Jaap Stam On Reading FC's Draw At QPR: "We Should Have Won"

It feels like a long couple of weeks without Championship football, but yesterday the Royals were back in action at Loftus Road and should have taken all three points in a 1-1 draw against QPR.

Both goals came in the first half with QPR taking the lead through Pawel Wszolek. Danny Williams equalised seven minutes later.

Jaap Stam was disappointed with the result, he told the Official Club Website:

"We should have won it. We defended well, worked hard, created chances, but we should have scored in the second half.

"We knew from the start it was going to be a hard game, because they've got a very strong, physical side and play a lot of long balls up to their striker and look to attack from the second balls and create chances that way.

"So it wasn't the easiest of games. They tried to make it difficult by pressing us high in the first half, but there was still a lot of space to play out from the back and we didn't always do it well - we could have done it better.

"We conceded a goal we didn't need to concede because we gave the ball away ourselves in the middle of the pitch. And after that we had to come back which we did very quickly.

"We scored a great goal - the cross from Garath McCleary and the finish from Danny and we deserved that. And after that we tried to go for the second one.

"We wanted to play our own game, creating chances from possession and at half-time we spoke about how, if there was a lot of space out wide we needed to switch the play to the other side quickly... and a couple of times we did it really well.

"We should have scored the second one. It's frustrating. We created the chances, but it would have been nice to finish one of them off - because we want to win games.

"Every game we play, we play with the intention of winning, home or away. Sometimes it can be a bit risky, but we want to play our attacking football. We kept searching for the second one today, but unfortunately it didn't come our way."

Poor Decision Making

Stam felt that his side made some poor choices and told GetReading:

"You could see it happening.

"We broke from midfield at pace with the ball and you see the runs we are making and sometimes they don't need to make those runs, sometimes they need to pass it.

"It's all about doing the right thing at certain points. If we do that better we will create more chances. That's something we need to work on. We will show that to the players."

With just one defeat in our last eleven outings and sitting just outside the Play Offs, the Royals welcome Aston Villa to the Madejski Stadium on Tuesday evening.