Manager Alex Neil spoke about Queens Park Rangers’ threats ahead of PNE’s trip to Shepherd’s Bush on Wednesday evening.
Mark Warburton and his club were very busy during the close season bringing in plenty of new faces, but they couldn’t keep hold of last season’s top scorer, Eberechi Eze, who left for Premier League side Crystal Palace.
Speaking about their business, Alex told iFollow PNE: “When you lose a player like Eze, it’s difficult, because he was a key player for them, but what they’ve done is they’ve taken a big batch of that money and they’ve invested in six or seven other players, that allows them to freshen their squad up.
“Obviously they lost Jordan [Hugill] as well so they went and bought Lyndon Dykes and to be fair it’s a sort of like for like replacement and obviously they’ve dipped into the market and freshened their team up.
“I think that always gives you a little bit of fresh impetus just a few fresh faces and what happens is the lads that you’ve got look round and think right I need to perform to make sure I keep my slot.”
Mark Warburton’s men head into Wednesday’s 7.45pm kick-off sat 14th in the Championship table on the back of a goalless draw against recently relegated AFC Bournemouth, who have started the season strongly.
Neil said: “By all accounts they should have probably won the game; if anybody was going to win it, it should have been them.
“They’ve had some great results, they beat Forest as well, I watched part of that game.
“QPR is always a difficult game, Mark’s got them set up really well. I think they’ve got good patterns, they know exactly how they’re going to play and we need to perform well on the day to beat them.”
Manager Neil had almost a fully fit squad to choose from on Sunday afternoon ahead of the Cardiff game and while that’s a great thing to have, it also means that some players don’t make the matchday squad.
“It’s difficult when you’re trying to select because apart from Darnell [Fisher] and Louis [Moult], we had most people available for the weekend and it’s hard because some of the lads who have been left out probably weren’t really deserving of it,” said Neil.
“But the team had played very well at Brentford and scored four goals, so we just need to pick which team we think has the best chance of winning the game.”
Alex also spoke about the way football seems to have changed since fans haven’t been inside stadiums, given that away teams seem to be the ones picking up more points – for example this weekend only one Championship home side came out on top.
“I think it’s hard to put your finger on, is it a lack of concentration maybe things like that because I think when you’re comfortably leading or searching for an equaliser – whatever it is – the fans get you up for it.
“I know certainly at home for us when we’re searching for a goal, we get a chance, we’ve got pressure, we’ve got momentum, the fans are roaring, they can get them up and I think what it does is it bleeds a little bit of doubt into the opposition and the lads find an extra couple of per cent from somewhere and I think we’ve certainly lacked that since lockdown since there’s been a lack of fans.”
Watch Alex’s full interview with iFollow PNE above.