Thriller a ‘bad day at office’ for Rangers

QPR manager Mark Warburton admitted his side had “a bad day at the office” in their dramatic 3-3 Championship draw at Reading.

Rangers led through an early Michael Morrison own goal, but John Swift levelled for Reading before half-time. Swift went on to complete his hat-trick, taking his tally for the season to six, but QPR launched a fierce late rally.

Sub Andre Gray and skipper Stefan Johansen both scored to stretch QPR’s unbeaten record to eight matches.

“We’ve got to say that is two points dropped,” Warburton said. “But if that’s a bad day at the office for us – and we’re dissatisfied with that – then that says a lot about our players and how hard they have worked.

“There’s no doubt that we controlled long periods of the game, but it’s about putting the ball in the back of the net and we didn’t do that.

“We didn’t really look dangerous until the last 10 or 15 minutes of the game.

“We were dominating the ball but not really hurting Reading – and then we found ourselves 3-1 down.

“Everything seemed to be flying into the bottom corner of our net.

“We had to be better, we had to do the basics well. We spoke about getting crosses in their box, but we didn’t really do it until late on. Even at the death, we could have won it.

“We did get beaten by a few long balls over the top and there’s no getting around that, it was poor. We can’t dominate large periods of the game and then be beaten by a long ball. We have to be better than that.

““If you’re doing your job well and you’re doing the basics, you switch off for two minutes and then you’re going to get hurt.”