Ilias Chair

"Ilias is coming from a long injury. It’s been almost 12 weeks without competitive football, so we need to be smart with him. He will notice it is not that easy to come back even if he is the most confident guy in the world.

"We need to give him time to make sure he recovers his highest level but it’s very good news for us, we have been missing him because he’s a very important player.

"It’s true he is a very robust player. Since I came here [in October 2023] he’s had just one small hamstring injury.

"Now it is about helping him to regain this match fitness level. In terms of fitness, he’s good but [to get up to] the tempo of the games you just need to play those minutes.

"We are going to try to help him and then as well he needs to compete because today Koki [Saito] did well and there were some good individual performances as well that proves we have good internal competition all round."

QPR shouldn't be in a rush to get Ilias Chair back to full fitness. Any long-term injury should be taken particular care of because you don't want to risk them coming back to training and match action too early and then causing more problems.

QPR will know this, but the good thing for them is that they have enough options in place already in Chair's position, so they aren't crying out for someone like him.

Dembele and Saito are perfectly capable of manning the ship until they feel the 26-year-old is back to his best. Their quality should allow him to take his time in what is going to be a continuous process to get him fully up and running, figuratively speaking.

FLW: "Dembele and Saito are perfectly capable of manning the ship until they feel the 26-year-old is back to his best. Their quality should allow him to take his time in what is going to be a continuous process to get him fully up and running, figuratively speaking."