Preston striker Ched Evans bemoans poor defending against Reading

The Royals went into an early lead through Lucas Joao before he doubled their tally before half time.

John Swift made it three early in the second half but for PNE to respond immediately and get one back through Daniel Johnson.

Cameron Archer netted North End’s second but they could not find a way back to win any points.

Evans, who was introduced after 53 minutes and had a marked impact on the game, setting up Johnson’s goal.

He said: “We’ve conceded three sloppy goals from our point of view. We’ve shown resilience throughout the season and we’ve got two goals back today but the third kills us off which is disappointing.

“Anyone beats anyone in this league and for us it’s definitely an opportunity missed.

“If you look at some of the games we could have taken points from: today, Huddersfield Town, Millwall.

“We’re not only then vying for the play-offs, we’re actually right in the mix to push on. For us as a squad and a team it’s disappointing and we can put that right on Tuesday night.”

North End welcome Nottingham Forest to Deepdale tomorrow night and there will be calls for manager Ryan Lowe to switch his team up.

Despite his best efforts after coming off the bench, Evans felt that the moutain his side had to climb would always be too much if sloppy goals were conceded in the manner they were.

He said: “I come on and I offer a different outlet and a different challenge to the opposition.

“All I can do is be there, put my body in and we score off the back of it. I’ve just got to keep doing what I’m doing then hopefully get in the box and score a few myself. We scored two goals and any other day we win the game if you go off the back of the last four performances but today we concede three goals.

“It doesn’t matter how many we could have scored today, if we concede like we did then it’s always going to end in disappointment.

“Creating the opportunities is positive, taking them on the other hand is another thing we need to work on.”

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