RANGERS RUN RIOT TO LEAVE ZOLA ON BRINK
UNDER-pressure Gianfranco Zola will talk about his future with Birmingham City owner Paul Suen.
Zola admits defeat to QPR was humiliating but says he wants to carry on despite only one win in his 14 games since the shock sacking of Gary Rowett.
“I need to have a chat with the club, with the owners, about me carrying on,” said Zola.
“I really care about this club and I want to help this club. As long as the club trusts me I am willing to try and do the best I can for everyone here.
“That statement is what I will tell the owner when we talk.”
Zola says he talks regularly with Suen and director Panos Pavlakis and has their backing, but admitted: “It was one of the worst, if not the worst, afternoons I’ve had.
“This was very painful and very frustrating. Sometimes football makes you feel you are on top of the world and sometimes it is like the world is on top of you.
“We lost badly. I feel bad. I feel sorry for the players as well. It is a hard moment for all of us.
“I hope I can still be a success here. It is getting harder, I understand that. I can tell you that at the moment I am feeling very, very low.
“I hope the owner of the club is a patient man. I came here and presented myself with an idea of playing football a certain way. I need to do better.”
Now it’s down to Suen and whether his patience has run out.
Blues have plunged from seventh to 14th in Zola’s 12 Championship games with a meagre six points earned. The fans were remarkably restrained given the circumstances, half-heartedly joining in with QPR supporters who were sarcastically chanting that Zola would get sacked in the morning. At best Zola will go into Friday’s local derby at Wolves with his job on the line.
It was a welcome win for QPR boss Ian Holloway. Rangers hadn’t won in five before this and he is having a tough time keeping his club out of relegation danger since succeeding Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink in November. But timid, uncertain Birmingham couldn’t even take advantage of that.
“There’s a real good feeling in our dressing room now,” said Holloway. “We had a bad run where we couldn’t get a win for love nor money.
“Birmingham have just got to get on with it. The last Birmingham manager did absolutely fantastic but unfortunately the work you do sometimes doesn’t get recognised.”
What Zola didn’t need was to go a goal down early on.
The marking for Luke Freeman’s 18th-minute cross was dangerously poor, and only emphasised by Matt Smith’s powerful header for his first QPR goal. Smith, 6ft 6ins tall andBirmingham-born, had one cleared off the line by Ryan Shotton before and there was a repeat header in the 31st minute that Tomasz Kuszczak saved.
It might have been different if Emilio Nsue had headed in rather than wide, or if Sinclair’s 38th minute drive had taken a defection under the crossbar rather than on to it.
But two minutes into the second half it was all over for Blues as QPR hammered them.
Conor Washington took advantage of their frailty with his fourth goal in five games and substitutes Idrissa Sylla and Yeni Ngbakoto added more before Nsue got a late one for Birmingham that brought no smile to Zola’s face.