Paul Ince makes Reading FC survival claim amid Barnsley and Derby County relegation battle

Reading manager Paul Ince believes his side will remain afloat in the Championship if they can sustain the performance levels they were at during last night’s 1-1 draw against automatic promotion favourites AFC Bournemouth, speaking to his side’s media team after the game.

The Royals came into this match having lost 4-0 at Nottingham Forest at the weekend – and looked as though they would take nothing out of this clash either with Dominic Solanke putting the Cherries 1-0 up after a well-worked move in the eighth minute.

However, the visitors did have their own chances and looked reasonably bright in the latter stages of the first half, but cranked up their performance to another level after the interval as they asked questions of Scott Parker’s side.

They finally made this possession and pressure count when Tom Ince fired home from the edge of the box with just under 10 minutes to go – and managed to hold on as they took themselves one point further away from Derby County – though Barnsley closed the gap between themselves and the Berkshire outfit to two points with their victory over Bristol City.

This victory for Poya Asbaghi’s men will be a real concern for Paul Ince’s side considering the Tykes’ resurgence, seemingly looked doomed before but managing to maximise their points return to give themselves a real chance of survival.

Regardless of this though, the Royals’ interim manager believes his side will have no issues with surviving if they can consistently replicate what they produced on the south coast.

He said: “We’ve set a standard now. The players have set the standards.

“We’ve got to keep playing to that standard, whether home or away. If we play like that in the next nine games, we’ll stay up.

“We go into