The Mark Hughes era kicks off on Sunday afternoon when
Queens Park Rangers travel to Newcastle United. After a bittersweet week in our
history it’s time to let the football do the talking and get this season back
on track with a good performance.
Match: Newcastle United v Queens Park Rangers Venue: St James Park Competition: The Premier League Date: Sunday 15th January 2012 Kick off time: 13:30
The best news for QPR comes from the opposition team sheet as
it won’t include Demba Ba. The Toon’s top scorer is on African Cup of Nations
duty along with Chiek Tiote so neither are available to Alan Pardew this
weekend.
Newcastle also have a few players on the long term injury
list with Steven Taylor (Achilles), Sammy
Ameobi (knee) and Sylvain Marveaux (groin) all out of action. Peter
Lovenkrands misses out with a calf injury too however Danny Guthrie is fit
again having been sidelined with a groin problem since early December.
Things aren’t much easier for Mark Hughes who must hit the
ground running without both of his best midfield players. Joey Barton remains
suspended, serving the second of his three match ban after his red card against
Norwich, whist Alejandro Faurlin is out of the season following his terrible
ACL injury suffered during the MK Dons FA Cup game.
Adel Taarabt and Armand Traore are our representatives in
action in Africa and are also unavailable as a result so the new R’s boss will
have a lot of thinking to do ahead of his first match in charge.
Newcastle might have slipped out of The Champions League
places since we last met but they are still sitting pretty in seventh spot with
33 points after an exemplary first half to the season.
A run of one win from eight games from mid November to New Years
Eve looked like it might threaten to derail their strong opening to this campaign
though. During that time they had some disappointing results including defeat
at Norwich, a home loss to West Brom and a stalemate with Swansea at St James
Park. A 2-0 win at Bolton was the only bright spot from this poor run.
However they bounced back in fine style, kicking off 2012
with a 3-0 home triumph over Manchester United and shrugged off the absence of
Ba last weekend to see off Blackburn 2-1 and move into The FA Cup fourth round.
Unlike much of this
division we have tangled with tomorrow’s opponents in recent years, The Toon’s
relegation to The Championship meant the two sides met in 2009/10 with the away
fixture ending in a one all draw and the home game seeing Newcastle win 1-0 and
lift the divisional trophy at Loftus Road. In the fantastic documentary “The
Four Year Plan” Amit Bhatia remarked whilst watching these events “that’ll be
us next year”. How right he was.
Our last two Premier
League meetings at St James Park have ended in 2-1 defeats. Two Peter Beardsley
goals did for us in 1996 whilst Beardo and Paul Kitson were on the score sheet
in the previous season. Prior to that though we had a run of four games up
there without defeat winning three and drawing one.
In 1986 John Byrne and
Gary Bannister scored the goals in a 2-0 win, our first at St James’ for four
years. The following season a David Kerslake penalty earned us a 1-1 draw and
in 1989 Mark Stein and Colin Clarke helped
us triumph 2-1.
Newcastle slipped down the
divisions after this before climbing back into the top flight under Kevin
Keegan and we met again in October 1993 when Les Ferdinand and Bradley Allen both
scored in another 2-1 win. That proved to be the last time we’ve taken three
points back home from St James Park.
Alan Pardew has had
something of a chequered career, he has been successful in flashes, disappointing
in others but his rather off handed, arrogant manner means he struggles to
endear himself at times.
At Reading he brought them
up from the third tier into the second and followed that up with a fourth place
finish in the then Division One. Soon West Ham started making come get me eyes
at him though and he couldn’t resist the lure of Upton Park. Despite Reading
refusing the East Londoners permission to talk to their manager he quit forcing
a messy dispute before eventually taking over The Hammers some weeks later.
That season saw
West Ham beaten in the play off final but the following campaign he went one
better. After an iffy start to the season that saw fans heavily questioning
him, he returned The Hammers to the top flight with a play off final victory
over Preston. A top ten finish and an FA Cup final appearance followed but
things took a turn for the worse in 2006/07 and by December he was sacked with
West Ham slumping towards the bottom of the table.
It took him just
two weeks to bounce back into management when fellow strugglers Charlton named
him their new boss. He couldn’t do enough to save them though and he was
relegated for the first time in his career. A mid-table finish in The
Championship disappointed the Addicks fans in 2007/08 but a relegation struggle
the next season proved the last straw. They forced the board to act and Pardew
was removed in November 2008.
A short spell with
Southampton followed. Then in League One and hampered by a ten point deduction
he did incredibly well to keep them in play off contention but ultimately
missed out on promotion. A Football League Trophy victory provided the
consolation prize but he was sacked early in the 2010/11 campaign after
clashing with the Saints Chairman.
That left him
unemployed until December 2010 when Newcastle bizarrely dismissed the man who
had just returned them to The Premier League, Chris Hughton, and opted to
replace him with Pardew. It appeared to be a strange, sideways move for the
club at the time and there was much talk of him being gambling buddies with The
Toon management. He signed a long term contract too, a five year deal, which
only made the situation seem all the more unusual.
Last season saw
them finish in a comfortable twelfth place however this year has defied everyones
expectations. Even Newcastle fans, who never really wanted Pardew appointed,
have had to sit back and accept the job he is doing for them which is nothing
short of fantastic right now.
Mark Hughes is only the third QPR manager to take charge of
The R’s in January, the other two where Mick Harford in 2010 and Gordon Jago in
1971. Both of their first games were also away from home and both ended in
draws.
Hughes will be the fourth different manager to take charge
of QPR at St James Park in the last four meetings between the sides there.
Hughes has never won a debut management game away from home.
He was beaten at Manchester United in his first Fulham game in 2010 and by EB
Streymor with Manchester City in 2008. His first game for Blackburn did result
in a win but that was at Ewood Park against Portsmouth in 2004.
An eight year spell with Oxford United saw my reputation
grow and I was part of the England under 21 side that won the European
Championship in 1984.
I signed for QPR for £260,000 and scored on my debut in a
3-0 win over West Ham at Upton Park.
I left Loftus Road after two seasons, following my old R’s
boss to St James Park with Rangers making a £40,000 profit on my fee.
The answer to the
previous who am I was Rowan Vine
Mark Bowen "Every game is a Cup Final for us coming into the Club, the games
are coming thick and fast.
"As staff, we've got a good
record of getting results at Newcastle. It will be a formidable task for us up
there, but we've had a good few days of training and we're looking forward to
it.
"There
are very small margins in the Premier League, preparation is absolutely key and
we'll leave nothing to chance. Over the next five months, it's all about
getting results and putting points on the board as soon as possible”.
Joey Barton “We
have got to look forward now as a unit and concentrate on maintaining our
status in the Premier League. It is not going to be easy. There are going to be
a lot of battles ahead.
"When a new man comes in the intensity of training goes
through the roof because people are out to play for places and perform. Hopefully
we can build a bit of confidence from that and get a couple of good results on
the board.
"This is going to be a
testing two month period for us now because we are playing a lot of teams in
and around us in the league."
Alan Pardew "The players are going to want to impress Mark
Hughes, and there will be a few new ideas on the training ground, which a
different manager is going to bring,
"You get an uplift -
there's no doubt about that. What Mark and his team will be hoping is that not
only do they get an uplift on Sunday, but they get one going forward. It has a
galvanising effect, and is something we are going to have to be on our guard
for."
We’ve not confirmed any new signings and with the
registration deadline for the weekend now gone perhaps this will be the perfect
opportunity for the squad to show the new boss just why they should stay in his
future plans.
Certainly it’s going to be a struggle to put a decent side
out, particularly in central midfield where Hughes is going to be shorn of his
two best players.
The loss of Ale Faurlin is a massive blow and means we will
now have to strengthen that area of the squad when perhaps we might have got
away with diverting those funds elsewhere. The absence of Joey Barton also adds
to the problems, whatever my personal distaste for our captains personality
there is no doubt he is an important player for us and will be even more so
with Faurlin now sidelined. Let’s hope this manager meets with Barton’s high
standards.
It’s going to be a long old trek for Rangers fans but one we
can make with a mixture of hope and curiosity. Hope that the players might start to put in a
shift under a boss they will have little choice but to impress after
chronically letting down both us and their former manager in recent weeks and curiosity
as to exactly what sort of QPR we are likely to see under Hughes.
Newcastle will also be looking to impress, shorn of Demba Ba
it’ll be interesting to see how potent they remain as a Premier League force
and I’m certainly thankful that the Senegalese man
is away on international duty.
I really don’t know how
this one will go especially as we still have the same frailties at the back and
now a heavily weekend midfield too. Any other week I’d be starting on this five
hour trek full of trepidation and expecting a beating but the arrival of a new
manager means I’m sure we’ll see a big step up in performance and you just can’t
tell how much of a bounce that might give us.
For the sake of being
positive I’m going to pick us for a draw this week which I think would be a
fantastic result in the circumstances and ten quid on one all gives pretty good
odds of 6/1 too.
Don’t forget you can follow
all the action from Newcastle tomorrow through our Twitter feed, just clink the
link below to follow @qprnet.
