GARETH Ainsworth put his hands up and sad sorry to QPR’s fans after today’s 4-0 home drubbing at the hands of Blackburn Rovers.
The Loftus Road hoodoo continued with Rovers racing into a 2-0 lead midway through the first half courtesy of strikes from Tyrhys Dolan and Arnor Sigurdsson.
Sigurdsson grabbed his second of the game just before the hour and then Sammie Szmodics’ piled on the misery with Blackburn’s fourth in the 66th minute to leave QPR in the drop zone and two points from safety.
Ainsworth told QPR TV: “I apologise – that is not good enough by any means.
“I’m a proud man and I expect my teams to be better than that, (be) more resilient defensively, (have) better quality in attack – those things were missing today.
“We’ve had more shots than Blackburn today but they’ve showed quality in the areas. We’ve given away silly goals. We’ve worked hard and a couple of big players are missing from the midweek game but it’s not good enough that to me.
“Listen, I’m a scrapper. I’m going to scrap, I’ll fight.
“I’ll get these boys up for the next game but we can’t keep losing games like that.”
Blackburn played without a conventional number nine and it proved a shrewd move by opposite number Jon Dahl Tomasson as the visitors romped to a comfortable success.
“That’s why we packed the midfield out with three today because we knew that the midfield area would be key,” said Ainsworth.
“We’ve looked at them so I changed shape by putting four at the back and three in midfield but they still over-run us.
“Their quality and the one-touch passing was a lot better than ours.
“We had our moments. I want to get on the pitch sometimes and show the boys and say ‘Look, you are making it harder than it looks in some key areas’.
“In the first half they only got in our box three times but they scored two goals.
“Second half, I thought we started really well.
“I thought in the first 10-15 minutes the fans were with us. It looked like we were going to score and I said to the boys ‘If you get the one, we will win this game’.
“We never managed to create anything and convert anything. We created, we just didn’t convert, we just didn’t get that final touch.
“That wasn’t good enough by any means for a QPR performance.”
The international break means Ainsworth now has a fortnight to prepare for upcoming trips to Huddersfield and West Brom, a gap in play the QPR gaffer is determined to make the most of.
“I’ve got to get my act together now and make sure that in the next two weeks we are working really hard because we’ve got two away games coming up,” said Ainsworth.
“We’ve done okay away from home with the formation we’ve been playing.
“I’ve been trying to change things at home, trying little different personnels.
“It was a tough day at the office today but I’m going to make sure we are on it for the next game and hopefully we can improve these results.”
