With Queens Park Rangers’ form falling off the wagon in the last few matches and manager Steve McClaren’s side registering back to back defeats, there were mixed hopes that we’d get back to winning ways against Middlesbrough earlier today.
Welcoming notoriously defensive manager Tony Pulis to Loftus Road for the tie, the visitors form probably made them favourites but QPR have at points this year shown that we are capable of a surprise or two.
And it took us four minutes to surprise them as Pawel Wszolek found the back of the net, and although Middlesbrough battled back to level the scores six minutes after the halftime restart, a spirited display saw Nahki Wells restore our advantage on the hour mark – and this time we held on to it.
Back to winning ways, a solid performance, and although Pulis moaned about the decisions of the match officials, they only levelled as we went down to ten men for a period with Joel Lynch’s injury – so a justified win for me – especially on the stats front given the chances we created.
Speaking to the BBC following the game a delighted McClaren explained.
“We deserved to win on the basis of the chances we created and the way we defended. It would have been a travesty had we not won. We showed great determination, could have scored more goals and defended resolutely right to the end. We had chances to score more. It was a great performance by all the players. We had to defend for our lives. Some of our football, in a tooth-and-nail game, was very good. This team never says die. It comes back and, after our second goal, we had something to hang on to. We needed this win. The three points are a big bonus for us.”
☺️ 'I'm so proud of them'
Steve McClaren praised #QPR's fighting qualities after battling back to beat Boro.#QPRMID pic.twitter.com/3BYOM4QhjG
— QPR FC (@QPR) December 15, 2018