‘A Half Season Of Two Halves’

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‘A Half Season Of Two Halves’ – The Lowdown On QPR

Queens Park Rangers’ upturn in form will lead to them arriving at King Power Stadium in confident mood, according to London Football Writer, Ian McCullough.

2025-01-11T09:00+00:00

by Sam Jones

Published

11 Jan, 2025

‘A Half Season Of Two Halves’ – The Lowdown On QPR

Queens Park Rangers’ upturn in form will lead to them arriving at King Power Stadium in confident mood, according to London Football Writer, Ian McCullough.

Sam Jones

2025-01-11T09:00+00:00

‘A Half Season Of Two Halves’ – The Lowdown On QPR

Queens Park Rangers’ upturn in form will lead to them arriving at King Power Stadium in confident mood, according to London Football Writer, Ian McCullough.

Sam Jones

2025-01-11T09:00+00:00

‘A Half Season Of Two Halves’ – The Lowdown On QPR

Queens Park Rangers’ upturn in form will lead to them arriving at King Power Stadium in confident mood, according to London Football Writer, Ian McCullough.

Sam Jones

2025-01-11T09:00+00:00

‘A Half Season Of Two Halves’ – The Lowdown On QPR

Queens Park Rangers’ upturn in form will lead to them arriving at King Power Stadium in confident mood, according to London Football Writer, Ian McCullough.

Sam Jones

2025-01-11T09:00+00:00

Queens Park Rangers travel to Leicester City in the Emirates FA Cup Third Round
Ian McCullough summarises the season so far for the EFL Championship side
Saturday’s fixture is a 2pm kick-off with tickets available to purchase HERE

The Emirates FA Cup campaign begins for both clubs at this weekend’s third round stage, with Filbert Way playing host to Saturday’s 2pm kick-off between Leicester City and the EFL Championship outfit.

Currently sitting 13th in the second tier standings, an excellent festive period has brought Rangers out of relegation danger and into the security of mid-table, beginning the New Year by winning successive home fixtures.

“It’s buzzing at the moment,” the journalist said. “They’ve won back-to-back games, beating Watford and Luton, albeit with a very fortunate winning goal, but they played Luton off the park and should have won by three or four. They’ve lost one in 11 and it’s been a half season of two halves.

It's now two in two for the Swiss striker.

“At the start of the season, they just couldn’t win at home and now they’ve won five in a row there. So many clubs have had this, but it all comes down to having too many injuries. They had 10 players out and playing centre midfielders at centre-back and left-backs at right-back and makeshift strikers.

“That led to stumbling across a couple of kids who are in the academy. Kieran Morgan, who is only 18, has played central midfield and done really well. He was released by Spurs in the summer and their loss is QPR’s gain.

“Ryan Colley is 19 and there’s a couple of loanees. Harrison Ashby from Newcastle is 21. Then the experience of Sam Field and [Michael] Frey up front the big Swiss striker who is in a bit of form at the moment.

“Just getting players back fit and then winning games means confidence rises. They were bottom of the table in November and never a team who should have been there. QPR are a mid-table team and where they are now is probably where they should be. They are certainly not a relegation team, but they’re quite a young team.”

The man at the helm.

The FA Cup has not been a competition of great success for the Rs over the years but having defeated Leicester in their league trip to Filbert Way last term, combined with the current form shown by Martí Cifuentes’ side, there will be plenty of confidence that an upset is possible.

McCullough explained: “They’re heading to Leicester in confident mood and they will fancy their chances. They’ll go there to win and they won there last year. The way Cifuentes wants to play, with more open, attacking football, at the start of the season results weren’t going their way, so he’s had to be a bit more pragmatic.

“He has adapted and it’s working. I’d imagine Leicester will have a lot of the ball and Rangers adopting a similar mindset to what they did last year and try to pick them off. [Ilias] Chair scored that way and it was against the run of play.”

A safe pair of hands between the sticks.

In terms of team selection, the number of injuries somewhat limits the Spaniard’s options to rotate, although several players will be keen to show what they can do against higher level opposition, having had to settle for a place on the bench in recent weeks.

“By and large, I imagine he’ll go with quite a strong team,” he added. “They don’t have the biggest squad, although they have some options on the bench who are first team quality players. He might change it around a little bit from Wednesday but I don’t think it will weaken the team that greatly.

“The goalkeeper will probably change. [Paul] Nardi, the French goalkeeper they bought in the summer, has been really good and very impressive. His understudy, Joe Walsh, is a young kid from Gillingham who has had to bide his time with loans elsewhere, but he finished last season and looked pretty good.

“He played in the EFL Cup earlier in the season and I imagine he’ll start in goal. Jake Clarke-Salter, who is arguably their best defender, may come in for Morgan Fox, who scored against Luton on Tuesday.”

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