The GLEN LITTLE column

GUTTED. That's the only word to describe how I'm feeling after the game at Reading on Tuesday.

The game was fairly tight and we would probably have been happy with a point before it, but when you get so close to three it's really difficult to come to terms with.

When you get your nose in front with 20 minutes to go you're counting the clock down, especially when the team you're playing against doesn't look like scoring.

They hit the bar with a shot and it dropped nicely for us and you think, 'that's it, they've had their chance and we can hold on for the three points'.

But then they pump a long ball forward and it's just fallen perfectly for Harps to slide it in.

It seems that Reading did a lot of that the other night, playing it quite direct. They didn't do that when I was there at the end of last season, they knocked it about quite a bit.

But I suppose with Nicky Forster, who is their Ian Moore, being out they had to change it to suit the two big men they had playing up front.

They were winning flick-ons but they weren't coming to anything, just rolling out for goal kicks mostly, and no-one looked like getting on the end of anything.

It was just that one ball out of the blue that dropped down and went for them and that was a big blow for us.

It's frustrating for me because I wasn't even here when we had our last away win in the league at Stoke in September, but we've been unfortunate.

As well as Tuesday night, we could have won at Wigan, and Crystal Palace was a tough 0-0, but in the last seven or eight games at least we haven't been losing.

In fact, this week's two games have been the first in a while that someone has scored two goals against us because of the way we've tightened up in defence, but it really cost us on Tuesday night.

We're trying to get away from trouble down there and that was a massive two points to drop, they could have been so valuable.

As I said before the FA Cup game with Millwall, if we went out it wouldn't affect us in the same way as it did last year because then, that was our season, we weren't going to get into the play-offs and we weren't going to go down either.

This time we have so much at stake still this season, we were never going to let the cup exit bother us and we proved it with two good performances that were so close to bringing us two great wins.

And that brings me nicely to the 4-2 win over Ipswich. I was hoping that my first goal of the season against Gillingham would kick-start a bit of a run, because things suddenly start dropping for you, and I scored again on Saturday.

I'm not that bothered about scoring goals but it's good to see David May getting two in two because you need them shared out among the whole team, not just relying on the forwards doing it.