Mick post-Reading | We’ve got to see games out
READING REACTION | MICK
The points were shared between the Bluebirds and the Royals on Friday evening, with Kieffer Moore and Yakou Méïté exchanging goals at the Madejski Stadium.
City manager Mick McCarthy spoke to the press and media after the match, expressing his frustration at the nature of Reading’s late equaliser.
“We’ve let our guard down again.” he began. “We’ve been terrific; we’ve made blocks, we defended well, we caught them on the break, and we could have scored a couple more in the second half.
“I can’t criticise the lads too much, because for 94 minutes they’ve been terrific. I thought we handled what Reading could throw at us. And then we let the cross come in and we’re not marking when it comes in.
“I’m disappointed for the players as well, because they’re all raging. Prior to the international break, we saw games out. We’ve got to get back to that.”
Despite a frustrating full-time result, the gaffer discussed his pride at the nature of his team’s performance against the Royals.
“We’ve had a terrific response. I’m so proud of the lads for the way they went about it, the way they were committed to it and all of the stuff we’ve done.
“At the end of 90 minutes I’m concerned about the results. We’ve played well tonight; that’s a proper performance, and a real aggressive performance that deserves to have won it in the end, had we stuck with it.
“The players rewarded me with a really good performance, and I don’t deserve to feel this way after the way we’ve played.”
With just four matches left of the Championship campaign, Mick finished with a look ahead to Tuesday’s trip to promotion chasing Brentford.
“It comes around quick. If you drop your guard against good teams, you get punished. So, we had better not drop our guard against Brentford.
“We’ll just keep plugging away and see where we end up. It’s been a good couple of months, but we’re not resting on our laurels. We want to finish as high as we can, so we’ll do our best in the next four games.”
He concluded: “We’ve a duty of care, to ourselves, to the club, to the fans, to everybody that is associated with Cardiff City, and we want to make sure that we finish on a high. And then hopefully the fans can come back looking forward to seeing us, and we’re looking forward to seeing them.”
