JAAP Stam cast doubt over Reading FC's promotion credentials after Saturday's 3-0 defeat at Preston North End.

Royals boss suggested his side lack the ingredients needed to go up after a third successive away defeat without scoring a goal.

Reading's comfortable saunter to a top-six finish now looks in jeopardy after seventh-placed Fulham won 3-1 at leaders Newcastle to close the gap on Royals to four points with a game in hand.

Stam's men started like a house on fire at Deepdale, but Lewis Grabban, Jordan Obita, Garath McCleary, Jordon Mutch, John Swift and Yann Kermorgant all wasted chances to put the visitors ahead.

They went on to pay the price as a Tom Barkhuizen brace plus a Daryl Hogan goal kept Preston within striking distance of the top six themselves.

Stam, whose side remain fifth, lamented: "You’ve seen that if you want to stay up there, where we are in the table, you have to do better.

"You are not allowed to make small mistakes. The players were very eager to do well, but we need to learn.

"Small things matter and to win games like these, you need to be sharp, focused. That means when we get the opportunities that we did in the first half, you need to finish them.

"That means when you’re attacking, you need to be aware of their strikers as well in case you lose the ball.

"And we need to be more decisive – if you can’t play nice football in the certain way we like to play, sometimes you just need to launch that ball into the stands and be decisive. And we don’t do that. That’s why we’re giving goals away."

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Reading have now lost their last three games away fom home after defeats to promotiom rivals Brighton and Huddersfield and now at Deepdale.

Stam's men have also failed to score in any of those games, leaving them low on confidence ahead of next Friday's trip to sixth-placed Sheffield Wednesday.

He added: "We know what we can do, we know what the opposition can do. We’ve proven we can be dangerous going forward and solid at the back.

"But we’ve had a couple of these games now and we should know better. We can be very open and give chances and goals away, that’s what happened today.

"In the first half, they didn’t create a lot of chances and we played ok. We had opportunities but we needed to be more clinical.

"There were opportunities to play if we’d made the right choices. We didn’t. And they deservedly won the game.

"We needed to anticipate certain situations better. We had the same thing against Brighton and we’ve had it in previous games, we need to improve on it."