5 QPR transfer mistakes the club must try not repeat in January 2025 | OneFootball

The R's can't afford to repeat these errors in the winter window.

Queens Park Rangers, for the first time in a few seasons, may actually be surprised about the current position of the club.

Seeing the R's down at the lower end of the Championship has become pretty normal, but, even though they are down there again, not many expected them to be so poor this time around.

Marti Cifuentes turned this team around with great effect in the last campaign, but has been unable to get his team to find the requisite form to get them in a more stable league position this season.

January could serve as an opportunity for them to improve their currently struggling squad, but they need to make sure to avoid these five previous mistakes that they have made.

Charlie Austin

Charlie Austin is one of the best players that the club has had in recent times. He helped to push them up to the Premier League, where he forged a career as a decent centre-forward.

Unfortunately for the R's, looking back at it, they sold him to Southampton in January 2016 for £4 million, after a £12 million offer from Leicester City was turned down by the club in the previous summer.

With the position that they are in now, they simply cannot afford to lose any of their star players, unless a really convincing offer was on the table, as it was with Austin in the summer of 2015, especially in comparison to what they ended up getting for him.

Jose Bosingwa

The lack of desire and spirit shown by Jose Bosingwa while playing for QPR is something that can't be allowed to happen with any of their January signings. Any player that they acquire has to be much more bought in to what the club are trying to do than the Portuguese full-back was as a Hoop.

Christopher Samba

Claiming QPR's dressing room was the worst that he had ever been in, Christopher Samba's stories of his time at Loftus Road are a perfect example of what they need to avoid in the winter window.

He was part of the infamous relegation team from the 2012/13 season, and recently detailed some of the things that led to their downfall. QPR can't afford to make those sorts of signings that are going to cause conflict among the players.

Bob Taylor

There's no limit on the number of loan slots that Championship teams can sign per season, but there is a cap of five on how many they can use in a matchday squad.

QPR made three temporary signings in the summer - Karamoko Dembélé, Koki Saito and Harrison Ashby - all of whom have made varying contributions to the team so far this season.

There's not much extra room for them, so QPR need to be careful not to make another loan deal like the one they made for Bob Taylor, who was only with the club for a month and featured just four times for them in that period.

Josh Laurent

With the current situation that QPR are in, they can't afford to let any of their stellar Championship-level players leave the club. Josh Laurent, who was with the R's until he was 20, was let go of and went on to become exactly that.

There aren't a tonne of emerging talents coming through the Loftus Road ranks that look like they will obviously blossom into a quality player, but they do have someone like Sam Field who, just like Laurent, is a solid second tier operator in the middle of the pitch. Holding on to someone like him will be crucial.