'It's a tough one to take': Paul Ince left gutted by Reading's opening day defeat to Blackpool

An early Callum Connolly strike was enough for the Seasiders to claim a 1-0 victory against the Royals in their first game of the season.

Michael Appleton’s men played some sublime football in the first-half and ought to have held a greater lead at the interval.

But the hosts were forced to hold on during the second period as Paul Ince’s side came on strong, who thankfully showed a lack of quality in the final third.

It resulted in Appleton kicking off his second stint in the Bloomfield Road hotseat on a winning foot.

"It’s a tough one to take because I thought it was one-way traffic in the second half," Ince said.

"I feel gutted for the players because we should have got something from the game with that performance.

"It boiled down to one mistake, we went tight when we weren't ready to go tight, the keeper makes a good save but we don’t win the second ball – and we’ve conceded a silly goal and we’re 1-0 down.

"But looking at the performance in the second-half, we should have taken something from it. We got into good positions, especially through Junior Hoilett who I thought was absolutely outstanding down the right-hand side, but sometimes we took too many touches.

"And we didn’t sniff out the chances. We didn’t get a body in at the back post to finish it off, we didn't take a gamble on a cross on a couple of occasions – if we’d done that we would have come away with points.

"It's disappointing, but it's one game. And their manager will be pleased to have come away with three points from today because they were camped in their half for the final 20 minutes.

"Coming back to a team you managed, you want to get a result. And I thought we deserved a result.

"But we’re going to win games and we’re going to lose games. I said to them before the game that we’ve got to be competitive and I thought we were certainly competitive today."