| Competition | Date | Opponent | Venue | Result |
| Division 2 | Saturday, 14th October (3pm) | Wycombe Wanderers | Home | Won 2-0 |
Reading goals: Butler, Viveash
Gamebreaker: Reading's first goal
Attendance: 15,443
Reading line-up: Whitehead,
Newman, Gurney (Robinson), Parkinson, Viveash, Williams, Jones,
Caskey, Butler, McIntyre (Igoe), Hodges (N Smith)
Subs not used: Howie, Mackie
This was the fourth biggest crowd at Madejski Stadium for a League game and hopefully not too many of the Reading fans will have been put off by the spoiling and time-wasting tactics of our Sunday League standard visitors (my apologies to any offended Sunday League players reading this). Wycombe's sole ambition from this game was to get a point from a 0-0 draw. In fact judging by their lack of attacking effort after we had taken the lead in the second half, they might even have been happy to have lost 1-0. Such lack of ambition and inspiration from a team who started the day in third place is nothing short of a disgrace, and it will not be long before they are back in mid-table (and after that, in their true place near the bottom of the division).
The entertainment value on offer was not helped by a fussy referee who stopped play far too often, but didn't take action on bad fouls by either side until late in the game. His total inability to keep track of the amount of time wasted by Wycombe or lost to stoppages for injury also played right into the hands of the visiting pub side (OK, apologies to any pub players as well).
Fortunately, Reading managed to rise above all this and win the game with two well-worked second half goals, although the overall impression was of grinding out a victory.
Things could have been so different had Darren Caskey scored with a header in the third minute, as it would surely have forced Wycombe to look for goals from an early stage. In that first attacking move, Jim McIntyre got the ball on the left-wing, beat his defender with ease, and crossed the ball into the penalty area. Caskey met the cross but the header flew wide.
In the opening half, there was only one team playing. Reading won the ball whenever we wanted to, and built attacks which never quite looked like producing a goal. I think that in the entire 45 minutes Wycombe managed one corner (dealt with comfortably) and two shots (one a trivially easy save for Whitehead, the other well blocked by Adi Viveash).
At the other end Reading had two notable attacks. One ended with a surprisingly delicate lob from Viveash that went just over the bar. In the second we had a corner that Wycombe half-cleared back to Caskey. He crossed over to exactly where Lee Hodges was, but Hodges was lying on the floor. I have no idea what happend to him, although given the tone of the rest of the game I expect he got fouled by some sneaky defender on loan from a prison team's 3rd XI.
As half-time approached Reading fans were speculating about how many minutes of added time there would be. Estimates I heard ranged from five to nine, so it was something of a shock when the fourth official held up a board showing just TWO added minutes. In fact there was an injury to a Wycombe player in the opening moments of the game that stopped play for three minutes, plus several subsequent stoppages and many instances of time-wasting. The actual amount of time that the referee added was two minutes and ten seconds, but for the first 90 seconds of that there was another injury, so the real time he added was only 40 seconds.
Now this means that Wycombe had cheated us out of at least five minutes of playing time, and therefore of attacking time. Alan Pardew knew all about this as on the blow of the whistle he came running onto the pitch to confront the ref. It's really unusual to see Pardew do something like that, so it just shows how much injustice he felt.
At half-time the PA announcer made a point of advertising the website "wwreadingfc.co.uk" (which he said four times, so it wasn't just a slip of the tongue), whilst condemning all others as being inaccurate. My own view is that if he doesn't know the correct name of the website he is trying to advertise, then he's obviously not familiar with the internet, and so hardly qualified to comment on other sites.
Much more importantly, at the start of the second half, Matthew Robinson replaced Andy Gurney at left-back. Gurney had not had a great first half, although obviously he had not had much to do defensively. Almost immediately the half started, Robinson went on one of his galloping runs down the left wing, and in several similar moves in the rest of the game showed that he was back to the form he showed last season. Can you believe it? - we now have yet another quality attacking option!
Reading's first shot of the half was an incredibly ambitious effort from Ricky Newman, from at least 40 yards out. He got the ball from a cleared set-piece and hit it first time. Unfortunately it went nearer the right-hand corner flag than the goal. About five minutes later, exactly the same thing happened. A player with less confidence would have tried a simple pass this time, but Newman decided to have another very long shot. And got exactly the same reward. I wonder if he would have tried it again if the same circumstances had arisen later in the game.
As it happened, things changed dramatically in the few minutes after that second Newman shot. In Reading's next attack, Butler received the ball on the edge of the box from a throw-in, laid it back and then turned to find that the ball had broken for him inside the area. He fired the ball into the bottom corner with a left-foot shot.
Things got worse for Wycombe five minutes later. Caskey was badly fouled on the edge of the area giving a free-kick in a fairly dangerous position although on the right-hand side of goal. The Wycombe defender was booked for the challenge and took his place in the defensive wall next to Martin Butler. As we were messing around with dummy runs before taking the kick, Butler fell to the ground and the referee sent off the defender - it was the player who had just been booked but he got a straight red card for the foul on Butler. I only half-caught the incident out of the corner of my eye, so don't take this as gospel but I think the defender elbowed Butler in the chest area and that Butler didn't really need to end up on the ground. On the other hand, I think Butler is God, so he can do what he wants, really.
After all that excitement, Caskey floated a gentle lob straight into the arms of the keeper once we actually took the free-kick, which was a bit of a waste.
As I mentioned earlier, Wycombe did not really step up the gear that you might have expected from a team down 1-0, but the fact that they were reduced to 10 men quickly after the goal may have had something to do with that. Nevertheless, they did get the ball into our penalty area once whilst it was 1-0. They put a high ball into the box and there was a bit of a scramble with a lot of players in and around the penalty spot. A Wycombe player had pulled one of our defenders over and the linesman was flagging for a free-kick to us. When we cleared it he rightly put his flag down, allowing play to continue.
However, Lawrie Sanchez (who retook his Maths A level just five yards from where I was doing my Maths O Level some years ago!) went running down the touchline to complain to the linesman. I hope that the linesman quickly told him that he was not flagging for a penalty but you never know with some officials. Meanwhile Martin Allen was complaining to the fourth official about Sanchez leaving the marked-out coaching area (pot, kettle and black are words that spring to mind here).
Before anyone from Wycombe had time to calm down we had scored a second. Caskey took a free-kick on the left, aiming for Viveash at the far post. The ball didn't reach him but after a couple of knock-ons Viveash did get the ball, this time at the near post, skipped round the goalkeeper and shot from a tight angle for his first Reading goal [apart from the goal he scored whilst on loan that I'd forgotten about!]. You know, I've seen plenty of forwards that would not have scored that chance (Paul Brayson being one, of course) and it just demonstrates a gulf in class between this Reading side and most if not all of the opposition we will see this season.
Once we were two goals up, the game settled down. Reading didn't push forward in the same way as in the previous three home games, whilst Wycombe were of course still completely clueless. Reading had one superb break that should have led to a third. Butler played the ball from midfield out to Caskey on the wing. He had one defender in front of him so played the ball in front of Jimmy McIntyre. Unfortunately the keeper blocked McIntyre's shot, and with the keeper still on the ground Butler blazed the ball just over the bar.
Neil Smith had already replaced Hodges, and for the last ten minutes or so Sammy Igoe made a welcome return, replacing McIntyre. Igoe played on the right, and showed with his few touches that he was also still in the form that he had just before he got injured. For minutes at a time at this stage of the game, Reading were just passing the ball around with no Wycombe player able to get anywhere near it.
However as we reached the last couple of minutes, Wycombe made a couple of forward moves, and looked almost half-dangerous. In the first they got the ball into the net off the crossbar but a player earlier in the move was offside and so it was disallowed. This was one of those occasions where the linesman flagged late because he was waiting to see if the offside player was going to interfere with play. In this case the player touched the ball and passed it on, so that was definitely interfering! Of course, the Wycombe fans were too stupid to realise this, and proceeded to complain bitterly.
Then they came even closer. With a completely legitimate move, a Wycombe player manged to head the ball onto the top of the bar after a cross.
The last incident of note was a goal that Reading had disallowed, although it's impossible to know whether the keeper had already stopped and so did not try properly to save it. A through ball split the defence, putting Igoe in the clear, and allowed him to nick the ball past the keeper and into the net. I didn't think he was offside, and I had 3-0 in the Prediction League, so I wasn't too happy about that!
So the final whistle went, with Reading having won 2-0. By now we all know that this team is of a completely different calibre from those of the last three years or so, but the fact is that this game under Tommy Burns would have ended either 0-0 or more likely as a scrappy 1-0 defeat. As it was, we got a comfortable win and can look forward with considerable confidence to the next few games.
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