The Royals suffered their second defeat of the season with a 2-1 loss against Cambridge United at the Abbey Stadium on Saturday.
Reading took the lead in the first half through Jack Marriott, but the hosts responded after the break with Liam Bennett levelling the score, before Kelland Watts struck shortly afterwards to put Cambridge ahead and ultimately secure all three points.
Here is what Royals boss Leam Richardson had to say following the game to Royals TV.
Richardson on the defeat
“We’re gutted with the result. It’s still
a bit raw. I ask myself the question all the time, if you think the players have given you everything, given the fans and the shirt everything, then you’ll never really have certain problems.
“Of course, the negatives are the result and the two goals, which are avoidable. They’re very poor from our point of view. The first time we didn’t get set from a restart, we concede.
“But I thought, in the main, for an away performance, with the amount of chances we created and the areas of the pitch we got into, we should have won the game.”
Richardson on going into half time 1-0 up
“I thought it was an excellent first half. I thought we brought the momentum from the last couple of games into it. We started on the front foot and had some really good moments in the game.
“When we’re 1-0 up, we’ve probably got to finish the game off. We had enough chances to go 2-0 or 3-0 up, but we don’t. Then we’ve got to defend and keep clean sheets if we want to get to where we want to get to.
“You’ve got to come to places like this, win 1-0, get out, shake hands and move on. So, yeah, disappointed, but like I said, we went after the game.
Richardson on Jack Marriott
“Taking goalscorers off is never something I want to do, but we were very cautious. [Marriott] had a little bit of a tight hamstring at half-time.
“We could have gambled and rolled the dice, but we’ve got lads behind him in Jacob Brown, Reidy, George Earthy and Randell Williams.
“I thought we had enough goals on the pitch to go and try to win the game. Unfortunately, credit to Cambridge, I thought they defended their goal really well.
“Their manager pulled me afterwards and said we were easily the best team that’s come here, which I don’t really like when they do that! But listen, we’ll move on.”
Richardson on missed chances before Cambridge equalised
“If we go 2-0 up, I think we go 3-0 and maybe more. But as long as they’re in the game, they’ve always got a chance.
“The first time we switch off from a restart, albeit we’d managed them all game, we lose a couple of duels, which we hadn’t done. At a place like this, you have to be consistent. You have to do it for 94 minutes, not 80-odd minutes, and it’s something we’ll learn from.
“I thought the performance levels individually were really high. There were some real high-performing individual performances. Collectively, I thought we were in a really good space and we had enough chances to win the game.”
Richardson on taking the positives
“You’ve got to take the positives because we’re still early in the season. The lads have only played three, four or five games with each other on the pitch, and they’re learning a lot about each other.
“We want to win so much for the fans. I think that’s always an indication when the result doesn’t go your way and you get clapped off by your fans after the game. You know the players have tried as much as they can, and sometimes it’s just not your day and the ball doesn’t bounce your way.
“We won’t hang around on the result for too long because we’re in a good place at the minute and we’ll certainly build from it. We’ll look forward to Tuesday and dust ourselves down because this one hurts today, but we’ll move on.”
Richardson on Brentford on Tuesday
“It’s hard to think about it at the minute, but once tonight gets out of our system, we’ll come in tomorrow and look forward to it because it’s a really good game.
“We were excellent in the last round at a really tough place. Now we’re coming up against Premier League opposition, so we know the challenge that brings.
“You want to manage as high as you can and players want to play as high as they can. The next best thing is to put yourself up against really strong opposition, and they don’t come any bigger than Premier League opposition.
“It’s a local derby, so I’m sure we’ll be looking forward to it once tomorrow morning comes.”
