Tonight, we face off against Championship strugglers of late, QPR, at Loftus Road. Here’s how I think our 31st game of the season will go down…
QPR
After such a good start to the season, everything has taken a turn for the R’s. When we first faced each other it was our third game of the season, and we were finding our feet back in the Championship. We had a comfortable 2-0 lead but then with minutes to go chaos ensued. Ilias Chair grabbed Gooch by the neck and avoided a red card, then scored a free kick seconds later. To make things worse, he set up the equaliser in the dying seconds as their goalkeeper Seny Dieng scored the leveller.
After a solid start to the season, Michael Beale was attracting interest from other clubs. He had reportedly turned down the Wolves job, and then in late November he joined the other Rangers, the one in Scotland. QPR then brought in Neil Critchley, who had a good spell at Blackpool, gaining promotion to the Championship via the play-offs before reuniting with Steven Gerrard at Villa which didn’t go so smoothly.
Critchley has been in charge of ten games for QPR, winning only one. At Blackpool he liked his side to play football, similarly to us. So tonight shouldn’t be a repeat of Saturday, and there’ll be two teams out there trying to play football, thank god for that. QPR have had their fair share of injuries this season, but Ilias Chair can always conjure up something, as he did at the Stadium of Light earlier this season. And if that bloody keeper comes up for a corner I’m looking away…
SUNDERLAND
Fresh off the 1-0 win against Reading at the weekend, Mowbray has hinted that he will make some changes due to the busy schedule. We shouldn’t be heading into this game assuming the three points are already in the bag but, tonight provides a great chance for Joe Gelhardt to grab his first goal in red and white.
Dennis Cirkin is back in the squad too, and I wouldn’t be too shocked to see him start, Alese covered some ground on Saturday whilst playing in two positions simultaneously. And it means if we’re struggling for a goal we can bring on our new centre forward Aji Alese!
I also think one of the other changes could be in midfield, O’Nien hasn’t had many minutes since returning from suspension so he’ll be raring to go, and it will give Dan Neil a chance for a breather. Dan Neil has the second most minutes for us outfield, behind Jack Clarke.
Lihadji made a decent cameo on Saturday too, a few nice touches to keep the ball moving forward so hopefully if we’re ahead and on top with time to go it would be nice to see Mowbray chuck the likes of him and Jewi on for more game time.
MY PREDICTION
When we spoke to one QPR fan, which can be read HERE, he said if we can’t beat them then we are rubbish. So with that said, I’m going to go with a big 4-0 win. They might like to play football but so do we, and the quality within our squad is up there with the best in the league on our day. As for the goals, I’m going to say they‘ll come from Roberts x2, Clarke and then I think Joffy will get his goal tally off and running, hopefully.
