No wins in five, and a League Cup defeat at home to Reading last week, and a position at the bottom of the table means Mark Hughes is a man in dire need of a win.
He has bought a lot of new players into the club since arriving at QPR; five in January and 12 this summer, that's practically a whole matchday squad, yet still the results aren't there.
Forward Jamie Mackie insists the club need time to gel, which is natural given the club's overhaul of playing staff, but the Premier League is unforgiving, and failure to get three points at home to West Ham tonight will rubber-stamp their start to the season as officially not good enough.
No-one will realise this more than ambitious manager Mark Hughes, who insisted on the final day of last season that relegation battles would be a thing of the past. Being dragged into one again will undermine his position.
This is being borne out by the bookies, who have slashed the odds on the manager's sacking.
At the start of the season Hughes was an outsider to be the first manager dismissed at 10/1, with Michael Laudrup (6/1), Steve Clarke (6/1) and Sam Allardyce (6/1) all having shorter odds.
Now as QPR head into their sixth Premier League game of the campaign, the odds on Mark Hughes to be dismissed have been cut to just 4/1.
In contrast Sam Allardcye, previously 6/1 has odds as long as 12/1, Clarke 25/1, and Laudrup a staggering 50/1 prior to this weekend.
Only Nigel Adkins of Southampton 5/2 has shorter odds than Hughes, so the game against West Ham is developing into a must-win for the manager.
Up after that is a tricky away tie at the Hawthorns, before they host Everton and travel to Arsenal. The positive for QPR last season was that while their away form was poor, their home form was very good, but this season they have one draw, and two defeats if you count the Capital One Cup game against Reading.
Tonight is a chance to rectify that, and Hughes will look to get some momentum going and prove the bookies are premature in cutting the odds on his potential departure.
How much pressure is there on Hughes? Can he survive the early season jitters?
image: © simonw92
Dan Coombs
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Dan Coombs is a writer who is keen to embrace the internet revolution. He first started writing for us in June 2011 and commenced his new role as Sports Editor in February 2012.
As a trained journalist he has met famous faces from Mr T to Boris Johnson. He once featured in an England World Cup music video too, but it did not make the charts.
He grew up wanting to be a Formula 1 driver, but it looks like this dream has passed him by. Instead, he hopes you enjoy reading his writing on our site, as we seek to debate the day's sporting hot topics.
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