Football League World
·11 January 2023
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·11 January 2023
Queens Park Rangers centre-back Jimmy Dunne has revealed he wants his team to be like Middlesbrough and West Bromwich Albion after seeing their recent resurgence at the Riverside and The Hawthorns, speaking to his side’s media team.
The West London outfit have made a mixed start to life under Neil Critchley, managing to secure a win at Preston North End and a respectable draw against Sheffield United but suffering humiliating defeats against Luton Town and Fleetwood.
Enduring a poor run of form towards the latter stages of Mick Beale’s tenure at Loftus Road, they haven’t been able to fully recover from that yet and that’s why they are in danger of falling away from the promotion mix completely.
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Boro and West Brom, meanwhile, are on the up under Michael Carrick and Carlos Corberan with both teams performing extremely well under their respective managers despite their underwhelming FA Cup results last weekend.
And with this, both sides are being tipped by many to be involved in the top six at the end of the campaign despite their slow starts to the season, with the clubs finding themselves in the relegation zone at one point.
Dunne is one player who wants his QPR side to gather momentum like their two league rivals have.
He said: “You look at the likes of West Brom and Middlesbrough – they’ve got their seasons going and we want that to be us.
“The sooner we hit form again, the better chance we’ve got this season.”
The Verdict:
QPR certainly have some of the ingredients needed to push for promotion and they won’t have a shortage of motivation to get into the top six this time after dropping out of the promotion mix during the latter stages of last season under Mark Warburton.
However, there are a couple of areas that ideally need to be strengthened and the forward department is one of those because they can’t afford to rely on Lyndon Dykes to score the majority of their goals.
Ilias Chair and Chris Willock can get in and amongst the goals on a regular basis – but more competition is needed up top and that’s why they need to be prioritising this area in the coming weeks.
It may be difficult for them to secure a top-six finish considering how well some of the other sides in the division are doing, with Burnley and Sheffield United running away with it in the top two.
And the likes of Boro, Albion, Watford, Norwich City, Blackburn Rovers and others are also likely to be in or around the promotion mix at the end of the season, so it would be a great achievement if they were to seal a place in the play-offs.