Royals boss Brendan Rodgers was left hugely disappointed after seeing his team let a two-goal lead slip away in a 3-2 defeat at Peterborough.

"I'm shocked, to be honest. First half we were outstanding with our passing and movement, and tactically we were very good," he explained.

"We scored two and could have been four up. From then on it was like watching two different teams.

"That's a little bit how we've been so far this season, at times we were fantastic, at other times tactically naive, which was very disappointing.

"Second half we never got started, call it what you want, our mentality let us down.

"We conceded so early in the second half. We knew what was coming, the first 10 or 15 of the second half was going to be tough. We just didn't match that, which was very disappointing."

A bemused Rodgers told the post-match press that they knew they would have to weather an early storm in the second half and that Peterborough would change their style and personnel, but for some reason the Royals didn't deal with it.

"We knew they would match us up and tatically I prepared my players as well as possible.

"They had to match us up because we were so dominant, we knew they had subs coming on.

"They tried to stifle us and went to a diamond. So they were stopping us playing, but the basics are that we have to stop them as well. We didn't do that."

The Royals manager will now face a tough task rallying his troops for the visit of Watford on Saturday.

"The players are mightily disappointed and this is a wake-up call for us. When you're in such control, your confidence is that you can go and score more goals.

"For us and supporters, who were terrific, I'm mightily disappointed because we should have three points, full stop.

"We need some consistency in our play. We've not made a great start, there is no denying that and today was going to be the springboard, it should have been kicking us on.

"We must regroup, we need to be mentally stronger in games if we're going to progress."