Mark Hughes waits for tide to turn at QPR By SIMON PEACH Published on Monday 1 October 2012 02:43 QPR manager Mark Hughes knows it has not been the greatest of starts to the season, but backed his side to turn the corner sooner rather than later. Hughesâ men have yet to win a Barclays Premier League match this campaign, collecting just two points from a possible 15 heading into tonightâs clash with London rivals West Ham United. That indifferent start has seen the pressure begin to mount on Hughes, who the bookmakers make second favourite to be the next top-flight manager to leave his post. The Welshman, though, is not too concerned with such talk and believes his side will soon start picking up victories, especially when they are able to call upon a number of defenders again. âOur performances have been fine up to a point,â said Hughes, who will have to do without the injured Anton Ferdinand, Jose Bosingwa, Fabio and Armand Traore this evening. âObviously we need to see games out. We have selection problems at the moment in a key area of the field in defence. âWe have had too much of a turnover in terms of selection and personnel changes, so that doesnât lend well to having that continuity of performance. âWeâve created some decent football in the initial period, but it was always going to take time. We are not going to hide behind the fact it is not the best of starts and the start that we wanted. âWe understood that it could happen and that it would take us time to get the team functioning as we wanted. âThe way I work and my staff work is we donât get too high and we donât get too low. What we do every single day is make sure the team is prepared and we give them the best chance to be successful. Over the long term, that has been proved in all the teams I have been involved with. At the moment it is difficult because we cannot get that continuity of selection.â West Ham midfielder Gary OâNeil has recovered from a knee injury, and Yossi Benayoun could make his first start since moving back to the club on loan. Modibo Maiga could keep his place with on-loan Liverpool striker Andy Carroll (hamstring) still unlikely to play.
I really hope so. We really need to win today. But, what MH is saying here is no different to what NW was saying last year, about the limited selection NW had and how he wished he could bring more players in. Now MH has to deal with this limited selection he's got, due to the said key injuries, but I see nothing different to the situation we were in last year when at least we were doing better at this point, with a lesser squad! I hope we put it together today. And is his name really Peach? I hope it turns out peachy today.
For his sake I hope tonight's the night. If we keep struggling to convert performances to points, confidence and belief will wane and who knows where the frustrations will lead. Losing can be a difficult habit to break out of.
'We don't get too high and we don't get too low'. 1. 20th is definitely too low. 2. 17th is definitely not too high.
May be he means the whole team while they're on the field? He prefers to play the middle of the park and may be that's why we don't score a lot and can't defend?
He doesn't really have the defensive talent to keep hungry PL teams at bay even when everyone is fit (his own fault of course) so unless we really start banging them in at the other end I fear for both us and the manager's job. Anything other than an attacking line up and tactics is dicing with death IMO. That said we do have the players to run rings round the likes of West Ham.
