Fernandes gives backing to Hughes

QPR chairman Tony Fernandes has given his backing to manager Mark Hughes, insisting he remains "the right man" for the job despite the club sitting bottom of the Barclays Premier League.

Rangers have collected only two points from their opening seven games and again paid the price for some woeful defending during Saturday's 3-2 defeat at West Brom. Yet Fernandes remains fully committed to supporting Hughes, who is convinced QPR's fortunes will improve once his heavily-overhauled squad has had time to bed in.

Fernandes tweeted on Sunday: "For all QPR fans. Fans who analyse properly. I am not changing anything. And all shareholders agree. No team except the first game [a 5-0 home defeat to Swansea] has outplayed us. We need a consistent four defenders not changing every week especially right and left back. Mark is the right man."

Fernandes added: "For all those calling for change, this is the team that outplayed Spurs and gave Chelsea a damm good game and you want change. No way."

Hughes offloaded 17 players during the close season while bringing in a dozen new faces, and has also been dogged by injuries, particularly in defence. He said: "I'm still learning about the group, still learning about the players I have. We had a big turnover in the summer and we all knew it was going to take time.

"Tony is a very supportive chairman and I've got great support from the shareholders. We've talked and discussed what could happen at the beginning of this year because we all understand it may take some time. But we are all fully committed to what we are trying to do.

"It is disappointing because we have showed glimpses of what we can do but we haven't been able to sustain it for 90 minutes. That will come. We've just got to keep working hard and cut out the mistakes."

Hughes added: "We are struggling to get a settled unit. We are having too many changes and a number of players are still carrying injuries and are not 100 per cent.

"It would be great to have a full complement of players who could complete 90 minutes.

"At the moment it seems that we can't get to that stage."