Adkins: We should have kept possession better

Nigel Adkins was pleased to pick up a point in his side’s six-goal thriller with Wolves, but felt his side should have kept more possession.

The Royals boss witnessed his side take a first half lead, thanks to Michael Hector’s header, before a crazy start to the second half saw the game leveled at 2-2. Wolves scored with five minutes to go, but Glenn Murray popped up late on to level the scoreline for a fourth time.

Speaking to the Official Reading FC website, Adkins said: ‘We scored some good goals and it was an entertaining afternoon. We ebbed and flowed against a good side that lead the percentage league for possession. We knew we would need to work hard on trying to get the ball back.’

‘Maybe at times we were not as crisp as we would have liked when we kept possession, but we got better as the game went on. We would have liked to have won another home game, as we always do. We will respect the point we have gone and got, but it was a good game of football.’

Wolves are no slouches and as Adkins alludes to, they have the best possession & passing stats in the division, so it was always going to be a challenge to get the ball off them. Bringing on Guthrie for Akpan showed how we wanted better control in midfield, but we still found it tough.

The possession stats were only 47-53 in Wolves’ favour, so it wasn’t as if they controlled the game, that’s still lower than their average this season. Despite this, the boss still seems happy with a point and should be considering we were losing twice and came back both times.