West Ham will be QPR's biggest challenge - Stephan
'Let's be honest, we're the outsiders' - QPR boss Julien Stephan
- Published
QPR head coach Julien Stephan says there is a "huge difference" between the Premier League and the Championship and he expects Sunday's FA Cup trip to West Ham to be his side's biggest challenge of the season.
The Hammers are on a wretched run of form having lost five of their past six matches, leaving Nuno Espirito Santo's team seven points adrift of top-flight safety after 21 league matches.
The 2005-06 FA Cup finalists have not won for more than two months and are in need of a bounce after damaging defeats to relegation rivals Wolves and Nottingham Forest.
"We know the difference between the Championship and the Premier League, it's a huge difference," Stephan told BBC Radio London.
"And they have some very, very good products - international players, [Lucas] Paqueta, [Jarrod] Bowen and [Tomas] Soucek, for example. They all play with their national team.
"I don't think we have to consider the position of the table for them.
"Just know that it will be the best team since the start of the season. Of course, the best one that we have to face and that's why it's a big, big, big, big challenge."
QPR go into the game on the back of a 3-0 win over Sheffield Wednesday but lost Rumarn Burrell, Kwame Poku and Jonathan Varane to injury during the match, with Liam Morrison taken out of the starting XI as a precaution during the warm-up.
The club said on Thursday that top scorer Burrell would be ruled out until March.
The R's have won just four FA Cup matches in the past 12 seasons, reaching the fourth round in 2019-20 and 2021-22 and advancing as far as the fifth round in 2018-19, when they were beaten by eventual finalists Watford.
They are looking for their first win in the competition for four years.
"In the cup if you lose you have to wait one year [to play again] and this is the rule. That's why always consider the cup as a competition first for the players and they need to know exactly what they want to do in this competition," Stephan said.
"We had a very difficult, a very tough draw to be honest because to play the first round away against a Premier League team it's a very difficult draw.
"But the only thing what we can do is to prepare ourselves very well and to give everything."
