Friday 5 August 2016 11:59, UK
Ahead of QPR's Championship opener against Leeds United on Sunday, Jordan Cousins talks to Sky Sports about finding his feet at Loftus Road after a rocky period at boyhood club Charlton Athletic…
Jordan Cousins is used to putting in the hard yards. The industrious midfielder had a reputation for being the last man standing in bleep tests at his former club Charlton Athletic, and he was similarly committed on the pitch, where he amassed 136 appearances and won two Player of the Year awards in three seasons following his first-team breakthrough in 2013.
Cousins' work-rate was one of the attributes that convinced QPR to make their move for him following Charlton's relegation, and speaking midway through the final double training session of pre-season at their Harlington training ground, the 22-year-old admits he has needed every ounce of stamina in his first three weeks under Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink.
"It has been tough," he tells Sky Sports with a grin. "It's a different kind of intensity to what I'm used to at Charlton. It's hard and it's a different regime but it's been good. I feel fit and I feel sharp. The double sessions are hard on the body but we are putting in this last bit of work. We know if we put the work in now, we will reap the rewards in the season."
The gruelling summer preparations have been building up to Sunday's Championship opener against Leeds United, and Cousins has been out to impress his new manager. "He's very demanding and I think that's what I need at this stage of my career," he says, "someone who can improve me and can get more out of me."
Getting the best out of young, hungry players like Cousins is Hasselbaink's remit at QPR this season. The west Londoners have completely changed their approach in the transfer market since pushing the limits of Financial Fair Play with their extravagant spending between 2012 and 2014, and their new-look squad only contains two players over the age of 30.
Cousins is one of four new arrivals. The £1.25m fee was little consolation to the Charlton fans who had watched his progress from their academy, but QPR's interest was piqued when he capped an impressive performance with a goal in the Addicks' 2-1 defeat at Loftus Road back in April.
"I guess I caught the eye," he says. "I had a good feeling from coming here then and having a good game. I liked the feeling of the club and the stadium, so when they came calling that was in the back of my mind. The boys are nice and everyone's been welcoming. I feel comfortable already."
The bookies rate QPR as 10/1 outsiders for promotion after last season's 12th-placed finish, but Cousins will provide a much-needed injection of energy in central midfield, and the former England youth international is aiming high.
"It's a very tough league this year with the teams coming down and even good teams coming up from League One, but I wouldn't have joined this club if they didn't have aspirations to be in the Premier League," he says. "Of course it's going to be hard but if we didn't have a chance of being up there in the play-offs and the automatic promotion places, then I wouldn't have come here."
QPR may have only recently begun to recover from a difficult few years, but it's a very different environment to what Cousins experienced at Charlton. "Coming to this club just feels normal," he says. "It's just the way people are around each other. Most people around here are English, for example, whereas back at Charlton you had people coming in from all over the place all the time."
After Belgian businessman Roland Duchatelet's takeover in January 2014, Charlton made seven managerial changes in less than three years. Cousins watched as key players were sold, only to be replaced by new recruits with no Championship experience. It culminated in relegation, with angry fans staging protests against the club's owners.
Cousins saw the sacking of Chris Powell in March 2014 as a turning point. "At QPR the squad is gelled," he says. "It's like how it was at the start when I was at Charlton, when Chris Powell was the manager. As soon as he left it was different. I had six managers in three years but here it just feels like everything is coming together and everyone is gelling together."
It was a wrench to leave his boyhood club, but Cousins is content in his new surroundings, and he looks back on the last three seasons as an invaluable learning curve.
"It was difficult but I had to stay in there, focus on my own mindset and show what I could do," he says. "There were times when new managers came in and took me straight out of the team, so I had to prove myself. I did that time and time again to get back in and keep playing. It helped my development, but when the relegation happened, I knew that it was time to move on."
Having bedded in at QPR, Cousins is now focused on Sunday's clash with Leeds. "It's a big game and it's in front of the Sky cameras," he says. "Everyone wants to make good first impressions, that's why everyone's been working hard this week and throughout pre-season." No one, you suspect, has been working harder than Cousins.
QPR v Leeds is live on Sky Sports 1 HD from 11.30am on Sunday
