Reading boss Paul Ince opened up on operating under a transfer embargo, admitting it is much tougher than he had originally expected.

The club have not paid a fee for a player since Ovie Ejaria in 2019, and have to operate under strict restrictions after breaching Profit and Sustainability regulations.

Taking over in February, Ince had been out of the game for eight years, and admitted he thought little of it.

"As someone who hadn’t managed for eight years, you don’t really take much notice of the word ‘embargo," he admitted. "I never really realised what it involved until taking this job. You sit there and think ‘ah it’ll be alright, we’ll try and keep Josh Laurent, Andy Rinomhota, Danny Drinkwater and the core from last season.’ All of a sudden, it becomes a financial situation where you’re trying to keep hold of players that other teams want, and we can’t compete. You then end up losing your whole midfield because of that.

Reading Chronicle:

"Then you think, where do we go now? You’re waiting and seeing what players are being released, then looking at loans. Trying to build a team in such a short space of time is tough. It’s tough for the players who signed, like Tom McIntyre, Tom Holmes and Andy Yiadom, Thomas Ince, because when they go to pre-season and they see all these trialists come in, it sends out the wrong message. These were playing with the likes of Josh and Swifty last season, and now they see a situation where it’s trialists after trialist.

"As a player I never experienced that, but these that have signed a long-term contract with the club are saying its not the right message to be sending out. I explained to them that this is where we are. We just have to get on with it. Sometimes you bring a trialist in and they just don’t have the quality. You put them into a training session, and it keeps falling down because they haven’t got the quality, and then you see the players getting frustrated, it’s not a nice vibe."

Reading Chronicle:

Despite being under the careful watch of the governing body, the Royals have defied expectations and sit comfortably in 12th.

With January on the horizon, Ince would love to be able to bring in more players to help the fight, but feels the club have nobody to blame but themselves.

"That’s our own fault. If you go over the FFP rules, you have to get punished for it," he said. "Being under the embargo basically means that you’re doomed to go down, that’s how its designed. The EFL say if people break FFP, this is what’s going to happen. That’s why I’m very happy that we are where we are, because they thought it would take us down. We keep surprising people, and that’s a good thing."