.

On This Day
Goalkeeper Wayne Henderson began what was to prove a frustrating spell at Deepdale on this date in 2007. Signed from Brighton, he featured in the last four games of the 2006/07 season and started the following season as No.1 before sustaining a back injury that ultimately ended his career.

After several operations, he spent the second half of 2009/10 on loan at Grimsby and seemed to be on his way back, but he only made two more appearances for North End before he was forced to call time on his playing career aged only 26.

Wayne is from a family of keepers, with his father and two brothers well known in the League of Ireland and his nephew Stephen is currently on loan with Portsmouth from Nottingham Forest. He is now a football intermediary and looks after both Sean Maguire and Daryl Horgan!

Club stalwart George Ross made the last of his 441 appearances for North End on this date in 1973, the day before his 30th birthday and more than 12 years from his debut. Sadly he could not mark his birthday with a win as we went down 2-0 on the Fylde coast and George left for Southport in the summer, having played at Wembley in our 1964 FA Cup Final side and being a key component of the 1971 third division championship squad.
George continued to work at the club for many years after retiring from playing and passed away in 2016 shortly after acting as a matchday host in the Invincibles lounge. Tomorrow would have been George’s 75th birthday, an anniversary he shared with Alan Browne who celebrates his 23rd birthday on Sunday.

Last Five Games At Loftus Road
Queens Park Rangers 0 Preston North End 2 (Beckford, Onuoha (og)), 20th August 2016
Queens Park Rangers 0 Preston North End 0, 7th November 2015
Queens Park Rangers 3 (Hulse, Taarabt, 2) Preston North End 1 (Connolly (og)), 20th November 2010
Queens Park Rangers 4 (Taarabt, Buzsaky (p), Simpson, Routledge) Preston North End 0, 17th October 2009
Queens Park Rangers 3 (Helguson, 2; Blackstock) Preston North End 2 (Sedgwick, Davidson (p)), 20th December 2008



Ref Watch: Queens Park Rangers

Taking charge of his second North End game of the season for our trip to the capital to face Ian Holloway’s Queens Park Rangers is match official Robert Jones.

Having been fourth official at PNE games earlier on in the season, he stepped up to the role of the man in the middle for the first time this campaign when we entertained champions-elect Wolverhampton Wanderers at Deepdale back in February.

Rob’s one other game in charge of the Lilywhites was last season’s 1-1 home draw with Rotherham United – the final home game of last season.

This is the referee’s second year on the EFL list and this will also be his second R’s game of the campaign, having taken charge of their 1-0 home win over Sunderland last month, when the Black Cats’ goalkeeper Jason Steele was sent off for a deliberate handball outside the box.
That was one of Jones’ eight red cards this season, to go with 113 cautions in his 40 games so far in 2017/18.

His last game was Tuesday night’s 2-0 away win by high-flying Millwall at Bolton Wanderers; with the majority of his recent games being in the EFL Championship.

This weekend in West London he will be assisted by Michael George and Mark Pottage, whilst the fourth official will be Craig Hicks.

This man sent off John Welsh

[themaclad]

Queens Park Rangers 1 Smith Preston North End 2 Robinson 2 apparently

QPR: Ingram, Furlong, Baptiste, Robinson, Bidwell, Manning, Luongo, Cousins, Osayi-Samuel (Smyth 61), Eze, Smith (Sylla 61). Subs (not used): Freeman, Scowen, Wszlek, Kakay, Smithies.
PNE: Rudd, Fisher, Clarke, Huntington, Cunningham, Pearson, Browne, Bodin (Gallagher 62), Johnson (Harrop 62) Barkhuizen, Robinson (Horgan 90). Subs (not used): Davies, Earl, Moult, Maxwell.
Referee: Robert Jones (Merseyside) Attendance: 13,760 (1,257 PNE)

Classic North End lull the opponents into thinking we are totally clueless and for 35 minutes we were not even that good and then step it up and win fairly comfortably in the end.
On a warm spring day North End took three vital points with a win over QPR as per usual we were a goal down before 15 minutes had been played, thought it was a soft free kick that led to it but more on Mr Jones later. The free kick was initially cleared but Bidwell pumped the ball to the back stick were only the giant Smith was, he scored with ease, poor one to conceded. They could have been two down shortly afterwards but Manning's header was well saved by Rudd. North End reaction was to hammer the ball skywards in the hope that our small forwards would win headers against taller defenders, strangely it didn't work and it wasn't until an incident just before half time that we started to turn things around. Ingram the home keeper brought down Browne outside the area after a clearance had been charged down by Browne. Yellow card for Ingram we wasted the free kick. Didn't matter though we got a vital goal just before the break, Bodin fed Fisher down the right, Robinson mishit shot just about dribbled across the line.
Second half Rangers faded badly probably coincided with the removal of Smith who had caused us trouble all afternoon, we grew in confidence had a goal disallowed when Clarke was adjudged offside. We started to get into decent positions and from a free kick we took the lead, Gallagher took Browne headed it towards goal and Robinson has been credited with the goal. We were not really threatened after that although the home fans thought they should have had about three penalties, which brings me to Mr Jones.
He is a bit crap to say the least, we had him against Wolves he was bad then and he hasn't improved since then.
Still in with this play off malarkey, think the boys are teasing us, Norwich next up which I'll miss time for bat and ball again.

North End have had to claw their way back from behind on several occasions this season, and having done so twice in one week, Alex Neil believes it’s no coincidence that his side have the knack of turning it around.

Speaking to iFollow after the game, the manager believes his side’s never say die attitude is paramount on the occasions when North End have come from behind and won the game, just like they did today.

He said: “We’re a resilient team and we’re never beaten until the game’s over. If I’m being honest I was disappointed first half. We didn’t play well enough first half and I separate performance from results quite a lot because I think the better we play in terms of performances, you’ll pick up more points.

“I thought in the first half however that we didn’t pick up second balls enough and we went too direct too early for me. I had a good chat at half-time about how we normally play and the way we want to go about it and to be fair to the lads for the whole of the season they’ve responded and I thought the second half performance was excellent and it’s meant that we’ve won the game.
“There’s very few games this year where we’ve played poorly and won the game. We’re at that stage now that because we’ve got a method of how we want to play, we need to carry it out and pass the ball well. Our passing first half was poor and we needed to pick up second balls better. We didn’t keep the ball at the top end of the pitch. But credit to the lads - in the second half we did the exact opposite. We showed a bit more bravery in terms of receiving the ball in the right areas and there was some really good performances second half.

“I said to them at half-time they’ve been really poor and the fact it was 1-1 was excellent as far as we were concerned. Now we’ve got a great opportunity of playing better and winning the game in the second half and that’s exactly what we’ve done. “

Two wins in two games in less than seven days have meant that the Lilywhites have brought their way back into contention of a Play-Off spot after a difficult start to the month, and the gaffer divulge to iFollowPNE after the game what his, and his side’s mindset will be going into the final three games of the season.

“Whatever happens elsewhere - if we don’t win - it doesn’t matter because we’re not going to get near the Play-Offs if we don't come out with three points.

“What we’ve managed to do is win our last two games and strangely enough, I actually think we probably played better over the three games prior to that then the two games we won but that’s football for you and it’s a strange game. It’s down to three points at the moment, we’ll try and win the next one and see where that takes us.

“The fans were fantastic as well and there’s nothing better when they come down, they have a great day, we get the win and everybody can go home happy.