PHIL Parkinson has warned Wanderers they must find a way to cure their travel sickness if they are to stay in the Championship.

Tuesday night’s defeat at Cardiff City was the ninth of the current campaign – meaning the Whites have taken just eight points out of a possible 45 away from the Macron Stadium.

Parkinson managed to fix a woeful away record on his arrival as manager last season in League One but has found the problem has resurfaced since promotion.

Taking into consideration the time before Parkinson’s arrival, Wanderers have just one league away win at this level of football in 40 attempts, that coming against Sheffield United in December.

While home form has kept them afloat thus far, Parkinson is concerned there needs to be a quick improvement if the club is to avoid dropping back into the bottom three – a very real possibility if they do not gain a result at QPR this weekend.

“We have to pick up points away from home if we are going to stay up,” said the manager, who welcomes Darren Pratley back into his squad. “We can’t simply rely on that home form, which has been excellent. We need to look at ourselves very closely.

“When you go away from home you have to have a different mentality and be willing to work that little bit more for a result, sometimes. We need to go to QPR and be ready to stand strong as a team.

“We have put an almighty effort in recently and the performance (at Cardiff) did not live up to those standards.

“But we have got to shrug off that result now and be ready for what will be another tough game against QPR, who are a very competitive Championship side.”

Parkinson feels, however, that his players can take something from their second-half display at Cardiff.

“We were better,” he said. “I hope we can take some encouragement from that and take it into Saturday’s game.”

Wanderers come up against a QPR side who gave a good account of themselves in defeat at Wolves last time out.

“We’re feeling confident,” said midfielder Josh Scowen. “It will be a completely different game to the one at Wolves last weekend, but we’ve prepared well and we’ll be ready.

“We feel we’re more than capable of getting the three points and building on the two wins we’ve enjoyed at Loftus Road since the turn of the year.”