QPR boss McClaren rues “cruel” result after late West Brom winner

Steve McClaren called football a “cruel, cruel game” after his Queens Park Rangers side fell to a late defeat to West Brom at Loftus Road on Tuesday night.

The result made it eight games without a win in the league, a run spanning back to Boxing Day.

QPR fans may well feel aggrieved over their last three league fixtures as decisions and lady luck continue to work against them. They first battled back against Birmingham from four goals down only to see a potential match levelling penalty from Nahki Wells saved in injury time.

Then it was off to Lee Johnson’s inform Bristol City at Ashton Gate, where a more than dubious penalty in stoppage time denied the R’s a valuable point.

McClaren cited their worse piece of fortune in yesterday’s game when their star man Luke Freeman had to be withdrawn with injury after 85 minutes and, after their boss had utilised all of his allocated substitutes, Rangers were forced to play the remaining five minutes plus the five stoppage time minutes with ten men.

The extra men let West Brom dominate and eventually breached the QPR goal in the 93rd minute through Jake Livermore.

“The character of the team, one-nil down after two minutes to come back from that, changed the shape at half-time, thought we controlled the second half and one mistake and it gets punished. Yet they’ve [QPR] got the character to come back and at 2-2 I thought there was only going to be one winner. We lost Freeman and then I’m thinking we’re going to hold on for a point cruel, cruel game and the players didn’t deserve that but that’s football.” – Steve McClaren post-match after QPR’s 3-2 defeat to West Brom

West Brom celebrate their injury-time goal at Loftus Road (Photo: Twitter/@WBA)

Upcoming fixtures against Middlesborough and Leeds means that QPR’s bad run may well continue.

QPR could now be looking down the table rather than up, but their goalkeeper Joe Lumley was adamant that his team will take their upcoming fixtures game by game.

“We don’t think about that at all, we just take each game as it comes. Every single game is a big game even the teams that are not up there, still massive games anyone can beat anyone. We just prepare the same and hopefully it will fall for us soon, we go to Middlesbrough and hopefully put in a good performance”

Lumley produced a string of impressive stops to prevent West Brom, with Livermore’s goal harsh on QPR’s defensive efforts and impressive second-half performance bettering Darren Moore’s team throughout.

QPR face Middlesbrough on Saturday at the Riverside as McClaren’s side look to complete an impressive double over the Teesside club.