From The Telegraph-
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QPR-PRESTON
- QPR's Win Over Preston: Previous Compilation of Match Reports and Managerial Comments
- VIDEO of Goals
Evening Standard - Neil Warnock in awe of Adel Taarabt talent
- QPR boss Neil Warnock heaped praise on midfielder Adel Taarabt after his two goals sealed a 3-1 win over Preston which moved his unbeaten side back to the top of the npower Championship table.
- Warnock said: "They were excellent goals and that's what he's capable of. "But it wasn't just his goals - he's working hard to do the things I want him to when we don't have the ball.
- "He's like a matador, the way he struts around that pitch. I'd kick him if I was playing against him.
- "If you look at what he can't do you'd tear your hair out, so why not look at what he can do and then go home happy?
- "He can be frustrating but if you're going to pay to watch football, who would you pay to watch? You'd pay to watch him. Look at boring England - we need people like Taarabt to entertain us.
- "My young son comes just to watch him, and is copying his tricks and doing them in our living room. Even when I look at Taarabt's tricks in slow motion I don't know how he does them." Standard
TELEGRAPH/Simon Briggs - - Adel Taarabt given free rein to create and infuriate at QPR
Saturday afternoon at Loftus Road provided a salutary lesson about the ills that beset modern English football. Or, rather, Adel Taarabt did.
Adel Taarabt given free rein to create and infuriate at QPR
The Moroccan international has been the outstanding performer of the Championship season to date, and on Saturday he struck two magnificent long-range goals to set up Queens Park Rangers’ 3-1 thumping of lowly Preston.
Amazingly, though, much of the talk afterwards was not of Taarabt’s talent but of his fecklessness. One reporter questioned how he could be captain when he selfishly ignores better-placed colleagues in the penalty box. Television pundit Steve Claridge questioned his overall contribution, saying: “When they don’t have the ball, he doesn’t give them much.”
On occasion, some of QPR’s own fans could even be heard to chunter when he declined to knock the ball forward at the earliest opportunity.
Neil Warnock’s response was every bit as admirable as Taarabt’s performance. “He’s frustrating at times but if you paid money to watch any player you’d pay to watch him,” said the QPR manager. “My lad comes to the matches just to watch his tricks. You look at boring England and realise we need people like Taarabt to excite us.”
If you want to know why Warnock is the outstanding manager in the division, there is the answer. He admits that, a decade ago, he would probably have taken the narrow-minded, jobsworthian attitude that pervades English football, and left out Taarabt.
But after 30 years’ experience, Warnock has developed the wit and wisdom to give Taarabt his head. The Moroccan has a free role in a team who pile forward every time they get the ball, taking up a 4-2-4 formation in attack. He is encouraged to dribble at people, as long as he does not give the ball away in his own half, and to back his own mouthwatering ability.
After three months of the season, this column has seen a handful of wild-card talents at large in the Football League. Carlisle use the gifted Ivorian playmaker Francois Zoko at the sharp end of a midfield diamond. At Brighton, Kazenga LuaLua has a roving brief, and four sumptuous goals to his name. What do these players have in common? Yup, they’ve all learnt their football overseas.
In case the point needs any further underlining, let’s have a look at the post-match comments from Preston manager Darren Ferguson on Saturday. “Individual errors cost us,” he said. “Generally the team that makes fewer mistakes is the team that wins the game.”
What a dismally reductive view of football that is. All right, Ferguson may not be blessed with a playmaker of Taarabt’s class (although the hard-working Iain Hume, a winger who resembles a more fleet-footed Danny Murphy, was outstanding on Saturday). But one suspects that, even if he did have a free spirit floating around the dressing room, he would react like a pre-enlightenment Warnock, and stick him in the reserves until the insolence had been beaten out of him.
On Saturday, Preston conceded in the fourth minute, when goalkeeper Andy Lonergan spilled a cross into the path of striker Rob Hulse.
You never fancied them to come back into it. Even their goal, which arrived in the 88th minute, had an element of fortune, as Hume’s free kick was chested into his own net by midfielder Matthew Connolly.
QPR did not quite get it right in the first half, which in essence means that Taarabt did not quite get it right. He overhit his through-balls and had to be given a half-time talking-to for “being a bit individual”. Then, after 56 minutes, the ball broke to him 30 yards out. He hit a curling shot of such certainty that you just knew, in the first few yards of its flight, that Lonergan would have no chance.
The second was almost as good, struck with raw power from just outside the box, although Lonergan did get a hand to this one and a top-class goalkeeper might have kept it out.
Warnock was asked afterwards whether Taarabt could become a QPR legend to rank with some of their previous greats. “He’s not like Stan Bowles or Rodney Marsh yet,” he laughed. “He’s still a baby, but if he stays here for three years, maybe.” As I remember, Bowles and Marsh did not track back much either. Telegraph
MIRROR
Mirror
QPR 3-1 Preston: Daily Mirror match report
Adel Taarabt lit up Loftus Road with two cracking goals – but was warned he is not in the same league as Rangers legends Stan Bowles and Rodney Marsh just yet.
QPR have had their fair share of maverick heroes over the years and the Moroccan midfielder is fast becoming a cult figure among their fans.
The former Spurs man crashed home a superb 25-yard effort nine minutes after the break to add to Rob Hulse’s early opening goal before sealing the three points with another screamer.
He thumped home a rocket shot from outside the box that was too hot to handle for North End keeper Andy Lonergan six minutes from time.
Basement side Preston mustered a late consolation courtesy of Matthew Connolly’s own goal, but they ultimately paid the price for failing to deal with Taarabt as QPR returned to the top of the Championship table.
Rangers manager Neil Warnock clearly loves his playmaker, but he knows the 21-year-old has some way to go to etch his name in club folklore like those enigmatic extroverts Marsh and Bowles.
Warnock said: “Don’t compare him with Bowles and Marsh. He is like a little puppy in comparison to them, but if he’s here two or three years and we have success, then who knows? He is definitely our talisman.”
Taarabt has the ability to delight and frustrate in equal measure with his flicks and tricks, but Warnock is getting the best out of him.
He has made him skipper, even though the hot-tempered Yorkshireman admits he would not have even given him a game if he was in charge of him in his early days in management.
“I think it’s fair to say in my early career I don’t think Adel Taarabt would have been one of my players,” said Warnock.
“In the latter end of my career I am absolutely loving him as a captain.
“It’s difficult when you are a player like him because you are going to get kicked and you do tricks where you shouldn’t do tricks, but as a manager I encourage him to do it as long as it’s in the other half of the pitch I’m not bothered what he does.
“I don’t think I’m mellowing, but when you are younger you don’t realise that it is far more difficult to be a creator on the field than a destroyer.
“It’s a shame he’s not English, but you wouldn’t want to see him in an England shirt, would you?
“We don’t want anyone with flair, do we?
“He’s like a matador, the way he struts around that pitch. I’d kick him if I was playing against him.”
Taarabt’s family witnessed first-hand the esteem in which the Morocco star is held among the Rangers fans recently on a trip to watch him play.
And Warnock joked: “I met his brother, uncle and best mate this week. I suppose they will go off and smoke one of those big, long pipes now.
“If it gets him two goals, I don’t mind what he does – as long as it’s not illegal!”
Preston have huge problems.
They have the worst defensive record in the Football League and have now lost 12 of their 18 league games. Their manager Darren Ferguson, who handed three new loan players their debuts, was jeered by his own disgruntled fans at the end of the game and he admitted: “We knew it would be difficult, but felt we could get something out of it.
“But if we keep making mistakes we are going to get punished.
“We have to go on a run we haven’t been on all season. We have got a home game against Millwall on Saturday. Hopefully we’ll start there.
“I think that it is a league that is unpredictable, anybody can beat anybody in this league. But you give yourself a hell of a challenge being 1-0 down after three minutes through a poor goal.
“We’re just not doing the basics well enough and QPR deserved to win.” MIRROR
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