QPR will look to recover from their weekend humbling at Southampton when Burnley come to town this evening - the Clarets have one win from 13 games and are already onto a second manager following relegation from the Premier League in May.

QPR (5-5-3 DDWLWL 9th) v Burnley (1-6-6 DWDLLD 22nd)

Mercantile Credit Trophy >>> Tuesday November 3, 2026 >>> Kick Off 19.45 >>> Weather – Grey, cool, damp >>> Loftus Road, London, W12

Enjoy this two week break we’ve got coming up.

Once back in action on November 21, QPR won’t get another break in play until March 22. They return, naturally, with a three game week featuring a double away (Millwall, Norwich, then Sheff Utd come to W12) and by New Year’s Day they’ll have played ten times in 41 days. There are 25 games to play in the 17 weeks until the next internationals – more if we progress in the FA Cup (ho ho ho).

Rangers face seven separate midweek rounds, five of those are away from home and four of them are in the “away fatigued” state of an away game followed by another away game within three or four days. The R’s play locally on Boxing Day and New Year’s Day, but have to travel to Swansea for a midweeker in between. In the last week of January they’re at Burnley on a Tuesday, then straight back up to Lincoln on the Saturday. Two weeks later they have a Tuesday at Derby followed by a Saturday at Preston.

This is going to be pretty relentless. No other Championship team has been given a fixture list like this in 2026/27 with so many double aways and away fatigued games. Watford, for comparison, have four double aways all season, and one of them features a trip to Loftus Road. I think the idea that two and a half years of chronic QPR injury problems are going to magically clear up as the season goes on and the cavalry return in November might turn out to be pretty fanciful.

It’s why, more often than not, we tend to back the parachute payment clubs to do quite well. A long Championship winter favours the sort of deep squad you can only sustain at this level if the division above is plonking £55m into your bank account in year one to reward you for failing miserably the season before. They may start poorly (Southampton last year, West Ham perhaps this) but as the nights draw in and the clocks go back so you start seeing more and more games like we experienced on Saturday where one of the early hopefuls gets comprehensively bummed in the gob by a team that has Tom Fellows as an unused substitute.

Over the last ten years in this division, more than half (16/30) of the promoted teams have been in receipt of a parachute. That divide is becoming more pronounced – in the last five years nine of the 15 promoted clubs had that advantage. In that time, seven clubs have been promoted more than once (Ipswich, Burnley, Leicester, Leeds, Fulham, Norwich and Sheff Utd) and in Fulham’s case they’ve gone up three times. The parachute was originally designed to protect clubs from the sort of financial cliff edge QPR and Coventry suffered after relegation in the 1990s. But in a world where Mateus Fernandes can get relegated once and be sold for £50m, then get relegated a second time and be sold for £100m, it's become protectionism of a very different kind. West Ham and Southampton have realised £400m in player sales between them since their respective demotions.

That is what QPR are up against in their quest to end 11 years of Championship purgatory. It’s felt, for the most part, like they’re closer this season than they have been for a while, so an afternoon watching Southampton run a sword through us for the seventh consecutive victory in meetings between the two was a chastening experience. It felt like Rangers were a good deal more competitive and in the game than they were for a 5-0 loss there in the spring, but at the end of the day but for two bad first half misses and a series of second half saves from Pierce Charles it could have been a more severe defeat. The R’s have now lost two away games on the spin and conceded seven times in the process. Assuming West Ham get their act together (now sans-Nuno as he got the push this morning) it feels like there’s a top four of West Ham, Wolves, Southampton and Middlesbrough ready to pull away here and the challenger brands like Swansea, West Brom and ourselves will fight over the extended play-off places below.

This parachute, however, is not a failsafe. It does not protect you against mismanagement, incompetence and general fuckwittery. There are plenty of Stoke types that had one, didn’t go back up, and now wallow around the middle of this league year on year. Luton and Leicester both completed the not inconsiderable feat of being relegated again, into League One, while picking up Premier League money and you wouldn’t be in an immediate rush to back either to come back up this year either.

Enter stage right Burnley, once considered one of the top flight’s most secure and stable clubs when Sean Dyche had the debt-free Clarets in the Prem for six seasons including a seventh placed finish and UEFA Cup qualification. Now saddled with crippling debts and reported interest payments on that money totalling £400,000 a week (!!) they could easily make it an unhappy trio of teams suffering a double relegation into the third tier. They arrive at Loftus Road tonight with one win in 13 games, and already onto a second manager of the season in Fabio Celestini (sounds a bit Watford to me).

Of course, you don’t have to have a particularly long memory to think back to this midweek round last year when Southampton, themselves just relegated in fairly disastrous circumstances, arrived at Loftus Road having just sacked Will Still and sitting fourth bottom of the table with just two victories from their first 13 matches. Rangers can be irritatingly charitable in these circumstances and duly obliged the visitors with a 2-1 win. The Saints won six of their next seven games, lost none of their final 19, and would likely have won the play offs but for their manager’s monumental brain fart.

Burnley certainly have the players to do something similar and could also start with a victory tonight, but then so did Leicester who came here and were 4-0 down by half time not long after Southampton’s visit. We spent all of 2025/26 waiting for the Foxes to stir into life, because surely you’re not getting relegated with a squad like that, but it never happened. Money counts for little if your club culture is rotten and your organisation is a shambles. Burnley are starting to whistle through the air as they fall, parachute or no parachute.

As we get ready to (hopefully, justifiably) get the wicker man burning for Manchester City, I do just wonder what is more damaging for football and what we should and shouldn’t be legislating against. City have cheated, no doubt, and should be severely punished, but that is an independently wealthy owner spending his money trying to move one of English football’s most notorious also rans into this country’s elite (for sportwashing a Middle Eastern regime and political clout, no doubt, but still). Is that worse for the sport than what’s gone on across the city, where a leveraged takeover by the Glazer family has taken one of the world’s genuine sporting superpowers and turned it into an international laughing stock with £1bn+ of debt, interest and loan repayments which could conceivably be relegated this year?

If I was the shiny new Independent Football Regulator I’d have leveraged takeovers, the like of which has saddled Burnley with £80m of debt overnight, in my crosshairs, not owners who want to invest in building and improving their club.

More clues as to how fatal this might be to Burnley’s immediate future, and QPR’s chances of keeping up with the clubs that are getting it right, on offer in Shepherd’s Bush tonight.

Links >>> Nightmare – Oppo Profile >>> Forgettable debut – History >>> Newbie – Referee >>> Burnley Official Website >>> Turf Moor – Ground Guide >>> No Nay Never — Podcast >>> Lancashire Telegraph — Local Press >>> Up The Clarets — Message Board

Below the fold

Team News: More problems for manager Julien Stéphan to deal with. For the fourth time in five games he was forced to finish a game with ten men thanks to accumulated injuries and the news on Alfie Lloyd is not good with the youngster joining Amadou Mbengue on the long term absentee list with a hamstring injury that will keep him out until the new year. Jake Clarke-Salter was an unused sub at St Mary’s but sitting on our bench seems to be a hazardous occupation at the moment because West London Sport is reporting he will now miss Tuesday’s game altogether. Ilias Chair and Karamoko Dembele continue to build back from the bench but Nicolas Madsen, Tariq Lamptey and Rumarn Burrell are all out until after the internationals.

One future gazing piece of admin. With Tariq Lamptey and Amadou Mbengue both knackered the team is suddenly heavily reliant on Kealey Adamson but faced losing the Australian right back as well to the Asia Cup in January – and Oz tend to go quite deep into that tournament. However, because of the decision to hold that competition in Saudi Arabia (what could possibly go wrong?) it has now had to be postponed for a year because WAR and will take place December/January next year instead when things will have inevitably calmed down and returned to a peaceful norm.

Burnley have also been in the wars but Anel Ahmedhodzic, Josh Cullen, Aaron Ramsey, Jaydon Banel and Jamie Vardy all made comebacks of varying degrees in the weekend home draw with Portsmouth. Top scorer Zeki Amdouni, however, remains sidelined along with Armando Broja and Chelsea loanee Dastan Satpayev who has a hamstring problem. Jacob Bruun Larsen, Bashir Humphreys and Hannibal Mejbri are on the long term list. Jordan Beyer is the longest of long term absentees – he hasn’t played for the club since December 2023 and won’t be back until 2027.

Elsewhere: STOP PRESS. Saturday’s 3-1 loss at home to West Brom was enough to see Nuno removed as West Ham manager, and to the surprise of absolutely nobody at all here comes former Hammer of the Year Scott Parker to thrill the Championship once more ahead of their midweek trip to Cardiff. Difficult to think of a job better suited to a manager who has made a career out of seal clubbing this division.

15 x 1-0 home wins (Bowen 64)
12 x 0-0 away draws
10 x January signings at a cost of about £60m, including the five other best players in the Championship, "just to freshen things up"
Eight starts made by those signings collectively from January to May.
Go up in second, win one of the first 12 games next year and walk away with another couple of million quid in his bank account.

Only Danny Rohl’s Sheff Wed have ever survived in the modern Championship having taken seven points are fewer from their first 13 games – 17 other teams have tried and failed. That’s not good news for Preston, bottom of the table with five points, at home to Sheffield Red Stripe in this midweek round. Nor, for that matter, John Eustace’s Derby who have seven points and conceded four goals again at Millwall at the weekend and now face a crunch week with Norwich and then Bolton heading to Pride Park.

🗣 𝗥𝗘𝗔𝗖𝗧𝗜𝗢𝗡 🗣

"It's just not good enough... You can't come here and lose your duels."

Sammie Szmodics reacts to Derby County's 4-1 defeat to Millwall today.

Listen to full reaction from The Den on BBC Sounds 👇

🔊 #DCFC" target="_blank">https://t.co/uWUbg7Ashf

#DCFC https://t.co/kr8DS5y8vX— BBC Sport Derby (@BBCDerbySport) October 31, 2026

In the immediate short term those two, and our opponent Burnley, will try and chase down a collection of four teams in poor form immediately above them.

Watford are fourth bottom, having blown a two goal lead to lose at Carrow Road at the weekend. The Hornets have lost 11 of their last 12 away games and six of the last seven in all comps ahead of their home game with Lincoln City.

He only team the Hornets have beaten in that run is Nathan Jones’ Charlton, who are cratering down the table on a run of ten without a win and three straight defeats. They have a six pointer at home to Bolton, one place and two goals better off after two heavy defeats of their own last week. Also on the slide are Wrexham with three losses in four games and now a home game with free-scoring league leaders Middlesbrough.

Kim Hellberg’s side have four wins from five and have scored 14 times in the process. Leading the chase of that lot are Swansea who bounced back from their trouncing at Loftus Road with a big win against Blackburn at the weekend, and now Wolves who’ve quietly moved up into third position with three wins from four ahead of a trip to Bristol City. West Brom (fourth) have also won three from four, and Southampton (fifth) four from five, ahead of their game-of-the-day meeting at The Hawthorns.

The play-off places are made up by Birmingham, at home to Millwall, and Stoke, away at Blackburn.

Referee: Tom Reeves, in his second season of Championship football, takes his first ever game with QPR or Burnley at Loftus Road on Tuesday night. Details.

Form

- QPR have had a very topsy turvy October, winning 4-1 and 5-0 at home to Derby and Swansea interspersed with a 3-0 loss at Birmingham and Saturday’s 4-1 defeat at Southampton. The R’s have only lost three games in 13, but two of those have been in the last three and it’s dropped Julien Stephan’s side down to ninth in the table.

- QPR come into this on a hot streak at home, winning the last two games at Loftus Road and scoring nine goals in the process. Prior to that the R’s had only won one of eight games in W12 going back into last season.

- Burnley have won only one of their first 13 games (a 4-0 away win at Watford) and currently sit third bottom of the table. Manager Nicky Hayen was fired after a 4-1 defeat at Lincoln in their last away game. They’re winless in four matches coming into this one. This is their worst start to a second tier season since 1979/80 which ended in relegation.

- Burnley don’t have a problem scoring goals. Saturday’s 0-0 with Portsmouth was the first time they’ve failed to score and 17 goals scored is better than eight other teams in the Championship, and equal with no tenth-placed Sheff Utd. T

- Burnley also don’t have a problem going in front in games – they’ve led in eight of their 13 matches so far but seen it through to only one win. The 18 points lost from winning positions is the division’s worst record. Only Preston (27) and Bolton (26) have conceded more than their 25 and they have kept only two clean sheets.

- It’s now been more than a year since Burnley last won at Turf Moor in the league - 23 failed attempts. In the history of the Football League no team had ever gone a full year without a home win until 2026, now Burnley and Sheff Wed have both accomplished it.

- It’s now 77 games and 25 victories since QPR last beat a team while holding more of the ball than their opponent. Another tick in Gareth Ainsworth’s “possession can do one” mantra came in last weekend’s 5-0 win against Swansea, achieved with 40.3% of the ball.

- Having failed to score in his first seven appearances of the season, Richard Kone is now QPR’s top scorer with four goals in his last two games. Zeki Amdouni is the Burnley top scorer with three.

- Last Saturday’s mauling of Swansea was the first time QPR have won a home game 5-0 since trouncing Blackpool on the opening day of the 2003-04 campaign under Ian Holloway.

- QPR have an abysmal recent record against Burnley. The R’s have won only one of the last seven meetings – the remarkable 2-1 with Chris Martin’s late goal which kept the club in the Championship in 2023 and was Vincent Kompany’s side’s only home defeat all season. Rangers haven’t scored a goal in five of the last six meetings with the Clarets, including both when they last shared a division in 2024/25 (5-0, 0-0).

Prediction

In our Prediction League for 2026/27 we’ll once again be handing out prizes for being top at Christmas and overall winner from The Art of Football - sample the merch from our sponsor’s newly extended QPR collection here. JB007007 won both prizes last year and has kindly agreed to keep up tradition and offer his irrational dislikes of each of our opponents this year…

“How can you ever forget watching your team thump anyone 7-0? My dad would take me to Rangers whenever his beloved Brentford weren't at home and there was a spare Saturday. So, I was lucky to witness that one. Amazing that for some years now, Burnley is viewed as a tough game that we'd do well to get something from.

“Saturday's Halloween nightmare will also stick with me, because it's Southampton, but at some point some when we'll get one over on them. We won’t, however, get one over anyone if we defend like we did on Saturday, which was disappointing as we've looked pretty solid so far this season.

“Burnley have, so far, struggled to come to terms with their relegation and I'm hoping that any new manager bounce they have doesn't start tomorrow night.

“I know we'd have probably wanted a bit more recovery time after Saturday, but I’m happy that we're back at it on Tuesday under the lights at HQ. I think we'll continue on this good form building at home and can see us winning narrowly with a goal from Smythy.”

JB’s Prediction: QPR 1-0 Burnley. Scorer – Paul Smyth

LFW’s Prediction: QPR 2-1 Burnley. Scorer - Jimmy Dunne

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Pictures - Ian Randall Photography