Reading defender Ivar Ingimarsson is confident the Royals have rid themselves of their losing habit at just the right time.Steve Coppell's side host Manchester City on Saturday in the knowledge that a point would be enough to lift them out of the bottom three.

Victory at Middlesbrough last week ended an eight-game losing run that had seen the Royals slip from relative safety to the Premier League drop zone.

And Ingimarsson is convinced ending that sequence at a time when no fewer than seven teams near the bottom are separated by just four points could not have been better timed.

He said: "It does affect you if you are losing all the time. You start thinking it doesn't matter what you do, you keep on losing.

"Winning a game has brought the confidence back and we can go into the next game thinking 'we have shown it works, why can't we do it again?'

"Everybody knows the end of the season is approaching quickly so it was good to get that win as we were running out of games.

"We are still in the relegation zone but we can feel the difference. Our belief has come back and we have to build on that.

"We worked really hard to get into the Premier League and we are going to work as hard as we can to stay there."

Few had predicted at the start of the season that a side that had finished eighth and just missed out on UEFA Cup football in their first top-flight campaign would struggle so badly this term.

But Ingimarsson was quick to point out that no-one had predicted last season's success in the first place either.

He said: "It is still in our hands what we do. We did so well last year that people are talking about failure.

"But if this had been our first year in the Premier League they would be saying we were doing quite well because we are still in it with 10 games to go.

"Most people thought we were going to be dead and buried by Christmas in our first year.

"It hasn't exactly gone to plan this year but with 10 games to go we have everything to play for."

Ingimarsson also knows what it takes to beat City as he headed the only goal of the game in the corresponding fixture last season.

It came at a personal cost though as he was temporarily knocked out in a clash of heads.

He said: "I wasn't out for minutes - the bit where I headed the ball and it went in was the bit I didn't remember.

"It was an important win for us. It was a game early in the season and we were trying to get used to being in the Premier League.

"Nicky Shorey put a low cross in and I was just a little bit in front of the defender, who caught me on the side of the head.

"I've seen it on tape since and it's the sort of thing that happens many times in football. It was just that it was a goal that people remember it a little bit more."

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