Nedum Onuoha has backed his former club Queens Park Rangers to survive in the Championship this season, although he feels that an "ugly" relegation dogfight could be on the cards in the latter stages of the campaign.
QPR narrowly avoiding demotion to League One last season under the tutelage of Gareth Ainsworth, who admitted prior to the start of the 2023-24 campaign that his side would be "up against it" in the second tier, but he nevertheless vowed to get "QPR back used to winning rather than getting beat which was the norm last season."
Ainsworth, who wrote his name into QPR folklore following a seven-year playing career at the club between 2003 and 2010, decided to end his legendary 11-year managerial tenure at Wycombe Wanderers – during which he managed a total of 550 games and led the Chairboys from League Two to the Championship – to replace Neil Critchley in the Loftus Road hotseat in February last year.
However, the 50-year-old won only five and lost 19 of his 28 games in charge of the R's, and he was sacked at the end of October last year after just eight months at the helm following a run of six straight defeats, leaving the club 22nd in the Championship with just eight points from 14 matches.
Onuoha believes that one of the main factors behind Ainsworth's downfall at QPR was that his philosophy – a direct, low-possession-based approach – did not suit the players that he inherited at the club.
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Speaking to Sports Mole following the release of a brand new BBC Sounds podcast 'Planet Premier League' for which he is joined by Cesc Fabregas, Onuoha said: "I don't know if he was popular among the entire fanbase, but he's an icon of the football club and they'd seen [the success] he had at Wycombe for 10-and-a-half years.
"He had a bit of personality, pizazz and the club meant something to him. [QPR were] the only club he would have joined if he were to leave Wycombe, so that meant a lot I imagine.
"But he inherited a group of players who were not built to necessarily play the style of football that he wanted. You never really saw, in my opinion, a true connection between how he was trying to get them to play and the players looking their best.
"The players had spent the last few years trying to play a certain way, trying to play attacking football with [Chris] Willock and [Ilias] Chair and people like that, playing out from the back, but that wasn't necessarily something that Ainsworth was interested in.
"It didn't work out. The team was heading in the wrong direction, they had to make the decision to let him go and I'm sure that was a hard one."
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Spanish head coach Marti Cifuentes has since taken the reins and has somewhat steadied the ship at QPR whilst adopting an attack-minded brand of football which contrasts the approach previously instilled under Ainsworth – much to the delight of the club's supporters.
Cifuentes, who earned Europa Conference League qualification with Swedish outfit Hammarby courtesy of a third-place finish in the Allsvenskan last season, made a bright start to life at QPR as he accumulated 12 points from his first seven Championship games in charge, claiming three wins in a row against Stoke City, Preston North End and Hull City in the process.
Injuries to key players then bedevilled Cifuentes's side, who endured an eight-game winless run in all competitions over the festive period, but QPR have since picked up four points from their last two Championship matches – a 2-0 home win over Millwall was followed by a 1-1 draw with relegation rivals Huddersfield Town on Sunday, in which Kenneth Paal scored a dramatic 95th-minute equaliser to salvage a point.
Onuoha, who spent six-and-a-half years of his playing career at QPR and memorably helped the club secure promotion from the Championship via the playoff final in 2013-14, has been impressed by the early signs of progression at the R's since the arrival of Cifuentes. However, he has encouraged the Spaniard to find the right formula for his side to grind out positive results in a "super competitive league" whilst operating with an attractive style of play.
"From what I gather, Cifuentes was somebody who was looked at [prior to Ainsworth's appointment], so it wasn't as if he came out of the blue, but the timing wasn't right I don't believe from his side," said Onuoha.
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"Cifuentes has since come in, I've watched [QPR] play and sometimes I think that's good, the football's good, but it's a reminder that that doesn't matter. The Championship is a super competitive league and certain teams just have a knack (for winning).
"Take Southampton for example, 22 games unbeaten, but I guarantee you'd watch some of those games and they're not playing football any better than anyone else, but they are still finding a way to win. It's the 'grind it out league' and I think [QPR] need to find a way to balance the good football with grinding out results.
"Obviously they need to score more goals as well to give themselves a chance of propelling themselves up the league, but as we've seen historically with the Championship, a bad team can become a good team in the space of about five results.
"Maybe their recent results are a start (for a positive run of form). I wouldn't be surprised if they won a few games in a row and then changed the perspective altogether."
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QPR have been languishing in the bottom three of the Championship since September last year and currently sit 22nd in the table after 29 matches played, one place and three points below Huddersfield – who sacked manager Darren Moore on Monday – just outside the drop zone.
Asked if QPR are capable of avoiding relegation this season, Onuoha said: "I think they are good enough to survive. It's Huddersfield right above them who are not exactly setting the world alight.
"Looking at [QPR in] the table now, 29 games, 25 points, 25 goals scored - it's not great, but if they can find that spark then before you know it, they could climb to 19th, 18th and have different conversations (regarding end-of-season targets). You sense a disappointing season as opposed to a catastrophic one.
"I'm pretty sure that the club aren't in a position whereby they're looking for a reset in League One or anything like that, because realistically how do you know how to get out of that division, it's been a long time since they've had to do that. I think they will stay up, but I get the feeling that it's going to get ugly to be honest."
Four of QPR's next five Championship fixtures are against teams who currently sit in the bottom half of the table, starting with Saturday's trip to Ewood Park to face 18th-placed Blackburn Rovers, who have failed to win any of their last seven league games.
Oliver Thomas
