Coventry City (0) – QPR (1) – “Devon is a Powerful Guy with Tremendous Enthusiasm Who Makes Himself a Real Handful”
Premier League
Team: Stejskal, Bardsley, Peacock, Yates, Wilson, Wilkins, Holloway, Barker, White, Penrice, Sinclair
Sub: Meaker (for Wilkins)
Attendance: 12,107
On the 22nd January 1994, the R’s travelled to Highfield Road to take on Phil Neal’s Coventry City. Ray Matts later filed the following match report:
‘Devon White is the proverbial square peg in a round hole. The towering six-footer of somewhat rustic disposition is not the sort of player one associates with those would-be footballing aristocrats of QPR – a cudgel compared with the rapier finesse of Les Ferdinand.
Yet, who could argue with skipper Ray Wilkins when he asserted after a 1-0 away win at Coventry that the ungainly striker has “done well for us”.
White’s match-winner at Highfield Road was his sixth in ten appearances since his £100,000 transfer from Cambridge a year ago. The greatest of soccer hit-men would relish such a ratio.
Wilkins added: “Devon is a powerful guy with tremendous enthusiasm who makes himself a real handful.” Coventry’s bruised defenders will undoubtedly concur.
White put himself about unstintingly in that loping, awkward, but physically dominating style of his to give Rangers an attacking edge that the Sky Blues sorely lacked.
He compensated for Ferdinand’s absence through injury, yet it would be folly in the extreme should Rangers believe that White could ever be more than a temporary replacement for his team-mate and be tempted to raise £4million by selling their England star.
Gerry Francis, albeit an excellent manager and coach, is unlikely to endow White with sufficient technique to command a regular place and supply the speed, cunning and dexterity of Les Ferdinand.
Francis said: “I have worked on him a lot. I don’t think that he will ever play for England…but he hasn’t let us down whenever he’s been selected.”
White might have had a first-half hat-trick, but was foiled by a goal-line clearance and his own lack of control before scoring in the 26th minute with a shot into the corner after a superb through ball from Gary Penrice.
Rangers dominated that period and then held out convincingly as Coventry improved without really threatening an equaliser.
The Sky Blues are now looking anxiously over their shoulders towards the bottom of the table.
Manager Phil Neal said: “We are giving fewer goals away and are more organised than we were. But our lack of goals is making life terribly hard.”
“We just have to maintain our resolve and commitment and hope the goals will come.”
What Neal wouldn’t give for a Devon White.’
Steve Russell