QPR completed a woeful year in woeful fashion on Sunday with a trouncing to Brendan Rodgers’ Liverpool, who in reality had won the game after just 3 minutes. They were uninspired, lacklustre, and massively out-played and after the game the gaffer’s words in his post-match interview failed to impress.
I don’t know if fans of a club that has completely refurbished their starting XI want to hear that Liverpool (who are having an average season themselves) are unplayable. He makes it seem like he was managing Stockport county against Juventus. He begins to list the quality players that Liverpool have at their disposal but fails the ‘rule of three’ by stopping after the obvious Gerrard and Suarez. Who else Harry? The ‘great’ Henderson or Downing?
His excuse is insulting to fans of the R’s. To say that the 0-3 score-line was unstoppable and that attacking after it’s inevitability had come to pass would only make them loss worse is unacceptable from a manager who’s meant to have the answers to the questions the opposition pose. Trying to distract with talk of a estimated £150m cost for Liverpool‘s team is very rich when QPR have bought more players than a kid with half a Subbuteo set.
The problem was clearly that a lot of the players shouldn’t have bothered turning up. Sure Liverpool’s possession and movement was great and would prove a massive hurdle for any team, but you rarely see a performance so dire from the minnows in La Liga when they travel to the likes of Camp Nou to take on Barcelona, do you?
Their players (mainly the overpaid Prima donna type) are very low on confidence right now and that makes it tough to work hard and better yourself as a squad. At the start of that game they needed to work hard, shut Liverpool out and make them question their methods, but very few of them took it upon themselves to do so.
I couldn’t name their starting XI because only half of them had some sort of impact. Jamie Mackie, Clint Hill, Sean Derry and in particular Ryan Nelsen showed the commitment and attitude that a relegation-battling team must show, but unfortunately for the home side, the others did not.
It was so obvious that the interviewer even asked Redknapp about their levels of effort, however in true Redknapp style he panned the question away, talking about Liverpool‘s strengths rather than his weaknesses – but it was evident he knew, compounded by the fact that he took Cisse off at half time.
Have a watch for yourself: