Having watched the game, I can't say I'm thoroughly surprised at the result.
I don't know what more Shota can do; the players he has signed have been written off injured and the few that are left are being propped up by a mix of League One standard players, a handful of last season's players and other new signings who are still adapting to the league. You can see he's trying to get players rested and minutes into other ones, but given how threadbare the squad is, the ones coming in simply aren't good enough. It's not a cause for concern really at this stage of the season and we've seen more than enough to suggest we can compete at the right end of the division.
When we got promoted under Bruce the second time, we had a season where we got thumped by Derby, drew with MK Dons and lost to Rotherham. The first time round we got done over by Leicester, then lost back to back home games against Peterborough and Blackpool. If you go back far enough on this forum, I'll wager some of the comments after those games will be similar to those tonight.
This team, with all its additions and injuries, will take time to get going. I know it's easy to get carried away in the early days of the season and that brings heavier disappointment when we lose, but some of the overreaction on here is as if we're fighting against going down.
The first half tonight was a catalogue of errors, but brought by a mixture of a lack of quality and some individual errors. I've seen people saying Jones isn't capable in this division, which given his start to the season is utterly laughable. The squad that went out tonight hasn't played a game as an XI. So the players stepping in have different traits, different movements and different expectations about getting the ball. If all of that gets confused, you end up with that first half. Nobody knew what the hell they were doing and a QPR side that's played together for an entire season and a bit will punish that.
With a full strength side, you're looking at: Ingram, Fleming, Greaves, Figs, Jones, Christie, Tufan, Seri, Sinik, Allayhar, Oscar. With a bench of Baxter, Macca, Coyle, Woods, Tetteh, Pelkas and Slater (with Longman, M'Hand, Traore, Doc and whoever else we sign also trying to get in there). That's the side you criticise when things go wrong, not this amalgamation of players we're calling a team at the moment. The likes of Cannon, Smith and Williams will probably go, the last of the McCann embargo transfers. Covil will probably head out on loan along with a few other young players.
We have to endure while we get the squad fit, we just have to. If you get frustrated at a team plagued with injuries, how are you going to cope when our fully fit side loses?! We've done incredibly well to get to where we are, but as Burnsey said tonight, the injuries have just caught up with us. We can't do anything about that. A fully fit side playing badly we can sort out. A mostly injured team being plugged with players who've barely played/played in the conference last season we can't.