Steve Bruce: Individual errors cost Aston Villa

A Joseph Mendes double and Lewis Grabban penalty earned the Royals a 3-1 win and the first-ever victory at Villa Park in their history.

Villa responded through skipper James Chester after Mendes had opened the scoring but the visitors made the most of some sloppy defending from the hosts to boost their play-off prospects.

"I think we've made more mistakes today than we have in the past two months," Bruce said. "We've been punished. We've given really, really bad goals away. We had good opportunities ourselves.

"But if you make the mistakes that we have today then rightly so you are going to get punished.

"Reading are a good side. They've been there all season and if you hand them goals in the way we just have then it's going to be a difficult afternoon."

Villa had conceded just twice in their previous nine games and had not been breached at home since Valentine's Day.

But Mendes made the most of a mistake by Jordan Amavi to open the scoring inside the opening six minutes.

Amavi, who was deputising for the injured Neil Taylor, was then caught napping again as the striker restored the advantage just 19 seconds into the second half after Chester had equalised before the break.

Villa had chances to level it again but Leandro Bacuna hauled down Liam Kelly to concede a spot-kick with 11 minutes remaining and Grabban made no mistake from the spot.

"I'm not going to sit here and criticise individuals," Bruce added. "Everybody makes mistakes but you have to recover.

"Especially when the spotlight is on at a big club like ours. We didn't handle that.

"It was one of those awful afternoons when every mistake did get punished and you just want to get the hell out of there."

Villa now head to Fulham on Monday with Bruce hoping Taylor will recover from a groin injury in time to feature.