QPR 3 - 2 West Brom

QPR repel West Bromwich Albion with Charlie Austin hat-trick

Charlie Austin 24 Pen
Charlie Austin 48
Charlie Austin 86

Joleon Lescott 10
Silvestre Varela 20



If Queen’s Park Rangers do stay in the Premier League – and even after this raggedly physical 3-2 victory that is a substantial if – then history will perhaps record that the campaign to erect a vast bronze likeness of Charlie Austin on Shepherd’s Bush Green started here. Austin scored a hat-trick, made up of a penalty and two close-range strikers’ goals, to make it eight goals in his last five games at Loftus Road as Rangers recovered from going 2-0 down to a sprightly but brittle West Bromwich Albion.

Harry Redknapp’s Hoops now have five home wins this season: Austin has scored at least once in each, four times claiming the winner. Here he ran and chased and several times fell over his feet but was sharp whenever it mattered and claimed the winner in the 85th minute with a lovely leaping header from a Joey Barton corner.

If this match always had the feeling of a slightly premature relegation pre-eliminator this is a product of QPR’s determination to play like a team with one hand tied behind its back. To date the Hoops have the home record of a top six team and the away form of something that doesn’t resemble a team at all, more a collection of disparate individuals fulfilling the fixture list.

Here Austin returned from suspension to partner Bobby Zamora up front, with Eduardo Vargas pushed high up the pitch on the right and the expectation of another storming start. This time, though, Rangers ran cold as West Brom’s neat, short-passing midfield dominated possession. With seven minutes gone Brown Ideye clumped Stéphane Sessègnon’s cut-back into the second tier of the stand from six yards out (no mean feat in itself).

But the goal was coming, and after 10 minutes it duly arrived, Joleon Lescott heading in Sessègnon’s flick-on from Sébastien Pocognoli’s corner. The challenge from Rangers’ central defenders was flaccid, in keeping with a poor start that saw the home team repeatedly give the ball away and a flat, muscular midfield offer little drive or invention.

West Brom continued to pass and move with greater purpose, and with 20 minutes gone it was 2-0. Silvestre Varela poked home his first Premier League goal at the end of a run from halfway, a simple exchange of passes with Sessègnon enough to bamboozle the Rangers defence, in which Richard Dunne lost his man twice, turning and twisting with all the feather-footed grace of a heavily laden municipal dustcart.

QPR showed spirit to hit back almost immediately. Morrison pulled back Leroy Fer at a corner, just as the Rangers man went to poke a loose ball goal-wards. The penalty was a good spot from the referee Craig Pawson, who offered no further punishment for denying a goalscoring opportunity. Austin blasted the kick past Ben Foster.

And finally, the drive came from Rangers at the start of the second half.

A series of long punts forward, a bullocking run from Nedum Onuoha down the right, and West Brom were rocking. Dunne headed a right wing corner against the bar, Bobby Zamora nodded it back and Austin – of course – finished and Rangers, for all their lumpen first half, were level at 2-2.

West Brom settled again, taking possession for periods without creating clear chances, but looking vulnerable whenever Rangers did press – and in a barnstorming last 10 minutes Austin’s moment finally came, as it always somehow seemed likely to.