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JAAP STAM was left angered by “one of our worst games since I’ve been here” as Reading lost 2-1 to Burton Albion at Madejski Stadium.
There was supposed to a celebration in the 500th game at the Mad Stad and Royals threatened a dramatic comeback when Mo Barrow equalised late on following Tom Flanagan opener.
But a freak goal earned Burton all three points as Tom Naylor charged down a Liam Moore clearance and the ball squirmed past Vito Mannone and into the bottom corner.
And Stam was left rueing more defensive errors.
On how tough it is to take losing to a goal like that…
After one? After two goals like that. The first one you probably forgot, a throw-in all the way through and then not defending good enough in front of goal and the defender gets in front of Liam Kelly and he scores. That’s the first one and then the second one as well.
We spoke about it many times, by conceding that first goal and needing to get back into the game it’s going to be difficult, especially if teams play in a certain way which you’ve seen today as well. But to be honest in how we played today, I think it’s one of our worst games since I’ve been here in how we played on the ball, quality on the ball and touches on the ball, choices.
On if the poor performance was down to complacency…
It’s not at all complacency, it’s got nothing to do with that. But that’s what people think quite quickly. We showed the team what Burton is capable of doing, how they play with the quick players they’ve got up front and that you need to be aware of that. Maybe they want it too much, making wrong choices or doing things too quick sometimes and then it can go wrong as well of course. It’s got nothing to do with what you’re saying (complacency). The players were very eager this morning to hopefully do well and get a result but it’s not there, not at all.
On feeling confident of going on to win when they got it back to 1-1…
We’ve played games like that before where in a difficult game and you’re not really in it or not at the level that you can play, you get the equaliser and hopefully after that it gives the players the extra boost and you can go for maybe that second one. Then you give away a goal like that. I haven’t seen it back but I can still vision it a little bit and of course that’s very frustrating to concede a goal like that, then again it’s going to be very difficult to get back into the game.
On being booed off by the fans…
It can always happen that fans are booing. Now that the stadium is finally a sell-out, there’s even more fans to boo. One thing leads to another but that’s probably how it goes and how it needs to be but I don’t know. We just need to deal with our own thing and think about what we can do and what we need to do to improve and to at least not concede those goals like that and score goals ourselves.
On the state of the pitch…
I don’t want to say that because then people might think it’s going to be an excuse. We had a new pitch this season but it’s not good at all. Because of how it was with rugby as well, you can already see the grass is going but I don’t want to basically talk about the pitch because I don’t think it’s fair. In how we played it was just not good enough.
On changing his style of play…
Sometimes we did it last season and you might need to change certain things but if you look at the game today, the amount of space that you get, especially with the second goal as well that we conceded, even of this pitch we could’ve done a lot better and should’ve done a lot better to not give that goal away.
On if the players are stepping up to the mark…
The players are always honest and always giving everything to give a very good performance and I think they tried today as well but a lot of players today didn’t reach the level that they can do.
On playing Bristol City on Tuesday…
It’s going to be a difficult game. It’s a good team and we’ve seen that but if you can get a result over there then it means it can give our team a boost as well. We need to be prepared for that and not only think how good they are and what they’ve done in the last couple of months, we go over there and of course be cautious in what we’re doing but try to get the points.
If you have a performance or a result like today then sometimes it’s good that the games come quick because the players want to redeem themselves or show that they are a good team and can play good football and get results.
On the transfer window…
We are always looking for certain players with a certain ability but to be honest, I don’t know if we can do a lot on the transfer market in January.
There’s always a possibility of a couple of players who have been doing well leaving who are under the attention of certain clubs but we don’t want to lose players. I don’t want to lose players or sell players to be honest.
