Shaun Goater was unable to lift the gloom in the Reading dressing room at the end of a bad week for his new side.

The First Division outfit made the headlines for the all the wrong reasons following manager Alan Pardew's decision to resign after he was denied the opportunity to speak with West Ham about their vacant managerial post.

And on Saturday it was the Hammers who inflicted the Berkshire side's first defeat of the season, beating them 1-0 at Upton Park courtesy of an early strike from Christian Dailly.

Goater played up front alongside Nicky Forster for the whole of the 90 minutes but was unable to drag his side back into the game.

With Pardew having been relieved of his post, coach Kevin Dillon was promoted to the top job, albeit in a temporary capacity and he was not too pleased with the performance of his players, in particular those in attack.

"For 20 minutes it was dreadful," he said. "We started very slowly but after that we were OK. We just didn't threaten their goal enough.

"We didn't test their 'keeper. We looked good until the final third, but we needed a bit of individual ability to get us the goal, which wasn't there."

Reading now have seven games in 21 days with the first at home to Cardiff tomorrow.