The Pre-Match Warm Up: QPR v Wigan

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Published on Friday, 20 January 2012 00:01

Written by Ron Norris

After limping back into winning form over MK Dons on Tuesday night QPR now face a pressure league match when struggling Wigan visit Loftus Road on Saturday afternoon. A win could put a whole new emphasis on the destiny of this season. Defeat just doesn’t bear thinking about.




Match: Queens Park Rangers v Wigan Athletic
Venue: Loftus Road
Competition: The Premier League
Date: Saturday 21st January 2012
Kick off time: 3pm 




The big boost for Mark Hughes, and hopefully for QPR, is the return of Joey Barton after the midfielder completed his three match ban for his red card against Norwich.

Barton is able to return one league match earlier thanks to the MK Dons replay which means he’ll take his place in a really crucial game. Having spent the last few weeks concentrating on his tweeting perhaps Barton will take the opportunity of a new start under a new boss to finally show us he can be as prolific with his feet as he is with his fingers.

Alejandro Faurlin is out of the country undergoing surgery on the knee injury that will keep him out for the rest of the season whilst Adel Taarabt and Armand Traore are also in international waters, although for happier reasons, as they represent their countries in The African Cup of Nations.

Danny Gabbidon is said to be Hughes’ biggest injury concern. Tuesday’s match winner missed training this week with a hip injury and his participation is perhaps in doubt with Fitz Hall probably on stand by to step in.

Assuming we don’t make any new signings in time for kick off the side is likely to be similar to the one that started against MK Dons with Barton coming into midfield for either Shaun Derry or Akos Buzsaky and Heidar Helguson set to lead the attack.

There are no real headaches for Roberto Martinez as he has just one injury problem to concern himself ahead of this crucial match. Midfielder Dave Jones missed the Monday defeat to Manchester City with a calf strain and Martinez is not expecting the Manchester United youth graduate to feature until their next match against Tottenham.

Mohamed Diame is their African Cup of Nations absentee, he is representing Senegal in the tournament but other than that The Latics have a clean bill of health.




It’s not an understatement to say Wigan are really struggling this season. They have a quite awful record over the course of the campaign and are currently on a run of three defeats in a row which includes an FA Cup exit to Swindon.

They’ve only won once since the start of December, a 2-1 victory away to West Brom and that was only the third time they have taken maximum points all season.  Of course one of those three was against ourselves at The DW Stadium.

Their away form is marginally better than their home, they’ve taken seven points from the last twelve available on the road, winning at Sunderland as well as The Hawthorns and drawing with Stoke at The Britannia but were battered 5-0 at Old Trafford.

All things considered it’s either remarkable, or merely a reflection on the quality of the bottom end of the table, that they still have as much of a chance of getting out of this as anyone else.




Wigan are one of those sides that we’ve managed to keep separated from for most of our history,  in fact the two clubs have only shared a division for three seasons in total prior to the start of this campaign. 

Between 2001 and 2003 we were both in the third tier of English football but going in very different directions. Rangers were a mess and just starting to rebuild after relegation whilst The Latics were on the rise and finished up as Division Two Champions.

The four games played in that division favoured us overall, 2001/02 saw us win at The DW Stadium 2-1 via a last minute Ged Brannan own goal and draw at Loftus Road thanks to a late Kevin Gallen equaliser.  

The following season, Wigan’s title winning year, saw Andy Thomson secure us a point in Wigan but a Nathan Ellington goal at Loftus Road was enough for The Latics to secure their first ever victory over us.

The two sides were kept apart for a further term until we joined them in The Championship. We avenged the home defeat from two years previous with a 1-0 win of our own after Paul Furlong scored the only goal of the game. Whilst the away match saw us hold the home side to a nil nil draw in a game most notable for the debut of R’s legendary ‘keeper Generoso Rossi…..




Roberto Martinez is still a fairly young and inexperienced manager, but his two and a half years with Swansea was enough for Dave Whelan to decide that he was the man to replace Steve Bruce in 2009.

Martinez had returned to Swansea as manager towards the tail end of the 2006/07, having only left the club 18 months previously when Kenny Jackett released him from his playing contract and, in a twist of fate, it was Jackett’s job he took on. He kept Swansea in the League One play off hunt but a heavy home defeat to Blackpool saw them just miss out on sixth place.

Things went much better in Martinez’s first full season in charge though and he was named League One manager of the year when he steered Swansea to the divisional championship in 2008 finishing a massive ten points ahead of runners up Nottingham Forest. The momentum kept going for City’s first season back in The Championship and Martinez had them bothering the top half of the table all season but ultimately they fell just a little short in eighth place.

That summer both Celtic and Wigan made their interest in The Swans boss known but it was Wigan, and Dave Whelan’s promise that he wouldn’t be sacked for three years even if the club were relegated, that persuaded Martinez to walk out of Swansea. This provoked a fierce reaction from disappointed Swans fans whom he had promised that the only way he would leave The Liberty Stadium is if he was forced to.

He has now completed two full seasons at The DW Stadium, both of which have seen him achieve exactly what can be expected of him – Premier League survival. The 2009/10 campaign saw them finish in 16^th place, plenty good enough to survive but they did endure some fearful tankings, including a 9-1 defeat to Tottenham and an 8-0 home loss to Chelsea.

Last year they spent much of the season in the bottom three but stayed up on the last day as part of the “survival Sunday” drama with victory over Stoke. In the end they finished in 16^th place once again however they did pick up six more points overall and managed to keep their negative goal difference down to just -21, almost half that of the previous campaign.

Things have been even tougher for him this year though, widely praised for playing football “the right way” by pundits across all platforms, Wigan fans would perhaps settle for playing the wrong way a little bit more if it meant they weren’t bottom of the league with 15 points and the worst goal difference in the division.




QPR have only scored one goal against Wigan in the last 405 minutes of football played between these two sides.

Franco Di Santo’s two goals in August were the first Wigan scored against us since Nathan Ellington’s strike at Loftus Road in 2003.

Danny Shittu is the only player currently at the club who has played against Wigan at Loftus Road. He and Kevin Gallen played in all three home meetings between 2002 and 2004.




My 22 year playing career saw me turn out for fifteen different clubs although I am currently without one having left Oldham last summer.

My three years at Wigan proved to be the best spell of my career. I made 107 appearances including three against QPR during the Football League years.

My Rangers career could hardly be described as memorable though. I made just two appearances in Hoops after signing for the club 24 hours after the departure of John Gregory.

The answer from the last Who am I was Steve Palmer

Mark Hughes
“From my point of view, certainly, we need to improve our home form, I think if we can do that, it will have a marked influence on whether or not we're able to get as many points as we need.

“Obviously, if we can make trips to Loftus Road more difficult for our opposition teams than possibly they have been up until this point, then that will help us.

“Our performance level will be higher against Wigan [than against MK Dons]. It's still early days. The players are still learning what I need from them and vice-versa.

Roberto Martinez
"Inevitably when a new Manager takes charge things take time to click but against Newcastle his side looked very competitive, and it speaks volumes of their organisation and team-week that they limited the home side to just one shot on target.

"Probably this weekend the biggest influence they'll have is Joey Barton, who is returning from suspension and that will lift the team and the fans.

"But I do feel that as a team we're ready to go anywhere in the Barclays Premier League and be competitive, taking confidence from the strong way we finished our last game against Manchester City.

"Loftus Road is a typical football ground; a nice and enclosed environment which the team and fans make count.

"It's one of the aspects of our game that is slowly moving away with the introduction on new stadiums that lose a little bit of the typical English atmosphere, so it's certainly a venue we're looking forward to visiting.

"As a player you love playing in those atmospheres but I think we're experienced enough as a group to be mentally strong enough to play the game and not the occasion."

James McCarthy
"It's going to be another tough weekend for us away to Queens Park Rangers, but we've finished the game strongly against Man City and need to try and carry that over at Loftus Road.

"We're still in good spirits, we've been in this position before so we know what's required.  There's no looking down now, we'll go into every game confident of getting the points we need with the help of our fans behind us."




Wigan are having a torrid season so far but as I mentioned above are far from marooned at the foot of the table and much like ourselves will look to this game to really kick start their fight back.

Rangers may well have got the win we have been so desperate for against MK Dons on Tuesday night but, in typical QPR style, it hardly did much to lift the mood of caution despite everyone sticking to the “a win is a win” mantra.

Wigan might not be a fantastic Premier League side but let’s be frank nor are we and neither side have much to fear from the other on Saturday. This match could so easily shape the remainder of both our campaigns though so this is either going to be a real old slobber-knocker or we’re going to see two teams more scared of losing than winning.

This really has to be the start of a good run for us, with home games against Wolves, Fulham and Everton to follow this we have to be looking at winning all those before a tough looking end to the season starts to kick in. We’ve seen improvement under Hughes in his first two games but time is not a luxury for us right now so we need to see that improvement continue apace this weekend.

I’m going to back Rangers to do it though, I believe we will nick it in a tight affair and start moving in the right direction so this week’s tenner goes on a 2-1 home win with odds of 15/2


Don’t forget you can stay in touch with the action from Loftus Road on Saturday via our twitter feed. Just clicnk the image below and follow @qprnet


 

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