Nedum Onuoha on Ebere Eze being ready for the Premier League, his QPR exit and the challenge club face in Championship

BY ALESSANDRO SCHIAVONE

QPR legend Nedum Onuoha believes that the difference between his former side and the league’s elite lies in a lack of consistency and the inability to win ugly.

Despite a wealth of budding prospects coming through in recent years, the Hoops have never really challenged for a place in the Championship play-offs, let alone for automatic promotion and they ended the last campaign like the previous four in the bottom half of the table.

Onuoha, who swapped west London for Major League Soccer side Real Salt Lake in 2018, said that the club is not “moving in the right direction”. Moulding young talented players may pay dividends but it is no recipe for instant success as Onuoha emphasised that the teams that habitually gain promotion are the ones that “understand what it takes” to do so.

QPR director of football Les Ferdinand has had to run a tight ship in terms of transfer costs and player wages. And to compound matters, the club is regularly forced into selling their stars.
But the fact that several Premier League clubs have knocked on the club’s door for the likes of Ryan Manning, Ebere Eze and Ilias Chair is also proof that Ferdinand and Chris Ramsey have an eye for unearthing bright talents and that they must be doing something right after all.

Onuoha said: “You could argue that QPR are not going in the right direction at the moment but that’s the type of stuff that changes very, very quickly in the Championship.

“QPR have got lots of young exciting players and they have got a few pieces around as well which all complement each other. But the difference between them and teams higher up for me is just consistency and gaining an understanding (about) what’s required to win games in this division, which comes with time. As soon as they do that, everything is possible. It’s not all doom and gloom but the level of consistency needs to improve and when it does, with the talent QPR have, anything is possible.”

Since getting relegated in 2015, QPR’s form has hardly been the one of promotion challengers, yet the team has always found a way of maintaining their Championship status so far.

In each of the last five campaigns the Hoops have never really mounted a credible promotion challenge and, more often than not, they were left with nothing to play for as the season reached its climax. To put it plainly, they were too good to slide down to League One, but not quite good enough to return to the Premier League.

“The way the Championship is, you see some teams who sit at the top because they have the biggest budget, the biggest stadium, the biggest foundation while the teams that are close to the play-off positions don’t have the biggest budget and the biggest stadium.

“Look at Brentford. You can have years where not much is going on but as soon as people understand what it takes to be successful in the league and gain experience that can make a huge difference because it’s about finding ways to win games.

“You won’t necessarily always see a team like Wolves from three years ago who played the best football, had the best attackers and go up. You find more teams like a Cardiff who Saturday-Tuesday, Saturday-Tuesday, grind out results and they are a tough team to play against but they have quality on top”

Last season, QPR’s precocious talisman Eze took the Championship in his stride and the young Englishman’s ability to dismantle any defence in the league on his day has left Onuoha with no doubts that there aren’t many players of his ilk across the country and that he can carve out a successful career for himself.

Onuoha and Eze’s paths crossed when the defender was entering his final years at the club with teenage Eze earning his first stripes in W10.

The 33-year old: “I played with a lot of young players. When I was at QPR they were all coming through. I do know about all of them (Chair, Kakay, Bright Osayi-Samuel, Eze, Lumley, Manning).

“Ebere for me has got potential to be a very, very good player and I think he is getting better on a day-to-day, week-to-week basis. His understanding of the game is improving. I think at times he’s probably too hard on himself when things don’t go great but if he is listening and getting contact with the right people then I think his game will go to a level which QPR have only seen with Taarabt before.

“There is nothing stopping him from reaching a very, very high level. For a young player it’s all about understanding the game and understanding what really matters and that’s why you can’t put a price on experience. Sometimes they need to go through something to understanding something. I think Eze has an incredible amount of potential and if he keeps improving and his consistency level improves as well then he can become a very special player.”

Speculation has intensified in recent weeks over Crystal Palace, West Ham United and Fulham being interested.

When asked whether Eze is ready to take his next career step this summer or if he should consider staying another season with QPR in the Championship to complete his development, Onuoha said: “As a former QPR player I can never say to someone that he needs to leave QPR, I can never do that.

“But what I’d say is when it comes down to it, there are players in the Premier League who had never played a game there before. But they need to experience it to get better and see where their level is. And I think from when you do get there, the really good players they really step up in the biggest games and that’s because you fight something within yourself there because the pressure is higher.

“When you look at Sheffield United this year, everyone would have been saying they’d be finishing bottom of the league but they are in the bottom half of the Premier League with players who most people wouldn’t have tried to buy to take to the Premier League.

“Who would have said that John Egan, their centre-back, would have been ready to play in the Premier League this year? You probably wouldn’t have done but then he’s got in there and has played well and Sheffield have one of the best defensive records in the league.

“I think everybody’s game will evolve in the Premier League, especially someone like Ebere but like I said I’ll never ask for anyone, especially at QPR, to leave.”

For six-and-a-half years and whoever the manager in question, Onuoha was one of the first names on the teamsheet thanks to his consistent and often quality performances. He was a mainstay of the squad that defied the odds and miraculously survived in the Premier League in 2012 and played a pivotal part in their promotion-winning campaign back to the promised land in 2014.

Despite his blueprint in the club’s history, Onuoha left the Hoops through the back door in June 2018.  The reason? At the end of the 2017-2018 campaign, the club asked him to ‘play for free’ the following campaign, an option the seasoned defender politely declined before being replaced by Union Berlin centre-back Toni Leistner.

Yet amid the disappointment came a ray of hope and Onuoha said he harbours no resentment at being fazed out of the club for which he always put his body on the line.

The former Manchester City academy graduate has shed some light on his controversial departure and said: “To be honest, if there would have been a good contract offer I probably would have stayed but then in the same time I was ready to do something different and they made it easy for me to do that.

“And it is a shame because the year before I won the Players’ Player of the Season so obviously I had a good season. I didn’t understand the decision because I was the captain and had basically played every game that I was available.

“But it is what it is. The club was also looking to get young players or whatever. But I was also lucky enough because in that moment as well I was happy to go and try something new, whether it was gonna be in Europe or in America or whatever.

“Yeah I have been at the club for six-and-a-half years, played over 200 games and if that’s the way they wanted to end it, it is what it is, it’s football. But I feel I have left a good legacy at QPR and still have positive feels about certain people in the club. It’s all good for me.”