Royals exit cup battle in penalty shootout

A PENALTY shootout defeat saw the Royals knocked out of the Second Round of the Carabao Cup on Tuesday night.

A young Royals side were unfortunate not to progress to the Third Round after holding Championship side Ipswich Town to a 2-2 draw only to lose out 3-1 in a penalty shootout at the Select Car Leasing Stadium.

Caylan Vickers had given Reading a second-minute lead when he forced an own goal from Brandon Williams, but Cameron Humphreys and Freddie Ladapo scored either side of half-time to put Town into the lead.

Kelvin Ehibhatiomhan came off the bench to draw Reading level late on, but the shootout went Ipswich’s way.

But Royals head coach Ruben Selles was proud of his young side for a performance against a talented Championship team that nearly caused another Carabao Cup upset — after Reading’s fantastic start to the cup campaign which saw them thump Millwall 4-0 in the First Round.

He said: “For some of our players that is the first time they have experienced a penalty shootout in professional football.

“And it is not about practicing penalties, it is about experiencing penalty shootouts in the pressure of the moment.

“And as we say, this is a process. These are young players who we need to grow. And tonight’s game was one they can be proud of.

“Kelvin scoring his goal, Michael Craig did well again after he made an impact at Millwall in the last round, Jay Senga made his first appearance in the line-up, Amadou in as a centre-back, Tom Mac coming back to the team, Coniah in goal – an unbelievable ball to set up Kelvin for the second goal, Basil making his first start – there were a lot of good performances today.”

He continued: “And they will learn a lot from this experience. They have gone through some tough periods in the first few weeks of the season, but they have shown that they have the character and the personality to be better every day, to play against opponents of a higher level – this is part of our path together and they took some good steps forward on that path this evening.

“These players are performing and growing every day.

“And we know these young players are working hard every day and can compete against any opponent – so making the changes we did today was an easy decision.”

“I am very proud of my team today. We played a very good game of football against a very good opponent, one grade higher than us. We are disappointed with the result, of course. We wanted to win the tie and go to the next round. Unfortunately, we didn’t get the result at the end, but the performance was there.”

The starting eleven on Tuesday had an average age of approximately 20 years and seven months. They included only three players who began against Exeter City in the Royal’s 2-1 defeat to the Devon side on Saturday.

The Royals were cruelly denied a point thanks to a strike from Reece Cole at St James Park two minutes into injury time. Harvey Knibbs had cancelled out a first-half header from Will Aimson and Reading had dominated the second half, hitting the post through Azeez. But the late, strike stole all three points for the hosts.

It was a heartbreaking end and there was no time for a response, much as Selles’ men tried to find a second leveller and the Royal’s boss felt they should have won.

He said: “In the first half we were too open, we were not intense enough and for the first 35 minutes I think we struggled to impose ourselves on the game.

“After that we took control of the game – finding the space to get the equaliser. And then at the start of the second half we had a number of chances to go in front – Femi was through one-on-one on the goalkeeper, he hit the near post, we had some shots from long distance and worked some good situations.

“In the second half we were playing like the team we want to be. We showed how we want to play with high intensity, high tempo. It was only in the last six or seven minutes we started to make some small mistakes.

“We didn’t put the ball in the back of the net when we should have, the opposition did. We could have been 2-1 up, but they win the game 2-1.”

On Monday evening the Royals travel to the Abbey Stadium to take on Cambridge United.