Not sure how many of you have seen this already, but Clive Whittigham's season preview on the QPR site Loft for Words is painfully funny, by which I mean it is both funny and painful. Especially after this afternoon's horror show. Wish I could disagree, but...
Swansea 20/1 (title odds)
Last Season: Swansea City played for 180 minutes against Queens Park Rangers without scoring a goal last season, and the abiding memory of the experience that I’ll take to my death bed was just what a terribly sad waste of 180 minutes of my life sitting through the whole thing was. Think of the other, better, more entertaining, more productive things I could have done with that time. Wallpapering a downstairs bathroom. Having a conversation about where to place a piece of furniture in a room. Seeing how many times I could bounce a ball on the floor in the first 90 minutes, and then trying to break that record. I’ve seen plays more interesting than this Marge, honest to God, plays.
There prevails an attitude that there is a right and wrong way to play football, and if you say anything against a ‘progressive’, young, ethos and culture-driven coach like Russell Martin then you’re obviously a Tony Pulis acolyte who thinks Sam Allardyce would have had the Dortmund job if he’d had a Johnny Foreigner name, and selects their dream candidate for the QPR job from the sofa of the Keys and Gray show. There is a happy medium, I could no more watch Pulis teams than I could GBNews, but equally I have seen more entertaining things come out of GBNews than the Swansea games we suffered through last year.
They spent the final game of the season, almost in its entirety, trying and failing to execute a goal kick where the keeper played a one-two with a wide centre back and picked the return up on the edge of the box. The keeper, Andy Fisher, who had presumably followed Martin from MK Dons specifically because he can do this sort of thing, palpably could not do this sort of thing. Three outcomes occurred on a loop: Lyndon Dykes closed the whole thing down and took the ball off them sparking a panic that would have been a good deal more dramatic had it been a better striker than Lyndon Dykes doing it; they belted the ball straight into touch looking for a wing back; they ended up smacking the ball long down the field anyway, as they could have done from the goalkick, only with less risk and without pissing away another 45 seconds of everybody’s life. It felt like an awful lot of effort to expend on a best case scenario of ‘your goalkeeper will have the ball at his feet 18 yards further forward than when he started’. It was like watching Tommy Cooper magic: keeper, ball, defender. Defender, ball, keeper. Alllaacazar… Whack. Just like that.
And I stand there watching this thinking… is it just me? Analytics accounts creaming their kegs, people falling over themselves to nosh this all off, £8m paid for central midfielder Flynn Downes, and yet there they were, fifteenth in the league. Fifteenth in the league, with a lesser-spotted 20-goal-a-season striker – only Mitrovic, Solanke and Brereton bagged more than Joel Piroe’s brilliant debut season total of 22. They finished the season without a win in six games – a sequence that included blowing a 4-1 deficit at Reading, a 3-0 home lead against Bournemouth, and losing 5-1 at Nottingham Forest. I found the whole thing profoundly odd.
Ins >>> Harry Darling, 22, CB, MK Dons, £2m >>> Nathan Wood, 20, CB, Boro, Undisclosed >>> Joe Allen, 32, CM, Stoke, Free >>> Matthew Sorinola, 21, LB, Union SG (Belgium), Loan
Outs >>> Flynn Downes, 23, CM, West Ham, £9.5m >>> Korey Smith, 31, CM, Derby, Free >>> Yan Dhanda, 23, AM, Ross County, Free >>> Ben Hamer, 34, GK, Watford, Free >>> Morgan Whittaker, 21, RW, Plymouth, Loan >>> Josh Gould, 25, GK, Released
Manager: Russell Martin Just like that.
This Season: Whether it is ‘just me’ and the xG evangelists are right to have a big stiff hard on for this lot this season we’re about to find out. I’ll confess I’ve drunk the Kool-Aid to the point that I think Swansea might be an interesting dark horse this season, but not a lot more than that, and were Piroe to leave then you can hack seven or eight places off our prediction.
I’ve tipped several other more rudimentary, traditional teams – Boro, Sheff Utd – on the basis that they’ll go well “if they get a striker before the end of the window”. Well, here, at Swansea, they’ve already got two. Piroe grabbed the majority of the goals and headlines last season, and there were certainly few better buys at EFL level than 22 goals in 40 starts for a basic £1m than him, but they’ve also brought in Southampton livewire Michael Obafemi for a similar fee alongside him and have Jamie Paterson, very decent at this level, to play behind them as well. I fancy Obefemi and Piroe, in particular, to terrorise this league this season if they stay – a number of those well financed clubs looking for strikers will surely pay a visit here over the next five weeks. Downes has already gone, but good money and a quick turnaround profit was made, which judging by their transfer activity last summer could be very useful indeed. After a few years doing stupid things under clueless American ownership, pick ups like MK Dons’ 22-year-old centre back starlet Harry Darling following Downes, Piroe, Obafemi and Manning previously suggest a return to that canny Swansea recruitment of old – although Andy Scott, who was overseeing that, left midway through last season.
They’ll need a couple more, including a good Downes replacement, even allowing for Joe Allen’s Indian summer. I think they’re soft-centred, and often the balance between culture/ethos and pragmatism is miles out of whack. At times last season they selected Ryan Manning as a third centre back, and along with Ben Cabango and despite the addition of Darling that is a defence that is gettable in the air – all three of them barely win 50% of headers they compete for. But I’m intrigued, and ready to be proved wrong. I’d be tipping QPR for the top six if we had their strikers.
What we said last season: 15th (actually finished 15th - stick we me kids).
Prediction: 10th If Piroe were to leave, stick a seven or eight on top of that nought.
Swansea 20/1 (title odds)
Last Season: Swansea City played for 180 minutes against Queens Park Rangers without scoring a goal last season, and the abiding memory of the experience that I’ll take to my death bed was just what a terribly sad waste of 180 minutes of my life sitting through the whole thing was. Think of the other, better, more entertaining, more productive things I could have done with that time. Wallpapering a downstairs bathroom. Having a conversation about where to place a piece of furniture in a room. Seeing how many times I could bounce a ball on the floor in the first 90 minutes, and then trying to break that record. I’ve seen plays more interesting than this Marge, honest to God, plays.
There prevails an attitude that there is a right and wrong way to play football, and if you say anything against a ‘progressive’, young, ethos and culture-driven coach like Russell Martin then you’re obviously a Tony Pulis acolyte who thinks Sam Allardyce would have had the Dortmund job if he’d had a Johnny Foreigner name, and selects their dream candidate for the QPR job from the sofa of the Keys and Gray show. There is a happy medium, I could no more watch Pulis teams than I could GBNews, but equally I have seen more entertaining things come out of GBNews than the Swansea games we suffered through last year.
They spent the final game of the season, almost in its entirety, trying and failing to execute a goal kick where the keeper played a one-two with a wide centre back and picked the return up on the edge of the box. The keeper, Andy Fisher, who had presumably followed Martin from MK Dons specifically because he can do this sort of thing, palpably could not do this sort of thing. Three outcomes occurred on a loop: Lyndon Dykes closed the whole thing down and took the ball off them sparking a panic that would have been a good deal more dramatic had it been a better striker than Lyndon Dykes doing it; they belted the ball straight into touch looking for a wing back; they ended up smacking the ball long down the field anyway, as they could have done from the goalkick, only with less risk and without pissing away another 45 seconds of everybody’s life. It felt like an awful lot of effort to expend on a best case scenario of ‘your goalkeeper will have the ball at his feet 18 yards further forward than when he started’. It was like watching Tommy Cooper magic: keeper, ball, defender. Defender, ball, keeper. Alllaacazar… Whack. Just like that.
And I stand there watching this thinking… is it just me? Analytics accounts creaming their kegs, people falling over themselves to nosh this all off, £8m paid for central midfielder Flynn Downes, and yet there they were, fifteenth in the league. Fifteenth in the league, with a lesser-spotted 20-goal-a-season striker – only Mitrovic, Solanke and Brereton bagged more than Joel Piroe’s brilliant debut season total of 22. They finished the season without a win in six games – a sequence that included blowing a 4-1 deficit at Reading, a 3-0 home lead against Bournemouth, and losing 5-1 at Nottingham Forest. I found the whole thing profoundly odd.
Ins >>> Harry Darling, 22, CB, MK Dons, £2m >>> Nathan Wood, 20, CB, Boro, Undisclosed >>> Joe Allen, 32, CM, Stoke, Free >>> Matthew Sorinola, 21, LB, Union SG (Belgium), Loan
Outs >>> Flynn Downes, 23, CM, West Ham, £9.5m >>> Korey Smith, 31, CM, Derby, Free >>> Yan Dhanda, 23, AM, Ross County, Free >>> Ben Hamer, 34, GK, Watford, Free >>> Morgan Whittaker, 21, RW, Plymouth, Loan >>> Josh Gould, 25, GK, Released
Manager: Russell Martin Just like that.
This Season: Whether it is ‘just me’ and the xG evangelists are right to have a big stiff hard on for this lot this season we’re about to find out. I’ll confess I’ve drunk the Kool-Aid to the point that I think Swansea might be an interesting dark horse this season, but not a lot more than that, and were Piroe to leave then you can hack seven or eight places off our prediction.
I’ve tipped several other more rudimentary, traditional teams – Boro, Sheff Utd – on the basis that they’ll go well “if they get a striker before the end of the window”. Well, here, at Swansea, they’ve already got two. Piroe grabbed the majority of the goals and headlines last season, and there were certainly few better buys at EFL level than 22 goals in 40 starts for a basic £1m than him, but they’ve also brought in Southampton livewire Michael Obafemi for a similar fee alongside him and have Jamie Paterson, very decent at this level, to play behind them as well. I fancy Obefemi and Piroe, in particular, to terrorise this league this season if they stay – a number of those well financed clubs looking for strikers will surely pay a visit here over the next five weeks. Downes has already gone, but good money and a quick turnaround profit was made, which judging by their transfer activity last summer could be very useful indeed. After a few years doing stupid things under clueless American ownership, pick ups like MK Dons’ 22-year-old centre back starlet Harry Darling following Downes, Piroe, Obafemi and Manning previously suggest a return to that canny Swansea recruitment of old – although Andy Scott, who was overseeing that, left midway through last season.
They’ll need a couple more, including a good Downes replacement, even allowing for Joe Allen’s Indian summer. I think they’re soft-centred, and often the balance between culture/ethos and pragmatism is miles out of whack. At times last season they selected Ryan Manning as a third centre back, and along with Ben Cabango and despite the addition of Darling that is a defence that is gettable in the air – all three of them barely win 50% of headers they compete for. But I’m intrigued, and ready to be proved wrong. I’d be tipping QPR for the top six if we had their strikers.
What we said last season: 15th (actually finished 15th - stick we me kids).
Prediction: 10th If Piroe were to leave, stick a seven or eight on top of that nought.
. Thanks.