Queens Park Rangers manager Ian Holloway is out for revenge this weekend as we host Nottingham Forest at Loftus Road.
The reverse fixture at the City Ground earlier in the season saw Queens Park Rangers well beaten with a four nil scoreline in the game in November, and Holloway told the Official Site when he met with the media today that his only aim was to see a solid revenge mission played out to rebalance the scores.
‘They beat us heavily at their place and that result still hurts me deeply, it really does. Revenge is in my mind, of course, it is – but learning from what we got wrong at the City Ground is also in the forefront of my thoughts.’
Holloway went on to say.
‘We started well up there, but then got a lot wrong. But they`ve got a new manager now and they`re playing in a slightly different way so we will need to do our homework and be ready. I expect them to sit off us, let us take the game to them and then look to hit us on the counter-attack. It`ll be a very different test to ones we`ve faced recently at Loftus Road.’
The last time we faced Forest they were of course managed by Mark Warburton but since then he departed the club and they have appointed former Middlesbrough manager Aitor Karanka to the job and for Holloway he’s expecting a very different approach from them.
‘Forest are a difficult side to read at the minute. Karanka is a very defensive-minded coach. He likes to build from the back. He`s very sort of Mourinho-esque in the terms of the way he sets his teams up.’
With only two points separating both sides, Holloway knows victory could be crucial to how the remainder of our season pans out.
‘It`s a big game. We`ve delivered in these games this season so far this season, but we can`t rest on our laurels – we`ve got to keep doing it. When you`re struggling on the road to get the results your performances deserve; it puts even more pressure on these games.’
He went on to say.
‘I`m still bitterly disappointed with Tuesday night. Those fans who made the journey to Bramall Lane would`ve acknowledged that it was one of our better away performances. Did we deserve more? Yes. Did we get it? No. That`s the Championship for you, but the encouraging thing for me is that we`re producing good performances and I`m confident the victories will come on our travels.’
Of course home form this year has been better than on our travels and he knows that plays into our favour this weekend.
‘At home, we`ve been really good this season. Our record is very good. The crowd have been great for us. Even at 0-0 in games when we`re sometimes not able to break our opponents down, they`re sticking with the team. We don`t get affected at home. We stick to the game plan and more often than not we`ve done the business. The bigger the game is, more than often we’ve coped.’
