Royals boss says only points matter now

Now pre-season is over, Nigel Adkins is fully focused on his side getting points in the upcoming Championship campaign.

It has been a rather mixed pre-season for Reading, who only picked up two wins in their six friendly matches building up to the new season. Despite this, the former Southampton boss has dismissed the importance of results in the friendlies and is now looking forward to the new league campaign starting this Saturday against Ipswich.

Speaking to the Official Reading FC website, Adkins said: ‘I’ve spoken about pre-season before on how the emphasis is not really on the result – it’s about performance, getting levels of fitness up, trying different formations and players in different positions. We’ll have everyone fit and available for next week’s game.’

‘The objective is that the young players have an opportunity to go and play and see what it’s all about. We want to push them as much as possible. The pre-season period is finished now so we can put that to bed. And now it’s all about points from here on in.’

Adkins is right – friendlies are no more than crucial minutes for players to get game time, the test against Swansea summed this up. We had to chase a lot of the game, but that was probably the logic behind organising it against good opponents, that keep the ball well. Despite the results, I’m convinced pre-season went well.

Wiki page: Nigel Adkins