Queens Park Rangers’ owners have talked up their vision of the future as they deliberate over the appointment of a replacement for Harry Redknapp, declaring they intend to hire someone who will integrate the club’s best youngsters into the first team.
A noble long-term plan but to avoid relegation Rangers need someone with quickfire improvisational skills akin to those of MacGyver, the old American TV action hero renowned for his ability to rapidly fashion deadly weapons from unpromising tools.
Lock MacGyver in a garden shed and he would burst out in a battle tank made from a wheelbarrow and paint cans. Whoever QPR appoint this week – and Tim Sherwood remains the most likely – will need to pull off a similar feat, as they look in a predicament even more sticky than the table suggests. As things stand one victory could lift Rangers out of the relegation places but getting that win, and enough others to avoid slipping back into the drop zone, will require hitherto unseen resourcefulness.
For Tuesday’s trip to Sunderland, they are going to require someone other than Charlie Austin to score. QPR have been heavily reliant on their striker for goals this season – he accounts for more than half of their tally and came closest to finding the net against Southampton on Saturday before Sadio Mané’s late winner for the visitors – so there was understandable angst when he left Loftus Road on crutches. However, scans revealed Austin’s foot was not broken and he is expected to return to action within two weeks, meaning the Sunderland game could be the only one he misses.
Chris Ramsey, who remains in interim charge must devise a solution for Tuesday and the options are skimpy. Bobby Zamora has scored only once this season and does not suit the more intricate style Ramsey tried to cultivate against Southampton.
Eduardo Vargas could work even though he was used mostly in midfield under Redknapp, and Mauro Zárate is another possibility, having impressed after being sprung from the bench against Southampton only days after QPR tried to send him back to his parent club, West Ham.
Whoever is selected up front will be counting on notoriously enigmatic players for service. Ramsey is keen to rehabilitate Adel Taarabt, in whom Redknapp lost confidence, and the Moroccan showed flickers of his undoubted creative talent but QPR need more than that. Matt Phillips and Armand Traoré, both also recalled against Southampton, also must improve.
QPR could, at least, draw encouragement from the solidity they showed in the second half and Mané’s goal was down to his fine play rather than another mistake by QPR’s defence.
They will have to show similar solidity consistently during the run-in – and Richard Dunne will not be around to help, the centre-back is unlikely to play against this season after limping off with knee trouble.
Southampton are a model of solidity. Although they started without two key defenders and lost their young left-back, Matt Targett, early on to a head injury, Ronald Koeman’s side kept their 11th clean sheet of a league campaign that could still conclude with a sensational qualification for the Champions League.
Koeman reckons Saints are an example to others seeking to shake up the established order. “It shows the rest of the teams [that] with good organisation and good structure, you can grow,” he said. “Not in one season, but in some four, five, six years you can grow up. You can really do that as a battle to the big ones, and we try it. We try to do it. That’s the best we can do.”
Man of the match Sadio Mané (Southampton)
