In a
behind-closed-doors friendly at Watford, Reading lost 2-0 to the
home side. Adie Williams played his first match since suffering a
knee injury, lasting for about 65 minutes, whilst Steve Brown
played the first full 90 minutes in his injury comeback. Also in
the Reading defence was Blackburn Rovers player Michael Taylor,
who last season had spells on loan at Carlisle United and
Rochdale but has not been able to break into the Blackburn first
team. Click here
for match details.
Reading
lost 3-0 away to Stoke City this afternoon - click here for match
details. We drop two places to seventh in the table.
(Added
Tuesday, 16th December) In the FA Premier Academy League, the
Under-19s lost 1-0 at home to Birmingham City, whilst the Under-17s
drew 0-0 away to Charlton Athletic. These are the last fixtures
before the winter break, with Academy matches resuming on
Saturday, 10th January.
Both
Graeme Murty and Scott Murray started for the Scotland Future
team agains Turkey this evening in a game in Dundee that ended in
a 1-1 draw. The game was part of a triangular Future Cup
tournament, with Germany the other side, in which Scotland came
last.
Murty, in his first international appearance of any type, was substituted at half-time by Greg Shields of Kilmarnock when the score was 1-0 to Scotland. Although he had been the earlier victim of a tackle that led to a straight red card, it seems likely that this was a planned change as Scotland manager Berti Vogts had said before the game that he might give Murty and Shields one half each at right-back. Murray played the whole game, hitting the post at one stage, and was also booked for a foul.
Shaun
Goater received his MBE from Buckingham Palace today. It was
awarded for the services to football and youth that he has
performed in his home island of Bermuda.
The
reserves beat Millwall 3-0 at Didcot Town's ground this afternoon
to remain top of our division of the Football Combination. Click here for
match details. Steve Brown made a return from his knee injury but
was substituted early on and taken to hospital because of a head
injury.
Jamie
Ashdown's loan spell at Rushden & Diamonds will be extended
as long as he agrees. The original deal was due to expire this
Saturday, and I assume that the new version will run out on
something like 10th January.
In the
third round of the FA Cup, we will play away to Preston North End.
Reading
complete the first double of the season with a 2-0 win away to
Wigan Athletic. Click here for match
details. The win takes us back up to fifth place in the table.
In the FA
Premier Academy League, Reading's Under-19 side took on Arsenal
at home in a second against first clash but lost 4-1. The Under-17s
lost 6-3 away to Millwall.
Reading
go out of the League Cup, with a 1-0 defeat at home to Chelsea in
front of a new stadium record crowd of 24,107. Click here for match
details.
We drop
to seventh in the League table following tonight's Division 1
results.
Both
Scott Murray and Graeme Murty are in the Scotland "future"
squad for a game against Turkey in Dundee on Wednesday of next
week. Murray played one game for the "future" team
whilst at Bristol City, but for Murty it is a first ever
international call-up.
There's
debate about both of Reading's goals against Watford yesterday -
the first is apparently going to go into the record books as a
goal for Nicky Forster rather than as an own goal by Watford's
Neil Cox, whilst for the second goal the ball was very close to
going over the goal-line before Forster played it into the middle
of the penalty area. TV pictures aren't conclusive for either of
these points (the problem with the second incident being that
it's impossible to tell whether the ball is in the air or not),
but John Salako was the guest on the Carlton TV Soccer Sunday
programme this afternoon and said that the ball was clearly in
play throughout the build-up to the second!
A late
Steve Sidwell is enough to beat Watford 2-1 at home this
afternoon - click here for match
details. We move back up to sixth place.
There
were no games in the FA Premier Academy League this weekend.
Steve
Coppell has made his second addition to Reading's playing squad,
with 20-year-old forward Dean Morgan today signing a deal for the
remainder of this season following a trial spell. Morgan was
released by Colchester United in September, so arrives as a free
agent.
Reading
crash to a 3-0 defeat away to Burnley - click here for match
details. We drop one place to eighth in the league table.
This
week's scheduled reserve game, away to Norwich City, has been
rearranged for a date in February.
Reading
drew 0-0 away to league leaders West Bromwich Albion this
evening, in a match shown on Sky Sports Extra. Click here for match
details. We drop one place to seventh in the table.
In the FA
Premier Academy League, the Under-17s drew 1-1 away to Wimbledon.
The Under-19s did not have a game this weekend.
Reading's
trip to West Bromwich Albion on Saturday evening is live on Sky
Sports Extra. However, there are also other places around the
world that you can see the action because South African cable
channel MultiChoice is showing the game live on SuperSport3. This
channel is available throughout Africa (and even southern Europe),
whilst it can also be viewed in Pattaya in Thailand (but
apparently not anywhere else in Thailand). Kick-off is 5.35pm GMT
- anywhere else in the world and you'll have to work it out
yourself!
Omar
Daley played the whole game as Jamaica beat Guatemala 3-2 on
aggregate to progress to the next stage of the Olympic qualifying
competition. In the second leg, Guatemala were 2-0 up after 90
minutes, forcing extra time, but Jamaica scored a golden goal
winner. Jamaica will now take part in an eight-team tournament in
Mexico in February with the two finalists progressing to the
Olympic Games in Athens. Initially, Jamaica will play in a four-team
group containing Mexico, Trinidad & Tobago or Grenada, and
almost certainly Costa Rica (who have a 7-0 lead from their first
leg tie against Guyana)
The
reserve team beat Colchester United 3-2 at Didcot this afternoon
to return to the top of the league - click here for
match details. Trialist Dean Morgan played the whole game, and
also score a goal against his former club.
Reading's
FA Youth Cup campaign is over for another year, after a 3-0
defeat to Southampton at Madejski Stadium this evening - click here for
a brief match report.
Omar
Daley played for the Jamaica Under-23 side as they beat Guatemala
2-0 in the first leg of an Olympic qualifying match in Kingston
this evening. The second leg is on Wednesday in Quetzaltenango,
Guatemala with the winners on aggregate progressing to a
qualifying group stage.
Reading
beat Millwall 1-0 this afternoon - click here for match
details. With only three other games in Division 1, we move back
into the play-off places and are now sixth in the table.
Meanwhile, Jamie Ashdown started his loan spell at Rushden & Diamonds by playing the whole game in a 2-1 defeat away to Hartlepool United.
In the FA
Premier Academy League, the Under-19s lost 2-1 away to Watford
whilst the Under-17s won 2-1 at home to Crystal Palace.
Not, I am
sure, that anyone reading this cares, but the Wigan Athletic
goalkeeper who received a red card in last Saturday's game has
managed to get it overturned on appeal.
Reading
have rescheduled the reserve league game against Colchester
United. It will now be played next Wednesday afternoon, 19th
November, at Layer Road in Colchester with a 2pm kick-off and
free admission (later news: now to be played at Loop Meadow
Stadium, Didcot at the same date and time - admission price not
known). The game will allow John Mackie to test his fitness and
possibly give trialist Dean Morgan a chance to play against his
old club.
Jamie
Ashdown will sign on loan for Rushden & Diamonds tomorrow.
Ashdown is likely to get some more first-team experience at Nene
Park as Rushden currently have two keepers out injured.
Presumably Jamie Young will be our regular substitute goalkeeper
in the next few weeks, although if Marcus Hahnemann does get
injured we should be able to recall Ashdown under the emergency
rule for goalkeepers.
Ashdown going out on loan will also free up some salary and so might mean that manager Steve Coppell is lining up a loan centre-back or forward to come into the club in the very near future.
The other
four teams in Reading's League Cup group all played games this
afternoon. The results mean that we drop to third in the five-team
group and have a chance to progress to the semi-finals only if we
win away to Swindon Town in our last game and other results work
in our favour. Click here
to see the results and standings from all four groups.
Reading
have confirmed the story from Friday that Kevin Watson is on the
transfer list at his own request. They have added that Nathan
Tyson is also on the transfer list, and again at his own request.
The reasons are a little different although both essentially
because they're not getting into our first team at the moment -
Watson's contract is up at the end of the season and he doesn't
want to take the risk of being one of many players all competing
for a few vacancies. Tyson feels that he wants more first-team
football at this stage of his career.
The curse
of the knee injury has continued. With John Mackie and Steve
Brown already recovering from operations, the club has now also
announced that Adie Williams will be out for a month or more with
a similar problem. This also means he will miss the Euro 2004
play-off matches between Wales and Russia. It's quite possible
that this mini-epidemic is in part due to the exceptionally hard
pitches that we have been playing on ever since the start of pre-season
training. Reading have already switched a number of training
sessions to try to reduce this problem. Unless someone comes in
on loan, I expect that Ricky Newman will have to continue at
centre-back alongside Ívar Ingimarsson with either Darius
Henderson, Graeme Murty or youth players as cover.
Scott Murray also has a knee injury that will keep him out of this Saturday's game, so that's squad numbers 5, 6, 7 and 8 with a similar problem. Kevin Watson (4) and Shaun Goater (9) had better be careful!
John
Salako was the studio guest and analyst on Carlton Television's
Soccer Sunday programme this afternoon.
When
Wigan Athletic are in town, you know that there's going to be a
lot of cheating going on and they didn't disappoint. However, an
Andy Hughes goal gave Reading a 1-0 win - click here for match
details. We move up to tenth in the League.
In the FA
Premier Academy League, the Under-17s lost 4-1 away to
Sotuhampton and the Under-19s lost 1-0 at home to Chelsea.
Ceefax
are reporting that Kevin Watson is on the transfer list. It's not
at all clear but it seems that Watson has asked to go on the list
because he is unhappy about his first team chances, and because
his contract is up next summer.
For the
first time this season, the reserve team failed to win a league
game, being held 2-2 by Crystal Palace at Didcot Town. Click here for
match details. We lose top spot in the table and are now second.
After
tonight's Division 1 games, Reading drop to 12th in the table.
Reading
have been drawn at home to Southampton in Round 3 of the FA Youth
Cup. The game will almost certainly be played on a midweek
evening at Madejski Stadium, and should take place before
Saturday, 6th December. The FA Youth Cup is for Under-18s, and
although our Under-19 side are going well at the moment with many
of those players eligible, the same is true of Southampton so
this will be a very difficult tie.
Reading
lost 1-0 away to Crewe Alexandra this afternoon and drop to 11th
place in the table - click here for match
details.
In the FA
Premier Academy League, the Under-19s drew 0-0 away to Aston
Villa whilst the Under-17s lost 1-0 at home to West Ham United.
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