In his monthly column, Hoops legend Gallen backs injured midfielder Faurlin to recover from his season-ending knee injury.

When Ale Faurlin went down injured on Saturday, it didn’t look much. But you could see the pain on his face, and the scan on Monday confirmed our worst fears.

It’s such a shame for him, considering he’s already had that very injury in the other knee. I certainly know how he feels; I suffered the same injury playing for QPR against Portsmouth in 1996.

It’s a long, long road back, but he WILL come back. Clubs’ medical teams have come a long way in recent years. But I would say he’s probably looking at pre-season now.

When you snap that ligament it takes a lot of time for it to knit back together, that’s why he’s looking at such a long time out. And then you have to work on the surrounding muscles.

When I was recovering I lost a lot of muscle mass. In the end I came back too quickly and it was probably 18 months before I was right again.

QPR have a duty now to keep him on a contract until he has recovered, and then they’ll have to take it from there.

It’s even more of a shame because he’s been playing his best football for us this season and been a big part of our early success in the league.

I was really impressed with the way Rangers pressed Derby. We’ve had a bit of a bad run recently, no wins in three before Saturday, but I never thought we were in serious trouble.

Against Millwall, they scored after Richard Dunne made just about his only mistake for QPR, and then scored again with a big deflection off Joey Barton.

For long periods of that game we were the better side and we deserved to win it.

Against Burnley, I think we could say that the better team won, and we played well at Wigan to get a point. That said, we needed to play well against Derby, and I thought Matt Phillips had his best game for us.

Matt has the pace to get in behind the defence and is a real impact player – although with the money Rangers paid for him I don’t think he’ll be starting games on the bench, I expect him to be first-choice, with Junior Hoilett on the other wing.

Off the pitch, QPR have added Wally Downes to the coaching staff. Wally has a good reputation as a coach and is very highly-regarded.

When he was at Reading and West Ham he worked more on the defensive side of things, so it may be the same at QPR.

He comes in with a really good pedigree so I’m sure he’ll be a great addition for Rangers.