Happy New Year everyone!
This is when it gets serious. In QPR's case, very serious.
With the spate of Christmas and New Year games out of the way and our traditional January FA Cup exit settled for another year, we now get down to what is known in the trade as "the business end of the season".
From now on you get a proper sense of who are the contenders for promotion and who are the teams heading for the drop. Sadly, QPR are firmly in the latter camp.
We are in the relegation zone and don't seem to know how to get out of it. We are starting to run out of games in which to catch up with the other stragglers.
It's not that we're playing that badly overall. At times we can look like a decent team. But we save our best performances for the wrong matches.
If it's against a top of the table team then we match them for long stretches of the game, create and spurn several scoreable chances and then lose by the odd goal. Our continuing lack of a reliable striker is all too apparent. But if it's against a bottom of the table team, then they are dire and we are even worse. Again no points.
In the autumn, things definitely took a turn for the better with the arrival of Marti Cifuentes and the departure of Gareth Ainsworth. Ainsworth's short reign at Loftus Road was a sad affair. Rightly loved and revered as a QPR player, coming back as head coach was a step too far. The kick, rush and hope style of football he adopted was awful. We were only saved from relegation by a freak result at Burnley.
Cifuentes, on the other hand, seems to have a clear view of the progressive style of football he wants us to play: get the ball on the ground, keep possession, pass it out from the back and then move forward quickly. Very good in theory and at times it looks very good on the pitch.
To start off with, we won three games on the bounce. But opposition teams have now managed to spot our weak spots and exploit them. Our normally reliable goalkeeper, Asmir Begovic has started flapping at crosses and getting bundled off the ball whenever he is crowded by the opposition.
Added to that we have also developed a dizzying habit of carelessly conceding goals from corners by leaving opposition forwards totally unmarked. Even with the best coaches and the best systems silly mistakes will still cost you games.
January's fixtures could well seal our fate. We have a run of home games against moderate opposition. If we don't pick up a good harvest of points in the next few weeks then I fear we really may be doomed.
So which will it be? An unhappy new year or a happy new year?
The views expressed in this blog are those of the author and unless specifically stated are not necessarily those of Hammersmith & Fulham Council.
