Deflated Stephan points finger at mental fragility after QPR slip to defeat against Blackburn
- By Yann Tear at Loftus Road
- 6 minutes ago
- 3 min read
Julien Stephan accused his players of mentally 'throwing in the towel' after conceding the third goal in Saturday's deflating 3-1 home defeat to Blackburn Rovers.
And he suggested that the play-offs may not be a realistic target - even though his side are still only four points adrift of sixth place.
Rangers started impressively enough, causing Rovers problems, but were hit with three sucker-punches - the third of which came right at the start of the second half and seemed to knock the stuffing out of them.
The R's boss was in no mood to sugar-coat his disappointment, believing his side needed to show greater mental fortitude. And the underlying message was : "We can forget the play-offs if we don't toughen up."
"We played too many long balls second half and didn't use the midfield - we forgot our plan in the second half because I think we dropped mentally after the third goal," said the Frenchman.
"I don't want to speak about the play-offs after today. We have to be realistic and the main thing for us now is to continue to improve with this young team and show more consistency, because if we want to compete and finish in the top six, we need to have consistency.
"You need all the players across the season [to do well] you need many things and I don't think it's really realistic to speak about the top six now.
"We have a very difficult schedule in the next weeks so now it's more a question of how we are able to react. Of course, I love competition and I like to speak about that but when you have the second lowest budget in the league, even if you want to compete against all the clubs you have to be realistic.
"Now it's not a question of top six, it's a question of how we react, bounce back and improve - and how we don't drop mentally after we concede a goal - and how we show more quality and consistency collectively.
"We showed that a couple of times at the start of the season but we showed as well that we dropped mentally a couple of times as well. If we want in the future to compete and finish in the top six, we need to improve."
Looking back on the loss, Stephan said: "I think we started well the first 20-25 minutes and we had two or three good chances to score the first one and probably could change the momentum of the game. They shot two minutes in the first half and scored two times. Two easy goals for me.
"The players found the solution to score a beautiful goal but when you concede three goals from three shots, it's probably too much for us. In the second half after the third goal we dropped too much the mentality and we didn't find the right keys to come back and create a strong momentum.
"Today we had more possession [than normal] but it's a question of efficiency. When you have opportunities you need to take them. Also we conceded three easy goals and we are normally stronger defensively - not only the back four but collectively - to reduce the opportunities for opponents.
"I think it was a decent performance in the first half. I think we started the game with a lot of hunger and we wanted to win but [you get punished] when you don't use the possibilities that you have to score."
