‘Very disappointed’ – Cifuentes reflects on QPR’s late defeat at Sheffield Wednesday

Marti Cifuentes was unhappy with the way his QPR side threw away the lead late on in Saturday’s 2-1 defeat at Sheffield Wednesday.

Rangers took the lead in first half at Hillsborough when an Ilias Chair effort was deflected into his own net by Bambo Diaby but their four-game unbeaten run came to an end courtesy of goals from Bailey Cadamarteri and Anthony Musaba.

The loss also meant QPR passed up the chance to move out of the Championship relegation zone, and Cifuentes was not happy with how his team finished the game as Sam Field and Osman Kakay both passed up chances to score a second goal.

“Today is a tough one,” he said. “We are very disappointed. Just before they scored for 1-1, we had a great chance to kill the game and make it 2-0 and take three points.

“In some ways, the last 10 minutes of the game were not good enough.

“It is true that it was not our best performance since I am here but I still think we had control over many minutes of the game even though we knew Sheffield Wednesday have this aggressive style.

“We should have had better control on that situation [the equaliser] and how it developed.

“Unfortunately, after the 1-1 we still got a very clear chance get the second one [goal] and if you don’t use your chances you give hope to the opponent and that’s what happened, and we conceded from a set-piece.”

Cifuentes brought on defender Steve Cook to try and hold on to the lead but the Rangers boss felt his team ended up dropping too deep as Cadamarteri drew the home side level on 86 minutes before Musaba found the winner in the sixth minute of stoppage time.

“The way we want to approach games I understand is not easy but that is not our way,” he said.

“When I look at the skills of the players, we are not this team that gets better by dropping and staying deep. It’s not the style that we want either.

“Sometimes you need to accept that it is the picture and in fact Sheffield Wednesday started to put more big players central to kick longer balls it was about being able to defend.

“Many times it is not about defending lower but defending better. Perhaps we missed this and let them be higher on the pitch, grab the second balls and build momentum. It is something we need to learn for the future.”

PICTURE: QPR FC