‘WE ENJOY THAT THE FANS ARE BEHIND US’
READING FC manager Ruben Selles praised his teams ‘character’ as they moved nine points clear of the League One relegation zone with a win away to Bristol Rovers.
After winning three points on the road, the Royals are now close to securing safety with three games left to play.
Sam Smith opened the scoring for the Royals with just eight minutes on the clock.
Reading were rewarded for their dominance before Lewis Wing netted to double their advantage on the stroke of half-time with a spectacular free-kick.
Following the win, a delighted Ruben Selles said: “I think we talked about it after Lincoln, the team are in a good dynamic and performed exactly how we wanted to perform.
“It takes a lot of character to play in the circumstances we are, fighting relegation and playing the way they have been playing.
“Today, especially in the first half, we made the difference and in the second half we expected, with the substitutions, to have a couple
of bits but we did a good job today and got the three points.
“It is not the first time this season but talked about how mature the group are and how they have been growing.
“We did the job in the first half. You cannot expect a game like today to be 100 minutes of dominating away from home against a team with their substitutes in the second half so it makes things difficult.
“After 15-20 minutes we took control back and ended up not defending our goal but with a free kick on the edge of their box.
Despite being nine points clear of the drop zone, Selles is refusing to get carried away yet.
He continued: “This season for Reading, it’s never done until the final whistle. We talked about getting a lot of points because we never know what might happen.
“Hopefully, nothing more happens now with the process we are living but it’s not done for us.
“I think we enjoyed it because we came here not to speculate.
They can feel that we are going all in. Sometimes we don’t get what we want but there is no doubt that we don’t go all in every game and the way we do things is exciting for them.
“The kind of team and characters is good for them to see. Some months ago we started to connect and now you can see how they enjoy the way we play and the boys performing on the pitch. We enjoy that they (the fans) are behind us every week.”