Lofty Heights... 'Ohhh Bobby Zamooooora!!!'

A look at Queens Park Rangers F.C. through the eyes of the fans - follow us on twitter @loftyheights70, @LoftyQPR and @qprleeroy








Saturday, June 19, 2010

Not Good Enough...


England 0-0 Algeria

Welcome back to LH's look at England's progress in the 2010 World Cup in South Africa, a feature that may well be ending a lot sooner than any of us thought or indeed, hoped...




Well, where on earth do I begin here? I am sure that many of you reading this would have seen last night's game and are as disappointed or disgusted as I am with England's latest showing. Wheras I tried to stay upbeat and stay positive with the 1-1 draw against USA, I simply cannot defend what I saw last night and I hate to admit it, I think we will be on our way home following next Wednesday's decider with Slovenia.

Amazingly, England can still win the Group and qualify or the last 16, but things will have to change and improve drastically for this to happen. In my opinion, the ONLY England players to come out of last night's game with any sort of credit were Gareth Barry and Glenn Johnson.

As expected, the newspapers today are not good reading and there is a lot of focus on Wayne Rooney's outburst to a TV Camera in light of the booing from the tens of thousands of England fans in the stadium...

'it's nice to see your home fans booing, that's what loyal support is...'


Seriously, Wayne, after a performance like that and you are no exception, what do you expect??? No, I don't normally codone booing, but I must admit, if I was in the stadium last night, I would have found it extremely hard not to. There has been a lot of talk also of Wayne Rooney's performances and the questions being asked are - is he injured? is he not happy with something? Or is it simply burnout following a long season? Either way, it's a worry and something will need to be done before next Wednesday.

Elsewhere and the World Cup has slowly started to gather some pace and things will soon become exciting with the final round of group games looming. We have now seen everyone play and there have been many surprises along the way, what with one of the favourites, Spain, being beaten by Switzerland and the stand out team from the first round of matches, Germany, being beaten by Serbia. The Brazilians were in action last Tuesday and stuttered to a 2-1 win over North Korea, but looked excellent in patches of that game. The stand out teams as we currently stand are Argentina and Holland. Maradona's side beating South Korea 4-1 in their second game and Holland beating Japan in the early game this morning. The hosts, South Africa look sadly doomed now following their 3-0 defeat at the hands of Uruguay. As indeed, do France who were soundly beaten by the Mexicans in their second game...



See you next week!! Come on England, we need to sort it out, put the champs down, PULL YOUR FINGER OUT!!!!!

Sunday, June 13, 2010

The Traditional Slow Start for England...


England 1-1 USA

Hello and Welcome, to what is hopefully going to be a regular and again, hopefully light hearted look at England's progress in South Africa for the World Cup, 2010.

Well, it all started last Friday with a spectacular opening ceremony, followed by a less than spectacular, but entertaining 1-1 draw between the hosts and Mexico. This was swiftly followed later that evening by the quite awful goalless draw between France and Uruguay.

Moving onto Saturday and South Korea's somewhat comfortable 2-0 win over a poor looking Greece and I have now had just about enough...

Of the football, no, I am loving it! I have had enough of the VUVUZELA!! In the first game, I found it quite interesting, the second game, slightly irratating and at the end of the 3rd game, I quite literally want to rip my ears off. To hear a droning sound of swarming bees throughout 90 minutes of football is a bit much and more importantly, it is drowning out the chanting supporters and the commentary - which some may say is by no means a bad thing...

Anyway, moving on, we had Argentina's victory over Nigeria to enjoy before the one we had all been waiting for, England v USA and normal service has been resumed.

Watching England in a tournament has been described as getting on a rollercoaster and last night was no different. It all started well enough though and some slick football saw Heskey feed Gerrard who poked it past Howard after 4 minutes to give England the lead.




Although the USA were by no means out of it, no one quite expected what was to happen on 40 minutes, when Clint Dempsey tried his luck from 25 yards, but Green hopelessly allowed the ball to squeeze through him and roll agonisingly over the line as he tried to recover.



Not surprisingly, the media have slaughtered Green for this blunder, but little have mentioned a superb second half save from Altidore, but the papers had their scapegoat and they milked it.

Personally, as much as I found the game frustrating, I didn't think it was all that bad. Stand out players for me were Emile Heskey, Glen Johnson and mine and many others man of the match - Steven Gerrard. Also, subdued for the majority of the game, Wayne Rooney had a decent last half an hour and England were well on top.

So, a draw it was and the typically slow start to a tournament continues for England. Today we have seen fellow group members Slovenia beat Friday's opponents Algeria, 1-0. Then followed an enjoyable Ghana victory over Serbia as the African's continue their Celebration of the Tournanment competion. A short while ago, the final whistle went on Germany's 4-0 win over Australia and dare I say it, the best team we have seen so far in this World Cup - 14/1 at the start??? Hmmmmmm....

Wednesday, June 09, 2010

Balanta leaves on season long loan.


Angelo Balanta has been allowed to leave the club on a season long loan deal , joining Franchise FC..... sorry I mean MK Dons.

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The season long deal is aimed towards giving one of Rangers' most exciting products of the youth team a chance to shine and play first team football and gaining the experience he needs before pushing for a regular slot in the R's first team when he returns.

In joining MK Dons Balanta is once again united with with former R's Assistant Manager John Gorman, who knows plenty about the youngster after giving him plenty of time to impress during the R's pre-season last year before Balanta picked up an injury that kept him on the side lines for a lengthy spell having started in the first game of the season against Blackpool at Loftus Road.


Good luck Angelo and we look forward to you returning back home this time next year!

Monday, June 07, 2010

Rangers' start building early with 3 new signings.


In a rare move in the close season for Rangers', it seems as if the building ahead of the new season in just over 9 weeks time, with three signings already made and two more looking as if they could be close to completion once a few formalities are sorted out.

The first of the three signings was Jamie Mackie from Plymouth for an undisclosed fee and signed a four year deal.

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The 24 year old had a very good season with relegated Plymouth and was the few in that team that came away from the season with their heads held high.
Mackie was linked to a January move to Middlesbrough and Burnley but it looks as if Rangers' have sneaked in to pick themselves up a very promising youngster that is likely to shine even more now that he has better players around him.


Second to arive at W12 was a former loan signing from a few years ago, Leon Clarke.
Clarke played one game in that loan spell and was soon sent back to Wolves after that appearance.

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Neil Warnock has admitted that signing Clarke is a bit of a gamble but seing as no transfer fee was involved as Clarke was out of contract it could be one of those that could pay off, we will soon find out.
Clarke has underachieved so far in his career but veteran manager Warnock feels he is the man to get the best out of the 25 year old, and who could doubt Warnock seeing as he has a nack of getting the best out of everyone, this could be a real bargin if Clarke hits the ground running early in the season.


Finally, today the announcement of our third summer signing came this afternoon and is the best signing of the summer so far, Paddy Kenny.

Kenny arrives for a fee of around £750,000 and has signed a three year deal.
He will provide excellent competition for Radek Cerny in the race for the number 1 jersey and its the first time in many a year that I can honestly say that we have two very solid keepers fighting for the slot.

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Kenny had spent 8 years at Sheffield United and made 278 games for the Yorkshire club.
This is the third time Warnock has signed Kenny after also signing him during a spell at Bury.

Welcome to our three signings and we hope you all shine during what should be a very exciting season ahead of you.

In other news.....
We are awaiting developments on the potential signings (and well documented they are) of Darren Ambrose and Clint Hill.
Ambrose has agreed terms with the R's and we are now awaiting to see the stance of Crystal Palace's new owners as they will try to inflate the already agreed transfer fee, thought to be around the £750,000 mark.
Hill however is available on a free transfer once his contract runs out at Crystal Palace so we only only assume that we are waiting for this to happen before anything is announced.

Apologies for the lateness of the updates on two of the new signings, work commitments have taken over for the main part of the close season but we shall do our best to be on the ball for the coming weeks in the build up to pre season.