Slaven Bilic in row with Reading boss Jaap Stam

Slaven Bilic has defended his training methods after Reading manager Jaap Stam claimed on-loan West Ham defender Reece Oxford was struggling with the regime at the Madejski Stadium.

The 18-year-old moved to the Championship promotion-chasers in January but has so far made just one substitute appearance, much to the annoyance of Bilic.

He said: “I am surprised, and I’m not happy with that. He went there to play.

“The only reason for him to leave us and go on loan was to get more games than he was getting here.”

Stam this week told reporters: “Reece Oxford has been surprised at the level of intensity in training at Reading, compared to at West Ham.”

But Bilic hit back: “We are training very intensely here.

“Reece is a different situation because he was out injured for more than four weeks. When he was coming back, he trained individually and he played more for the under-23s. So he is not a role model for how we were training.

“But if you ask me, if I heard any feedback about the intensity of our training, it was never a question of do we train with less intensity? It was more sometimes that we train too much.”