Boss Paul Jewell admitted that his side were soundly beaten as Reading left Portman Road with a 3-1 victory. The Town manager was at a loss to explain such a muted performance.
Jewell said: "It was so flat it was unbelievable. I’m at a loss to explain that. The one thing we’ve had in most of the games is endeavour, I’m not saying there was no endeavour, we just looked flat, we looked leggy and we looked tired.
"I’m not using that as an excuse because they’ve had as many games as us, they were better than us in all areas tonight and we were soundly beaten.”
The Blues boss says losing Jimmy Bullard to a hamstring injury was a blow but that the rest of the side failed to match their previous performances: "Jimmy has a hamstring injury. He had a fitness test this morning and we were quite hopeful he might come through, he was a bit tight after the game on Saturday.
"He had the test this morning and when he went into a 60% run he could feel it. You just can’t play with a hamstring, so it was a disappointment to lose him, but we’ve got to do better than we did tonight.
"I think losing Jimmy was a huge loss to us but there didn’t seem any spark to the team at all tonight from anybody.
"We were flat, were second to every ball. The first goal was disappointing and was always going to be key. We never really put enough pressure on our goal, and they always looked a threat.”
Town had one or two chances in the second half, but Jewell admitted that his side deserved little from the game: "It would have been masking a multitude of sins. I think you’ve always got to be honest, and we just didn’t play well enough tonight.”
Reading boss Brian McDermott was delighted with his side’s performance: "That’s as a good an away performance as you’ll see in the Championship, let alone Reading.
"As we didn’t have Jimmy Kebe, Jay Tabb and Jobi McAnuff we played a different way tonight and everyone carried out their jobs really well. With 10 minutes left we changed back to 4-4-2 and we got the two late goals, which were very useful.”