Torres Treble Spells Terrible Trouble For QPR

Oh dear. Aston Villa are now out of reach unless Rangers beat Stoke and pick up a point at Unreal City. To stand any chance of that, the gRs have to hope upon hope that Man Utd triumph over their noisy neighbours on Monday. If the title is still attainable come the last day, God help QPR.

With Wigan's stunning victory over Newcastle, they too probably only need one point to be safe. The nightmare for QPR would be for Blackburn to beat Wigan and for Wigan to triumph over Wolves, the ultimate double whammy, meaning that Wigan would be out of sight without a QPR victory at Unreal City and that Blackburn would still be in with a shout of saving themselves. The game at Tottenham this afternoon is truly huge.

Blackburn, unless they win today, are probably relegated so it almost certainly boils down to a straight fight between Bolton and QPR. Even after the 6-1 mauling today, QPR retain a superior goal difference but a similar reverse at Man City would make it all square on that front too. There is a temptation to treat the Stoke game as a home banker, but winning runs come to an end at some point and as good as QPR's recent performances at Loftus Road have been, the pressure of looming relegation may get to them as expectation and anxiety mount in equal measure - and a limp display in the Bush would be very costly indeed! For Rangers, it probably all boils down to this one game. Anything less than victory and it is almost certainly back to the Championship as Bolron would have three games to find two points: with home games against Tottenham and West Brom potentially yielding anything from two to six points and an away fixture at Stoke still up their sleeves. On paper, you have to call Bolton favourites to stay up looking at those fixtures.

A narrow defeat today would have sent QPR into the game with Stoke in good heart; the hammering must have sown terrible doubts in their hearts. When QPR sat in tenth or eleventh place in the table I warned that this would happen and the gRs mocked me. I still hope Rangers will stay up but it is now looking like a very, very, very tall order. Still, the good news for disgruntled gRs is that Leeds have been crap under Neil Warnock!