Reading FC manager on penalties, red cards and Swansea City win

Here is every word from manager Paul Ince.

Ince on the game

Come out with a gameplan, you know when you play Swansea they’re going to have the lion’s share of the ball. But we knew if we could get one or two passes on the counter attack we’d get in. Hence why we played Yak [Meite] and Thomas [Ince]. It worked a treat to be honest. You try to keep it like that until half time and normally you should win the game from that position. To concede the goal at that time in the first half gave them a lift. You sense the fans were getting frustrated and that was the plan. Really, really frustrated because I think the boys gave everything again. They’re playing well, the performance was good. Every time we make an error, we're getting punished. I'm not sure if the errors are [coming] because we're tired. I'm asking my players, all 13, 14 of them to play every week at 100 percent. We haven’t got that luxury of changing players. When you’re asking the demands to give 100 percent every week, you get tired, you lose focus, when you lose focus you make mistakes and we’re seeing that today. 

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We always want to try and go and win the game. To be fair, we had chances, it’s just a game of momentum, football. Once they got the third they sat back and we started to attack. But yeah, if you go to Swansea and score two goals, you expect to win the game or at least get something out of the game. Luton came here four or five weeks ago, scored two goals and kept a clean sheet. That’s the frustrating thing, we put ourselves in a great position to claim three against a very good side and we’ve come away with nothing, so that’s frustrating. I’m disappointed because the fans came here, it’s a long journey down here and I’m disappointed for the players because they’ve given everything. One thing about this Reading team is they give everything. They're in there [the dressing room] gutted. We have to move on, we have another game on Saturday and it's a game we need to get something from.

Ince on injury crisis

Unfortunately they weren't centre halves. That's the issue. The issue's not the centre-forwards. We’ve got Shane back, Lucas and AC but when you look at the situation with centre-backs, six weeks, seven weeks ago I was thinking we might have got Naby [Sarr] player, we’ve got Scott Dann, a plethora of centre-halves, now I’m down to Tom Holmes and Tom McIntyre. That’s going to be an issue, but this is where we are as a club, with the embargo, it’s where we are with injuries. Tom Holmes came in and he’s had the flu last couple of days. We’re a team with a great spirit and we’ll try and win every game, so that’s what we’ll try to do on Saturday.

Ince on three straight defeats

I think if we were playing poorly, you’d start to think ‘wow’, but just look at the QPR game, we make a stupid mistake giving away a last minute penalty, West Brom we’ll all over them in the second half, diabolical referee for Jeff [Hendrick]’s goal, we had 17 shots they had two. As a manager, if you look at your players and you think: ‘Ah we’re not playing well.’ Nah, this team’s not like that, you’ve seen that last year. The hub of the team is still here. Norwich have just come down from the Premier League and they’ve lost three on the bounce, they’ve spent loads of money, we haven’t, we know where we are.

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The remit’s to stay in the league, because we’ve got the buffer of starting the league well, we’ve got the buffer of, if we lose games, it gives you that cushion. But no-one likes to lose games, especially the manner we’ve lost them, especially today, West Brom and QPR. So all of them are ones where you can say: ‘How have we lost those games?’ We should have got something out of them. As a manager, it’s different when you see that they’ve given in - we’ve got no reason to give in 15 games into the season. What it does it just put things into perspective, where we are as a club, as a team, and as players, we’ll try to win every game we play. But if we keep making them mistakes and keep shooting ourselves in the foot, we’ll lose games and that’s the reality of it. 

Ince on Yiadom injury

"It's an elbow in the face, how the referee can't see it baffles me. It's a sending off for sure." I’m not sure on the Thomas one with the goalkeeper [Benda] I think Thomas got their first but Yiadom got booked anyway-his fifth booking. He’s suspended for Saturday’s game against Bristol which is a blow but we go with what we go. You know where we are as a club so we just keep plugging along. We need to pick something up on Saturday.

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Ince on losing leads

You forget Tom McIntyre and Tom Holmes are 21/22, young kids, and I’m asking them to play week in and week out. Andy Yiadom is a right-back playing right-sided centre half. You tell me any team that has got that in their back three if they play a back three. They haven’t. Luton have Sonny Bradley and Tom Lockyer; Danny Potts plays there year after year. We’ve got young kids and a right-back playing right centre-half. To keep demanding from them every week, especially three games every week, it’s tough. The Championship is a brutal league and to ask them to keep going to the well, they will try it, but you get tired. When you get tired, you make mistakes and get punished. This is where we are as a club at this moment.

Ince on physical or mental issues

When you get physically tired, you get mentally tired. It comes hand in hand. You don’t get mentally tired until you feel that you get physically tired. I get that from the players, because you are asking them to play week-in and week-out, and that’s demanding. No other club is doing what we’re doing, and I think we have to appreciate that and understand this is where we are as a club. We’ll scrub ourselves down and go again on Saturday. Another depleted squad but that’s the way we are.