QPR v Stoke 0 - 0 Full Time

It's been a quiet week which suggests we are all a bit down in the dumps about the club at the moment. We are all seemingly resigned to a meaningless end to the season and a bleak looking 12-24 months ahead.

I can't call if McClaren will stick with his preferred starting 11 which would mean very few changes or if he'll send a clear message that he wasn't happy with last weeks performance. Perhaps Scowen is due another chance and Osayi-Samuel could start too.

I thought long and hard about replacing Cousins with Scowen in my selection above, but I finally decided on the basis of Cousins getting a second chance against Scowen getting another booking or two. When Scowen was on fire he was a very good foil to Luongo's game and, to be fair, his absence has meant Luongo seems to be getting more physical in his tackles as compensation ('needs must'). I was also in two minds regarding including BOS, but felt Wszolek does a better job of trying to protect Furlong so he deserved the WB slot. Having said that, I suggested elsewhere that BOS should be tried as a replacement for Eze, where his far superior physicality and more positive attacking with the ball should cause problems for defenders. Steve McClaren must look at what players are available and what they bring to a unified team performance against Stoke. For me that means dropping Eze. 

Well it looks as if Rangel will feature in the game as he has been seen training with the squad, although I suspect it will be a place on the bench. Cameron will be available for the Rotherham game too after 3 months off, and you cannot help wondering what if.....

There was an interesting interview with one of Stoke's fanzines where they said that it was slowly improving under the new man, but there were concerns over having no proper LB available. For a side that has spent millions, discarded the likes of Cameron, and looked a reasonable side as well - they have massively under-performed! I have modified my optimistic prediction to a more modest 1-0 win but, in all honesty, I have concerns post-Brentford. If the 'wrong QPR' turns up - we will be tanked! 

P.S. To add to our woes, it appears Matt Smith picked up an ankle injury in training and is in doubt for selection. Not saying he would start but it would be nice to have some options... 

As northwest as said it could go
I actually think Stoke will thrash us if we play like last week
Can’t see us winning this game I’m afraid

I thought the same but at that time we were playing really well and had only lost 1 in 10 or something like that. Now we've got 1 win in 11 so it's completely switched around.

At Stoke we had Eze swashbuckling about and Luongo dominating the midfield, plus Rangel going full Roberto Carlos on us and most players were in good form.

Again now it's the opposite!

A return to 4-4-2 is interesting.

As your rightly point out kingfisher it does not bode well for Furlong that he's been benched even before Rangel is back in the mix. Maybe Steve has been making note of our stats that we've been losing 60% of games with Furlong involved!

I think a lot of our chances in this match now ride on whether Scowen and Luongo can get the better of a very good pairing in Adam and Allen. Scowen certainly needs to impress with Cameron's return looming and he's not been involved much even when he's been out injured.

Come on you R's.