It was all just so typically Typical QPR in the first half at struggling Portsmouth on Boxing Day, but the team did at least show character and powers of recovery enough to salvage a point from another Christmas no-show – a comeback inspired and personified by captain Jimmy Dunne.

In the opinions arms race it’s important to really armour up.

Nobody’s going to let you have five minutes on TalkSport to tell Jason Cundy that QPR played quite well at the weekend. Subscribers are not going to flood towards your Substack for 1,500 words on Reece Norrington-Davies’ steady, 6/10 start to life as Rangers’ emergency cover left back. Clout is not achieved with calm, reasoned Tweets, taking into account all extenuating circumstances and relative points from what’s gone before. How about hyping up the youth team's trialist left back as the next Clive Wilson instead?

You don’t display “ball knowledge” by praising quiet, consistent effectiveness. No, you describe Sam Field as some sort of Satanic spawn for his inability/refusal to turn around and play the ball forwards, for clicks; while rating Jonathan Varane as a £10m+ “baller” despite his inability/refusal to turn around and play the ball forwards, for likes.

The internet turns us all into monsters. There are never just victories, or defeats. Each win is a portent for play-off glory to come, each loss a catastrophe from which the club will be lucky to recover. It can’t just be “bad”, it has to be “literally the worst QPR performance I’ve ever seen”. This despite the obvious massive fucking elephant in the group chat that when a club has been as poor/mediocre for as long as ours has it is vanishingly unlikely the worst you’ve ever seen them play (ever) is the game just gone.

Everything should be judged against losing 6-1 away to a relegated Blackpool side managed by a mostly retired Mick McCarthy – a result that, by the way, was Blackpool’s only win in nine games, seven of which they lost, none of which they scored more than a goal in.

It’s never as good as we think, nor as bad (apart from that night), but I’m not shifting many Patreon subscriptions with that am I? Clearly. So, in the interests of a bit of hyperbole, if you did want to look for some of the absolute worst examples of QPR being QPR, then Boxing Day might be a good place to start.

Last season there really was not debate – the 3-0 loss at Swansea City the day after Christmas was certainly as bad as Marti Cifuentes’ team got across the 46 games, and the first half in particular was as bad as any Rangers team has played for some time. More candidates the year before, when Gareth Ainsworth started the season 4-0 down at Watford by half time and spent most of the subsequent away games acting like little old us were just lucky to be at Elland Road for the night, but, again, a 2-0 loss at Millwall on December 26 was a performance so poor it effectively ended the careers of several players here who Marti Cieuentes simply refused to pick again afterwards.

If you can’t remember the televised 0-0 at Cardiff the year before I certainly don’t blame you for that. Just be grateful your arteries didn’t harden to the point of actually killing you while watching it – although, to be fair, I’d choose death over sitting through it again if those were my two options. In 2021/22 our Sky Overlords did us the service of moving the game to the 27th to give us half a chance, so we only lost 1-0 at home to Bournemouth, but 2020 was much more on brand. A 2-0 home loss to Swansea had Lee Hoos and Les Ferdinand deep in conversation at the front of the director’s box with us all locked down and pressing our noses against the stream while Mark Warburton dangled on a thin string.

Year before, lost at Reading, John Swift scored, because of course. You have to go back to 2018 for a win, or even a goal. The R’s haven’t scored away from home on this date since 2015 (lost anyway, at Ipswich), and before that it was 2008 (drew 2-2 at Charlton, You R’s). We’ve won eight Boxing Day games in my lifetime and, well, mind your own business, but that’s a while. There hasn’t been an away win on this day since 1967 and if you think that must mean QPR don’t play away from home on Boxing Day very often then, sorry to be that guy again, it turns out only Blackburn play away on this day more than us among the 24 Championship teams.

Julien Stéphan says the group spoke about all this in the build-up. Well, if you’re one of those who thinks the “we never win in game three of a three-game week” and “we always lose to a team that hasn’t won for ages” stuff can become self-perpetuating then there was plenty of ammunition for you at Fratton Park yesterday afternoon. QPR took each of the tactics that had worked so well against Leicester, each of the things we’d most enjoyed about that game, all of the factors that added up to that thumping 4-1 victory, and ditched them in favour of doing the exact opposite. Less self-fulfilling, more self-immolation.

(I Googled the latter just to check the term and it offered me some numbers to call, if you’ve been affected by anything you’ve read in today’s match report let me know and I’ll pass them on.)

Against a Portsmouth team with one win five, which would finish the day in the bottom three, and was missing its best player Josh Murphy plus stand out defender Conor Shaughnessy, Rangers were a distinct second best throughout the first half. The home team were more aggressive, more intense, more effective with the ball, had greater urgency without it and were just an all-round far better side. They looked like they’d been on performance enhancers, we looked like we were racing Justin Gatlin while full of Christmas dinner.

The passing out from the back returned with a vengeance, on a ground where it was least effective and most beneficial to the opposition last season. Stéphan said he’d watched that game in the lead up to this... perhaps he had the wrong tape in the machine? Stick Mrs Brown’s Boys on next time Jules, I’d rather watch that than this. On a day when Jake Clarke-Salter was injured once more and Steve Cook had to play left centre back, the return of the dreaded “game model” seemed… try and think of word that isn’t a swear… ill-timed. Well done, Clive. Stand down LFW counsel (unsalaried).

I love Steve Cook, I think he’s been a terrific signing for us, but he’s a player late in his career now who always had very particular strengths and weaknesses. A desperate last-ditch clearance inside the six-yard box, emerging from nowhere to save his team mates just as Colby Bishop honed in for a second half tap in right in front of the away end, is where Steve Cook eats. Asking him to play out from the back, against Portsmouth, isn’t it. Nicolas Madsen and Jonathan Varane offered virtually no help first half, never showing or wanting the ball, and our own attempt at a press was so misguided it often ended up with Cook 100 yards from his own goal charging up on their ball player. Nevertheless, when we have a left sided centre back who can run us 15-20 yards up the pitch past that first opposition press, or pass us 30-40 yards with good, effective ball to the left side, it transforms us. It’s why Clarke-Salter is so important and his injuries so frustrating, and why Ronnie Edwards looked like a God in this team. If that horse isn’t running, pick a better one for the course in front of you. Stop trying to scale Ben Nevis in a bloody Nissan Cube.

The Londoners, like the last time the sides met, seemed intimidated and surprised by the physical aspects of the game.

Amadou Mbengue, so brilliant against the Foxes last time out, had a wild afternoon. So hilariously dominant against Arsenal and Juventus alumni Stephy Mavididi, here he got skinned twice in the first five minutes by Harvey Blair on just his fourth ever league start. Mbengue repeatedly went down looking for free kicks he was never going to get from experienced referee James Linington and conceded possession as if he was being sponsored to do so – passing accuracy of 65%, giving the ball away basically every other time he had it.

(Burrell, 50%, and Kone 54%, literally gave the ball away every other time they had it. Varane tried 28 passes, and a third of those went to Portsmouth players - a competent central midfield performance in a winning team at this level is double the first number and half the second. Dozzell played 69 passes with an accuracy of 85.5%.).

Callum Lang, meanwhile, was giving Norrington-Davies all he wanted on the opposite flank. A testing afternoon for the Sheff Utd loanee which finished with him taking a late cross right to the gentleman’s area. Pray silence please, a moment of respect while we await the arrival of the St John’s Ambulance. Sam, you’re going on, take a bucket of cold water and a sponge with you. Bad news for Daniel Bennie, who had been due to come on instead, but not half as bad as it was for Sweet Rhys. Thoughts and prayers.

Koki Saito was too easily bullied on one side, Karamoko Dembele – another who was magnificent in the previous game – didn’t want to know on the other. A misstep from the manager, for me. This felt like a Paul Smyth game. Games like that you need your attacking players to attack, which Saito can do, but you also need them to defend and to mix the physical stuff. In the nicest possible way Smyth is a niggly little prick, perfect for Portsmouth away, Saito's too light and too nice. Isaac Hayden came on later and got booked, but he got booked for giving a foul away when a foul needed to be given away and I didn’t mind that at all. He’s another I think we’re underusing a bit - Varane is in very patchy form at the moment and getting a pass from fans for a lot of things Hayden, Field etc would get caned for.

We’ll see what happens at West Brom but it feels like we went skilful and lightweight here against Portsmouth, expecting to dominate with the ball, and got bullied when it was more of a Field, Smyth, Hayden game. Then at The Hawthorns, against Ryan Mason’s West Brom, we’re going to have to bring a lot of those sorts of players into a much more technical battle. The wrong trousers, Gromit. The wrong trousers.

More to the point, though, this is exactly what I talked about in the preview. It doesn’t matter who you pick, sometimes it is about mentality and the identity and ethos of the club. The John Sitton rant – “good players want to be good players all the time”. Stéphan even said, pre-game: “We will see, if we are a very good team that means we understand that every time, every game we need to switch and we need to prepare.” He’s acknowledged that if we play even at 90%, just 10% off, we’ll get beaten.

He knows the problem, but can he solve it? Your manager makes a big point of it in his pre-match and then you chuck in this first half. Worse still it was largely the players who’d been so good, so electric, the previous week, who were the biggest problem children here – Mbengue, Dembele, Saito, Madsen…

It’s no good, in the context of a play-off push, playing out of your skin one week because you’re up for it and the old manager is in town and you’re bearing a grudge or whatever it is, only to play like a tart the next because it’s cold and it’s Fratton Park and it's Christmas and their full back is being a bit beastly to you. Good players want to be good players all the time, don’t you understand how profound that is, haven’t you examined the words?

The reason you’re playing for QPR, and the reason QPR are like they are, is because you and they follow that performance with this one. It’s a pure mentality problem, and it’s why they’re there, and you and I are here.

Second to every loose ball, Rangers weren’t even winning the 70:30 tackles, never mind the 50:50s. It was a first half dominated by Pompey’s Andre Dozzell, free to pick up the ball unchallenged and spread it about at will. When that’s the case, you’re losing midfield. When that’s the case, you’re losing the game.

At one point Dembele sat down “injured” so the team could come across for a conflab with the bench, but James Linington wasn’t having that and nor should he. It was to our detriment, but I wish more referees would clamp down on this trend of trying to artificially force “water breaks” into games by modern managers. I’d go one further and let the opposition restart while everybody’s over there colluding in the illusion there’s anything fucking wrong with him. Bollocks lads, we’re playing on here with or without you.

Blair had a shot deflected over by a desperate defensive block after Varane had given the ball away (again). Colby Bishop headed one of nine Pompey corners onto the base of the post. Steve Cook’s robust challenge in the penalty box may have yielded greater attention from a less lenient referee. Ben Hamer dived full stretch to his left to palm away Bishop’s shot after Mbengue had given the ball away and Varane had stepped himself up and out of play on the recovery. Then, from that corner, a back post header bounced past the keeper but thankfully all the way through the six-yard box, agonisingly out of reach of both Hayden Matthews and the bottom corner of the net.

The biggest surprise, the biggest positive, was that it was only 1-0 to the hosts at half time.

It felt like a real matter of time and, when Richard Kone made an absolute botch job of a clearance from another corner in stoppage time, Minder extra Terry Devlin steered in a richly deserved opener with Hamer unsighted by the crowd scene in front of him.

Annoying to get so close to half time and conceded but it had, to say the very least, been coming in every possible way. Rayan Kolli was standing behind us in the away end and the only bigger disappointment than him not being available to bring on at half time, for a tiring Burrell, was him not standing directly in front of me.

So, if you are still a mixture of angry, pissed off, surprised, frustrated, exasperated about Rangers’ performance yesterday I hope I’ve done it justice for you there with a suitable kicking. Stéphan used the word “intensity” a lot in his post-match, and that was exactly what we lacked. Typical QPR on Boxing Day, typical QPR following a good performance with a bad one, typical QPR in an awkward away game… typical fucking Leyton Orient. I get the strong impression the manager knows all about this, is as desperate to change it as we are, but is grappling with how. Physical beatings? Until morale improves?

Where this team is not typical of what we’ve been used to previously is its response to adversity. At Fratton Park in February Rangers followed a first half no show with an even worse effort in the second half; an opening Portsmouth goal was swiftly followed by a second. Just lately the R’s have been able to respond to blows, like the two occasions they fell behind at home to Hull - sometimes quite gut-wrenching blows that would have hobbled previous iterations of this team for weeks, like the last-minute Birmingham equaliser - and come back out swinging. When you do good, I use the green pen.

There had clearly been words said at half time. What’s French for “come see me Monday, you’ve got a fortnight’s notice”? It’s an old-fashioned hairdryer, by gar it’s been a while.

The visitors were a totally different outfit after the break. Madsen and Varane were much more like it, showing for the ball in midfield. Dozzell’s influence waned as he was finally pressed – everybody at QPR should know you kick that soft twat once and it's game over so it’s frustrating when it takes us 50 minutes to do so and I have to spend the first half watching him picking up free ball and spraying it about like a fucking sprinkler/actual footballer.

Dembele personified the chalk and cheese difference from half to half – so painfully weak and ineffective in the first, at the heart of so much good at the start of the second. Getting on the ball and making things happen. Like last week, remember that?

Rangers were back to tackling people, back to competing. And, lo, having been buoyed by all the encouragement they’d been offered in the first half, struggling Pompey quickly wilted under moderate pressure in the second. Given the amount of times they hoisted crossfield passes into the side stands they’d make quite a nice rugby union team - where that, of course, is the aim of the game. That and lighting each other’s farts in The Cricketers afterwards.

A great switch of play from left to right freed Dembele for a cross which Burrell sadly misjudged when afforded a free header in the box. A deep cross returned into the danger zone by Dembele gave Kone his own chance in the air and Schmid had to dive full length across his goal to improvise a save by the post. Dembele’s lovely soft shoe shuffle in midfield took two opponents out of the game and the resulting pass almost freed Mbengue for a run through on the goalkeeper. From that corner, Jimmy Dunne soared above all others to head home an equaliser.

I thought Jimmy was terrific in this game, amongst all the negativity. Really the only Ranger to emerge from the opening stanza with any credit at all and the only member of the team who looked like he understood what was required in this fixture and stood up to the opponent physically from the first whistle. I love it when he plays well. I grew up with Alan McDonald, I identify with a QPR team more when it's got a centre back like that, playing like this. Come and see me.

After that there was a shot on the turn from Richard Kone that looked in from the other end of the ground and had the 2,000 travelling faithful bobbing about beginning to celebrate but was actually rather embarrassingly tame and at the keeper. Kwame Poku, once again, looked forceful and exciting down the right side from the bench and I beg that we see a bit more of him in the coming weeks – particularly home games against struggling Norwich and Sheff Wed where the emphasis will be on us as home team and favourites to impress ourselves on the game rather than let it come to us. This another where a reasonably positive-ish result was achieved while the opponent had significantly more – 66.5% - possession.

A positive result is what it was. You may not agree and that’s fine, but aside from all the usual stereotypes and trite nonsense about Fratton Park being some sort of bloody citadel from which you have to be a side as good as Norwich or Sheff Wed to ever stand a chance of getting a result, it is difficult to turn around a performance as bad as QPR were here in the first half and not only get a result out of it but also change the momentum of the match and how you’re playing within it.

Stéphan said it – it’s not a bad result when you only play for half a game. That does show what was here for us if we’d strung together even 60 mins of passable performance but, still, most QPR sides would have lost this 2-0.

It was a different contest in the second half, with a completely different mentality from the away side, and there is a certain amount of begrudging credit due for that – though spending six minutes of stoppage time repeatedly conceding dangerous free kicks round the box felt like a pretty good way of undoing much of that hard work to me. Michi Frey’s impact from the bench stretched as far as an attempt to bring a ball out of the air so atrocious James Linington blew full time immediately to prevent further embarrassment. There could be no more, after that. I cannot wait for him to start at West Ham in the cup while Burrell and/or Kone sit out with “a minor knock in training”.

At one stage in the autumn QPR had the best away record in the Championship – finishing last season with three straight wins and starting this year with three wins and a draw from the first six. That’s gone awry a little of late, with only one success against a poor Blackburn side to show for the last five road games, and two pretty chunky defeats in there at Carrow Road and the Riverside where Middlesbrough looked unplayable and have since taken one point and not scored in the next two games.

Forgive us, it’s only a day until we have to start preparing match previews again, so we’ll delve into a little of why that might be and whether the approach needs to be altered when we sit down and look ahead to West Brom tomorrow.

One thing is for certain though, start at The Hawthorns like we did here and we won’t be bringing back even the draw we rescued from this one.

Links >>> Ratings and Reports >>> Message Board Match Thread

Portsmouth: Schmid 6; Devlin 7, Matthews 6, Poole 6, Swanson 6; Dozzell 7, Kosznovszky 6 (Pack 69, 6); Lang 7, Chaplin 5 (Min-Hyeok 85, -), Blair 7 (Segecic 59, 6); Bishop 6

Subs not used: Bowat, Bursik, Kirk, Swift, Umeh, Williams

Goals: Devlin 45 (unassisted)

Yellow Cards: Segecic 62 (foul)

QPR: Hamer 6; Mbengue 5, Dunne 7, Cook 5, Norrington-Davies 5 (Field 90+1, -); Dembele 5 (Poku 71, 7), Madsen 5, Varane 5 (Hayden 71, 6), Saito 4 (Smyth 71, 6); Burrell 5, Kone 5 (Frey 85, -)

Subs not used: Bennie, Morgan, Morrison, Nardi

Goals: Dunne 61 (assisted Madsen)

Yellow Cards: Hayden 87 (foul), Norrington Davies 88 (foul)

QPR Star Man – Jimmy Dunne 7 Only one who looked like he understood the task throughout. Ended up rescuing his team with a third goal in eight since his move back to centre half. Two or three more 90-minute performances like this and we’d have won the game.

Referee – James Linington (Isle of Wight) 7 Stood for none of Rangers’ histrionics in the first half, and took decisive action against the nonsense ‘pretend you’re injured so we can have a bit of a mid-game team talk’ trick which is one of many scourges on the modern game and more referees need to deal with like this. There was plenty to disagree with, the linesman on the main stand side gave the impression he’d need a sat nav to find his own nipples, but I wish more games were refereed like this.

Attendance – 20,449 (1,926 QPR) Portsmouth made a similarly poor start to last season and were deep in the relegation mire going into Christmas. Thanks in part to two typically charitable donations to the cause from QPR home and away they staged a barnstorming second half to the campaign and stayed up with something to spare. Josh Murphy and Colby Bishop scored 18 collectively in that revival, and this year have just a single goal between them. It can still turn around for this lot, with a few Rob Atkinson-type January additions and players who have shown their ability at this level before coming back into form. But the atmosphere was absolutely febrile for our last visit, a real cauldron surrounding a game in which Rangers were smothered and pressed out of existence. This time, once the orchestrated clap along to the Ibiza Trance Anthems 1998 Sea Shanty had died away, nothing. Just a bell, in every sense of the word, and a feeling of genuine resignation around the place. Be interesting to see what happens here between now and May.

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Pictures - Reuters Connect