{"id":308094,"date":"2025-12-10T02:48:04","date_gmt":"2025-12-10T02:48:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/308094\/"},"modified":"2025-12-10T02:48:04","modified_gmt":"2025-12-10T02:48:04","slug":"queens-park-rangers-2-1-birmingham-city-kieran-morgan-earns-last-ditch-qpr-win-football-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/308094\/","title":{"rendered":"Queens Park Rangers 2-1 Birmingham City: Kieran Morgan earns last-ditch QPR win | Football News"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Substitute Kieran Morgan struck with the last kick of the match to fire QPR up to sixth in the Sky Bet Championship after a 2-1 win over travel-sick Birmingham.<\/p>\n<p>Blues thought they had secured a point when Patrick Roberts cancelled out Jimmy Dunne&#8217;s first-half header in the third minute of stoppage time.<\/p>\n<p>But Rangers went straight up the other end and Morgan, who only came on with four minutes of normal time remaining, crashed in a dramatic last-gasp winner.<\/p>\n<p>It secured a fourth win from their last five matches for the Hoops, while Birmingham have now lost seven matches on the road this season.<\/p>\n<p>QPR, without Moroccan playmaker Ilias Chair through injury, were inches from taking an early lead when a Rhys Norrington-Davies curler from the edge of the box flew just wide.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sdc-site-video__accessibility-message\" data-role=\"accessibility-message\">Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player<\/p>\n<p>                <img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/skysports-football-qpr_7106127.jpg\" alt=\"QPR\"  aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"sdc-site-video__poster-img excluded-image\" data-testid=\"sitewide-video-poster\"\/><\/p>\n<p>              Kieran Morgan scored this stunning goal in the 97th minute to secure a 2-1 win over Birmingham.<\/p>\n<p>Birmingham threatened through Demarai Gray, who was played in behind by Jay Stansfield, when he fizzed in a low cross which was just out of Marvin Ducksch&#8217;s reach.<\/p>\n<p>The hosts looked shaky at the back, but were beginning to find their feet going forward and Amadou Mbengue&#8217;s cross was nodded back across goal by Koki Saito to Paul Smyth, whose downward header was straight at Blues keeper James Beadle.<\/p>\n<p>The breakthrough came five minutes before half-time after Birmingham only half-cleared a corner.<\/p>\n<p>Saito swung the ball back towards the far post where Rangers captain Dunne rose to powerfully head his second goal of the season past Beadle.<\/p>\n<p>The Irish defender had scored a last-minute, 30-yard screamer to win the match the last time these sides met at Loftus Road, two seasons ago. This one was about 29 yards closer.<\/p>\n<p>After the break, Beadle just managed to get a palm to a Norrington-Davies cross with Dunne lurking behind him again.<\/p>\n<p>Moments later, with Birmingham making unnecessarily hard work of clearing their lines, Smyth stole the ball and crossed towards Mbengue, who could not convert at the far post.<\/p>\n<p>Richard Kone should have doubled QPR&#8217;s lead on the hour from Nicolas Madsen&#8217;s cross, but volleyed over from six yards out.<\/p>\n<p>Birmingham had barely registered an effort on goal all night, but as time ticked away and the homes side retreated, Gray fizzed in a low cross which zipped all the way to Roberts who finished at the far post.<\/p>\n<p>But Rangers won a free-kick at the death and Jonathan Varane laid the ball back to Morgan who, from 20 yards out, pinged a superb drive past Beadle to snatch all three points.<\/p>\n<p>The managers<\/p>\n<p>QPR&#8217;s Julien Stephan:<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;It was a lot of positive emotion just after a negative emotion.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;What a fantastic game we did, especially in the second half. I think it was a great game. Usually they are a team who shoots a lot and they shot three times, one on target.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Then what character after a bad moment. All credit to the players. It was amazing. It&#8217;s probably why we do this job, to share that emotion.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Birmingham&#8217;s Chris Davies:<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Obviously it&#8217;s a very painful defeat, as painful as it gets really, to get a goal in the last few minutes and then concede in the last seconds.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;In terms of the game itself we were too slow in the first half. The problem in some ways was the first goal, not the last.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We gave ourselves too much to do. There had not been a lot of football on show from either team and we needed to get to half-time 0-0 and build from there.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I don&#8217;t think we got in their box often. But staying in the game was a good sign and then we think can we get a point, which we nearly did.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Last-minute winners are the worst feeling in football and we have to take our medicine.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Substitute Kieran Morgan struck with the last kick of the match to fire QPR up to sixth in&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":308095,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[218,101,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-308094","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-football","8":"tag-football","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/308094","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=308094"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/308094\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/308095"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=308094"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=308094"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=308094"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}