Clement frustrated after Reading let two-goal lead slip

Posted Thursday, August 23, 2018 by PA

Reading manager Paul Clement was unhappy with the award of Blackburn’s equalising penalty after seeing his side surrender a two-goal lead to draw 2-2.

Jon Dadi Bodvarsson’s first-half brace – Reading’s first away league goals since March – put the Royals in a dominant position.

Blackburn hit back in the second half with two goals from the spot. Both times Paul McShane was penalised by referee Oliver Langford, and both times Charlie Mulgrew dispatched the penalties – with power and with precision.

The result stretched Reading’s away league winless run to 10, and Clement bemoaned the award of the second penalty – which leaves them on one point – though he tried to take the positives.

“We were the better team by far in the first half,” he said. “Then, Blackburn’s system and style changed which says a lot about what we did in the first half. We found it difficult to stop the supply of balls coming in.

“The two penalties – the first one is clear.

“The second one I wasn’t clear about what it was given for. I’ve looked back at it on the video; my opinion is it’s not a penalty. That’s disappointing. McShane said there was no contact.

“I’m looking at it on the video over and over again.

“But we’ll take the point, we’re up and running. It’s taken a bit too long to do that – we’ve had four games.

“We’ve suffered a little bit early on but long term, we’re going to be OK, we just need to get through this period.

“A bit of pain in the short term for the long term gain.”

After the game, Blackburn boss Tony Mowbray highlighted his team’s resilience in light of losing key players to injury as his team stretched their unbeaten home league run to 22 and remained unbeaten this season.

He said: “What I want to talk about is the spirit of the team, the fact at half time in the dressing room, we talked about two or three times last season being a couple of goals down and not losing any of those games, and we know if we get the next goal, we’ll ask a lot of questions of them.

“And we sit here having not lost the game from 2-0 down with two of our most attacking players not available before the game and the next two most attacking players hobbling off the pitch.

“I think we have to take the positives that without four high quality attacking footballers that were unavailable for us towards the end of that game, and I thought we dug in and showed the spirit that hopefully makes the connection between this team and the support base.

“The fans can see this team don’t give in.”