Guess who is now favourite to win the 'sack race'...

Manager Mark Hughes is the bookmakers’ favourite to get the chop with odd now at 5/4 that he will become the first Premier League manager to get sacked this season.

Despite a public backing from Tony Fernandes who represents the majority share hold of the board, the Hoops’ coach received a whopping 75.37% of the vote in a readers’ poll conducted by Goal.com

QPR have yet to secure a win this season, following the departure of 17 players in the summer and the signing of 12 replacements.

The new-look squad has yet to gel together and the defensive performances have been abysmal.

Chairman Fernandes was quick to dismiss concerns, stated in an interview:

“My faith in Mark has not wavered. Not at all. I’m 1,000 per cent behind him. I love him. He’s honest, hard-working, ambitious and he’s a friend.”

He leaped to his manager’s defence suggesting QPR’s start to the season had been a result of bad luck as much as anything else,

“We get on very well, he’s had success in every club he’s been at. We’ve been incredibly unlucky - look at last season with the number of sendings off we had, goals disallowed, over the line at Bolton. All kinds of things.”

But the bookies’ don’t have quite the same faith in the manager with some even offering odds on Hughes’ successor – Harry Redknapp is the front-runner to take over the reigns should a vacancy become available.

Hughes’ woes could worsen with the fixture list seemingly conspiring against the Hoops boss – his side host in-form Everton, and title-contenders Arsenal away from home this month.

Failure to clinch points from either of those games will surely only exacerbate an already worrying situation for QPR and would likely only stack the odds higher against Hughes.

image: © Tom Cuppens