QPR first-team player confirms Loftus Road exit | OneFootball

One experienced midfielder has already confirmed that he'll be leaving Queens Park Rangers upon the expiry of his contract at Loftus Road.

At the end of a mixed season for the West London club, one Queens Park Rangers star has taken to social media to confirm that he will be leaving them this coming summer.

With a disappointing run of six matches without a win to close off their season, the Hoops will have work to do in the transfer market this summer.

A 3-0 defeat at Ipswich Town on the final weekend left them in a final position of 15th place in the Championship, which may be seen as an underwhelming final placing, given that they spent much of the season in the top half of the table.

As the dust settles on 2025-26, Rangers don't have quite the number of players falling out of contract as some other Championship clubs do, with seven players reaching the end of their agreements with the club.

But they can already count without one of those who arrived at the club last year, following an Instagram announcement from the player himself which confirms that he will be leaving Loftus Road now that the season has ended.

Isaac Hayden is set to leave Loftus Road after one season with Queens Park Rangers

Posting to Instagram following QPR's defeat at Ipswich Town in their final game of the season, defensive midfielder Isaac Hayden has confirmed that he will be leaving the club.

In a heartfelt message to fans, Hayden said that, "Whenever leaving a club I always try to leave it in a better place and I believe this club will go from strength to strength moving forwards", and that he will "always hold QPR in my heart and wish everyone associated with the club the best for the future."

Hayden arrived at Loftus Road as a free agent in August 2025 on a one-year contract following his release by Newcastle United.

Although he had been a Newcastle player for the previous nine years, he'd spent a not inconsiderable proportion of this time on loan elsewhere, and this included spending the second half of the 2023-24 season at Loftus Road, where he went after being recalled by Newcastle from the Belgian club Standard Liege.

A permanent move to west London though came last August, but his permanent stay has lasted less than a full calendar year, with the 31-year-old moving on to pastures new.

Isaac Hayden's departure could signal the start of a summer of change at Loftus Road

Although he made over 170 appearances for Newcastle United over his nine years with the club, Isaac Hayden was also no stranger to being sent out on loan, having had short-term spells with Norwich City and Portsmouth, as well as his previous stays in Belgium and at Loftus Road.

But it was to Loftus Road that he returned following his release by Newcastle United last summer with QPR completing his signing towards the end of last summer's transfer window. It was a difficult time for the club, who'd lost 7-1 at Coventry City the weekend before his arrival, but Hayden made the first appearance of his return the following Saturday against Charlton Athletic, a match which Rangers won 3-1. Indeed, they won all three of his first matches back in the team at Loftus Road.

Hayden made 29 appearances for QPR over the course of the 2025-26 season, of which 14 were starts. There were points at which the team looked as though it could challenge for a play-off position, but a poor run of form throughout the final third of the season - they won just four of their final 15 matches of the season, with three of those coming bunched together in March - saw them tail off and fall into the bottom half of the table, although they were never in any danger of getting pulled into a battle to avoid relegation.

And while there will be those at Loftus Road sad to say goodbye to him, Queens Park Rangers themselves at least have the consolation of getting a relatively large wage off their books. Salary Sport estimate him to have been on £16,000-a-week this season, a figure which made him among the higher earners at the club - that money can now be diverted elsewhere.

There has been speculation in the French media that head coach Julien Stephan could be lured away from Loftus Road this summer, though much of this has been dismissed by Stephan himself. Nevertheless, following on from a season which had moments of promise but which fell away considerably in its final weeks, it's likely to be a busy summer in the transfer market for Queens Park Rangers, and they will benefit from the decision over whether the player stays or not quickly, whether it was made by the player himself or the club.

This was QPR's 11th consecutive Championship season, and while the club's performance in 2025-26 was an improvement on the season before, when they finished 18th, the focus at Loftus Road will now be put upon how they can build on the positives from this season for a more concerted push towards promotion next time around. Whatever that might turn out to look like for QPR, it seems certain that these plans will not include Isaac Hayden.