Good point, bad point – Report
Sunday, 13th Sep 2026 14:40 by Clive Whittingham

QPR remain unbeaten away from home and in the midst of the early play-off picture after a spirited effort to take a draw from league leaders West Brom on Saturday morning.

Flavio Briatore wasn’t a big fan of draws full stop. “The difference from losing to drawing is the same, it’s one point. Five draws? Two wins is better.” Paulo Sousa was never likely to last long under that regime. I wonder though whether this week we’ve seen the difference between a positive draw and a negative one? A bad result on Wednesday followed by football’s archetypal “good point” on Saturday, albeit the same impact on the league table.

Charlton have started the season surprisingly well with just one defeat so far, but they’ve won none of their last four games now and looked a side of limited ability and ambition to me. Not arsed about having any of the ball, happy to sit back and rely on commanding centre back Lloyd Jones for long periods of time, best hope of a goal springing Tyreece Campbell on a counter attack. They drew 0-0 at home again on Saturday against a Portsmouth side I also haven’t been much impressed by to this point. Those are the sort of games a genuine promotion contender should really be looking to win, and unfortunately QPR struggled to penetrate and pose threat amidst a glut of injuries that hamstrung (literally) their team selection. I came away disappointed.

West Brom were also unfancied pre-season after a 2025/26 campaign in which they rattled through three managers and came within a whisker of playing third tier football for the first time since 1993. James Morrison was rewarded for a caretaker rescue act, completed impressively despite a late curve-ball points deduction, with the permanent gig in the summer. While I don’t usually rate that as a particularly smart idea for clubs (see Alan Sheehan in your textbooks) it’s been a strong summer of recruitment at The Hawthorns and they’ve gone off at some lick to top the fledgling league table with four wins on the board already. The Baggies looked much the better of the two teams, posing persistent threat in wide areas through the likes of Isaac Price, and to stand strong and get a point from the game while playing a long way shy of their best was a creditable enough outcome for Julian Stéphan’s team.

You certainly would have taken the draw at half time. West Brom were wholly dominant in the first 45, getting in on full backs Amadou Mbengue and Dennis Cirkin too easily and too often for the visitors’ liking and fizzing balls hither and thither through the penalty box. Mbengue had a particularly unhappy time trying to keep hold of Price and that right side of him and Kwame Poku was often exposed with Conor Townsend on the overlap from full back. From the opposite flank Nzingoula was allowed to run a long way before duffing a shot wide off team mate Myhre, then immediately Townsend flashed a low ball across the six-yard line without a touch. Toby Collyer, whose selection here means every single member of the West Brom squad has now already had minutes in the early season rotation, took the same route to a cut back on the half hour and how Heggebo’s powerful effort at the near post didn’t find the net I still don’t know this morning.

QPR – with a manager dressed like an extra from Quadrophenia and a team that looked like it forgot its gear and had to have a rummage through lost property – struggled to keep and progress the ball at all in the first 45. Paul Smyth becoming the latest to join the first half injury club and being left out there to try and run off what looked like a back complaint far beyond the point of it being a lost cause really didn’t help. He was forced to pull Nzingoula down right on the corner of the Rangers box after being showed a clean pair of heels by the Frenchman on 32 minutes, and was fortunate Dennis Cirkin was able to head the resulting free kick away. Leon Scarlett, still too young for a sponsor’s logo (lucky git), was the eyebrow- raising choice to replace Smyth. The 17-year-old looked understandably overawed by things to begin with but grew into the game and posed good threat in the second half – either way, he was fit and able to run about, which Smyth clearly wasn’t long before he was removed and Stéphan is perhaps fortunate not to have paid for that dithering with a goal.

In fact, so against the run of play as to actually be quite funny, it was Rangers who took the lead. Kwame Poku’s somewhat ropey beginning to the game suddenly blossomed into a clever intercept on halfway, nice exchange with Harvey Vale and Rumarn Burrell, acceleration into the West Brom half and then cute through ball for the Jamaican striker. On his own with four defenders, Burrell skilfully sat the first of them down and then saw his attempted chip of Max O’Leary cleared from the line straight into the face of Chris Mepham and back into the net. Burrell deserved the goal for the control and composure and will be niggled that our ever-prolific friend Own Goal gets a second for the campaign instead – Rangers have had 13 of these in the last two- and a-bit seasons – but overall team wise this was a beautiful smash and grab raid and it’s nice for Mepham to finally live out that childhood dream of scoring for QPR.

Annoying, though perhaps not too surprising given the run of things, that West Brom went straight up the other end and equalised. Callum Styles, only playing at right back because of an injury to one of our summer transfer targets Nolan Galves and suspension to Brayann Pereira after a midweek red card, used a crowd scene on the edge of the box as a screen for a curled 20 yarder that was past Pierce Charles before the goalkeeper even knew it had been struck in the first place. Styles later accomplished the not inconsiderable feat of taking a throw in to himself (indirect free kick, in case you were wondering) but this was a special strike, nicely executed.

Five league goals conceded by the R’s so far, four of them from outside the box, and when you look at the calm, composed, dominant displays at centre back from Jake Clarke-Salter and particularly Ronnie Edwards in the absence of Jimmy Dunne you can see why. Even when Stéphan’s team are not playing well, they can lean back and rely on the centre of their defence for reassuringly long periods of time. Goals like Styles’ here I’m not sure you can really legislate for.

Rangers were a good deal better after half time. Glen Kamara was introduced from the bench for Nicolas Madsen, still working his way back to fitness, and took greater control of the midfield than had been possible without him – though perhaps fortunate referee Ruebyn Ricardo chose to penalise Clarke-Salter for the first foul rather than Kamara for the second as they both sought to illegally halt a West Brom counterattack soon after Kamara had already been carded for a meaty tackle at the other end.

There was still plenty of work to do at the back end – Charles saved diligently low down from Price, Molumby headed wide when left unattended at a corner, Edwards stormed out of a wall to block a free kick from Price after a horribly wayward pass from Vale had put his team in the shit, Burrell ran nearly the full length of the pitch to help stop a breakaway that at one stage looked to be weighted four on one in the home side’s favour. QPR, though, started to create some stuff of their own. Burrell’s downward header at the back post from Vale corner was saved right by the post by Max O’Leary. When Scarlett got around his man and into the penalty area for a pull back it induced a panic through which Poku was able to brilliantly create space and time for himself but then saw a shot you were just waiting to hit the back of the net expertly saved. Credit the keeper? Should score really…

In the end, through the usual clutch of substitutions, I got the impression both teams were pretty satisfied with this outcome long before the end. Morrison did introduce new strikers – summer signing Barney Stewart and Jimmy-Jay Morgan who has five goals to his name already since escaping from the Cobham puppy farm to play some actual football for himself – but the game rather petered out. For QPR a fifth game in 15 days, for West Brom a seventh in 21, and my overarching feeling coming away from a ground on which Rangers are now winless in eight visits was… who was that for?

Sky continue to pursue a volume play while most in television talk about “fewer, bigger, better”. Their marketing is built entirely around this promise to show you in excess of 1,500 live football matches this year, but this total is mostly reached by bunging midweek League Two games and Freight Rover Trophy matches onto a buggy streaming service en masse during the week. How good, and watchable, are these games they’re using to push subscriptions?

QPR’s workload was compounded by having their Charlton away game played on Wednesday at 8pm instead of Tuesday, and then this one moved to Saturday morning at the behest of the broadcaster when there are already two other games on. Again, who is that for? I would have thought the audience for live Championship matches is a pretty finite thing, why are we splitting it three ways each Saturday lunchtime (with three games from the lower divisions thrown on top for good measure) at enormous inconvenience to the match going supporters (Bristol Rovers away at Grimsby, 12.30 kick off, outright cruel)? What should have been one of the games of the weekend – first v fourth, two attractive and well coached teams – petered out into a tired draw both teams were happy to shake hands on and play out without picking up any more injuries. Rangers’ problems with fitness and absenteeism have been chronic for the last two years, and Paul Smyth’s withdrawal will only make for more awkward questions at Wednesday’s fans forum, but the whole league is injury riddled and out on its feet a month into this new campaign. The schedule is ludicrous. It puts the players in harm’s way and makes for sloppy and unwatchable games between tired teams.

One of the things Rangers are getting particularly screwed with of late is these double aways. In the Championship when teams play ‘away fatigued’ (that is an away game after another game within three or four days) their win percentage goes down 15% versus the baseline. When it’s a double away (an away game within four days of another away game) that ratio drops again from even that point. Then you throw in QPR’s personal aversion to so-called three-game weeks in general… Since returning to the Championship, Rangers have the second worst record for away underperformance in a three game week (of teams who have played at least 20 such games – ie a decent sample size), picking up 30% fewer points than ‘normal’ games – i.e. it costs us 0.35 points a game (1.15 points/game to 0.8).

As last year, we have six of these double aways including this week’s which was compounded by the first game being played on Wednesday instead of Tuesday and the second being moved to 12.30 Saturday. Later this season we have a week in January where we’re at Burnley Tuesday then all the way back up to Lincoln Saturday, in March we have Derby midweek then back up to Preston Saturday. This in a season with three weeks off in September and no games over Easter. Six of these this season, six of them last year including Hull on Saturday then Southampton on Tuesday (lost 5-0), and the previous year where we had Plymouth Saturday and Hull Tuesday. Conversely, only three times this year do we play a team at Loftus Road in away fatigued state – and one of those was Boro last week. For comparison, West Brom only have four of these double away weeks and one of those involves a midweek at Birmingham.

Despite all this, Rangers remain unbeaten in four away games to begin and will cement a play-off place going into this ridiculous break if they can see off basement dwellers Preston at Loftus Road next weekend. A really tough assignment in ‘away fatigued’ state and I’m delighted with a draw from it.

See Flavio, there is such a thing as a good point.

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

West Brom: O’Leary 7; Styles 7, Phillips 6 (Campbell 90+2, -), Mepham 6, Townsend 6; Molumby 6, Collyer 5 (Tunde 68, 6); Nzingoula 7 (Diakite 74, 6), Mhyre 7 (Morgan 74, 6), Price 7; Heggebo 5 (Stewart 74, 6)

Subs not used: Crowther, Ingram, Maughan, Whitwell

Goals: Styles 41 (assisted Mhyre)

Yellow Cards: Diakite 90+3 (foul)

QPR: Charles 7; Mbengue 5, Edwards 8, Clarke-Salter 7, Cirkin 6 (Adamson 71, 6); Madsen 6 (Kamara 46, 7), Varane 6; Poku 6 (Saito 81, -), Vale 5, Smyth 5 (Scarlett 35, 6 (Lloyd 82, -)); Burrell 7

Subs not used: Alemayehu, Morrison, Obikwu, Ward

Goals: Mepham own goal 38 (assisted Burrell)

Yellow Cards: Kamara 51 (foul), Clarke-Salter 63 (foul), Varane 64 (foul), Burrell 80 (foul)

QPR Star Man – Ronnie Edwards 8 Cut above. With only one goal conceded from inside the box so far this season it’s clear the centre back pairings have been an outstanding element of QPR’s start. Edwards and Clarke-Salter got their team mates through a ropey first half here in which Rangers struggled to keep and progress the ball and came under pressure from a series of crosses and balls in from wide areas.

Referee – Ruebyn Ricardo (Leicestershire) 6 Fine. Perhaps a little bit inconsistent with the yellow cards, but wasn’t in the mood for awarding free kicks for every bit of context which I like.

Attendance – 24,547 (1,453 QPR)

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Pictures – Reuters Connect

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