McDermott pleased despite defeat

Reading manager Brian McDermott was extremely pleased with his players efforts, in their 3-1 defeat to Tottenham on Tuesday.

The Royals took on early lead against Andre Villas-Boas’ side at White Hart Lane, as Pavel Pogrebnyak headed home after they hit the bar. Spurs soon equalised as Michael Dawson attacked Gylfi Sigurdsson’s corner and went in front thanks to a back-post header from Emmanuel Adebayor. Clint Dempsey sealed the victory with ten minutes to go.

Speaking to the Official Reading FC website, McDermott said: ‘Our fans clapped the players off at full time and that tells you something. I’m never happy when we don’t win but we showed a great spirit today. When we went in front, I thought if we could get in at half time 1-0 we had a chance. It was a great free kick from Hartey and Pavel headed in.’

‘We got done on a set play and the second one was a good goal, Lennon and Adebayor did well. Then at 2-1 we had opportunities, I’ve seen them again and we were very unfortunate not to score from any of them. When you come here, playing against this team, you know they’re going to have a lot of possession with what they’ve got going forward.’

Despite letting Spurs have way too many shots in the game, the heart we showed during that second period was admirable from our point of view. Not many teams will create more than four chances against Spurs at White Hart Lane, so we can just rule this game out, as no one really expected us to get anything from this game. Onwards and upwards!