"This one was a tough watch": John Smith's PNE Fans' Panel verdict

However, there was not much foraging done by our forwards on the grass at Loftus Road on Saturday as, once again, we drew a blank for a fourth successive game on our travels.

After watching us struggle to maintain any rhythm in a pedestrian performance during this single-goal loss, it also appears that this venue remains a resting point in modern times – only this time for our players.

Having won on five out of our last seven visits to this ground, I was relatively optimistic that this run could continue before the game kicked off at the unsociable time where I would normally be considering whether or not to order a Saturday evening takeaway from the Chinese.

In the first half, after we squandered an early half-chance, there was little to cheer again for the faithful travelling following who had parted with their hard-earned cash.

Having forked out for yet another expensive trip, it was now a dead rubber after our play-off hopes had finally gone down the Swanee with the crushing midweek defeat at Southampton .

Relegation-threatened Rangers were no Southampton, who had totally outclassed us in every department.

Watching the game though, it was hard to tell which team was supposedly just short of a play-off spot and which one was in serious danger of accompanying Rotherham United into the dark depths of League One.

The only goal of the game came almost midway during the first half when keeper Freddie Woodman let the ball slip out of his hands.

He dropped it to the floor in a similar fashion to rogue trader Del Boy dropping his counterfeit goods in fright when the police appeared round the corner at nearby Shepherds Bush Market.

Rangers forward Lyndon Dykes would have thought it to be ‘cushty’ when he accepted this gift and gleefully tapped the ball into the net – but I certainly felt far from ‘lovely jubbly’.

We huffed and puffed in the second half but created very little and, in all truth, were nowhere near to blowing the house down as the game petered out to its disappointing conclusion.

Like many games in my life sentence of watching North End, this one was a tough watch.

Leaving the ground with my friend, we questioned why we keep putting ourselves through all this pain.

Is it devotion or just plain stupidity? The answer is you do it because, occasionally, you have the odd good day but Saturday certainly was not one of these.