Saturday 26 September 2015 22:12, UK
Reading are up to third in the Sky Bet Championship table following their 2-1 victory at in-form Burnley, but Royals boss Steve Clarke is not getting carried away any time soon.
Nick Blackman and Lucas Piazon both scored inside the first 10 minutes to open up a two-goal cushion for the Royals.
Tendayi Darikwa pulled one back for the Clarets, who were on a five-match unbeaten streak.
But the visitors held on and while the Royals are let to lose on the road this season, Clarke knows there is much work still to do.
"The idea is always to be competitive in the division and I think after quite a slow start, not performance-wise but results-wise, we're starting to pick up wins now so that's four wins out of the last five games," he said.
"If you continue to do that in this league, who knows what can happen because if you're able to string together a run of wins, as Burnley did which took them into the top six and as we've done recently, you can quickly get up the table. But there's no point in getting too excited about the table in September.
"We started well. It's a good three points. Coming here is difficult and a hard place to come. Burnley are a good team and Sean's (Dyche) got them really well drilled.
"We got off to a quick start and managed to see the game out, managed to defend well second half and showed a lot of character.
"We've made a lot of changes in the summer and we've done a lot of work in a very short space of time and the team looks okay. It's certainly better than last year."
For the Clarets this defeat ended their fine recent form, and while Joey Barton's debut was a plus, boss Sean Dyche admitted his side had paid for their slow start.
"It's unusual for us to start so sloppy really.
"They scored a first from us crossing the ball and a breakaway and a bit of a mix-up really so it's a mistake from us and the second one was good play from them," he said.
"After that I thought the response was excellent. The way the team went about it for the rest of the game, the chances we created were certainly enough to get something from the game.
"We kept them to mainly long-distance efforts apart from one at the end where it got a bit of a scramble in the box.
"You can't give a two-goal head-start to anyone at any level of football. It's very difficult then."
