Queens’ Park Rangers have had a woeful start to the season and there are no signs of their fortunes changing anytime soon.
They were two of the three teams to be demoted from the Championship previous season, finishing 20th, and Reading and Wigan Athletic were penalized with points in the last few months.
The fact that QPR have continued where they left off is undoubtedly a bad thing.
They are now in 22nd place with just two points from their last six games.
For Gareth Ainsworth and his team, conceding goals is one problem, but on the other end, they aren’t scoring enough.
Chris Willock is regularly watching on from the sidelines and given that he was one of the hottest prospects in English football not too long ago, there is no reason why he couldn’t help change the fortunes of the West London club.
Where does Chris Willock fit in?
On paper, Chris Willock and Ilias Chair sitting behind a solo striker, operating as a pair of number 10s who can also push out wide just makes sense.
Ainsworth seemingly doesn’t agree given that Willock has managed just 221 league minutes to date, starting only three games.
The situation is clearly dire when a defender is your top scorer and that is the case at the Kiyan Prince Foundation Stadium, Kenneth Paal leading the way with three.
Sinclair Armstrong and Lyndon Dykes meanwhile have just one-a-piece and the aforementioned duo of Willock and Chair are yet to get off the mark themselves.
In some ways, 20-year-old striker Sinclair Armstrong is the key to changing things – he has two assists to his name as well as scoring for both the Republic of Ireland U21s and the first-team in 2023.
Armstrong and Dykes have a similar build and they both work very hard, meaning that one probably needs to make way.
Unleashing the former on Championship defences when he can intertwine with Chair and Willock is the suggestion being put forward here.
QPR may have been a much better side then but in 2021/22, Chris Willock put up 18 goal contributions whilst Ilias Chair also had a career-high return of 14. The Moroccan international scored nine and assisted five that season before doing the reverse of that in 2022/23.
Spending a moment on Chair reveals that his overall shot totals haven’t really changed. The biggest change is that in prior seasons, he averaged 0.9 and 1.7 efforts on goal in the penalty area, however now it is just 0.6. 2.3/2.4 shots per game have decreased to 2 shots per game. This might be because Dykes and Armstrong are both on the field.
Going back to Willock, he has also experienced a significant drop in output, going from 1.7 shots per 90 to 0.3 and 0.9 attempts inside the penalty area to 0.3.
Under Gareth Ainsworth, QPR is doing well.
Many clubs in League One and Two discovered this after playing against Gareth Ainsworth’s Wycombe Wanderers team because he is not known for playing the most expansive of games.
Since QPR wouldn’t have anticipated him to continue where Mark Warburton had left off, perhaps the powers that be rather than the manager are to blame.
Ainsworth has averaging 0.73 points per game this season, which is a little less than his career average with the Rangers, which stands at 0.76 points from 25 games.
His current deal runs until the summer of 2026 and he clearly knows the club having been a player there as well as a player-coach, assistant coach and even a caretaker manager for two stints in 2008 and 2009.
It will be fascinating to see if the hierarchy stick by their man or if they look elsewhere for a saviour with relegation to League One looming even this early in the season.
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