Reading FC keeper out for season as manager Paul Ince laments defensive woes
Reading FC manager Paul Ince has urged his players to keep believing as his threadbare squad suffered a heavy defeat to Blackpool.
Royals goalkeeper Karl Hein faces up to two months on the sidelines after falling at home and injuring his ligament and was replaced between the sticks by Luke Southwood for Saturday's 4 - 1 loss to Blackpool.
Interim Reading FC manager Paul Ince said: “We lost our goalkeeper - for the rest of the season,”
“I haven’t got much detail really. He fell, in his house, I think he’s took the ligament off the bone in his thumb. They’re talking 4-6 weeks if he doesn’t need surgery and two months if he does.
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Ince said that defensive mistakes had punished his side at Bloomfield Road
He said: "We get the early goal and you’re thinking ‘great’, but we give a poor first goal away, really poor.
"This has not just been for me, this has been throughout the season - conceding stupid goals, making silly errors.
"I said to them before the game ‘we know what we’re going to get from Blackpool, nothing’s going to surprise you. They’re going to go long into Madine, get bits around there, Bowler, Hamilton'.
"There were no surprises, so when you go 1-0 up you think ‘okay, settle down.’ Then we give a silly goal away, not marking…keeper comes out and before you know it it’s 1-1, changes the course of the game.
"But I said to the lads at half-time ‘we’re still in the game, consider it 0-0'.
"If we get the second goal I think we go on to win the game. If I said to you guys ‘4-1, we got beat 4-1’ you’ll think ‘how the hell was it 4-1?'
"Because up to the last 10 minutes when we’re trying to chase it and we open ourselves up - but as far as the first 25 minutes of the second half there was a lot of positive stuff to come out of it.
"But it’s about getting results, about getting the points on the board. But listen, I’ve said to the lads in there ‘just keep believing’. We had a great result (against Birmingham City) on Tuesday night and then you come here and it’s a bad result."
