PRESSURE’S GROWING ON AITOR
STEVE McClaren knows the pressures of managing Nottingham Forest. He lasted only 13 games in 2011 when the club were in a mess.
Times are calmer, but there is pressure growing on Forest boss Aitor Karanka. They are getting big crowds again at the City Ground and with that comes big expectation. What is not expected is successive 1-0 home defeats against teams below them. Both Preston and QPR stopped Forest playing, threw a blanket over them, then popped out to get the winning goal.
Karanka is threatening to shake up his squad just as he did last January, but having been already backed significantly in the transfer market he has less leeway. McClaren, meanwhile, is reviving QPR with no money and no prospect of any.
If he takes QPR from bottom of the Championship to the top six by the turn of the year it will be one of the biggest achievements of his career. only 15 or 20 per cent of our level. You should ask the players what they feel about this. I hope they accept what I am saying.”
As Forest slip , QPR are climbing after a dreadful start to the season that left them bottom of the Championship.
No club in English football history had gone so long without winning at an away ground until Rangers’ German captain Toni Leistner powered in a header right on half-time.
It took that tremendous save by Lumley to make history, but 18 bosses on, Steve McClaren is the man to break the hoodoo.
“It’s good to get that monkey off your back,” said the QPR manager.
“We know Nottingham Forest is a tough place to come. But I thought the players were magnificent.
“It was a great team effort. No outstanding individual, everyone doing their job.” Almost 1,500 QPR fans went nuts at the end.
It wasn’t clear if anyone watching was old enough to have been there at the start of QPR’s epic search for a win at Forest.
But McClaren added: “I am so proud of the players. I don’t know exactly how far this team can go. But we don’t want to waste this result, and the one we had before this in beating Middlesbrough.
“We must build on them against Ipswich on Boxing Day.”
Getting anything out of this game was a miracle for Rangers.
But McClaren seemed so confident after QPR took their lead that he didn’t take his seat on the bench until three minutes into the second half.
Cool? Or was he so worried that history might still repeat itself that he needed a quick trip to the loo?
There was no need to fret. With half-time imminent Luke Freeman had put in a superbly accurate free-kick and Leistner got a thumping header.
It wasn’t as if Forest hadn’t been warned because every QPR free-kick and corner before that had been aimed at Leistner’s head.
Leistner, signed from Union Berlin, was magnificent as Forest tried to up the pace and danger late in the game. He and Darnell Furlong stayed strong.
McClaren added: “We’ve come a long way since that poor start to the season. What we do now is keep our concentration.
“Ipswich will be a different test, a game we are expected to win, and that is the next challenge for us.”
There is unlikely to be a better Christmas present than the one QPR fans got yesterday, though.