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After the hand-wringing over Raheem Sterling and England during midweek, Liverpool FC have a welcome return to the Premier League with an away game against Queens Park Rangers.

QPR made an immediate return to the top flight following relegation in 2012/13 via a play-off final win over Derby. They currently sit bottom of the table after just one win in seven games.

What do QPR fans make of their start and the upcoming game with the Reds? We spoke to Clive Whittingham of QPR fan site Loft For Words, to get the lowdown on the Loftus Road side.

Bottom of the league after seven games - is this what you expected from QPR's second bite of the cherry at Premier League football under Tony Fernandes?

It was always going to be a struggle, coming up through the play-offs doesn’t leave a lot of time for squad building, particularly when so many players are at a World Cup. But I thought we’d be better than this.

QPR bought far better, younger, fitter players this summer than they did two years ago and the team, on paper at least, is good enough to stay up. The problem we have is we’re not a team or a club with a long term strategy. We sign loads of players every transfer window, spend loads of money, but don’t have a set system, a set style of play, a training ground we own, an effective youth system, a philosophy or an ethos.

The most senior man at our club with football experience is the manager, the CEO and chairman above him are total novices and it shows. Clubs of our size – Swansea, Leicester, West Brom – who do well in this league do so because they have a very clear idea of how they’re going to operate and play and they appoint managers and make signings to fit with that philosophy. We don’t and don’t.

All of that said, this group of players, if organised and motivated, and fit, is a good deal better than what we’ve seen so far.

How do QPR fans feel about Harry Redknapp and his summer signings?

Harry is on thin ice. Promoting QPR last year should earn him a period of grace, particularly as he had to ship out a dozen big earners before the season and rebuild the team after relegation, but Rangers had by far and away the biggest budget in that league.

Taking on Yeovil, Millwall, Barnsley etc with players on £60,000 a week should have been like shooting a hammerhead shark in a mop bucket and yet we squeezed up through the play offs, playing tremendously dull football, and Redknapp appeared bored and uninterested throughout.

We’ve made far better signings this time as opposed to the expensive disasters like Ji-Sung Park and Jose Bosingwa from our previous crack at it, so I expected us to do a little better, but we change formations and personnel every game, we lack effort and fitness and we lack organisation.

The best thing about our team last season was the defence, as you may have seen in the play-off final, and yet Redknapp has sold or dropped three of the back four, once again largely to accommodate Rio Ferdinand who, at the moment, looks like another over-paid has-been that we’ve saddled ourselves with. We planned and bought to play a back three and Redknapp abandoned it after two matches.

He says the players aren’t fit enough, as if it’s somebody else’s job to get them fit. His touchline presence, sitting on the bench silently with his hands pressed into his pockets, sums up his current attitude towards managing our football club and permeates onto the pitch.

How will they set up against Liverpool, and who can shine against the Reds?

I’d love to tell you. We started the season with a back three, allowed our right back Danny Simpson to leave for Leicester to accommodate right-wing-back Mauricio Isla, and then abandoned it for a back four after two matches. Isla is now struggling badly on the right side of our defence and Redknapp says he lacks options at right back. We’ve played with a three, four and five man midfield already.

We’ve played with one, two and three forwards already. We’re only seven games in. The only sure fire bet is that Rio Ferdinand will start, regardless of his abysmal form, unless he has a book signing on Sunday. Everything else will be drawn out of a hat about an hour and a half before kick-off.

Niko Kranjcar’s free kicks are currently our best chance of a goal so don’t foul our players around the area and you’ll probably be ok. Eduardo Vargas looks fantastic for Chile, we’re yet to see much of him, maybe he could be finally get going with Charlie Austin and cause you problems.

What have you made of Liverpool's start to the season?

I subscribe to the theory that Liverpool, with few injuries and no European games, missed a massive chance to win the title last year. It was always going to be impossible to maintain that consistency without Suarez, with so many new players to bed in, and with the extra games. So I haven’t been surprised that it’s been a bit patchy for Liverpool so far.

Brendan Rodgers is clearly a superb manager so in time it will come good again, but you can’t buy that amount of players and expect the team to just hit the ground running – which is why QPR’s policy of adding eight new players every transfer window is so damaging to us. That said, a lot of Liverpool’s summer buys did look a bit Tottenham-like to me, and that’s not a good thing.

Which player do you fear most?

Well Raheem Sterling came through the youth set up at QPR without ever getting the chance to play for our first team, so this will probably be his first competitive game at Loftus Road. Local boy, against old club, with all the publicity he’s had this week, against our defence – I feel like I’ve seen this film before.

Score prediction?

I suspect we’ll give a really good account of ourselves, stung by recent criticism, particularly early in the game, maybe even take the lead, and slip to a brave defeat in the end – maybe 2-1.

We’ll feel a good deal better about ourselves for a week and hope that we’ve maybe turned a bit of a corner, before putting in an abject showing next Monday night in a far more winnable game at home to Aston Villa leaving us to reflect on another three weeks and two matches slipping by with no real solutions in sight.