Jake captures the Bard, with thanks to Owen Lennox
John McCormick writes: I wrote an upbeat introduction to the weekend’s e-mail from the manager. Today, I can’t repeat the feat. I’ve travelled across Liverpool to lose a game of chess, which meant the team lost the match, and while taking solace at the bar and watching the final minutes of an apparently entertaining Liverpool v Spurs it transpired we’d once more self-destructed. How does our manager explain this? Let’s find out as M Salut shares with us the e-mail he received shortly after the game:
Jake thought he had ways of making them talk STOP PRESS – Within an hour or so of this going live QPR fans were quick to step into the breach described in the introduction. Thanks to JC and Josh (and any others waiting in the wings) for promptly filling the gap.
All seemed in order when Monsieur Salut went off to Cuba. A QPR fan, who had long ago volunteered to do the Who are You? interview, had the questions and promised replies. Thinking only of the transfer window and intervening results, I told the interviewee, Gareth Parker, to take his time as ‘things – and therefore your answers – will change between now and Feb 10-ish’. I was not thinking of ‘Arry’s dodgy knees (M Salut knows all about those) and I certainly wasn’t implying that the answers could wait until after the game.
But despite returning from holiday to an email suggesting some revised post-Redknapp questions, which I duly sent last Friday, Gareth has remained silent.
If any QPR fans fancy answering in his place, just go to Comments, specify the question number and give your reply. If there is a good response – and that’s a big if, given how close we are to the game – we’ll come up with a prize.
And apologies to all readers who enjoy this series for this one lapse. I am sure Gareth either overlooked it of has a perfectly good reason for not being able to oblige. We should, however, have a cracker for the Bradford City cup game …
Jake: have your say on Keir’s assessments , then guess tomorrow night’s score
Apologies to all for pulling these two items together, a necessity given constraints on time between the two games, at Swansea on Saturday and at home to QPR tomorrow. Agree or disagree with Keir Bradwell’s man-by-man ratings from the 1-1 draw at the Liberty Stadium and then have a stab at the scoreline in tomorrow’s crucial game…
Lost in the deluge of post-Southampton news, anger and gallows humour, John McCormick applied a scholarly eye to the statistics he considers relevant factors in determining who goes down, who stays up. Ominously, in this update, the 8-0 defeat is seen as not only wrecking our goal difference but pushing us more obviously into the frame, on John’s interpretation of trends. He hopes and we hope he is completely wrong …
Before the season started I used some dodgy stats and history to predict this season’s relegated candidates, including a couple of wildcards. From 20th place upwards they were:
QPR – Purely because a promoted team is almost certain to go down and most often it has been the playoff winner. I had to go with this, whatever the bookies said about Burnley.
Hull, on the basis that second season syndrome’s due and as two London teams have never been relegated in the same season QPR’s demise must mean Palace are safe.
Villa, on the grounds of their being the only club to have been in the bottom three for each of the last three seasons without being relegated. That’s scary stuff for a fan.
Southampton were the first wildcard, chosen because of the personnel changes and turbulence the club has experienced this year.
West Brom, because of last season’s iffy form and the way they appointed their manager, were the second.
Courtesy of the British Coaches Abroad Association
There are worse things than being the coach, as we must these days call managers, of a team in the third tier of Belgium football.
Perhaps not many worse things, but being the coach/manager who took Cercle Sportif Visé, better but not very much better known as CS Visé, down from the second division in May would have been one of them.
