Vale was almost taken off before QPR winner.

Julien Stephan admitted that he pondered taking Harvey Vale off before scoring the winner for QPR against Stoke.

The head coach considered sending Kader Dembele on to attack left-back Aaron Cresswell, but Vale was performing admirably on the flank and was retained on.

And the former Chelsea man scored his first Rangers goal on 75 minutes, securing Stephan’s side’s third successive victory. Stephan explained:

“In the last 20 minutes, I had a lot of hesitation, and to be honest, I expected Kaddie to come on the pitch for Harvey. This was the plan.

“I wanted to do something unusual with Kaddie one on one against the left-back. “But we didn’t adjust, and in the final 15 minutes, I felt like the players were still doing well physically, and entering the pitch in these types of games is difficult. So we decided to stay like this.

“Sometimes you feel that you have to change and sometimes you feel you don’t have to change.” Rangers have responded impressively to their recent 7-1 defeat at Coventry. “In the season you have some good moments and bad moments and that was a bad moment,” according to Stephan.

“It’s finished, and we’ve learnt a lot. And now that we’ve won three in a row, that streak is over, and we must focus on the next game. “Full credit to the players.

We’ll have fun tonight and tomorrow, but we have to start preparing on Monday.” Mark Robins, Stoke’s manager, looked to be concerned about his players’ attitude. The Potters have had a fantastic start to the season, but they finished second best at Loftus Road.

“We didn’t deserve anything from the game because we didn’t do the non-negotiables you’ve seen us do in previous games,” Robins told reporters. “We simply didn’t do enough. There was a lot to dislike about the game, which was annoying.

“If you start believing your own hype, press, or anything, you’re in trouble.

Unless you execute the fundamentals and essentials correctly, you are unlikely to receive anything out of the game, and we did not earn anything from it. “It was almost as if we weren’t thinking about it, just participating in the game.

“Unless we do the fundamentals, unless we do the non-negotiables well, you will not get anything. “A 1-0 defeat and it might be perceived as narrow, but I didn’t think we were anywhere near our best.”

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