QPR's Quiet Revival and Challenge Against West Brom
The mood around QPR has changed. Not with noise or bold predictions, but with the sort of steady, stubborn progress that makes people look twice at the league table and rethink what they said in August.
On BBC Radio London’s latest QPR show, Izzy Gilligan and Andy Rowley picked over a goalless draw at Charlton Athletic and then looked ahead to a far tougher examination: Saturday’s visit to Championship leaders West Bromwich Albion.
Charlton 0-0 QPR: A point with half an attack missing
The stalemate at The Valley was not one for the season highlights, yet it told its own story about where QPR are right now.
They travelled to Charlton without four attacking players: Ilias Chair, Richard Kone, Koki Saito and Kwame Poku all sidelined through injury. For a side whose pre-season narrative revolved around whether they had enough firepower or depth, that list would once have sounded like a warning siren.
Instead, they dug in, kept a clean sheet and came away with something to build on.
“Given the way people were talking about QPR at the beginning of the season, I think they've done very well at the start of the campaign,” said BBC commentator Andy Rowley.
It was a reminder of how low the bar had been set, and how decisively the squad has stepped over it so far.
No Chair to knit things together. No Saito or Kone to stretch the game. No Poku to offer another angle. Yet QPR avoided defeat again, kept their shape, and refused to fold in a game that could easily have slipped away.
Unbeaten and unafraid on the road
If there is one line that will travel with them to The Hawthorns, it is this: QPR are unbeaten away from home at the start of this season.
Rowley pointed out they “could've had three wins in a row away”, a small detail that hints at something larger. This is a team that has started to enjoy the grind of the road. They defend with a bit more conviction. They counter with a bit more belief. They look like they trust each other.
That matters now, because the next away day is as sharp as they come.
West Brom at The Hawthorns: the acid test
Top of the Championship. Roaring home crowd. A side “looking like quite a tough challenge given the way West Brom have started,” as Rowley put it.
“It’s looking like quite a tough challenge… They’re a tough nut to crack and they will have the home support behind them,” he said.
The description fits. West Brom at full tilt can suffocate teams, pinning them back, feeding off every loose ball and mistake.
Yet Rowley was clear on one thing: “I don't think QPR are really fearing going anywhere at the moment.”
That line cuts through the table, the form guide, the injury list. This is not a QPR side tiptoeing into the leaders’ backyard. It is one that has already proved it can travel, compete and stay in games.
They will, as Rowley suggested, “go there with confidence”, armed with the knowledge that their away form is no fluke. The only question is whether they can add a cutting edge to that resilience.
Waiting on the cavalry
There is also that lingering hope – and it hangs over the build-up to Saturday – that at least some of those missing attackers might return in time to “strengthen those options in attack”.
Chair’s creativity, Saito’s movement, Kone’s directness, Poku’s versatility: even one of them back changes the look of the bench, the shape of the attack, the options late on if the game is tight.
Former Hoops forward Bradley Allen also weighed in on the show with reporter Phil Parry, adding the perspective of someone who knows what it takes to wear the shirt in difficult moments. His voice, alongside Rowley’s, framed the same emerging picture: a QPR side that has surprised people, and one that now faces the kind of fixture that reveals whether this early resilience is a platform or a ceiling.
The leaders await. The away record is intact. The injuries are clearing, slowly.
Now QPR have to walk into The Hawthorns and prove this start is not just a pleasant correction, but the beginning of something more serious.
