Former QPR man shares worrying problem that’s plagued the club for years, ‘it sounds terrible’

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If you thought things were a little chaotic and worrying at QPR right now, these comments from Joel Lynch may explain how that kind of situation has arisen in recent years.

An awful start to the season for QPR in 2024/25 did pick up as the campaign went on, and a relatively solid if inconsistent run in the back end of the year left the club in 15th place after 46 games.

That’s not disastrous by any means, but is hardly remarkable, and QPR fans would obviously hope and want for far better.

It’s now been a decade since QPR were last in the top flight, and ten years of mediocrity have plagued the West London outfit.

Now, former QPR man Joel Lynch has shed some light on the reasons for the issues behind the scenes at the Championship club.

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What Joel Lynch said about QPR’s issues

Appearing on the Under the Cosh podcast, Lynch did not hold back in his scathing review of how things used to operate at QPR when he was at Loftus Road.

He said: “Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink signed me. You’d think that with the players he’d played with and how good he was himself, we’d play attacking football. But his expectations of us were way too high. And we were only getting 1-0, 1-1, we were trying to be solid, we weren’t winning games by big scorelines.

“Being there, as a player, it’s like everyone’s overpaid, no one really cares, it sounds terrible but they don’t. It’s not how QPR should be as a club, there’s still no real expectation or thinking they should be the best.

When asked if he was any different or if the bad habits caught up with him, too, Lynch admitted: “I sort of slipped into the same as everyone else. It just seemed like a money pit. It was just train, go home, get paid, and that was it. And we never really had a manager to push us.”

Even Ian Holloway, an eccentric QPR manager who the fans adored, couldn’t get things sorted during his time at the club.

Lynch added: “Ian Holloway is one of the best people I’ve ever met, but as a manager he just used to overthink things. He had so much to give but couldn’t just stick with one thing… he’d always have new formations and stuff, just crazy stuff… I remember thinking the guy is just nuts.

“We didn’t have the players that would care enough, though. If the team had bought into what [Holloway] wanted we might have been alright.”

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A season of uncertainty ahead for QPR

In many ways, there’s a risk things could be pretty turbulent for QPR next season, too. For a start, Marti Cifuentes is still on gardening leave, after expressing a desire to find a new job elsewhere.

It is thought Johannes Hoff Thorup could take over at QPR this summer, with little chance of Cifuentes’ situation repairing itself.

QPR will have to rebuild their squad, though, with key players Jimmy Dunne and Ronnie Edwards leaving this summer.

If the club can get the right manager and make the right recruitment decisions this summer, there’s every chance QPR could be a dark horse next season. But, as things stand, it’s a very worrying time for QPR fans, with so much up in the air.