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BLIND, STUPID AND DESPERATE
 
04/05: Preview: Queens Park Rangers
Opposition opinion
by David Barton of Dave's Unofficial QPR Website

What happened last season?
Last season was a great season to be a QPR fan. We were outstanding at home staying unbeaten in the league at Loftus Road. The support from the QPR fans played a major part in this with the noise and numbers in the stadium being far better than during our Premiership days. Our away form was not so great but we did more than enough to get promoted and the celebrations at the end of the season will never be forgotten.

Some say we made hard work of promotion despite having some of the best players in the division but off field problems badly hurt us and could have cost us promotion. We lost giant defender Dan Shittu twice to cruciate knee injuries, fellow defender Clarke Carlisle went into a clinic with his drink problem, another defender Terrell Forbes was arrested over an alleged rape and during one week in March we lost every goalkeeper at the club through injury and had Steve Palmer pencilled in for goalkeeping duty until we were able to sign Lee Camp on loan a day before a vital game at Hartlepool. On top of all that we had plenty of other injuries and we lost our assistant manager Kenny Jackettt with just a few games to go which didn't help matters.

Life was never dull but the spirit within the club was superb with fans getting right behind the team and even holding a bucket collection and various other fund raising events to pay for Jamie Cureton to sign for us in January. Going into the last day of the season we needed a win to go up and we got it with a 3-1 win in front of 7,500 QPR fans at Hillsborough which was a nice way to end the season.

What's going to happen next season?
It's tough to tell to be honest. We have kept all of our better players from last season and the likes of Martin Rowlands, Chris Day, Gino Padula, Kevin Gallen and Paul Furlong should all be good enough to step up to the next level and do well whilst new boy Lee Cook should do well for us on the left. On the downside we lack quality in central defence and central midfield and the proposed signing of George Santos has not gone down too well among the fans.

Ian Holloway is an excellent manager though and I expect he'll add one or two new faces on loan to make sure we can compete at this level. I can't see us bothering the top of the table too often but we have a very hard working squad and a manager as enthusiastic as any in the league so I think we'll sit around mid table and probably flirt with relegation and the playoffs at various times but end up sitting nicely boring in about 14th place.

Soundbites (from assorted Census correspondents)

"The plural of Octopus should be Octopoeds not Octopi as is commonly thought. Octo and Pus (Eight Legs) is from the Greek not the Latin - and the pluralisation of pus in Greek is Poeds not Pi"

"Danny Shittu is a beast and you lot are lucky to be playing us while he's still injured. Lee Cook will score against you and have a blinder of a season for us. Paul Furlong is a God. Ian Holloway is a legend. I prefer Bitter to Lager (unless it is a hot day)."

"Pingu is from Switzerland"

"It is imposible to lick your own elbow"

"i used to go drinking in camden on sunday lunchtimes and my house is full of weird tat i bought in the market when i was pissed"

"My wife wanted to use the computer tonight. This cost me."

"Coventry is not as bad a place as people make out!"