QPR suffer big player blow ahead of Bristol City - fans saw this coming | OneFootball

Amadou Mbengue has picked up five yellow cards and will miss QPR's match at Bristol City, and FLW's QPR fan pundit warned of this potential outcome.

Queens Park Rangers defender Amadou Mbengue will miss Saturday's trip to Bristol City after picking up his fifth yellow card of the season, but no-one can say that he wasn't warned.

74 minutes into their goalless draw at home to Oxford United on Wednesday night came an extra headache for QPR manager Julien Stephan, when Mbengue picked up his fifth yellow card of the season, which means an automatic one-match suspension. He will now be missing their trip to Ashton Gate on Saturday for an important game against Bristol City.

Getting to five yellow cards by the start of October is an achievement in its own way, though not one that Mbengue should be seeking to repeat. But the fact that this could happen was entirely predictable. Less than two weeks earlier, FLW's own QPR fan pundit, Louis Moir, had predicted that this lack of discipline would end up costing the Rangers defender dear.

Amadou Mbengue's suspension had been foretold

Less than two weeks before Mbengue picked up his suspension, Moir had flagged up the fact that picking up four yellow cards in six matches was "quite ridiculous" and that he'd been "a bit reckless" in allowing this to happen so early in the season. It took him just two further matches to reach that five-card limit that triggered an automatic suspension.

The cost of this was clear and obvious. At that time, Mbengue had been paired at centre-back with Liam Morrison for the previous three games for the full 90 minutes, and it had worked, with Rangers winning all three games. The obvious concern was that, having found a central defensive partnership that was working, that fifth yellow card would only bring more chopping and changing to their central defence.

Louis clearly had a sense of humour about Mbengue's early over-enthusiasm, describing him as "quite the character since arriving from Reading" and pointing out that such commitment to their cause can easily make a player "a cult hero for the club".

But of course, manager Julien Stephan will likely see all this somewhat differently. Having conceded seven goals at Coventry in August, it was clearly necessary to carry out some urgent remedial work on that Rangers back line. That work had been carried out with apparent success.

Since that Coventry loss, QPR have only conceded three goals in five games, winning three of those and drawing the other two. Now he has to reshuffle at the back again, following yet another moment of recklessness from one of his defenders, for a match against a strong Bristol City team who, should Rangers be challenging for a play-off place or better come the end of the season, will likely be among their key rivals.

Mbengue's pre-QPR stats demonstrated that this yellow card issue was in his locker

Tempting though it may be to believe that Amadou Mbengue's five yellow cards could be a result of not being able to keep up with life in the Championship, the evidence is that he had a degree of this in his locker before he arrived at Loftus Road from Reading in the summer.

Mbengue had spent the previous three years with Reading, and over that period ran up 24 yellow cards in 109 appearances for the Royals, a record of almost one every four games, while he also picked up four in 13 games for his previous club, Metz. It's notable from his statistics that he only picked up one red card over that time, and that he didn't pick up a second yellow card leading to a red once, which indicates that he can rein himself in as soon as he's had that warning from the referee.

At 23 years of age, Mbengue is young enough for this tendency to still be coached out of him. That central defensive partnership with Liam Morrison had been working well, and Queens Park Rangers even ran up another clean sheet against Oxford.

But Stephan will not be happy with a player picking up five yellow cards in his first eight appearances for his new club, and the question now facing him is can he coach this out of Mbengue while retaining the level of commitment that may already be starting to make him the "cult hero" that fans would want him to be.