Sky Sports pundit drops damning QPR claim as Marti Cifuentes pressure builds | OneFootball

Jobi McAnuff believes QPR's poor summer recruitment is to blame for their struggles this season, rather than head coach Marti Cifuentes.

Pundit Jobi McAnuff does not believe Queens Park Rangers head coach Marti Cifuentes is entirely to blame for his side's poor start to the season, and he criticised the board for not recruiting enough Championship experience in the summer.

QPR achieved safety last season following a remarkable turnaround after Cifuentes replaced Gareth Ainsworth in October, and they were one of the form teams in the division in the second half of the campaign, losing just four of their final 19 games.

After a busy summer transfer window that saw the arrival of nine new signings, many expected the R's to climb the table this season, with some even suggesting they could be surprise play-off contenders, but it has certainly not worked out that way.

The Hoops are now without a win in their last 11 league games after they were beaten 2-0 by Leeds United at Elland Road on Saturday, and they head into the November international break sitting bottom of the table, five points from safety.

Cifuentes only signed a new contract at Loftus Road in September, and after the defeat to Leeds, he insisted that he still feels he has "a lot of confidence from the club", but reports on Tuesday suggested the R's are considering former Liverpool and Birmingham City defender Gregory Vignal as a potential replacement for the Spaniard.

Jobi McAnuff slams QPR summer recruitment

McAnuff said the lack of Championship experience of those recruited in the summer has been a big problem for QPR this season, and while he does not believe Cifuentes was responsible for most of those signings, he admitted that the 42-year-old will be the one to pay the price if results do not improve.

"You look at their results and performances, it's only one win this season, it's a really disappointing start for them, more than disappointing," McAnuff said on Sky Sports' Essential EFL podcast.

"That is the nail on the head for me, the lack of experience brought in.

"This is not necessarily a Marti Cifuentes problem, this is a hierarchy and a board problem, and we've seen clubs take these models on where they are going to recruit from abroad.

"The Championship is such a unique league in terms of the demands, and for me, if I'm a manager at that level, I would want a certain amount of players that have got experience.

"The biggest question that I need to know on a Saturday is what are those 11 players going to give me?

"I think at the moment for QPR, he just doesn't know because they don't know, they're learning about the Championship, they're developing as players.

"You've got some younger profile players, which is part of the model they want to go down, and that inconsistency and the up and down just stems from exactly that.

"They've got a manager who can get results, he's proven that, and I just feel at what point are you going to get a board or a club that's going to back him?

"This is just my own opinion externally, I've got no real inside information and I've never really had a proper chat with him, but I would be amazed if all those signings were his.

"He might have said I need a midfielder, I need a winger or whatever it was, but it just seems to me that something hasn't married up with that recruitment in the summer, and now he's having to try and fight the fire.

"The fact they've given him time maybe suggests that as well, but he's in big, big trouble, make no bones about it, because unfortunately, as we've always seen, it's managers that end up in a really difficult spot.

"I've got sympathy with him, whether he gets the time to turn it around, only results will tell, and at the moment, they're just nowhere near good enough."

Of the nine players QPR signed this summer, only Harrison Ashby had previous Championship experience, and that was during a loan spell at Swansea City last season, which underlines McAnuff's point about the club's risky transfer policy.

Recruiting from abroad can be a successful strategy in the second tier, but McAnuff is right to question whether the R's brought in enough experience and quality during the summer transfer window.

If Cifuentes did not have a big role in recruitment, it would be unfair to lay the blame for the Hoops' struggles solely at his door, but with reports claiming that the club are weighing up replacing him with Vignal, it seems the board do hold him responsible for the poor form.

Given that Vignal's only managerial experience is a 10-game spell in charge of French third division side Versailles last season, during which he won just three games, his appointment would be too much of a gamble for the R's to take in their current predicament, and Cifuentes should be given more time.