Cifuentes verdict on Cardiff defeat - and reality of squad improvements during transfer window

Marti Cifuentes admits his side were simply 'not good enough' against Cardiff City as his side fell to a seventh home defeat in the league in their deflating New Year's Day clash.

They succumbed to two set piece goals in a 2-1 loss - both corners - as the feelgood factor from the battling 0-0 draw at Ipswich of a few days ago made way for the gloomy reality of four defeats in five.

Rangers are now only above Rotherham in the Championship table and four points from safety.

"It was an opportunity to kick off the year with a positive result and a positive game for our fans to change after the last few games - to keep building after a good performance against Ipswich - unfortunately we were not good enough," said the Hoops boss.

"I think the first half was really disappointing, we played very poor. Very slow tempo on the ball, very slow movement. It's not that Cardiff created chances outside of the corner kicks, I would say, but we knew they were good on set pieces.

"In the second half, we changed a couple of things. we gave Rayan Kolli the opportunity to show that he is training well, with energy after being back from injury and we started to build up [better] and pushed up higher.

"We got good momentum at the beginning of the second half and we scored a goal, but slowly we lost this momentum - several reasons, probably the first one is Rayan gets injured again and needs to be subbed off. The second reason is because we conceded another goal on a set piece which is unacceptable."

The Spaniard added: "I think now I've been 12 games in charge and we've conceded 11 goals, which is a quite decent defensive performance, but several of them were set pieces, which is unacceptable in the situation we are in. This part of the game should be an asset, not a liability. Right now we are getting extremely punished. So I'm disappointed.

"We need to be critical of ourselves. If we concede two goals from set pieces, we cannot expect to win games.

"I'm extremely committed. My life now is about trying to make sure that QPR play Championship games next season, so we need everybody on board with this challenge. For sure I know that there are some players that are trying their best and sometimes trying is not enough. We need to perform better.

"I will not lose my mind because we lost one game, but the reality is that in the last four it was a good opportunity with a lot of games in a few days to pick up a lot of points and we picked up only one. The last games have not been as good as we want. We need to change things, definitely."

Rangers will need to be 'creative' in transfer dealings this month if they are to change personnel but Cifuentes accepts money is tight and knows he cannot expect miracles.

He said: "It definitely will be busy, in the sense that we are going to try our best to make sure we are [mindful] of the situation where we are. That makes us very limited in terms of what options we can work for.

"We need to have the mindset that we can always improve if we try our best. I'm aware of the financial situation and the restrictions, so it's not only up to us. We have to be aware of the possibilities and solutions to see if we can improve as a football team because that's the nature of the game."