Brian Barry-Murphy: It’s good for Cardiff players to feel excitement of going top

Cardiff head coach Brian Barry-Murphy believes it will benefit his players to “feel that excitement” at moving to the top of League One following a 2-1 home win over Reading.

Second-half goals from Omari Kellyman and Yousef Salech completed a comeback after the Royals had gone ahead through a first-half strike from skipper Lewis Wing.

“It felt like a pretty chaotic game and you could see what the victory meant to the players at the end,” said Barry-Murphy. “I’m very pleased that we managed to get that win and to move to the top of the table.

“I think for everybody who is involved at the club it’s very natural to look towards the table and when I was younger as a player I used to speak about not looking at the table and ignoring it.

“But really it’s very unproductive because it’s very exciting and the players want to feel as if they’re going for something and they believe they are good enough to challenge at the top end of the table.

“I think it’s really good for the players to feel that excitement of being at the top end of the table and to look forward to what we can do for the rest of the season.

“Inside the dressing room we have to obviously focus on how we’re going to maintain that with performances that are better than today.”

Reading boss Noel Hunt was at a loss to explain how his side lost the game after creating so many opportunities.

The Royals remain in the relegation zone, and Hunt said: “I thought we played so well, bar probably a 10 to 15-minute spell in the second half. I thought we were the better team by far and they’re top of the league.

“We have to do that week in, week out now. We’ve got to put in that performance and create those chances every week and we’ve got to be ruthless in both boxes. It’s as simple as that.

“We’re just disappointed that we didn’t come home with something from the game.

“We had 18 shots inside the box, four one-on-ones today. We’ve got to keep going and keep creating the chances because that’s what we want to do. Good teams will create chances.

“I think they had 10 shots, three on target, which is the disappointing part in the second half as two of them are goals.

“So we’ve got to toughen up and make sure we keep going. If we play like that over the next three or four weeks, I think we can put points on the board.”