PAUL Clement bemoaned his Reading FC side’s finishing after a narrow defeat at Nottingham Forest.

Hillal Soudani’s second-half strike was all that separated the teams in a closely-fought clash at City Ground on Saturday.

Royals created a number of opportunities through Sam Baldock, Marc McNulty and Jon Dadi Bodvarsson, but failed to find a way past Costel Pantilimon.

Reading have now lost their opening two Championship fixtures and are bottom of the table, while the win moved Forest up to fifth and maintained their unbeaten start.

But Clement argued his team could have come away with a least a point on Saturday.

“The overall summary is that we created match-winning chances and didn’t take them, “ he reflected. “That was the difference.

“The first goal always makes a big difference but, even when we went behind, we continued to create chances.

“But we have to convert better. That’s two games where people will say that we played alright and deserved more, but we didn’t get more.

“We’ll continue to try and build our performances, and we’ll turn that into results whether home or away.”

Reading Chronicle:

Reading striker Yakou Meite in action in the 1-0 defeat at Nottingham Forest. Pictures: Jason Dawson.

Reading are still looking for their first points of the season after a difficult start that also included a home defeat to Derby County in the Championship curtain-raiser.

And based on team performances so far, Clement is confident results will quickly improve.

He stressed: “I’m not worried because we created chances in both games. For the majority of the games we’ve looked pretty solid defensively, but we can’t be a team that feels sorry for ourselves.

“We can’t be the ‘nearly team’, where we nearly get a result or nearly get a performance. We have to turn good performances into points.”

He added: “We are an improving team but we have to get results and points on the board.

“That’s how you get rewards from the work that you’re doing. A positive result isn’t far away for us.”

Clement will be hoping back-to-back home games will now bring about a change in fortunes.

Royals host Birmingham City in the Carabao Cup first round tomorrow night (8pm ko) then Bolton Wanderers in the Championship this Saturday (3pm ko).

Clement said: “We have two homes games now in the cup and the league and hopefully the players will reap the benefit of their hard work.”

Nottingham Forest 1 - 0 Reading FC: Match report here.