A lot of very strange things happened on Sunday afternoon. Queens Park Rangers played well. Queens Park Rangers played better than Liverpool. Bobby Zamora was the best player on the pitch. Queens Park Rangers were losing 1-0 in the 85th minute, were drawing 2-2 in the 95th minute, and lost. In a pub in London, a QPR fan removed his shirt to celebrate the second equaliser, and had only just got it back on when Liverpool's winner apologised its way into the net.
Liverpool, in complete disarray, are finally fun again
Liverpool left Queens Park Rangers with three wholly undeserved points after a 3-2 win, as well as a sign that they might just be remembering how to be themselves.
Clive Rose
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Richard Dunne scoring an own goal is not a strange thing — it's his 10th in a long and otherwise largely creditable career — but for QPR to manage another one later on makes things peculiar. Perhaps Mario Balotelli finishing like Luigi isn't that surprising either, but watching expensive strikers tuck the ball over an unoccupied goal never gets old. Oh, and QPR missed a couple of open goals as well, one thanks to a remarkable clearance by Glen Johnson that could easily have been two penalties, had the referee only been standing in the net.
In short, it was a stupid game. Stupid in the very best sense: there is no greater pleasure in watching footballers staring at one another in horror as the very fabric of their game collapses around them. We’re meant to be good at this, scream their frightened eyes. We’re meant to have some kind of control here. What the hell is going on?
But right at the end was something familiar; something that we haven't seen from Liverpool at all this campaign, but which set the tone for their title charge last time around. The fear, as generated by the sight of Liverpool advancing with the ball and manifested in the heads of opposing defenders. The circumstances, timings and Steven Caulker's erring finish made their last two goals peculiar, but in their execution, they were exactly the sort of goal that made Brendan Rodgers' side special. Those quick, direct, galloping counter-attacks that turned defenders' brains to porridge and their legs to pretzels? Welcome back, old friends. Brendan has missed you.
Even more encouragingly for Rodgers, Liverpool managed to re-find themselves without the flogged Luis Suarez or the crocked Daniel Sturridge. Balotelli was nominally the senior professional among the attackers that ended the game, but this wasn't his game, and it was Raheem Sterling and Philippe Coutinho who spooked the QPR defense. The latter's form in particular will please Rodgers; impish and unpredictable at his best, the dainty Brazilian has looked jaded for much of this season. His goal may have taken a deflection, but his running was back to something near its most incisive.
There is one sizeable caveat, of course, because nothing in life comes without caveats. This one comes in the shape of the opposition: though QPR were playing well, they are still a broken mess of a team, a fragile collection of mismatched players under the guidance of a manager teetering on the edge of dismissal. There is simply no way that any functional team would have delivered that final free kick so limply into Liverpool’s possession: any half-decent lower- to mid-table team would have put the ball into the stands or just passed it around; any team that truly believed a win could be won would have put in a decent ball, and attacked it. QPR, brains gone, legs going, did neither and paid for it.
Still, it’s never bad to win without deserving it, and to do so in a manner that hints at improvement to come will have been even more pleasing. The next question is whether this spark -- or hint of a spark, at any rate -- can be fanned into something more substantial over the next few weeks. With that in mind, the visit of Real Madrid on Wednesday night might have come around at exactly the wrong time. Cold showers don’t come any more potent, after all, and Cristiano Ronaldo is probably better than both Zamora and Gonzalo Jara put together.
Though Liverpool have played better this season in both victory and defeat, this weird game against QPR is the most Liverpool they’ve looked. At least, the most Rodgers’ Liverpool they’ve looked. Utterly horrible in defense, but finally matched with an echo of last season’s ‘we’ll just go and score another one’ attitude. It may not do wonders for the blood pressure of their fans; it may not lead to victories against any team better than QPR, which is to say all of them. But never mind all that. Liverpool might well be getting back to their most neutral-pleasing. Fun at both ends.
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