Reading fought back from a goal down to take a 1-1 draw at Brentford.
Royals were struggling at Griffin Park and fell behind to a first half Josh Clarke strike. Further Brentford chances came and went before Liam Kelly equalised in the 70th minute to earn a share of the spoils.
Here is what Jaap Stam had to say after the game.
On if he is happy with a point…
We are pleased with a draw.
On the game…
I think we had a hard time, especially in the first half. We didn’t play up to our standards. When we had the ball our choices were not good enough. We gave the ball away too quick and with the players Brentford has got up front and the pace that they have, they are always a threat. You need to be very accurate in your passing. Especially in the first half we didn’t do that and then we got in trouble. They go forward, they scored a good goal with a one-two and then the finish. We knew that, we spoke about that. We’ve seen them play already.
They haven’t won all their games but they’ve played well and made it difficult for the majority of the teams that they’ve played against and we remember still the game we played over here last season (a 4-1 defeat) as well. At the end of the day you always want to win but you need to be honest to yourself as well and say ok we have a draw over here at Brentford, a good team, good side, good players and we’re happy with that. It makes us aware as well that we still need to improve a lot.
On the half time sub bringing Beerens on for Bodvarsson…
Brentford had a couple of opportunities in the first half but don’t forget within two minutes we already had two very good opportunities to score. If you score that then the game is
totally different after that. We needed to make a change so we brought Roy on from the left and then Sone as a number nine or G-Mac as a number nine sometimes because we needed to keep that ball up more and to be more of a threat going forward and we needed to be more aggressive in our pressing.
On Liam Kelly…
Liam Kelly is a quality player. You can say he’s 21 but it doesn’t matter. If you want to play on this stage and be a big man over here then it doesn’t matter if you’re 21 or you’re 35, you need to take your responsibility and put it in the net. We know what Liam Kelly can do. He is young but he is very down to earth, calm in everything he does. It was a very good penalty and then after that they could’ve given us a second one as well.
Liam Moore wanted to step in and they tripped him. It wasn’t done on purpose but I can understand for a referee sometimes to give two penalties in a short period of time is difficult but sometimes you just need to stick to your decision.
On Sone Aluko’s late shot…
That’s football. You could say is it deserved or not, maybe not, but everybody wants to go for the win. We had to fight for our lives to get the ball out of our goal as well. You know if they’re pushing on there is space to come out on the break. If you look at it in all fairness then it’s right that it went on top of the crossbar rather than underneath.
On the defensive display…
It’s not only the defenders, it’s everybody. If you want to do well in this league then everybody needs to be ready to give everything. Even if it’s only for 60 minutes, then we can take you off.
Big games are going to be won towards the end because the quality of both teams are very close to each other. You need to be mentally strong and be willing to go over the edge to back it difficult for the opposition.
On the first half display…
Everybody knows we needed to do better after the first half. The second half was better. Players don’t go into a game thinking it’s going to be easy. It doesn’t go like that. Sometimes for some reason if you make a couple of mistakes in a row then sometimes the team drop deeper. But in the second half we did it better.
On Mo Barrow missing the game…
He’s injured. He twisted his knee so he has a problem with one of his ligaments. It’s not ruptured or anything like that. There was a bit of liquid in his knee so we needed to take him out. He’s probably going to be out for a couple of days or a week maybe.
