DE CANIO LOVES AGYEMANG!!!
Patrick Agyemang had QPR boss Luigi De Canio purring after his double sank calamitous Southampton 3-2 at St Mary's.
Agyemang, one of 10 new signings brought in by moneybags Rangers, had already added to Martin Rowlands' equaliser with a close-range strike before a horrible mix-up between goalkeeper Kelvin Davis and Jermaine Wright killed Saints off.
Lee Camp's long punt over the top caught Wright napping and with Davis in no man's land, the hapless defender kneed the ball over his goalkeeper to allow Agyemang to nip in and tap into an empty net.
That goal took Agyemang's tally since joining from Preston to seven goals in five Coca-Cola Championship games.
But Italian De Canio, who only took over in October, admitted the credit for his astute signing lay elsewhere.
He said: "Patrick is doing really well, along with the rest of the team. He came to my attention because Gianni Paladini, our chairman, suggested him to me as I was not familiar with a lot of English players.
"Southampton are a good team with good players but the behaviour of the QPR players, even after we let in an early goal, was excellent. We regained the right mentality and dominated the game."
Rangers fell behind courtesy of a comical piece of defending of their own with barely a minute on the clock.
Centre-half Matthew Connolly left a harmless-looking through-ball to Camp, but the Rangers goalkeeper hesitated and when he did finally come to collect, he inadvertently slid out of the penalty area with the ball in his grasp.
Adam Hammill chipped the resulting free-kick into a crowded goalmouth, from where Darren Powell bundled the ball over the line.
But Rangers hit back through skipper Rowlands' fifth of the season and Agyemang pounced at the far post just before the break.
Saints were killed off on the hour when Agyemang took advantage of Davis and Wright's shocker to stroll towards the empty goal, stop the ball on the line and backheel it in.
Youssef Safri capped a miserable afternoon for Saints with a red card for a late tackle on Agyemang before Stern John, who was guilty of an awful miss at 1-0, swept home a consolation.
Rangers are now up to 15th but De Canio, despite the financial clout of owners Flavio Briatore and Bernie Ecclestone, is refusing to talk up their chances of a late surge into the play-offs.
"With all the changes, our main objective is to become a real team at the right level in the Championship," he said.
"We still do not have the continuity to make us a really important team so we will look to get as many points as possible and grow as a team.
"The owners are rich, but the club is not. They are entrepreneurs, so they don't throw their money away."
Saints, who this week confirmed Jason Dodd and John Gorman will be in charge until the end of the season, find themselves moving in the opposite direction having slipped to 18th.
"It's a worry that we are not scoring goals," said Dodd.
"We don't seem to be punishing teams and we made three individual errors, which cost us the match.
"I'm not going to blame individuals, we are collectively to blame."
