Although QPR have undoubtedly improved since Marti Cifuentes took over as head coach at the end of October, they currently find themselves in the same position they were when he arrived — second-bottom of the Championship table.
A run of three wins in a row following the November international break was more victories than Rangers had managed in their first 17 league games, and they passed up several chances to move out of the relegation zone throughout December.
A clear strength of the early weeks of the Cifuentes reign has been the team’s defending in open play. QPR have conceded just five goals from open play in the Spaniard’s 13 matches, and their Expected Goals Against in that time is the fourth best in the Championship.
It is dead ball situations that have proved costly so far, with Rangers letting in a worrying nine goals from set-pieces.
Although a couple have been from free-kicks (Rotherham A and Southampton H), it is the defending of corners that has been most concerning. QPR have been beaten by a single goal in back-to-back games at Loftus Road, conceding twice from corners in each.
Cifuentes has acknowledged the issue is more than a coincidence, and said last week that more time had been dedicated to defending set-pieces in training.
Although there were slight changes in the FA Cup tie against Bournemouth on Saturday, they did little to stop the miserable record continuing.
I tried to take a look at what is not going quite right at the moment.
Cifuentes’ approach
This screenshot from Cifuentes’ first game against Rotherham shows clearly his approach when defending corners.
Kenneth Paal is stood on the near post. Lyndon Dykes, Steve Cook and Jimmy Dunne are stationed along the six-yard line with a focus on winning the ball rather than marking a player (black arrows).
Another four players are picking up Rotherham men, and Ilias Chair is towards the edge of the box to deal with a potential short corner.
The screenshot below is from a game between Cifuentes’ former side Hammarby and Djugardens in May 2023. You can see that Hammarby adopt a similar approach to defending corners as we have seen recently from QPR, with three players stationed along the six-yard line (red arrows), one on the post and the rest picking up opponents.
Back in Rotherham, even though QPR were level at 1–1 in an important game against a relegation rival, Chris Willock was left up the pitch to lead a counter-attack should his side successfully clear the ball.
This creates a situation where there are more Rotherham players than QPR ‘markers’ in the box, but I think the reason for this is that those players are being asked to disrupt the runs of the opposition players rather than truly ‘man-mark’ them as they would in a more old-school system.
This corner sees Rotherham’s Hakeem Odofin (№22) escape Elijah Dixon-Bonner (red arrow) with little trouble before getting in the gap between Dykes and Cook to head against the post. It is a lucky escape for QPR that in fact leads to a counter-attack up the other end led by Willock.
Dixon-Bonner is not the only player who can do better in this situation. Dykes (black arrow) is attracted forward, in front of his station in line with the near post, by a clutch of Rotherham bodies.
This creates a bigger gap to exploit between Dykes and Cook, and puts both of the players in a position where they are unable to attack the ball — their primary purpose using this set up.
Again, more could have been done to disrupt Rotherham players crowding Dykes but Odofin ends up meeting the ball just over his head, meaning his original position would have been a better one to stay in.
Alterations
Slight adjustments can be seen in the games that have followed. However, it is hard to know if these are intentional or players not carrying out instructions in the way they are being asked to.
Against Cardiff on New Year’s Day, a noticeable change is that Jake Clarke-Salter, who is now in Dunne’s position from the Rotherham game on the six-yard line in line with the back post, is deeper than the far post defender had been in previous games.
We can also see from this image from the defeat at Millwall on Boxing Day that the three players tasked with attacking the ball are much deeper than the six-yard line starting position from the Rotherham game.
You could suggest that this is because the corner is set to be an in-swinger whereas the Rotherham example is an out-swinger, but the Cardiff example is an in-swinger and the starting position is much closer to the six-yard line.
This is also the case from these examples from the most recent game against Bournemouth, although it makes more sense as Bournemouth have crowded the six-yard box with players.
Main problems
The goals conceded below show that both the players tasked with attacking the ball and those who are supposed to be blocking runners appear to be making mistakes that are costing goals.
Cifuentes admitted after the latest defeat to Bournemouth that the issue has gone beyond a tactical problem and is now affecting his players mentally.
This perhaps explains why goalkeeper Asmir Begovic has tried to become more proactive at corners, although it is yet to do much to help the situation.
Begovic has been criticised for his role in a number of recent goals conceded, and although I don’t think his newfound willingness to be proactive is doing much to help, he is not the sole cause of the recent issues.
QPR suffered a damaging defeat at Sheffield Wednesday in mid-December, and although the game-deciding second goal for Wednesday came from the second phase of a corner, it nicely summed up a panicked approach from the defending team.
Begovic’s (red arrow) starting position is very deep as he is presumably anticipating a delivery to the back post where there are a clutch of Wednesday shirts.
However, Barry Bannan’s corner actually lands at the front post. Begovic is in no position to deal with it, but either Dykes (front post) or Paal (on the line) should be able to clear.
But it is actually Dunne (red arrow) who leaves his position as the middle of the three ball attackers to head away — you can see below that Paal is actually the closest player to challenging him for the ball.
Although Dunne actually ends up recovering well to prepare for the second ball to come in, this seems representative of QPR players either not communicating well at set-pieces or ignoring what their instructions seem to be.
Begovic also tries to take responsibility during the second goal that Cardiff scored at Loftus Road on New Year’s Day.
He does not get near the ball and it allows Perry Ng to head into an empty net at the back post.
But just as the gap between Dykes and Cook became too big during the first example from the Rotherham game, it also seems to be too big between Dunne and Clarke-Salter (red arrow) here.
Rayan Kolli can’t disrupt Ng’s run effectively and he strolls into that gap to score.
Similarly, at Millwall Begovic ends up taking a lot of blame for not dealing with the late corner that results in the home side scoring their decisive second goal.
It is quite right to expect the goalkeeper to deal with the delivery as it is played into his six-yard box with not too many bodies around him.
However, as shown above, the QPR players designated to attack the ball are deeper. In this instance Clarke-Salter (black arrow) ends up being the player that challenges Begovic (red arrow) for the ball and leads him to punch in the direction of Millwall’s Murray Wallace to score.
It is hard to know if Begovic has communicated to Clarke-Salter that he is coming for the ball, but if he has, the defender should be getting out of the way rather than trying to head clear.
Begovic was again criticised at the weekend as Kieffer Moore beat him to the ball at the near post to head in. But you can see below that his starting position is quite deep once more.
This meant he would have had to have covered a decent amount of ground to get to his near post ahead of Moore.
It is great delivery that goes over the head of near post defender Ziyad Larkeche, and once again the blocker (Morgan Fox in this instance) has not done a great job of disrupting Moore, but the ball being met so close to goal makes it look as though Begovic is the main culprit.
Opposition teams are also seemingly targetting the area just in front of the line of six-yard box defenders, and that is creating problems.
For the first goal conceded against Cardiff, Larkeche (black arrow) is unable to disrupt the run of Dimtris Goutas, and the delivery is in front of Dunne (red arrow), leaving him with ground to make up to deal with it.
He ends up allowing Goutas to get in front of him and meet the ball first, and this serves as an example of an area that QPR have struggled to defend effectively at corners.
It can also be seen in the first goal conceded in the win against Stoke.
Stoke put a low ball into the box, in front of Dykes as the first zonal defender. Jack Colback is beaten to the first ball but blocks the shot, only for the rebound to fall to Ryan Mmaee to score.
This is another situation where Dykes (red arrow) has been tempted into a less useful position to attack the ball that comes in.
He is attracted deeper by a Stoke player, and that creates more space for Mmaee to attack the delivery.
Has Cifuentes changed his approach?
The short answer is yes.
Against Bournemouth, he decided to not leave any players forward and bring everyone back to defend.
This left QPR with an extra blocker to try and disrupt runners. Yet the two Bournemouth goals came from the opposition crowding the six-yard box and nullifying the impact they could have.
When Marcus Tavernier scored Bournemouth’s first goal on Saturday, all 11 QPR players were in their own penalty area.
A possible solution
The example of Dunne leaving his zone in the Sheffield Wednesday game to beat Paal to a clearing header possibly offers a hint to something else Cifuentes could try going forward.
Taking Paal off the post and letting him become a blocker/marker instead, and moving one of the better headers of the ball into the line of zonal defenders to create a four-man line on the six-yard line rather than only three.
In theory, this should create smaller gaps between QPR’s better aerial defenders and also offer better protection should one of them get dragged out of position (as Dykes does in the Rotherham example).
Cifuentes is under no illusion that the problem will just sort itself out. The examples show that individual errors in terms of concentration and execution are proving costly, but Cifuentes has talked in the past about how he has adapted his Johan Cruyff-inspired idea of football to the leagues and environments he finds himself in.
It is also possibly no great coincidence that just three of the set-piece goals conceded have come when Steve Cook has been on the pitch. Although the experienced defender is not the most aggressive in the air, the fact that he is usually the central zonal defender at corners suggests his ability to communicate and organise is valued by Cifuentes and plays a part in QPR defending better in these situations.
Adaptability has brought Cifuentes the success that ultimately led him to Loftus Road. He may well need to change his approach to set-pieces if he is to keep QPR in the Championship and become a success in England.
