Slade goes from ugly 5th former to striking sixth former in the space of two matches

QPR 2 Cardiff 2

For a long time Cardiff City was the guy who gets the girl back to her place, knows all the moves, lots of ball control but doesn’t score.

A man who can score

 

QPR looking as clueless as, well, as clueless as last season’s Cardiff City, score from an unlikely corner and then an illegal goal from a hand ball. A hand ball which only the myopic ref and his blind assistant missed.

But then the officials missed the handball from keeper Robert Green which was well outside the area. Would have been neat free kick and a sending off.

Cardiff were the better team, 62% possession, and at one point in the second half it had been 75%. Good team work too, with swift passing – yes a Russell Slade side playing with slick, quick passing. Rub your eyes and look again.

Lots of smiling Russell's 'cos I have given him a hard time in the past.

 

We just can’t score. Revell and Mason work hard enough, both show promise but we need them to deliver. We need goals from the forwards.

So Slade is suddenly looking better. He is the girl who was butt ugly in the 5^th form but arrives in the sixth with a new haircut and a decent set of tits. From zero to a bit of all right in no time. Maybe he cannot be dismissed so lightly. You couldn’t fault city for effort, determination or getting the ball forward.

You could fault them for not capitalizing on the possession advantage.

 

There again who knows. If Fulham and QPR are in the mix at the end of the season then this will have been a prized pair of points. I fear though that QPR will have to step up four or five gears to be mid table based on what I have seen. Fulham were like a sealed envelope, impossible to know anything about their contents just yet.

Whitts does it for me but then I might be alone in that.

Smiling Russell could last a little longer than many of us thought

 

Connelly troubles me. I admire the guy. I have seen him have some cracking matches in the past but too often in these first two games he has given away the ball more cheaply than bottle of a Cote de Rhone at Lidl.

Not hundred percent sure of Peltier either. If anything he is the solid unsung hero yet he made mistakes here. Not least giving away an unnecessary unforced corner and thus their first goal.

If Malone scores a couple more like that, in circumstances like these, then he will be forgiven buckets of errors. He came close with a similar effort against Fulham, about the same point in the match too. So it isn’t a fluke.

Surely Fabio will get a call back sooner rather than later? And I have always rated Declan John.

But again a cracker of game from the tough, skilful and ball hungry Pilkington. Maybe he tired towards the end but he ticked all the boxes throughout the match.

Noone had a brief chance to remind us that he could be better on the pitch than on the bench.

Ralls gets better, Moore redeemed his error against Fulham with good saves and more bite in the box.

Morrison and Dikgacoi are clearly going to be important to us. Yet at the same time we have cover for the both of them so they can be rested or absorb some yellow cards and injuries.

 

Impossible to say well done Russell until we see more games and know more about the quality of the teams we have played. But it would be churlish not to point out that this is a side unrecognisable from the despairing teams of last season. Not just in skill but in attitude. They want to play and they want to win. Surely that is going to count for something over the coming months.