A Stoke side on a run of seven consecutive bottom-half finishes but starting with four wins from five, and a QPR team somehow combining its worst start in six years with its best start in four, meet in surprising circumstances at Loftus Road tomorrow afternoon.

QPR (2-1-2 DLLLWW 12th) v Stoke (4-0-1 DWWLLW 2nd)

Sky’s Super Saturday Brunch Spectacular >>> Saturday September 20, 2025 >>> Kick Off 12.30 >>> Weather – Warm and sunny >>> Loftus Road, London, W12

After the Coventry debacle, Queens Park Rangers were on their worst start to a league season since 2018/19 under Steve McClaren – a year in which they also started with a damp squib against Preston and lost game three 7-1. Now, after successive victories against newly promoted Charlton and Wrexham, seven points from five games means it’s Rangers’ best start to a league season in four years, since Mark Warburton opened up 2021/22 with three wins and two draws.

If that has you screaming ‘make it make sense’ then a fixture against Stoke City probably isn’t going to help – this a team that has seven consecutive seasons of bottom-half Championship finishes under its belt, fancied for nothing in all pre-season predictions, that has won four of its first five games to set the early Championship pace.

Recent skirmishes between these sides have often been seismic, and chaotic.

QPR needed a victory when these sides met at whatever we call The Britannia Stadium these days in the penultimate game of 2022/23 and got one – Albert Adomah finished cutely off the post for the only goal of the game which secured another season of Championship football at Loftus Road.

For a long while that looked a pipe dream. Rangers had topped the table in October but looked all set to repeat Millwall’s post-Mick McCarthy collapse into relegation of 1996 when Mick Beale walked out setting in motion of train of results that eventually stretched to two wins from 28 different fixtures across three separate managers. One of those victories, at home to Watford, was sandwiched by ten defeats on either side, including an infamous 6-1 at relegated Blackpool. This was surely a QPR side all set to follow the Tangerines into oblivion. And, yet, they won 2-1 at Burnley – the champions’ only defeat at home all year – and then repeated the dose at Stoke a week later to finish with two wins from the last three and survival. Flipped over in the air, landed on both wheels, pulled over, said ‘what you worried about?’.

As if it needed emphasising just what a miraculous nonsense that survival was, Rangers then won two of their first 17 games the following year to set off back towards League One all over again. It predictably, inevitably, brought Gareth Ainsworth’s brutal time as manager to an end and left Spaniard Marti Cifuentes with a monumental task of saving a team bottom of the league and six points adrift of safety. Two draws with Rotherham and Bristol City and a defeat at Norwich in games one to three didn’t suggest the team had that sort of turnaround in it, and when an utterly shambolic first hour at home to Stoke saw the R’s trail 2-1 against ten men the game looked to be up.

Referee James Linington had done all he could, awarding Rangers a first half penalty so they could take the lead, and then sending off Enda Stevens right at the start of the second half so they could build on it. Instead the R’s contrived to fall behind to goals from Ryan Mmaee and Wouter Burger – this a Stoke side in such lousy form manager Alex Neil was on the cusp of dismissal despite being given the keys to the safe for a huge summer rebuild just weeks prior. One of those Lyndon Dykes goals that tricked you into believing he might be a Championship footballer after all levelled matters, setting the stage for Ben Pearson to toe in a last minute own goal to win the game at the Loft End. It may say more about me, it definitely says a lot about how few and far between highlights have been following QPR for the last 30 years, but I’ve definitely had worse sex than that moment. I won’t name names, but yeh. A Ben Pearson own goal? To win the game in the 90th minute? Against Stoke? Never mind hook it to my veins, put that straight in my bum.

The credit Cifuentes accrued for rescuing that team, and the style in which it was achieved, was plentiful. He did a wondeful job of engaging and uniting a fractured fan base behind a team we’d grown to hate. By the end of the season we were knocking off handsome victories against Leicester, Leeds and Coventry in front of sold out away ends and capacity Loftus Road crowds. It meant that when the team, once again, started with two wins from the first 17 games, the crowd stuck with it, and the manager, to almost ridiculous levels. A 1-1 draw at home to Stoke made it 13 without a win, and still the Loftus Road crowd backed their manager in song. It helped keep him in his job. Stoke had a last minute goal disallowed on a day when referee Gavin Ward suddenly turned into the biggest QPR fan in the world after decades of persecuting us, Ruben Gnanalingam ordered faith be kept, a win was secured at Cardiff. Cifuentes said in his press conference he’d never heard of a crowd backing the manager like that when on such a run. Rangers lost just one of the last 11 games. By January they were within three points of the play-offs.

Make it make sense? Nothing about playing Stoke has made much sense of late.

Recruitment has been key to the failings of these two clubs in recent years. Both have been too quick to fire reasonable managers doing good jobs. Both have gambled silly money chasing an unlikely promotion. Gary Rowett spent nearly £60m here in 2018 including north of £10m each on Tom Ince and Bennik Afobe. Prior to this year Stoke had signed 98 players since relegation from the Prem and spent £75m doing it (that doesn’t include the numerous undisclosed fees). While QPR’s over-stretch in 2021/22 wasn’t nearly as extravagant, lengthy contracts for past-it Charlie Austin and Stefan Johansen, and then a double down with Mick Beale a year later, put the club behind the spending eight-ball for subsequent seasons in the rolling three-year cycle and was potentially ruinous. Having won six of 46 games over a 12-month period it’s remarkable Rangers weren’t relegated – lucky it was done over a calendar year, rather than a football one.

I can’t say I had much faith in Stoke doing anything more than same again this season. A team that has finished 16th, 15th, 14th, 14th, 16th, 17th, 18th in this division over the past seven seasons, I described them as “Copy & Paste FC” in the summer and wrote them up first out of all 23 other sides in our season preview because, well, when you’re topping up the pensions of Aaron Cresswell (35) and Steven Nzonzi (36) why would you expect anything different of a team that only escaped relegation last year because it had the best goalkeeper in the division? Stoke haven’t done much to inspire a lot of faith of late, and even the appointment of Coventry’s greatest ever manager, Mark Robins, was tainted by the notion he’d never been the same at the Sky Blues once ‘brains behind the outfit’ Adi Viveash had left (incidentally, Viveash is now assistant at Middlesbrough, the only club to have started better than the Potters). But Stoke have done some decent business too. Divin Mubama, Jamie Donley and Ashley Phillips look like tremendous use of a loan market Tony Pulis once used to great effect to promote this club to the top flight. Maksym Taloverov was the outstanding player in a relegated Plymouth team, Sorba Thomas is the best player on the pitch whenever QPR play against him. It’s early days, but we might have to take them a bit more seriously.

Early days too, for QPR. Our season preview comrade @AnalyticsQPR posted this chart in the week which tries to measure style of play and has QPR slap bang in the middle of all 24 teams. Neither long nor short ball, neither direct nor play out from the back, no identity at all it seems looking at this. Wider sample size required.

Bit early to be getting into this too much, but so far, for all the talk of ‘playing it out from the back’, #QPR have been fairly pragmatic in terms of build up from the GK position. Certainly compared to other @SkyBetChamp teams, no specific approach in evidence. Early days tho pic.twitter.com/PRq21zE3iB— QPR Analytics (@AnalyticsQpr) September 17, 2025

And yet, for me, it shows perfectly what’s happened at Loftus Road in the opening month or so. We played the first two-and-a-half games in one style – very slow build up, possession based, play out from the back, goalkick routines – and we got our arse handed to us. Halfway through game three we pivoted – big bastard striker, much more direct, play in their half, park the goal kick routine – and have started to compete. We’ve only beaten two newly promoted teams, worth remembering before we think we’ve cracked it, but we look much more comfortable and threatening like this to me. Credit to Julien Stéphan for coming to that realisation and making that change this quickly – Cifuentes reached it too, but it took until December for Rangers to even win a home game last year.

What has helped enormously is QPR finally seem to have recruited some proper strikers. As we said numerous times in our write ups of Amadou Mbengue, Kwame Poku, Rumarn Burrell and Richard Kone, this summer’s intake did give strong and welcome indications that lessons had been learned and the strategy adjusted from last year’s trawl of European backwaters. That’s true nowhere more than up front.

Kone, who has scored three goals in three games from his first three shots on target, is rightly attracting headlines. He looks proper. It’s the position QPR have struggled most with since relegation, with multiple bad misses on and off the pitch. Kone looks the real deal. Strong, powerful, confident, composed, talented. I’ve never been so relaxed with a player through on goal as I was when he went clear against Charlton. Sinclair Armstrong would have killed a guy in the same situation. Kone's goal last week stayed hit.

In addition, against Wrexham, and in general in his appearances so far, it’s Rumarn Burrell who I like the look of. Rumours of what Wrexham are paying Conor Coady are as plentiful as the sums themselves, but he should probably think about handing a chunk of that change back after having his pants yanked down to that extent by somebody who spent the last two seasons at Cove Rangers and Burton Albion. We spoke all last season about how our recruitment, and therefore squad, wasn’t up to it physically, how slow and weak we were as a team. Well, Burrell’s pace is absolutely electric, and he makes things happen.

Not one striker, but two? And, more importantly, a manager willing to play them both together at the same time? That’ll always give you a chance in a game.

Not the fixture I was expecting tomorrow. Not the fixture I was expecting at all.

Links >>> Wrexham Awayday - Patreon Podcast >>> Stoke’s surprise start – Oppo Profile >>> Cisse at the death – History >>> Premier League official – Referee >>> Stoke City official website >>> Stoke Sentinel — Local press >>> The Oatcake — Message Board >>> The Wizards of Drivel — Podcast >>> Every Step Along The Way — Podcast

Below the fold

Team News: QPR have added 37-year-old free agent Ben Hamer to their ranks following Joe Walsh’s broken wrist which ruled him out of the Wrexham win and will keep him sidelined until the New Year. Presumably Hamer has been brought in merely as cover (or maybe we’ve got so many coaches and support staff now we needed to sign somebody else to give them enough to do) given he hasn’t played a first team game for anybody anywhere since March 2024 while at Watford and you don’t ideally want your young goalkeepers hanging round on the bench as cover and warm-up fodder as opposed to going out and playing some proper football.

Elsewhere Jake Clarke-Salter is back in training along with Ilias Chair and Kwame Poku but are still some weeks away from first team returns. Paul Smyth, on the other hand, should be available here after an impressive, goal-scoring first half against Charlton was interrupted by a knock which ruled him out of Wrexham.

Sam Gallagher has scored six goals against QPR in his career – the most he's netted against any side. He was due to play for Stoke’s U21s this week on comeback from injury but has looked so sharp in training Mark Robins has abandoned that plan and put him back with the first team. Thankfully that’s with more of an eye on the 30-year-old featuring in next week’s homer with Norwich than this one. Steven Nzonzi, 36, awaits a second debut for the club but that won’t come this weekend as he hasn’t played any football at all since leaving Iran in May. Expect much the same team as the one that beat Birmingham last weekend.

Elsewhere: The big story in the Mercantile Credit Trophy this week is obviously the developing Martin Allen-Barnet-he’s changed this time Mum situation developing at Sheffield Red Stripe, where Chris Wilder returns for a third spell in charge barely three months after he was dismissed from the second.

Our season preview prediction for the Blades was “red flags here, but even a drop off of 20+ points from last season would still be a play-off finish and something will have to go badly wrong for this squad not to be top six”. They’ve set about proving that with real gusto under Ruben Selles. Six defeats from six played, 14 goals conceded, two scored and none in their last four. They were pathetic at Ipswich last Friday, losing 5-0 in a game where even goalkeeper Michael Cooper looked poor and got nutmegged for two of the five goals – hitherto about the best in the division bar Stoke’s Viktor Johansson.

We did say in the summer that a switch between managers of such contrasting styles might produce some “minor women’s whiplash”, but the decision to ditch the club’s best manager of this generation after a 92-point season (with two deducted) because they conceded twice in the last 15 minutes of the final game of the season was always a huge risk in any case. Likewise, Selles’ decision to give it the full Phil Brown-treatment with a team dressing down on the pitch in front of the fans after the opening day hammering by Bristol City looks as shrewd now as it did then. They begin life under their new/old boss at home to Charlton on Saturday afternoon.

The division lurches back into action tonight with surprise early pace-setters Middlesbrough hosting Ryan Mason’s West Brom and a better tip from our summer preview, in-form Isaac Price.

The two other Saturday morning games along with our own feature Birmingham, who have had two defeats in two games torpedoed into the hull of their pre-season hubris, at home to Swnaselona who recorded a remarkable League Cup win over Nottingham Forest in the week having trailed 2-0 and scored two injury time goals – make a point of seeing the glorious, chaotic third if you can. Marti Cifuentes’ Leicester meet Frank Lampard’s free-scoring Coventry in a derby-of sorts – Cov have never won at the Foxes’ new stadium.

Ipswich looked a bit more like the juggernaut we expected last time out, albeit only against Sheff Utd. The Tractor Boys travel to Blackburn among the Saturday 15.00 games which include a similar clash between pre-season promotion favs Southampton and one of our relegation tips Hull City.

Three promotions in three seasons but already talk about the future of Phil Parkinson at Disney FC after taking QPR’s pork sword in all holes last weekend. Non-executive director Shaun Harvey says speculation about the manager’s future at The Racecourse Ground and leaks from internal meetings are “an absolute disgrace” – and when has Shaun Harvey ever been wrong about anything? Nuno Espirito Santo the preferred choice among their online brethren apparently. Such a ruddy bloody fairytale. Norwich away for them this weekend.

The ongoing meltdown at Sheff Wed (on which much more next week) heads to Portsmouth while John Eustace’s Derby host Preston Knob End. Bristol City host Oxford on Sunday afternoon while we have a rare Championship Monday Night Football with Marxist hunting Milllllllllllll hosting premier used car magazine What Ford?.

Referee: Premier League referee Tim Robinson makes his comeback with a first game of the season here. Last at Loftus Road for the 2-2 draw with Leeds where Koki Saito was sent off. Details.

Form

- With a draw against Preston and defeats to Watford and Coventry QPR made their worst start to a season since 2018/19 under Steve McClaren when they also started with Preston and lost their third league game 7-1. That year they lost their first four league games but then won three and drew one of the next four.

- Since Coventry, QPR have won both league games 3-1, albeit against two of the three newly promoted teams. With seven points from five games it is now the R’s best league start in four years.

- The victories against Charlton and Wrexham are the first time QPR have won consecutive league games since knocking over Plymouth and Hull at the end of January. It’s the first time the R’s have scored three in consecutive league games since beating Watford and Hull under Mick Beale in 2022.

- It’s the first time QPR have won consecutive games 3-1 for 58 years, since beating Bristol City and Rotherham in August/September 1967 @HoopsDreams_QPR

- Richard Kone is having his best scoring run in English football – three consecutive scoring appearances from his first three shots on target for QPR. This after his worst run without a goal in senior football – 12 games. The last QPR player to score in four successive League games was the artist formerly known as Chris Willock in August 2022. The last player to score three goals in his first four appearances for QPR was Djibril Cisse in March 2012.

- Since 2004-05, only six players have scored in as many as four of their first five Championship appearances – Rob Hulse (2005), Diomansy Kamara (2006), Igor Vetokele (2014), Lyle Taylor (2019), Borja Bastón (2019) and Ryan Hardie (2023).

- In the Championship only Leicester, Derby, Wrexham and QPR have scored in every game they’ve played so far. Across the whole Football League it’s only those four, Liverpool, Huddersfield and Gareth Ainsworth’s Gillingham.

- QPR went six unbeaten against Stoke between 2018 and 2021 winning three before the Potters did a double in 2021/22. There have been some dramatic meetings in the six games since then – Albert Adomah’s goal in a 1-0 win in the Potteries in April 2023 kept Gareth Ainsworth’s side in the Championship, the 4-2 victory with a last minute Ben Pearson own goal was Marti Cifuentes’ first win as Rangers manager, and the 1-1 here last year with a controversial late disallowed Stoke goal kept the Spaniard in his job.

- QPR have lost only one of their last eight home league games against Stoke (W2 D5), a 2-0 defeat in December 2021.

- Stoke have won two of their last three league meetings with QPR (D1), as many victories as they managed across their 11 games prior (W2 D4 L5).

- QPR have already forced two own goals from opponents this year. Last year own goals was the club’s joint third top scorer along with Rayan Kolli (four).

- After failing to score in his first 17 home games, Koki Saito has three goals in five appearances at Loftus Road. One of those was against Leeds in April, a game in which he was also sent off by Saturday’s referee Tim Robinson.

- Stoke have finished in the bottom half of the Championship in each of the seven seasons since they were relegated from the Premier League in 2017/18 (16th, 15th, 14th, 14th, 16th, 17th, 18th).

- Defying that history and expectations, Stoke have won four of their first five league games to set the early Championship pace. The 12 points from a possible 15 is their best league start in 27 years, since winning first six games under Brian Little in the third tier in 1998-99. Their nine goals scored is the most from the opening five games since the 12 they scored under Little that season, and this is also the first time they’ve won their first two away games since then when they won their first three.

- Stoke’s top scorer so far is four different players with two each (Baker, Manhoef, Mubama, Thomas). Tom Cannon scored in this fixture last year and finished as Potters’ top scorer with 11, five ahead of his nearest rival, despite leaving the club in January.

- Stoke winger Sorba Thomas has progressed the ball 792 metres upfield with ball carries in the Championship this season, the most of any player, while he’s also created the most chances following a ball carry (6).

Prediction

In our Prediction League for 2025/26 we’ll once again be handing out prizes for being top at Christmas and overall winner from The Art of Football - sample the merch from our sponsor’s newly extended QPR collection here. QPR_Hibs won last season’s Prediction League at a canter and is lending his thoughts to this year’s previews – that ‘first scorer’ guess is becoming a bit redundant mind...

“It’s mid-September and they’ve started already. Those festive e-mails, I mean. This week alone I’ve had messages titled ‘100 days till Christmas’ (annoying), ‘100 sleeps till Santa’ (childish and annoying) and ‘Only 100 days left to get your free Rhys Norrington-Davies Welsh shirt printing set.’ (Yes please!) OK I may have made up that last one. Last season I had already attended two Christmas parties before QPR got their first win at Loftus Road on December 7. This year the invitations haven’t even been printed and we have managed to notch a home victory against Charlton.

“QPR have scored in every game this season, with the ever-reliable Owen Goal chipping in with another one against Wrexham. It’s a shame that effort wasn’t awarded to Rumarn Burrell who was a real handful for the defence all afternoon, but I was pleased to see that later he deservedly got on the scoresheet to seal the win. Richard Kone scored the goal of the match though after excellent build-up work from Harvey Vale and Nicolas Madsen.

Stoke City are the visitors to West London on Saturday. They are somehow sitting in 2nd place after 5 games despite not having finished higher than 14th since being relegated back to the Championship in 2017/18. Results this season seem to have been built on strong defensive performances, and they have possibly the best goalkeeper in the division in Viktor Johansson, who has 9 international caps for Sweden. It will be interesting to see how QPR’s much improved attack perform against a more organised defensive unit.

I don’t expect Julien to make wholesale changes to last week’s winning line-up, maybe just a little tweak to the midfield (Hayden, anyone?) and I am not aware of any injury updates from the club at time of writing. Perhaps they will announce the unwelcome news just before kick-off, as they did with Joe Walsh last week. Exactly what we don’t want to hear.

No clean sheet for the R’s again this week, but 2 goals to win the game. Jimmy Dunne to get on the end of one of those delicious Harvey Vale set-pieces. Richard Kone with the winner.

QPR_Hibs Prediction: QPR 2-1 Stoke. Scorer – Jimmy Dunne

LFW’s Prediction: QPR 2-2 Stoke. Scorer – Richard Kone

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Pictures - Ian Randall Photography

TacticalR added 11:58 - Sep 20 Thanks for your preview. 'A team that has finished 16th, 15th, 14th, 14th, 16th, 17th, 18th in this division'. Stoke are our great rivals for 16th place. 'Sorba Thomas is the best player on the pitch whenever QPR play against him'. Unfortunately that's true.
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