Blackpool boss Ian Evatt says loss to Reading provided him with ‘a low point’

Blackpool head coach Ian Evatt was despondent as he described his side’s 3-0 defeat to Reading as rock bottom.

It was the manner of the loss that hurt Evatt the most, as his side capitulated after falling behind to Kamari Doyle’s 28th-minute goal.

“This is a real low,” said Evatt. “It’s a low point for me, for this club and the fan base and the players, as it should be. I’ll try and look at the game as a coach.

“I thought we actually started okay, we had two massive chances, for Andy Lyons and Hayden Coulson, and if they go in, then it’s probably different, and we had control of the game.

“Then the first real attack they had, they scored. We turned the ball over far too easily, and they scored, and it completely rocked us. And we lost our belief, we lost our clarity of thought and we lost the ability to make rational decisions.

“We can’t be that affected by going behind. I’m still learning about the players four weeks in. And probably today is my biggest learning day about them and about each other.

“Fundamentally I have to take responsibility. I’m the head coach of this football club and the first person I’ll look at is me.

“We can’t be that affected mentally by any adversity. It should inspire and not discourage, and the minute they scored today we were completely discouraged and let ourselves down.”

Royals boss Leam Richardson was delighted with his side’s work, having got a first away win of the league season under their belts.

Daniel Kyerewaa was the inspiration with assists for goals for Doyle and Randell Williams, as well as winning the penalty from which Lewis Wing scored.

“All the credit goes to the players,” said Richardson. “They’ve been outstanding this week, with the output in training.

“It’s never easy to travel away with the distance that we have with the numbers that we’ve got, up to a place like this, when these are going well themselves, but I thought we conducted ourselves very well.

“Honestly, I thought we started the game relatively slowly, but then I thought we were very comfortable, both in possession and out of possession today.

On the impressive Kyerewaa, he added: “The staff have been working with Daniel very hard. I put demands on people because they’ve got a role in the team to play. Your forward players have got to be destructive and today I thought Daniel was excellent.

“We talked about possession, position, penetration etcetera with our mantra through the week, and I thought his finishing positions were good today, he could have had a couple.

“Daniel is very proactive and aggressive in what he does, that’s what we want from our wide players, we want our front four or five to score goals. Everybody needs to start shipping in and having that responsibility. It was a big result for us.”