IT HAD to happen at some point I suppose.

No, I’m not talking about Chelsea’s unbeaten start to the season coming to an end at Newcastle United but our own mini-run which has seen us pick up eight points from a possible 12 in the four games going into the weekend.

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We could have just done with it not being against one of our rivals at the bottom of the table.

QPR, having hung on for much of the first half, just stepped things up in the second half and were able to grab two goals to kill off a game that which could have gone either way.

It also had to be him didn’t it?

Austin has been in a real rich vein of form in the last couple of months and when he added a second 16 minutes from time – after Leroy Fer had given Harry Redknapp’s side a lucky lead – there was an real air of inevitability about it.

That killed off any hopes we had of getting back into it, although Austin was later sent off for a second booking after for a challenge on Michael Keane that which could have quite easily have earned him a straight red.

It was another one of those games Sean Dyche would describe as a ‘nearly’ game.

And the nearly games are the ones we need to make sure we are winning because inevitably they’ll be the games in our mini-league at the foot of the table.

The first half certainly showed positive signs with QPR’s Rob Green by far the busier of the two stoppers, saving well from Scott Arfield before pushing a magnificent 25-yard drive from George Boyd onto the post.

Dyche admitted after the match that we need to be more clinical and I don’t think anyone will argue with that. You cannot get away with missing chances at this level and probably in the last three games – against Aston Villa, Newcastle and QPR – we’ve created enough chances to take all three points in each.

You can’t compensate for the keeper pulling off a ‘worldy’ but I think back to a couple of the chances against Newcastle, Dave Jones’ shot over on the stroke of half time, and wonder how things might have been different.

We’ve got a tough run of games coming but no-one said this year was going to be easy and we’re going to have to get used to setbacks… even when we perhaps deserve better.