Peter Ramage today challenged his Queens Park Rangers team-mates to prove they are ready for the Premier League by knocking Aston Villa out of the Carling Cup.

The 24-year-old joined Rangers on a free transfer from Newcastle and has featured in six of the club's seven opening league games as they look to climb their way out of the Championship.

With rich backers Lakshmi Mittal, Flavio Briatore and Bernie Ecclestone comes an expectation of success but after an encouraging start to the season, Ramage wants to meet that pressure head on at Villa Park tonight.

"Aston Villa obviously go into the game as favourites," he said.

"But we can go there and judge ourselves on how far we've come in the first few months and see where we need to be to compete against the top teams.

"Villa are one of the best in the Premier League and with all this talk about us as promotion contenders, it's a great chance to see how far behind or on track we are.

"Hopefully we can nick a result. They are fighting on a few fronts with Europe so we might catch them on a bad night."

Despite so much focus on satisfying the star-studded board's thirst for Premier League football, Ramage insists the anticipation is not any different from what he experienced in Tyneside.

He added: "Everyone here wants to get promoted and it's a lot like the pressure of trying to break into the top four of the Premier League at Newcastle.

"It's almost an impossible task to do that given the strength of the top four but they live in hope they can do it and we are living in hope we can join the teams in the Premier League.

"Kevin Keegan offered me another year at Newcastle and very kindly kept that offer open while I talked to other clubs.

"QPR had the ambition and the infrastructure, plus they were offering me first team football so, in the end, it was the right decision to move.

"But just as at Newcastle, we are trying to get into the unknown. I know QPR were in the Premier League a while ago but it's a whole different ball game now.

"We have got to try and match the board's ambition. We've done that so far and, hopefully, we can carry it on."