Ruben Selles Takes Positives From Reading’s Narrow Defeat To Posh
Selles on an opening-day defeat, young players, the fans, using all tools at his disposal to get an advantage, and more.
For the first time in over 20 years the Royals played in League One, but it wasn’t a happy return. Peterborough United were the visitors to the Select Car Leasing Stadium and were victorious with a first-half goal by Ephron Mason-Clark.
Rubén Sellés felt the Royals stamped their identity on the match but was disappointed with the result, saying his side need to change the current trend of defeat that they are on. After the game, he spoke to the official club website and Reading Chronicle.
Sellés on the performance
“We don’t like the feeling of losing of course, and we need to change that trend but I am positive with the performance that my team put together, with the challenges that we have had in the last five weeks.
“We saw a team that wants to be protagonists in the game, that wants to be intense. We created some situations straight before we conceded where we had a chance to make it 1-0.
“I think you can see the team that we want to be. We need to defend that cross better for the goal and we needed to take our chance just before that too… but we showed the fans some speed and tempo. I know we didn’t get the result today, but we are growing.
“We are not passive. We are not a team that will wait to see what the opponent does… we want to put pressure from the very beginning, with and without the ball.
“We were playing against a good opponent today, but we showed that we have our own identity that we want to develop. And hopefully this defeat will help us to build something stronger.”
Sellés on signings and younger players
“We have a lot of young players making debuts today. Players like Tivonge, Mamadi and Caylan – they showed that they are footballers and we can count on them.
“And we had players like Harvey making his competitive debut, and Lewis Wing who has not played much football. We are in the early stages and we need to keep working and stick with the plan… and we’ll get some good things.
“I will use any tool in my hand to change the game – whether that’s the ball-boys being more alive or making five substitutions… anything that can help us.”
Sellés on Sam Smith injury
“Sam is going to be around six weeks out. We made a new scan and there was some blood there so he will be out for the first six weeks. We still have good availability of the squad, one of the highest I had in my career, but we are missing some because of the problems.”
Sellés’ message to the fans
“They were with us from the very beginning. They got excited and I think the style of play helped them to be with us.
“They understand the squad that we have right now. They supported us throughout the game… of course they can be disappointed with the result but I felt that they were excited with the way we do things. Excited with the young players, excited with the new players, excited to see a team that wants to do things.
“I hope that they continue to be like that – we want this to be the minimum level of their support! We will go forward together.”