A midweek trip to Sixfields couldn't yield the return to winning ways the Royals were hoping for, two first half goals handing Ruben Selles' side a mountain to climb.
"Another tough night. Another tough trip away from home. And another game in which we were not ready for the first part of the game," Selles began.
"We came here with an idea of how we could affect the game in the early stages – and we did exactly the opposite as a team.
"And we made it difficult to come back from that position. We nearly equalised a couple of times after the first goal, but the goalkeeper make two fantastic saves. And then we concede the second one.
"In the second half, we scored our goal we crated chances again to equalise – but chasing the game in the final few minutes you can make the mistakes we made for the third.
“I cannot ask for more to the fans. They come here on a Tuesday night and they are with us, supporting us. They were excellent for us and all I can say is that we will work hard to try to be better and try to make them proud."
Ruben Selles
"We were losing the ball in midfield, we were losing our shape and we were too open too often.
"We need to be more ruthless, because we are in the positions to score goals. But we need to demand more from those situations and be more clinical.
“I cannot ask for more to the fans. They come here on a Tuesday night and they are with us, supporting us. They were excellent for us and all I can say is that we will work hard to try to be better and try to make them proud.
"But it’s frustrating, because we need to keep sustainable attacks and score goals but we also need to keep the opposition away from our goal. It’s in both boxes we need to work on our game. The whole team needs to do better.
"And we quickly need to learn how to play games like these, because we can’t continue like that."