Charlie Austin scored twice to lift Queens Park Rangers off the bottom of the Premier League with a 2-0 home win against Aston Villa on Monday.
Manager Harry Redknapp was under pressure after his struggling side had won just once in their opening eight games, but a goal in either half from Austin helped lighten the mood at Loftus Road.
Aston Villa, beaten in their past five games without scoring a goal, started brightly, but Austin calmed the home fans’ nerves when he lashed a half-volley into the corner on 17 minutes.
Photo: Reuters
As the visitors went in search of an equalizer, the QPR striker struck again after 69 minutes with a deft side-footed finish inside Villa goalkeeper Brad Guzan’s near post from an Eduardo Vargas cross.
The win lifted Redknapp’s side to 19th on seven points, ahead of Burnley on four, while Villa dropped to 15th in the table with their search for a league goal now extending to more than eight hours.
“It was an excellent performance,” Redknapp told Sky Sports. “There’s no reason why Charlie Austin can’t score a lot of goals this season, I’m pleased for the lad.”
Photo: Reuters
“There’s nothing in the league in terms of points,” Redknapp added. “We’re only four points behind Hull [City] in 10th.”
Villa played last season’s top five league teams in consecutive fixtures, enduring a miserable run of four straight defeats, but any hopes of picking up easy points at QPR were soon dispelled.
All of QPR’s points this season have come at home and they proved to be difficult opposition again for Paul Lambert’s side.
Scenes of jubilation from the home fans were in stark contrast to Lambert’s men, who must be wondering where their next league goal is coming from. Prolific marksman Christian Benteke made only his second start since March, but drew a blank as Villa’s inability to score became almost farcical.
The visitors started like a team determined to get back to the winning ways that had seen them reach as high as second in the table in the opening weeks of the season. However, the hosts turned the tide when Bobby Zamora nodded a long ball to the area for Austin to finish.
Ciaran Clark nearly equalized after the restart when Benteke headed down to the defender, but he failed to apply the finish only meters from Robert Green’s goal.
To compound Villa’s miseries Austin quickly made it 2-0, making the miss even more costly.
Vargas nearly added a third when substitute Junior Hoilett put him through on goal, but the Chilean fired straight at Guzan. Villa’s on-loan midfielder Tom Cleverley nearly ended their wait for a goal with 10 minutes to go, but Green parried his volley and Sandro made a tackle from Clark at the rebound.
Revelations of positive doping tests for nearly two dozen Chinese swimmers that went unpunished sparked an intense flurry of accusations and legal threats between the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the head of the US drug-fighting organization, who has long been one of WADA’s fiercest critics. WADA on Saturday said it was turning to legal counsel to address a statement released by US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) CEO Travis Tygart, who said WADA and anti-doping authorities in China swept positive tests “under the carpet by failing to fairly and evenly follow the global rules that apply to everyone else in the world.” The
Taiwanese judoka Yang Yung-wei on Saturday won silver in the men’s under-60kg category at the Asian Judo Championships in Hong Kong. Nicknamed the “judo heartthrob” in Taiwan, the Olympic silver-medalist missed out on his first Asian Championships gold when he lost to Japanese judoka Taiki Nakamura in the finals. Yang defeated three opponents on Saturday to reach the final after receiving a bye through the round of 32. He first topped Laotian Soukphaxay Sithisane in the round of 16 with two seoi nage (over-the-shoulder throws), then ousted Indian Vijay Kumar Yadav in the quarter-finals with his signature ude hishigi sankaku gatame (triangular armlock). He
RALLY: It was only the second time the Taiwanese has partnered with Kudermetova, and the match seemed tight until they won seven points in a row to take the last set 10-2 Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching and Russia’s Veronika Kudermetova on Sunday won the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix women’s doubles final in Stuttgart, Germany. The pair defeated Norway’s Ulrikke Eikeri and Estonia’s Ingrid Neel 4-6, 6-3, 10-2 in a tightly contested match at the WTA 500 tournament. Chan and Kudermetova fell 4-6 in the first set after having their serve broken three times, although they played increasingly well. They fought back in the second set and managed to break their opponents’ serve in the eighth game to triumph 6-3. In the tiebreaker, Chan and Kudermetova took a 3-0 lead before their opponents clawed back two points, but
Taiwanese gymnast Lee Chih-kai failed to secure an Olympic berth in the pommel horse following a second-place finish at the last qualifier in Doha on Friday, a performance that Lee and his coach called “unconvincing.” The Tokyo Olympics silver medalist finished runner-up in the final after scoring 6.6 for degree of difficulty and 8.800 for execution for a combined score of 15.400. That was just 0.100 short of Jordan’s Ahmad Abu Al Soud, who had qualified for the event in Paris before the Apparatus World Cup series in Qatar’s capital. After missing the final rounds in the first two of four qualifier