Oh bollocks! I guarantee those were the words running through the minds of 9000ish long suffering QPR fans as Henrik Larrson scored the first goal after 63 seconds.

Those who would have been expecting the floodgates to open and for Celtic to flip us over and hump us would have been sorely disappointed. Don’t get me wrong, they could of, but they didn’t want to and I for one am grateful.

The last thing the ever fragile confidence of QPR’s squad needed was to be pummeled in the first pre-season friendly by the Old Firm champions. I won’t call them Scottish Champions as we all know nobody outside Glasgow gives an arse who wins the league or not.

But lets not get distracted by that. This was an average performance from a group of players who have probably barely met each other. It would be hard to expect them to have gelled into some sort of team at this stage.

After a nervy start, which resulted in a goal for Larrson, before we had even had a meaningful touch of the ball, you could visibly see the confidence of the players start to grow. Terrell Forbes in particular should be singled out for praise. He was at fault for the goal but after that largely had a 50 goal a season striker under control. He even started to bring the ball out of defence in the manner of a seasoned pro. The ovation he got when substituted in the second half paid testament to the fact that the Rangers management seem to have unearthed a gem.

Starting debuts also for Mohammed Barr (haven’t a clue if that is how you spell it), Chris Day and Steve Palmer. Day looked solid enough despite that fact that Tony Roberts was on hand to try and sap any confidence he had before the game had even begun. Palmer seemed to grow as the game went on but Barr remained anonymous throughout. He had the look of a player making his pro debut and not being quite sure what he was doing there.

With Thompson seemingly on his own up front he had little impact on a half in which Rangers barely had a touch of the ball. Wardley was trying to support but once again his shortcomings in the professional game were highlighted.  A half had passed and no shots on target, it all seemed a little too familiar.

The second half started with the usual round of substitutions, not that the bloke with the clipboard could be bothered to tell us about it, thanks for the Celtic subs though!

The second half saw the introduction of Leroy Griffiths. I think the words to describe him are big old unit. He looks promising though, and could be another of Olly’s non-league gems. Sammy Two-Bums also came on. I assume that all professional clubs have fines for players that return for pre-season out of shape, if so Sammy may well be out of pocket for a while. Never has such an arse graced the Loftus Road pitch since Trevor Sinclair departed!

As the half wore on it became apparent that Celtic were merely toying with us. This was mainly manifested by moving the Chelsea reject to centre back, how shit did they think our forwards were? They even tried to do us a favour by bringing another Stamford Bridge dud on in goal. I didn’t know Dimitri Kharine was even alive let alone plying his trade in Scotland. I am not sure how cold he thought it was but I think the tracksuit bottoms could have been dispensed with. Nice perm though!

Second half sub Lubo Moravcik added a second for Celtic and in doing so killed off any lingering hopes of a comeback we may have had.

I would pass comment on the rest of the players that came on, but as I don’t have the faintest idea who most of them were I won’t bother.

Decent performances from Bignot as always, the swarthy Frenchman in midfield, Bonnot I think, and maybe surprisingly Paul Bruce. Karl Connolly started brightly but seemed to fade badly in the second half. Peacock ran around a lot shouting at other people to cover his errors but still performed better than a lot of the rubbish we saw from him last term.

All in all a satisfactory display against a team who were playing well within themselves. It is probably not the game we would have chosen as the first friendly but at least they didn’t batter us.

On to the Watford game now and you never know maybe a shot on target to look forward to. It would be nice to see some of last years U-19’s coming through for a game. I know you can’t play everybody but people like Pacquette, Burgess and Cochrane deserve a fair trot. Oh, and a bit more information about the trialists wouldn’t go amiss, like their names!