Queens Park Rangers 0 Wolverhampton Wanderers 0

It's now ten games, spreading over almost 24 years, since Wolverhampton Wanderers last lost at Queens Park Rangers. But after this draw, the seventh such result of that sequence, there weren't many Wolves fans celebrating.

Because another slightly less positive statistic is that their team have now scored only six goals in their last ten games and have managed none in their last five away from home.

Looking beyond figures as damning as those, to put it bluntly manager Mick McCarthy's team just haven't performed at anything like the level they would aspire to so far this season.

When they overcame such deficiencies by grinding out results, that didn't necessarily matter. Now, with one point from a possible nine against three teams who can hardly be considered Championship heavyweights, a sequence which has seen Wolves drop from third to eighth in the table, that lack of cohesion becomes a problem.

In the first half here, they were poor. Edgy, nervous and unable to string even a couple of decent passes together, the pair of defeats which preceded the trip to Loftus Road appeared to be weighing heavily on confidence-sapped shoulders.

Michael Gray's tentative header as early as 24 seconds into the game prompted a crucial tackle from Darren Ward on Dextor Blackstock and that set the tone for a first half of which the hosts should have made far more.

Fortunately for Wolves, goalkeeper Wayne Hennessey was at his usual excellent best, making routine saves from the excellent Akos Buzsaky and Gareth Ainsworth and more impressive stops, two of them, from the strong-running Martin Rowlands.

And when Ainsworth had skipped past Gray as he did on several occasions during the afternoon, Blackstock diverted his cross wide of the target from point-blank range.

Wolves had barely functioned as an attacking force in the opening period, Seyi Olofinjana and Darron Gibson firing off-target with their only efforts on goal, but the second half proved an entirely different story.

Jay Bothroyd and Stephen Elliott were finally able to make the ball stick up front, Gibson and Stephen Ward started making headway down the flanks and the latter also saw his looping header tipped over the crossbar by Lee Camp.

Then, 20 minutes from time, came the chance of this, or any other game, as Elliott was teed up perfectly at point-blank range by Gibson.

That such a natural finisher as Elliott spurned the chance, shooting wide with the goal at his mercy, summed up the afternoon for Wolves, who were then once again indebted to Hennessey for another late save from Rowlands to preserve even a point.

"I felt sorry for Stephen," McCarthy said of Elliott's gilt-edged miss. "He'd done all the rubbish jobs like chasing down, running into channels and holding the ball up and probably all that took something out of him. I thought he was terrific and the goal would have been the icing on the cake."

McCarthy also tried, without really convincing anyone, to maintain a positive outlook on Wolves' performance and result.

He admitted that they continue to search from within the squad for an answer to the goalscoring problems which are threatening to seriously derail any type of promotion challenge.

"We got away with it a bit in the first half because we didn't play well at all but, in the second, we were a lot more positive," he reflected.

"It's clear to everyone that if we were more prolific in front of goal, we'd be further up the league, but it's not that we don't create chances because we do, or that we are defensive, because we're not.

"We'll just have to continue to strive to improve our goalscoring record, but whatever happened on Saturday, we didn't want to lose three games on the bounce; to be honest, I'll take the draw."

QUEENS PARK RANGERS (4-4-2): Camp; Malcolm, Rehman, Stewart, Barker; Ainsworth, Buzsaky, Leigert-wood, Rowlands; Nygaard, Blackstock (Sinclair 83). Subs: Cole (gk), Moore, Walton, Balanta.
WOLVERHAMPTON WANDERERS (4-4-2): Hennessey; Foley, D. Ward, N. Collins, Gray; Gibson, Henry, Olofinjana, S. Ward; Bothroyd (Keogh 88), Elliott. Subs: Ikeme (gk), Edwards, Jarvis, Eastwood.
Referee: Fred Graham (Essex).
Bookings: None.
Attendance: 13,482