Queens Park Rangers earned a crucial victory over Preston North End thanks to Jimmy Dunne's 89th minute winner.

A Milutin Osmajic goal midway through the first-half had earned Preston North End a half-time lead at Loftus Road before Rayan Kolli's leveller five minutes after the interval.

With the scores level, Liam Lindsay was sent off for Preston who stay 17th following just one win in their last 12 league games.

Dunne's late winner gave Rangers a victory which meant they moved up to 14th in the Championship table having extended their unbeaten run to seven games.

It was Rangers that started the stronger team and with just four minutes on the clock, Dunne headed wide of the target from Kenneth Paal's inviting corner.

Moments later, great work down the right from Paul Smyth presented Paal with a golden opportunity to open the scoring but he smashed his effort against the crossbar from eight yards out.

In the 21st minute, North End took the lead against the run of play when Osmajic turned the ball around the corner of Cook, who immediately fell to the floor with what looked like a serious ankle injury, before ruthlessly slotting the ball home past R's keeper Paul Nardi.

Osmajic appeared to apologise after the extent of Cook's injury became clear but the referee saw no wrongdoing and the goal stood.

Five minutes into the second half, the tireless Smyth got behind the visitors' defence on the right hand side and pulled the ball back for Kolli. who levelled the scores when he fired his lost shot through the legs of Woodman into the back of the net.

From that moment on, the home side were entirely dominant and when Kieran Morgan threaded a delicate through to Sam Field, the midfielder wastefully sent his shot wide of the post when he ought to have hit the target.

With seven minutes remaining, North End defender Lindsay was given his second red card of the season, this time for hauling down Kieran Morgan to put his side down to 10 men.

The home side finally made their advantage count in the closing stages as Dunne threw his head at a wicked Ilias Chair inswinging cross to deservedly grab a huge win in front of a delirious Loftus Road.

QPR boss Marti Cifuentes said:

"For me it was our best performance of the season.

"Starting the game so well – something that we had spoken about, because the last two first halves were not great – and then conceding a goal and losing our captain, that is something that can be mentally hard.

"The response, which was such a good performance, says a lot about the mentality of the group.

"I saw a lot of players performing at a high level, everybody contributed and that's important.

"And we need more of that. The Christmas schedule is crazy and we need to be ready."

Preston North End boss Paul Heckingbottom said:

"The best way to sum it up is that we would have been celebrating a draw. QPR were the better team – helped by the officials all game, but they were the better team.

"It would have been a big point for us, but they deserved the win. QPR were very good and competed against us very well. But the referee helped them out massively. We didn't get any decisions.

[On Liam Lindsay's red card] "It's not a sending-off. It's totally killed us because we've got all our attacking players on the pitch. We've then got some players out of position and that was a big, big problem for us."