Hello people,

Right here, right now, I am ready to report about the first part of matches in season 9. Trying to play Football Manager 2012 as quickly as I can. Luckily, I got some additional free time for that.

But the start produced by The Rangers is very disturbing.

16 matches: 7 wins, 4 draws,  5 losses.

Last season Q.P.R. managed to get into winning streak and capture leadership with 3-5 points of distance to the 2nd position. Now… you see… Something strange happened. Normally such kind of start below expectations is provoked by numerous squad changes. But I bought 2 players only…

 

Community Shield. Vs Man City

The bad row of matches started with defeat at Wembley stadium. Q.P.R. had all chances to win the game. But inefficiency in attack doesn't allow to do that. Moreover, we got 3 unexpected and pretty weird goals.

Read more about the match

 

Premier League

6 points distance from PL leaders is not too much of course, but it's still very annoying. Arsenal, Manchester United, Manchester City have better players in their squads. They didn't fail the PL season start, have great morale level… It will be really tough to compete with the 3 grands for the title.

The main reason of our poor start is a strangely low attack efficiency in home matches. Q.P.R. scored just 17 goals in 10 matches having 3 forwards upfront. It differs much to results I had in the last season.

Look how many points Queens Park Rangers lost due to missed shots:

Q.P.R. - Arsenal 1:1	Q.P.R. - Wolves 0:1
Q.P.R. - Bristol City 1:1	Q.P.R. - Wigan 1:1

 

The best match of the period is the one against Manchester United. My boys managed to keep consistency through the whole 90 minutes and win the game confidently.

 

Champions League

Another weird start in the tournament. Here we got very equal group where any of the opponents can qualify into the next rounds. Interesting that all clubs (apart from mine) are leading in their national championships.

Rubin impressed me with their desire to win and smart team moves. More or less equal match resulted in 0:2 loss.

Than we got a victory over Twente and thought that it's OK, we will win the group. But suddenly Toulouse disappointed Q.P.R. fans scoring 4 out of 5 target shots whereas my players managed to change scoreboard numbers 3 times only. It was said because of large advantage we had. Again and again strikers didn't cope with pressure failing many goal chances.

 

We had to win the next match against Toulouse at home. Moreover, I was pretty confident of that. Team leaders Fleck, Douglas Costa, and Fierro supported my belief in them scoring 3 times.

 

Carling Cup

Q.P.R. is the last season Carling Cup winner. This is why it's even more pity to leave the tournament at the starting round. Carousel of mistakes produced by all my defenders and especially goalie ter Stegen became a main reason of the loss. What a shame!

 

Q.P.R. players

This time I am not happy with performance produced by my players. As you see there are just 8 persons with average rating higher than 7.00. It means a lot.

First of all I would like to criticize strikers:

- somehow Daniel Bazan lost his backsight, very low percentage of shots on target - 31%.

- Fierro failed to score more than 1 goal in the first 8 matches. But then he returned his great form.

- Alonso Romero totally forgot how good he was in the end of the last season. Now he has the lowest average rating in the squad.

Goalkeeper ter Stegen was very unconfident in several matches.

Ezquerra and Alessandro. Both are young and have adaptation problems making quite many mistakes. Time should pass to see if they can perform more reliably.

 

Douglas Costa

Only one striker showed excellent.  Douglas Costa managed to score 8 goals and make 2 assists helping our team much.

Looking into his shot stats I see Douglas Costa is having a top form. He has never been so brilliant in attack before.

 

Upcoming matches

Will Q.P.R. be able to catch up Premier League leaders? That's the main question. For now I have no answer. But I believe all title struggle is ahead.

Excited to blog for you,

Vitaliy Mokosiy