"He's been dealt a really really difficult hand" Morrison says of Reading FC manager

Pressure continues to mount on Paunovic with Reading fans loudly voicing their displeasure at the Kiyan Prince Foundation stadium.

When asked whether the Serbian was still the right man to lead the team forward, Morrison responded: “I think so. I think he’s been dealt a really really difficult hand. 

“You can talk about a lot about ‘excuses’ and you can say they’re excuses but they are difficult problems to solve. When you think of getting a job it’s not what you’re looking to do. He’s been fighting fires all season, from day one, and it's been a really difficult job. 

“We’ve all got to come together now. We haven’t got the injury crisis now, we’ve got some good players in there, and now it’s putting the excuses to the side and all following our instructions and putting in a better performance for the team, for the manager, and for the football club.”

Reading made it five defeats in a row as QPR went ahead 3-0 at half-time through two Lyndon Dykes goals and one from Luke Amos. Jimmy Dunne’s free header made it 4-0 shortly after the break to mark Reading’s wretched month of January with their sixth defeat since the turn of the year.

Paunovic’s side remained two points clear of the drop zone after the weekend’s fixtures thanks to Peterborough losing their fourth game in five. 

Of the many issues this season, Morrison recently became acting Reading captain after Liam Moore was stripped of the honour.

Morrison leads his side out for pre-match warm-ups. Image by: JasonPIX

“As players, we had a talk about it, and it’s something you can’t affect as a player,” Morrison said of the Moore news and general “noise” around the club. 

“You can’t use it as an excuse for a performance. Ultimately, when you walk over that line nobody cares what’s happened during the week or what’s happening around the place and all that noise. 

“We had a conversation about controlling the controllables and that’s your performance, how hard you work day in day out. There is a lot of noise here, there is a lot of noise at other football clubs as well. The grass isn’t always greener at other places and you have to think about what you can control, you have to think about what you can do for the team and the performances that you can put in.

“The last part of the season needs to be a bit of a siege mentality. This is what we’ve got, this is who we are, this is what we’re going to do and push as hard as we possibly can. We want the fans to get behind us as well and obviously, we have to put in better performances. 

2,000 Reading fans made the trip to West London. Image by: JasonPIX

“To be fair when we played Huddersfield last week it was a better performance and a better connection with the fans and the team. And we need to galvanise that at the football club - which is difficult at the moment.

"It’s hard to get behind a team that’s conceding so many goals, I appreciate that. But we’re all in it together to do the best we can for Reading and try to win games. Because we need to win them soon and we need to win them quickly.”

Morrison has never been relegated in his career, but has been in rather desperate situations, Birmingham docked ten points during the 33-year old’s spell there.

“When I was at Birmingham we had ten points deducted, so I’m used to that! I suppose there are comparisons when you get points deducted and there’s noise going on.

"It has been a difficult time for the football club. People are working hard behind the scenes to get correct things. We haven’t brought in as many players as people probably would have liked. The group probably needs a bit of help, just to refresh it, bring in some people who haven’t been in that rut. 

“I’ve been in much worse situations before. I see the talent in this team and it’s about trying to get that mindste of working as hard for everybody and everybody putting in every single bit of energy they can for the next three or four months goes into Reading Football Club. Doing everything you can for them.

"Your mindset has to be for the football club for the next three or four months and make sure you get the results and get out of it. We definitely can, there’s some really good talent, and it’s about utilising it as best as we can. Yeah, it looks bleak at the moment but I’m sure come the end of the season we’ll be far away from it.”