‘Too Little, Too Late’ Says Doyle

Kevin Doyle believes that had Leroy Lita scored the Royals` second goal a little earlier, another unlikely point over the Christmas period may have been secured.

Lita coolly slid the ball home in the first minute of injury time to make it 3-2, but with only three minutes of stoppage time to play, we could not conjure up another goal.

Doyle said, ‘In the end we nearly got back into it and if we had five more minutes then we might have equalised.

‘It looked all over when we had 10 men and went 3-1 down, but we showed that spirit of ours to come back. Leety deserved his goal.’

Kevin admits that Manchester United were very much on top in terms of possession, saying, ‘To be fair though United played well, and they would have been disappointed if they’d given it away.

‘They probably deserved it with their possession, but we could have nicked something.’

Substitute Sam Sodje was shown two yellow cards in just 11 minutes on the pitch, and Kevin had sympathy for his teammate.

‘I don’t think anything he did was that bad. I didn’t see the tackle for the first yellow, but it can’t have been that bad; Heinze was still playing at the end!

‘The second one was for a pull when it was offside anyway. I feel sorry for Sodj.’