Angry Queens Park Rangers supporters have demanded the club sack Julien Stephan just four games into his reign after a humiliating 7-1 defeat at Coventry.
Coventry briefly threatened to equal the Championship’s record margin of victory, 8-0, when they surged seven goals clear, but Richard Kone’s late consolation ensured QPR avoided an unwanted place in the history books.
That mark remains jointly held by Bournemouth’s 8-0 win over Birmingham in 2014 and Wigan’s 8-0 thrashing of Hull in 2020.
Haji Wright, Jack Rudoni and Victor Torp all scored twice while Brandon Thomas-Asante was also on target for Frank Lampard’s rampant Sky Blues, who made it 12 goals in their past two matches. Kone’s stoppage-time strike was his first goal since joining Rangers from Wycombe.
After the game, QPR’s official account posted a single-word caption on X alongside the scoreline: ‘Defeat.’ The message was swamped by hundreds of angry replies from supporters, many demanding immediate change in the dugout.
One wrote: ‘I don’t think this is a bad squad which makes this defeat shocking. But we looked absolutely clueless and made so many errors. Do the players take the responsibility or does the manager? Or collectively? Can we recover from this – should the manager get sacked to get a fresh start?’
Coventry City beat Queens Park Rangers 7-1 in the EFL Championship on Saturday afternoon
The result saw QPR narrowly avoid setting an unwanted record for the biggest margin of defeat
After Saturday’s game, multiple QPR fans called for manager Julien Stephan to be dismissed
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Another fumed: ‘Bin Stephan NOW and get in a Championship-experienced head coach, a tough git who actually wants to win.’
A third added simply: ‘Disgrace.’
Others pointed fingers higher up the chain. ‘Marti was forced out because Nourry wanted a yes man. No matter how bad it got under Marti, we were never this bad. The club is fundamentally so badly run – it’s infuriating,’ wrote one supporter.
The ‘Marti’ in question is Spaniard Marti Cifuentes, who managed QPR from October 2023 until June 2025. He kept the club in the Championship during his first season and delivered mid-table stability the following year before leaving after reported disagreements with the board, including CEO Christian Nourry. His departure paved the way for Stephan’s appointment.
There was fury at the performance too. ‘This was beyond a joke,’ read one tweet. ‘The players should refund the fans who travelled today. They get paid thousands to jog around the pitch – pathetic.’
And another post read: ‘The next tweet had best be that Julien Stephan has departed by mutual agreement. That was embarrassing as hell. Shocking.’
The result means Stephan, who only took charge in June, is still without a win as QPR boss. His tenure began with a 1-1 home draw against Preston, followed by a 3-2 defeat at Plymouth in the EFL Cup and a 2-1 loss at Watford last weekend.
Stephan fronted up afterwards, telling BBC London: ‘We did a lot of mistakes today. It’s unacceptable. This is the first time in my career I have had to deal with a score like this, but in football you learn a lot. I can promise one thing: it will be a completely different game next week against Charlton.’