Nygaard Makes His Marc..

QPR 1-1 Ipswich

After a fortnight and an overall, disappointing International break, proper football returned and a late equaliser from Marc Nygaard, silenced the boo boys and more importantly, earned Rangers what could be a very valuable point in an entertaining affair at Loftus Road.




Well before I go on, I must just apologise for the lateness of this report. But after the game, it was off to watch England's brave performance in the Rugby World Cup final, followed by what was an excellent Paul Weller tribute band. Then of course, today, after a lazy and recovering morning, there was more sporting disappointment with Lewis Hamilton in the Brazilian Grand Prix. Anyway...

Onto the game and Rangers had slightly the better of the first half but failed to turn several chances into what would have been a deserved lead.But Ipswich started the second period much the brighter and on 53 minutes, they were ahead. The ball was fed to Sylvain Legwinski who took the ball on his chest and looped a superb volley over Camp from 25 yards. As good a goal as this was, it was also disappointing to see the former Fulham midfielder being given the time to do it.

The game then went a bit quiet, but on 73 minutes and just as the home fans starting to become a tad restless, Ephraim fed Rowan Vine who somehow poked the ball through to substitute Marc Nygaard to ram the ball home and level the scores.




There followed chances for both sides, notably to Rowan Vine who volleyed wide from Ephraim's cross. But with time almost up, Lee Camp produced a quite stunning save to keep out Danny Haynes close range header.

QPR: Camp, Barker, Stewart, Mancienne (Nygaard 55), Bolder, Ainsworth (Moore 68), Rowlands, Ephraim, Vine, Leigertwood, Cranie. Subs: Cole, Bignot, Jarrett.

Lofty's Man of the Match - Mikele Leigertwood - a decent midfield performance of good tacking, decent passing and good support work going forward.



As mentioned, this was an entertaining enough game, but was slightly disapppointed with the overall result. It was nice to see the fight return also, especially having to come from behind. Also, I have been critical of Nygaard in the past, but I must say how well he played when he came on yesterday and he took his goal extremely well. With Nardiello and Blackstock injured and the left out Sahar - quite possibly in disgrace after some rather ill-advised comments he and his Mother made to an Israeli newspaper about how hard it is playing for QPR and how much he regrets coming here - I wouldn't be at all surprised to see the Big Dane start in what is a crucial game up at Preston on Tuesday, him and Vine together could be an interesting combination.

Finally some exclusive news as myself and the gang became intrepid reporters after the game and managed exclusives with our possible new Manager, Francesco Guidolin and loan star, Hogan Ephraim.

Well, after about 15 minutes of hanging around and whispering things like 'are you sure that's him?' to eachother, myself, PK and Corp approached Mr Guidolin. Although speaking very good English, he seemed to struggle to understand us talking to him, but after a few beers throughout the course of the afternoon, that could well have been our fault. But he basically expressed his desire to manage in England and would like to go to the Premier League one day - but has to sort out the contractual issue with Palermo. When asked the magic question of which you can all guess what it was, his reply was that he was 'thinking about it'.

Onto the impressive Hogan Ephraim who was more than pleased to stop and have a few words with us -

Lofty - 'Good game again Hogan, you MUST come and sign for us!'

Hogan - 'ah nice one, that's nice of you to say, thanks a lot mate, appreciate it!'

We would like to thank Mr Guidolin and Mr Ephraim for giving us their time to be able to talk to us.