McClaren happy with QPR resilience

Steve McClaren described QPR’s first Sky Bet Championship away win of the season as “a huge three points” after a 2-1 victory at Bolton.

But the Rangers boss admitted the Londoners put him through the wringer in the closing 20 minutes.

Goals from Luke Freeman and Ebere Eze saw QPR move 2-0 up after 56 minutes only for substitute Josh Magennis to claw a goal back with a 69th-minute free-kick.

Erhun Oztumer wasted a good chance to equalise in the closing minutes but Rangers hung on for their first away win since last March.

McClaren was pleased with the way his side dealt with the late Bolton siege, saying: “We defended it well but other days you don’t get away with that.

“So I am disappointed in that because we should have been out of sight, not holding on.

“However, we’ve got seven points from three games and we showed we can do everything.

“We can play football, we can compete and work hard and get results away from home which is tough.

“The start of the season was poor. But we really only had two bad halves; the second against West Brom and the second against Bristol City.

“The rest have been okay but this and the other two performances showed we can compete a lot better than we did four or five weeks ago. Now, we have got to build on this.”

For Bolton, defeat was a bad end to a roller-coaster week which saw the club escape administration at the 11th hour and be rocked by the death of one-time owner and benefactor Eddie Davies CBE.

Bolton boss Phil Parkinson said: “It was disappointing to end the week on a poor result.

“We had a lot of the ball but we didn’t do enough with it to create opportunities.

“When we did we weren’t clinical enough. Both goals, particularly the second one, we weren’t strong enough with one or two challenges.

“We kept going and got the goal back and Oztumer had a great chance to get us level. But we are disappointed because we wanted to put in a performance that would have done Eddie Davies proud. And we weren’t able to get that result.

“QPR have got some good players with Luke Freeman and Nahki Wells and they looked dangerous when they broke on us.”

Wanderers also lost Sammy Ameobi to a first-half ankle injury which will keep him out of at least Wednesday’s trip to Middlesbrough.