00:00John, what are your thoughts on tonight's defeat to Reading, please?
00:03I'm just very disappointed with the performance and the result, really.
00:07I thought we got what we deserved and, yeah, overall we just weren't good enough.
00:11What was your thinking behind the team selection tonight?
00:13We've got to prioritise the league, that's the most important thing for us.
00:16And at the minute we have a squad that, if we lose a couple of those front-line players,
00:25it's probably not going to, well, it's definitely going to weaken us.
00:28So, we looked at protecting quite a few of those that had played at the weekend
00:32and the bigger game for us is obviously Norwich at home on Saturday.
00:35So, I also thought that we could put out an XI that was strong enough to win the game
00:40and that was proved wrong.
00:42But ultimately I think I still look at the XI players on the pitch
00:45and think that they should all be competitive championship players
00:49and able to deal with the situation tonight.
00:51Yeah, because your squad is large enough, isn't it?
00:53So you didn't have to put kids on or anything like that at all.
00:55You could go with the XI players again.
00:56Yeah, we kept Swifty and made that deliberate change at half-time
01:02and bringing Doz on, we thought it was a good exercise for both of them.
01:05That was the one position we didn't have quite enough players to fill in.
01:09And then four of the five substitutes that came on as well
01:12were relatively experienced pros in terms of minutes
01:17and in terms of exposure in the league.
01:18So, yeah, we definitely thought that we had a strong enough squad to win the game.
01:22You can expect more from them tonight?
01:23Yeah, yeah, we expected to win the game.
01:25So when we come away with that, I look at performances, hopefully objectively.
01:29It's always hard to sometimes when the result doesn't go your way,
01:31but I don't think we can come away from that and think we were unlucky.
01:33I thought we got what we deserved.
01:35What disappointed you most other than the scoreline?
01:37I think that the fact that after going a goal down, I thought heads went down
01:42and, you know, it was a sort of quick-fire second and could have been a third, actually.
01:45So we just didn't deal with the conditions well enough.
01:47The second goal probably summed up where we were as a side.
01:49It was a longer ball clipped out to the right back.
01:51We lost the battle in the middle of the park and then we lost the battle with the big centre forward.
01:55And any time you lose individual battles at any level, you're going to lose games.
01:59It's very, very simple.
02:00We can speak about anything that we want tactically, et cetera, et cetera.
02:05If Saturday wasn't a great example of how, you know, when it comes down to it,
02:10games boil down to a lot of the basics of football that we've spoken about for years and years and years
02:14and we didn't do them very well tonight.
02:16Do you feel they should have done better tonight, that team?
02:18Oh, definitely, yeah.
02:20What was the issue with them, do you feel?
02:21I don't know.
02:22I don't know.
02:23There's plenty of reasons, but, you know, we're not in the space to start making excuses.
02:28I think Reading were in the same spot.
02:30Reading made plenty of changes.
02:31They had plenty of kids on the pitch.
02:33So I don't think we've got any reasons to come away from that game and not win it.
02:36There were some good points.
02:37I mean, you look at some of your players, it's the first time back for injury.
02:41Boat, first time back for 15 months.
02:44Matthews, Farrell.
02:45So that's something for you, isn't it?
02:47Yeah, that is.
02:49And ultimately, when we pick the side as well, we are looking at players that haven't played in a long time.
02:55But I still think the opportunity was there for us to be better.
02:59And we have players that have played in competitive pre-season games.
03:03And I think that we, yeah, I just think we needed to step up a little bit more than we did.
03:07Does that show some of those players aren't quite ready for the first team yet in the championship?
03:12It's a difficult one.
03:13And they're going to have to be, really, because we're not going to be able to rely on them sort of 10 or 11 players for the entire season.
03:20So players are going to have to step up quickly and be ready.
03:22And that's a good lesson for a few of them tonight and a really good challenge going into the next couple of games.
03:27And because there's no cup competition now to January, so they'll have to find a way into that team.
03:31Yeah, and that's one of the sort of double blows of tonight is the fact that it could have been another opportunity in a couple of weeks' time to have played in another cup game for lads that are short of minutes.
03:42And, yeah, that's something we're now not going to be able to do.
03:45Any more injuries at all after tonight? Is everyone all right?
03:48No, I think everyone's all right after tonight.
03:49So the Swifty and Andre substitution was planned at half-time.
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