Neil Critchley: Blackpool face a dangerous and wounded animal in Queens Park Rangers

Queens Park Rangers have lost three of their last five games and are without a win during that run too.

Despite that, Mark Warburton’s side remain in fourth place in the Championship and Critchley knows it’s only a matter of time until they hit form again.

“It makes them dangerous opponents for me,” Critchley said.

“They’re a very good team and they have lots of good players. I like watching them play because they play a fantastic brand of football.

“They have good attacking players in their team, they have good experience and they’re well managed and well coached.

“Loftus Road is a great stadium to play football. It will be a great atmosphere under the lights in midweek, so it’s a great challenge for us.

“They will be looking to get back to winning ways, but it’s a great game for us to look forward to. We know we’ll have to play well but we can take great heart from some of our recent away performances.”

QPR have perhaps surprised some this season with their impressive displays.

Despite their recent poor form, the Loftus Road outfit remain only five points off Bournemouth in second place.

Given the man in charge, Critchley isn’t surprised to see tonight’s opponents flying high in the table.

“Mark has done a fantastic job at various clubs. He’s got an interesting background from the younger part of his life and he’s done a great job at QPR,” he said.

“They improved massively during the second half of last season and they’ve carried that on into this season.

“He’s got a really good football team there, so that’s credit to Mark and his staff.

“We spent some time with Mark and his staff after the home game earlier in the season and you can see he’s a very intelligent football man. You can see that with the way his teams play.

“I like speaking to some of the managers and asking them questions after the game because you can take things from them, you can learn from them.

“Mark is someone with a lot of experience from managing some top teams, so he’s someone I can learn from.”

James Husband could return to training this week following his time out with a hamstring injury, but tonight will come too soon for him. Pool’s squad is otherwise likely to remain unchanged.

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