QPR face fight to stay up
Hughes did not want to rain on Beard’s parade too much, so he said simply he would need at least five to 10 years to turn QPR into title contenders.
For now, the challenge is to avoid immediate relegation, which is looking more and more likely.
In October, I went to Loftus Road to see QPR against Chelsea. The match ended 1-0 to QPR, still the only home league victory of their season so far, and I came away from the ground thinking that they would probably be relegated.
Even though they’d won the match thanks to David Luiz, who was generous enough to give them an early penalty for no reason, they had been comprehensively outplayed by a Chelsea side that had been reduced to nine men by two first-half red cards.
There were three worrying aspects to QPR’s performance. First, their tactics were a mess. They didn’t know how to exploit their two-man advantage and defended too deep, giving Chelsea too much respect. Second, they seemed to tire a lot earlier than Chelsea, again despite a two-man advantage. Third, they were plainly lacking speed and technical quality.
The appointment of Hughes will not solve all of these problems.
At St James’ Park yesterday evening, the new manager spoke about how pleased he was to see that his players had taken on board all the things he had been telling them during the week. His emphasis was on the collective nature of the display:
“What was pleasing from my point of view was the way they looked after each other. They worked together, and that augurs well.”
Hughes is proud of his reputation as a demanding coach, but however insistent his demands, it is hard to see how he is going to transform Clint Hill into a Premier League quality full-back, or give Heidar Helguson the acceleration to get away from defenders, or make Shaun Derry young again so he can run for 90 minutes.
But he might be able to improve certain details.
For instance QPR score fewer goals in the last 15 minutes of matches than any other side in the league, which might be related to their apparently poor stamina: if so, Hughes can put it right.
And perhaps he can get better performances out of some individuals who are failing to do themselves justice. Against Newcastle, Shaun Wright-Phillips lacked the confidence to take men on; maybe Hughes can help him rediscover his mojo.
Even if Hughes does manage to get a little more out of the existing squad, it is plain QPR’s owner Tony Fernandes faces a choice between getting burned by some inflated January transfer fees and dropping back down into the Championship in May.
Hughes was not forthcoming when asked about transfer targets after Sunday’s match but the strongest links concern the Chelsea defender Alex, who would certainly beef things up at the back, and the young Brazilian striker Henrique.
The second name is intriguing because QPR are desperately in need of some finishing quality, but it would seem a big risk to pin their hopes on a 20-year-old with no experience of European football.
History shows that young players from Latin America take a while to adapt to the more lenient refereeing they encounter in England. There are exceptions, notably Javier Hernandez, but Hernandez is three years older than Henrique and was never asked to deal with the pressure of being the main source of goals for the club. Hernandez also has exceptional speed, which scares defenders in every country.
Henrique has long-term potential, but QPR need someone who can score in the short term. They would be better off going for Darren Bent, who is ideally adapted to the specialist task of scoring goals for a bad team. Bent would be expensive, but not as expensive as getting relegated.
