Neil Critchley hailed his QPR players’ rapid adaptation to their new front-foot philosophy after celebrating his return to Championship management with a hard-fought 1-0 win at Preston.

Jimmy Dunne’s second-half strike proved decisive at Deepdale as the visitors earned their first win since October.

Brad Potts went close to grabbing a late leveller for Ryan Lowe’s side – who stunned high-flying Blackburn 4-1 at Ewood Park last week – but they were brought back down to earth with a bump as QPR leapfrogged them into the play-off places.

Former Blackpool boss Critchley replaced Michael Beale in the Loftus Road hotseat after his high-profile departure to Rangers at the end of last month.

Critchley spent a brief spell as Steven Gerrard’s assistant at Aston Villa but says he’s loving life back in the EFL dugout as his newly-inherited side bid to rediscover their early-season form.

The 44-year-old said: “I could not have asked for more from the players, to be honest.

“They’ve given me everything all week. I can see that they’re a good honest group of players to work with and coming to a team in form, we’re out of form.

“I said to the players that we’re not coming here to take a point – we’re coming here to win.

“We’re not going to be on the back foot, we’re not going to be everyone behind the ball and see if we could nick the game on the break, we’re going to try and take the game to them and we did that.

“I thought first half we were very good, had the better of the play and the better of the chances. I actually said to the staff, when you’re on top you’ve got to try and score and we didn’t.

“Thankfully we did in the second half from a corner routine that we worked on yesterday.

“And then we’ve had to show a real different side to our game.”

Preston’s first half-chance came on 10 minutes when Ryan Ledson played an excellent long ball to Potts but his volley was mis-hit and went well wide.

Tim Iroegbunam twice went close for the visitors before Critchley’s side exposed Preston’s defence once again as Sam Field’s shot was diverted away for a corner.

Ben Whiteman came close for the hosts just before half-time but there was nothing to separate the sides after a cagey opening period.

The visitors took the lead after 58 minutes, however, when the unmarked Dunne nudged the ball home in off the crossbar on the end of a corner.

Preston could have equalised six minutes later when Ben Woodburn was denied by Seny Dieng before the hosts were then denied a possible penalty appeal after a potential handball from a Potts shot.

Iroegbunam should have doubled QPR’s lead but his effort was tipped over by Freddie Woodman in the Preston goal before Potts’ volley went just wide in the closing stages as the away side held on for a hard-fought win.

Lowe, whose team are now seventh and level on points with QPR, said: “It probably should have been 0-0 – they’ve had a couple of good chances to score and so did we.

“Ultimately, it’s a bit of frustration for us in terms of, if you can’t win it don’t lose it.

“Could we have done better? We’ll have a look at it, possibly.

“There’s loads of positives, we always take positives out of it.

“The fact of the matter is, when you don’t win you think about what you could do better more than the positives because I expect the positives to be good, I expect us to open teams up and get some good chances.

“I didn’t think we’ve done that enough but there was definitely certain positives. The positive thing was you see the players going right to the end to try and get a result out of it.”