In assessing Monday night's 1-0 home loss to Leicester, Royals boss Brendan Rodgers was again pleased with his team's endeavour, effort, and approach - but ultimately rued a lack of luck and clinical finishing in front of goal.

Reading peppered the Leicester goal during the full 90 minutes, hit the post through Jobi McAnuff at 0-0, saw a number of crosses roll agonisingly across the six yard box and were on the front foot throughout.

Brendan said, "Our performance was outstanding, apart from in that final area, and that's been our problem. Some of the quality was very good, we are very disappointed but we go again. I was very proud of the players, there was a bit of pressure leading up to the game but the spirit and quality was very, very good.

"Leicester will be very, very happy with the result. Their two centre halves were excellent, they've got momentum from coming up last year and they did well.

"You saw tonight that our group is very much together. The spirit was good, we just maybe needed a bit of luck and if we'd got one goal we might have got three or four. All you can do is keep working.

"The public looking at that, and anyone watching on TV, will see we played well and I'm pleased because some people only look at our position in the table. We're disappointed with where we are right now, nobody more so than me, but you could see the performance tonight. If we play like that we won't lose many, either home or away.

"I think we had 16 or 17 shots and a lot of chances. I take encouragement from the game because you could see the players' confidence. If confidence was low then they would not have wanted the ball, but every player  wanted to have possession. We need that bit more though and once we get that we will push up the league.

"So it was another good performance, we created chances, we played with quality, but it's about results. We need the cutting edge, no doubt. I know what we need, no doubt. We've showed promise, but it needs to be more than that."

Martyn Waghorn scored the only goal of the game just before half time, and Brendan was very disappointed with the goal, the striker heading home from a corner into the back post. Brendan said, "We switched off.

"From an outswinging corner we have someone on the back post and tonight he wasn't doing his job. That cost us, and we said afterwards you have to take responsibility. If you're given a job, especially at a set piece, you have to do it. The guy in that position should know, he's worked with me for long enough."

Brendan was pleased with our fans' response, and they kept encouraging the players and applauded the team off at full time. "I thought the fans were great and kept encouraging the team.

"We've got 32 games to go, which is a lot of points to play for, and once we get that important win we get back up."

Lastly, Marek Matejovsky was our man of the match and Brendan said, "He was outstanding tonight, he showed big qualities. He and Brian Howard worked really well together."