Despite taking an early lead through Lucas Joao, Reading succumbed to a 4-1 defeat at Blackpool on Saturday. Here is every word from interim manager Paul Ince following the loss...

On chasing the game at 2-1 down:

It’s one of those. We get the early goal and you’re thinking ‘great’. But we give a poor first goal away, really poor. And 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, Bower…Hamilton.’ There was 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 ten 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 on Tuesday night and then you come here and it’s a bad result.

It wasn’t a bad performance but it was a bad result. The way we conceded the goals, defensively we’re making silly little errors. And when it’s 2-1 I said to them ‘stay in the game’. We’ve seen the record of Blackpool…in the last 15 minutes (of games this season) they’ve conceded 13 goals.

On being open in the final 15 minutes:

We’ve got to push. This is the business part of the season, we’ve got to push. We’ve got to go 4-4-2 and try and get something from the game. So listen, I’m not too deflated - we know where we are. We’ve got one of the best midfield players playing right back, we’ve got our right back playing left back. We lost our goalkeeper - for the rest of the season.

We’ve got Tom Dele who’s probably more of a ten playing as a holding midfield player. So you can see where we’re at. These things happen. It’s been a bad day, we lost a few players, but we go again. 

On Karl Hein’s injury:

I haven’t got much detail really. He fell, in his house, I think he’s took the ligament off his bone in his thumb. They’re talking 4-6 weeks if he needs surgery and two months if he does.

The physio knows more than me but we’re switching four or five layers just to make a team we’re that down to the bare bones.

On wealth attacking options vs dearth of defensive options:

If it was just about scoring goals I think we’d stay up this year! But in defence you look around and you think ‘how could we change it?’ We can’t even go three at the back. As I said, there’s a lot of things we need to address, a lot of things we need to get better at. I’m not despondent, keep your head up, we’ve got a long way to go.

On Scott Dann:

He started training. I think he’s probably a week away. So that’s encouraging. 

On Josh Laurent:

He’s back on the grass this week. I don’t think he’ll be ready for Millwall - we’re hoping Tom Holmes will be ready for Millwall.

On Tom Holmes:

Fingers crossed (he’ll be back for Millwall). He did it against Birmingham - in the warm-up. In the warm-up he started to feel his glutes and he got through the game but after that…he’s got a little grade 2 in his glutes. He could be Millwall, he could be Forest. We’ll see where we are.

On having a full week of training now ahead of Millwall:

It’s tough because we’ve relied on, not just me but the previous manager as well, the same players playing, the same 11 players every game. Which is tough. The demands that I’m trying to put into them…it’s a lot a lot of work. And they’re having to play five games in the last two weeks, it’s a lot for these players.

So they’ll have a couple days off, you can’t do too much with them because we don’t have enough players to do what we want to do (in training)! But they’ll have a couple days off and then we’ll continue.

On the frustration of Blackpool not having to be very good to win 4-1:

Very frustrating. Because normally when you get beat, you want it to be good play from the opposition: they cut you to pieces, they open you up. And at no time did they actually do that.

And just looking back at the goals we’ve conceded…I’ve looked at them and we made so many mistakes. So many mistakes, so many stupid errors, schoolboy errors. But listen, we played some good stuff. But it’s not about good stuff now. We’ve got to combine that with defensive work and defensive shape and structure.

We’ve only been here six days, we’ve got a lot of work to do. But the lads are in good spirits. The belief is still there. I said to them at the end of the game ‘that’s not a 4-1’. So don’t look at the result and think you’ve been absolutely battered because you saw today that wasn’t the case.

On conceding avoidable goals:

Sometimes it’s not even about the set-piece, it’s about how you give the corner away. Don’t give silly fouls away, don’t give silly fouls away. But we have to deal with it. I think the second one Madine scores, he’s on the goal-line or inside the goal. If he’s inside the goal it shouldn’t have been allowed.

But we’ve got to do better, we’ve got to be stronger. But this is where we are. We’re a fragile team when it comes to the defensive side of things because they never played that way. We have to change that.

On facing up to Blackpool’s challenge of long balls forward to the strikers without Holmes in defence and Rinomhota in midfield:

We knew what they were going to do and there were no surprises. That’s when you need your Scott Danns and Tom Holmes. We didn’t deal with it, simple as that. And that’s the disappointing thing.