The defender talks about growing up in Miles Platting in Manchester, his strict Nigerian upbringing and how the QPR team are up for a dogfight this season

Nedum Onuoha has an admission. The Queens Park Rangers defender played in arguably the most tumultuous game of the Premier League era but, for days afterwards, he remained in the dark over who had fashioned the sting.

“It was just the nature of it, the intensity of it and the sheer emotion of it,” Onuoha says. “For maybe three or four days … I wasn’t really watching any sport or anything … I didn’t know who had scored the winning goal. That’s how mental it actually was. I had no idea. I just remember feeling distraught when it went in. It was like: ‘This is it’.”

The 28-year-old is talking about the Sergio Agüeroooo moment on the final day of the 2011-12 season, the goal that gave Manchester City the title at the very death and consigned QPR to a defeat that Onuoha briefly thought had relegated them to the Championship. The last update he had heard, during half-time, was that Bolton Wanderers were winning at Stoke City, which was the result that QPR did not want.

“When City scored their winning goal, myself and three or four others thought we’d blown it,” Onuoha says. “If you look at the final shot of when Aguero scored, there are four or five of us who are distraught. It was only at the moment when I looked over and I saw that our fans were celebrating and I saw that our bench weren’t too bothered, either, that I had a feeling of relief. That’s when I knew. When we were 3-2 down.”

Onuoha is in the mood to debunk a myth. Stoke, of course, had equalised against Bolton and the popular story goes that after Edin Dzeko had scored his injury-time equaliser for City against QPR, Onuoha and his team-mates heard the game at the Britannia Stadium had finished and knew that Bolton were down, rather than them. QPR promptly downed tools and Agüero took advantage to win the title for City and deny Manchester United.

“No, no, absolutely not,” Onuoha says. “One or two players in the team may have known but they didn’t pass on the message and so the entire back-line were fretting. As you can see after Agüero scores, there were three or four of our players on the floor.”

What stands out from Onuoha’s recollections is the journey between the extremes of emotions in what was little more than a heart-beat. It is his QPR career in microcosm. He had been a City player in the first-half of that season – and, indeed, since the age of 10 – which made the final-day carnage all the more surreal. But, after staying up, Onuoha and QPR went down, before bouncing back up and now they are battling against going down once more.

Onuoha might have thought that he had seen it all at City, from the days when he was a ball-boy in the North Stand at Maine Road and the team was losing matches outside the top division or winning that old division two play-off final epic against Gillingham on penalties to the time when the money from Abu Dhabi began to pour in and everything changed so sharply.

“I went to the Wembley play-off final against Gillingham [in 1999], just as a fan, but I was one of the people that left early,” Onuoha says, a little sheepishly. “I left when it was 2-0 to Gillingham with five minutes to go. I remember going to McDonald’s. I was one of the people that left but didn’t go back because when I heard people cheering, I thought Gillingham had scored again.”

QPR, though, are giving City a run for their money in the drama stakes. Onuoha has seen the club live on the sharp end of a knife and, after the streaky 1-0 Championship play-off victory over Derby County last season, they have been under relentless pressure on their Premier League return, largely because of their dismal away form.

Two goals and no points from seven matches so far have made it even more imperative to win their home games, particularly against the teams around them. They face Burnley at Loftus Road on Saturday afternoon and it is another must-win. In the background is the threat of sanctions for a possible breach of the Financial Play Play regulations. Everybody knows that another relegation is unthinkable. QPR need the Premier League revenues.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Nedum Onuoha joined Manchester City when he was 10 years old. Photograph: Linda Nylind/The Guardian

When Onuoha signed from City in January 2012, QPR sat 16th in the Premier League, two points above the relegation cut-off and the drop zone has been their habitat. It was not like this for Onuoha previously. He made his professional debut at the age of 17 for City, in October 2004 and, prior to QPR, he had only briefly flirted with relegation.

It was in 2006-07 when City, under Stuart Pearce, failed to score at home in the Premier League after New Year’s Day. But even then, they did not truly look like relegation fodder. Onuoha spent 2010-11 on loan at Sunderland and they finished in mid-table comfort.

“We were close to it that season with City but it was never really as intense as it is at QPR,” Onuoha says. “I can’t even describe it here, sometimes. As the season progresses, you just get this feeling of more and more big games but not necessarily big games because you’ve won a few on the bounce and you’re trying to get to this high position. It’s just … at times, it can seem like you’re treading water.

“The whole time I’ve been here, I’ve always had the belief that we can win games back-to-back-to-back but when you lose an away game, all of a sudden, you feel the pressure for the home game. So it’s always working that way.”

Onuoha has no explanation for QPR’s away-day toils, which are even more of a mystery as they have played quite well at Loftus Road. “Historically in the Premier League, it’s harder to get results away from home and it’s something I’ll never understand to the day I retire,” Onuoha says. “It’s still just a football field and a football and three officials. We have improved since the 4-0 defeats at Spurs and United at the start of the season and we have been in a lot of games. We just need a break.”

QPR feel as though they are steeled for another protracted battle but in Onuoha, they have a fighter. He has never had anything given to him, from the early days in Manchester – to where his family moved from Nigeria when he was five. He talks about living in Miles Platting and he describes it as a “mess.”

“My mum and dad were always wary of parking their cars on the road because they would just be taken and a few cars would burn out and things like that,” Onuoha says. “We were burgled, and me and my sister walked in on it. I would have been nine and she would have been six. There were two of them. It was just a shock. They ended up running off, which was a bit weird considering we were just nine and six but it shows what type of people they were.”

Onuoha says that he had a strict Nigerian upbringing. School came first and if he did not study properly and successfully, he was forbidden by his mother and father from playing football or athletics – he was an extremely gifted school-boy sprinter and long-jumper. The work ethic was drummed into him. He would ace his A-Levels with A grades in maths, business studies and IT.

Onuoha has coped with plenty; most devastatingly, the loss of his mother and inspiration, Anthonia, to cancer in November 2012. There has been professional pain, including the England Under-21 game at the European Championship in 2007 when he was racially abused by Serbia fans. He walked towards them, palms up-turned, enquiringly. Onuoha is not a man to duck for cover. The end of what he called his “fairytale” at City was not easy to take.

Onuoha is simply intent on pushing himself and QPR towards a finish on the right side of the margins, and he is quietly confident. Two seasons ago, after the last-day survival at City, the club signed what he described as “a different type of player;” individually talented but not suited to a dog-fight. Now, the profile of the squad and, related to that, the spirit and atmosphere feels better.

“A lot of people that are here know what we are trying to achieve but they also recognise where we are right now,” Onuoha says. “You feel like this is a spell where you’re almost fighting it but if you get through it, there is going to be a long-term benefit to come. If you stay in the division, you roll onto the next season and who knows where you are going to be next season.”