'Very sad' - Marti Cifuentes issues blunt verdict on QPR's poor start after Derby County defeat

QPR suffered another defeat on Saturday afternoon, conceding two goals in quick succession to lose 2-0 to Derby County at Pride Park. The Hoops remain stuck on one win for the season so far, failing to build on the momentum they built up under Marti Cifuentes in the back end of last season.

With seven points in nine games, the Hoops are currently in the relegation zone, albeit it is still very early at this point. Still, a sense of urgency is building at Loftus Road, and Cifuentes knows that his men must start delivering results soon.

“It’s not been good enough so far,” he admitted after the Derby defeat in an interview with club media. “When things are not going well, it’s very easy to point fingers. But the most important thing is how we react. Now we have an international break which is going to be tough for us, because we know we have two weeks of feeling bad about how we’ve done this week - in terms of results and performances.

“It’s a time we need to use properly to look at what is missing and what we are failing at currently. We have to make sure that we come back stronger, because it’s very disappointing - not only for the players and staff who are working hard, but also for the supporters. We had over 2,000 here today and I’m very sad that we couldn’t deliver a better performance and result.”

The derby defeat

Speaking about the Derby defeat specifically, Cifuentes added: “We knew that they (Derby) are a good team from set-pieces. Unfortunately, we weren’t good enough from them today. We also had nine corners to their six and still we weren’t good enough to take our chances. We know there are areas we need to improve in and we mustn’t lose our heads - we need to be good enough to understand what we’re missing and keep on working.

“Last season, we were in a similar situation at the beginning and managed to turn things around. We’re disappointed to start in this way. But I’ve been in these situations before in my career and I will work my best to make sure we get out of this situation. Today we saw two teams with totally different styles and we need to be much better at what we do. We’ve signed a profile of player to play a certain style of football and we need to be better at playing it - when games get more physical, we need to be better at getting the ball on the ground and finding solutions. We need to play the football that we want to.”