Following today’s clash between Nottingham Forest and Reading, here are the instant reactions from both managers.
Nottingham Forest hosted Reading at the City Ground for a 7.45pm kick off on Tuesday February 20, with both sides playing out a one all draw.
Reading took the lead in the first half with an effort just after the half hour mark from Omar Richards, but Forest plugged away and Lee Tomlin finally got their reward with five minutes remaining in normal time.
Both sides have now won just once in their last 12 Championship games and they remain in 17th and 18th place respectively, with Reading four points above the dropzone.
Teams:
Nottm Forest:
Pantilimon, Darikwa, Pereira Figueiredo, Fox, Osborn, Watson, Colback, Lolley, Dowell (Cash 66), Tomlin (Guedioura 90), Brereton.
Substitutes:
Bridcutt, McKay, Fuentes Hernandez, Bouchalakis, Kapino.
Reading:
Mannone, Gunter, Moore, Ilori, Richards, Bacuna, van den Berg (Evans 81), Aluko, Kelly (Edwards 90+1), Barrow (McCleary 71), Martin.
Substitutes:
Clement, Bodvarsson, Blackett, Jaakkola.
Speaking to the BBC’s cameras a short time after match day referee Steve Martin blew the final whistle, Nottingham Forest manager Aitor Karanka explained.
‘We need to go to the pitch in the way we’ve gone in the second half because in the second half the atmosphere was amazing and we need to give the crowd that atmosphere. We needed to be more aggressive because we were losing every single challenge in the first half. I’m really pleased with the response of the crowd. We have a lot of good players and main thing is to create those chances, to play intense, to play aggressive and if we play that way we will have chances and we will win the games.’
Reading manager Jaap Stam in his comparative interview explained.
‘First half I thought was very good, we played some very good football and created some good opportunities to maybe score more than one. Second half, we wanted to continue that and play a bit more aggressive against their press, which made it difficult at times. We were confident today what we could’ve done, unfortunately we couldn’t find the second goal but at times we should’ve done better. Playing here isn’t always the easiest. A point is at least something out of it, but of course we would’ve rather had three.’
