Lloydy direkt från City Ground!
"QPR have never won at the City Ground and it was reasonable to expect that the Rs could reverse this trend against a Forest side stuck in the bottom three. Unfortunately it was not to be!"
Richard Lloyd var Swedish Hoops man på plats i Nottingham i lördags när QPR inte förmådde förbättra sitt usla facit i Robin Hoods hemstad"
QPR have never won at the City Ground and it was reasonable to expect that the Rs could reverse this trend against a Forest side stuck in the bottom three. Unfortunately it was not to be.
This was my 4th visit to Nottingham with QPR, my previous visits have seen us relegated from the Premiership with a 3-0 defeat at Forest and draws against Forest and County more recently. I was hoping to see my first win but the team were missing key players again, Bircham being the latest as he had to pull out suffering with flu.
The Rs lined up with Day in goal, a back four of Bignot, Shittu, Santos and Padula and then 5 in midfield. Bean started sitting in front of the back four, Miller (making his debut) and Gallen in central midfield with Cook and Ainsworth out wide. This left Furlong as the lone striker.
Rangers started the brighter with Ainsworth and Miller linking up well on the right, unfortunately not managing to create and real clear cut chances. The referee was being particularly picky and called fouls at any given opportunity which resulted in the game not flowing as well as it might have.
Rangers were then behind midway through the first half, a long ball over the top and Johnson got ahead of Shittu and as he raced into the box a clumsy attempt by big Dan to win the ball resulted in Johnson going down for the penalty. Having seen it on TV since it is a fair call but Johnson did make the most of it. Reid stepped up to take the penalty and hit it hard and low, Day got down behind it but Reid was on hand to lift the rebound over the stranded keeper. Bizarrely Shittu wasn't even booked for the challenge and he could have conceded a second penalty 10 minutes later but the ref waved it away.
From there to halftime it was all Forest. Within a minute of the penalty Day pulled off a brilliant stop to deny Forest doubling the lead and it was only some inspired keeping that kept the score at 1-0 to halftime.
Rangers started the second half much brighter, Gallen pushing up a little further forward to bring us back to the usual 4-4-2 formation. Miller, again the pick of the outfield Rs, was involved in all of what we were doing well and he had an excellent 25 yarder turned aside by the Forest keeper. This forward momentum was rewarded with a goal when a freekick from Gino was flicked across the box for Santos to smash the ball against the inside of the post and the ball kindly ended up in the net.
The match and possible win was back on but then the defence was caught out again as a fairly regulation cross was not dealt with and Lester headed in for 2-1 Forest. Lester was far from the tallest player on the pitch and the defence will be disappointed the ball wasn't dealt with better.
Ollie made some changes, bringing in Cureton and McLeod for Ainsworth and Cook, Gallen dropped back into midfield, Miller moved out to the right and Cureton joined Furlong up front.
Rangers pushed hard for an equaliser. Gallen had two shots that were close and McLeod tried a cheeky lob from near the edge of the box but an equaliser failed to come. Cureton also had a decent shout for a penalty turned down. Forest, understandably, slowed the match right down. Andy Reid was booked for respotting a QPR freekick, something for a player of his undoubted talent that was completely unnecessary. I would imagine he will move onto better things during the forthcoming transfer window.
Man of the Match - Chris Day, without him it could have been six again though a special mention for an excellent debut from Adam Miller, seems to be a good prospect.
