| Competition | Date | Opponent | Venue | Result |
| Division 2 | Saturday, 28th October (3pm) | Oxford United | Home | Won 4-3 |
Reading goals: Caskey (pen),
Cureton, Rougier (2)
Gamebreaker: Final whistle
Attendance: 16,022
Reading line-up: Whitehead,
Newman, Gurney (Rougier), Parkinson, Viveash, Mackie, Jones (Igoe),
Caskey, Butler, Cureton (McIntyre), Hodges
Subs not used: Howie, Murty
Before the game Maurice Evans' son was on the pitch to take into safe keeping the Maurice Evans Memorial Trophy. This will be presented each year to the best Reading Academy player. Both sets of fans applauded this and it is good to think that Oxford will also have some memorial to the great man.
To the game, and Reading lined up with the side that started against Bury, except that Andy Gurney replaced the injured Matthew Robinson. However, there were changes on the bench, with Reading fielding perhaps the most unbalanced substitutes bench in football history. Apart from Scott Howie, the other four players were all wingers!
The rain started falling before kick-off and although it wasn't too heavy at first, it was obviously enough to make the ball slippery and also to let long balls skid off the turf.
Reading started off fairly brightly and made a couple of decent early chances. The closest was when Martin Butler had a shot from inside the penalty area blocked, but the rebound came straight back to him. He hit it first time, and just caught the outside of the post. Soon after that, a poor Oxford back-header let Jamie Cureton through but his shot went over the bar. Had either of those shots gone in and given us the early lead, then I really believe that we could have started thinking about record victory margins. As it was, Oxford held us off surprisingly well at this stage, although without ever threatening to score themselves.
The other noteworthy move in the opening minutes was when we worked the ball down the left and Andy Gurney received it whilst overlapping. He was facing the wrong way, but did a little drag-back with his right heel to completely fool the two nearby defenders and leave him in acres of space to put a cross over. Gurney doesn't often get recognition for any of the good things he does, so this was excellent to see. We didn't actually make anything out of the move, though.
Many of our attacks were stopped by the offside flag. The linesman at our end clearly adopted a policy of flagging whenever he was unsure, meaning that he pulled both Cureton and Butler back on occasions when they were close and on at least one instance, when Butler was way onside at the time the ball was played. (And remember this point for the second half.)
Although the Reading players did not look as though they were really clicking in this game, we continued to put pressure on the Oxford goal, and won a penalty after Darren Caskey was tripped just inside the area. Caskey was trying to work the ball into a shooting position but did not really look like he was going to manage it, so this was a bit of a lucky break. Although the Oxford keeper illegally stood a yard off the line, Caskey was easily able to beat him with the kick to give us a 1-0 lead.
I'm sure a lot of fans thought that the metaphorical goal-scoring floodgates might open at this point, to mirror the actual floodgates in the sky that had definitely opened and stayed well and truly open, but it didn't happen. Perhaps if we had got a second Oxford would have collapsed, but the fact is that they continued to hold us off and started to go forward a little more as well. On one occasion they managed to hold us off only by fouling Butler when it looked as though he was heading for goal - what had happened was that Butler had received a long ball and may well have fouled the defender to get to it first. Both players fell over, but as Butler got up the defender held him down. It was not however a clear goalscoring opportunity so the referee gave only a yellow card. The linesman five yards away appeared to miss the entire incident!
And a few minutes later, we really rued not getting that chance to extend the lead. Oxford played a ball over our defence which John Mackie really should have been able to clear, but he didn't get enough height on his jump and missed it. The ball went through to Ricky Newman, who really should have cleared but instead headed it back in the general direction of ex-Oxford goalkeeper Phil Whitehead, but wide of the goal. Whitehead rushed to his right and just stopped the ball going out for a corner, but realised he was going to slide out of play so released it just inside the pitch. Under some circumstances that would have counted as smart thinking, but with an Oxford player two yards away it instead looked like the actions of a madman. Scarcely unable to believe his luck, the forward dribbled the ball into the empty net for the equaliser.
The Oxford fans sang (rather amusingly I thought), "Oxford till he dies, he's Oxford till he dies", etc. whilst Whitehead undoubtedly hoped that the rain would create a puddle big enough to swallow him up.
So at half-time it was 1-1 and we were treated to a penalty shootout in which Kingsley Royal demonstrated by some distance that he would not be taking over from Phil Whitehead in the second half (or at least not if we wanted to win the game and protect the level of our record defeat).
At the start of the second half, I noticed that the two linesmen had swapped ends! So that meant that the one who had been giving the Oxford defence the benefit of the doubt and continually flagging us offside would be doing the same throughout the second half. This wouldn't have mattered so much except that the linesman now at our end was clearly giving the Oxford attack the benefit of the doubt (which is what he is supposed to do). I've seen this happen before, most notably at Stockport in 1998 when the linesman should have had an assist for four of the home team's goals in a 5-1 defeat. I meant to contact the Football League to ask about linesmen swapping ends then, but didn't do so. I will definitely speak to them this time.
Aided perhaps by a lack of offside decisions, Oxford started the half better than we did, and Mackie was forced to pull back one of their players when he threatened to break through our last line of defence. Mackie was booked, but he really shouldn't be getting caught out so easily by an attack that had scored five goals in its previous seven away games.
Reading came back into the game, and started to seriously press with a series of corners and other attacks. We wasted our first corner with an unnecessarily complicated short-corner routine that only seemed designed to ensure that the ball ended up on the wrong foot of our two players. However the next one was an obviously planned move that allowed Ricky Newman to get a clear shot on goal with no defenders within 15 yards of him. The shot went well wide, but the move had worked well.
In another attack, a crossed ball came off a defender and fell at Jamie Cureton's feet ten yards out from goal. He reacted quickly but never got the correct angle on the shot which went high and wide. If you remember, Cureton's answer to the question about how he got so many goals was that he "just tends to stand around the box, and the ball just drops to me". Well, this was a good example of that.
Sammy Igoe came on for the very disappointing Keith Jones. I've seen Jones play well for us in a couple of games, but he really doesn't seem to have it just at the moment. To be honest, you would expect at this point in a game that Phil Parkinson would be the player to go off, but he is producing at a much higher level than Jones, and Alan Pardew is able to make the right decisions rather than base his judgements on whether or not he brought a particular player to the club. With Igoe playing wide right, Caskey moved into the centre of midfield. Igoe's pace and trickiness certainly worried the Oxford defence and added an extra dimension to our game. His first main contribution, though, was to nearly score an own goal with a header as he misjudged a cross that he was trying to knock away for a corner and got far too much contact on the ball. Fortunately it went a couple of feet wide.
Andy Gurney nearly got himself on the scoresheet with a speculative shot from the left wing (well, OK, it was probably a cross!). The ball looked to be just dipping under the bar, but the keeper was able to tip it away for a corner. The action led to a corner on the other side, which was crossed to Butler. Butler got a powerful header in on goal, which the keeper was able to parry. However the ball came out right at the feet of Cureton who placed it home out of the keeper's reach. ("I just tend to stand around the box, and the ball just drops to me", as he might say.)
Surely this was it - we would now go on to score more goals. No - instead it was Oxford who came back strongly and within a few minutes they had incredibly taken the lead. The first goal came after a dangerous cross from the right eluded everyone except the Oxford player at the far post, who put it back across goal at ground level. Adi Viveash stuck out a boot and the ball flew into the net - Viveash had to play at it because there were several attackers around him. Moments later, Viveash gave away a corner whilst trying to clear for a throw-in. The ball had sliced off his boot, and I started wondering whether the head injury he had suffered five minutes previously had affected his balance. The corner was played to the near post, where an Oxford player rose unchallenged to flick the ball into our goal. Oxford's fans went absolutely wild, and who could blame them? I hope they got the most out of those few minutes, because from their point of view it was all downhill from here on in.
Pardew brought on Tony Rougier for Andy Gurney (with Hodges dropping to left-back), which proved to be an inspired move. Rougier's first touch was horrible as he totally misjudged a pass and let the ball off for a throw. However, from then on he showed exactly the talent that we bought him for. Every time he received the ball he was able to go past defenders as if they weren't there, and very soon Oxford replaced their right back in an attempt to stop him. It didn't work.
Particularly with Igoe and Rougier on the wings, Reading now began to totally dominate the game in the way we had expected in the first place. We won a corner on the right, and tried to repeat Oxford's third goal. Viveash went for the flick - I'm not sure if he made contact but the ball continued into the danger area, bounced off someone's leg and went in. From my angle it looked like it had gone in on off a defender but the public address gave the goal to Rougier, which was much more satisfactory!
That left just over ten minutes to look for a winner, and we continued to push hard. It turned out that it was another defensive error that gave us the goal, as an Oxford player stopped the ball in the goal area and then appeared to tread on it. Whatever happened, Rougier was there to just knock it into the goal. Cue wild celebrations from the 14,000+ Reading fans. Cue also a further opening of the heavens, as the rain intensified into monsoon proportions. Puddles began to appear on the pitch, and at times the rain was so heavy I couldn't see the West Stand. Had this happened earlier in the game, it might well have been abandoned but fortunately with only moments left the referee let play continue.
We played almost the whole of the remainder of the game in the last third of the pitch, just wasting time as much as possible. There was one scare when we had the ball in midfield and played a backpass along the ground to Whitehead with an Oxford attacker chasing. It was a totally clueless thing to do, as it would only have taken one small puddle to stop the ball and a goal to be scored.
Meanwhile we played what I can only describe as Tommy Burns football to hang onto our one goal lead. We forced a number of corners, but instead of continuing to attack we played short passes and tried to keep the ball near the corner flag. Well, that's fine when it works, but on occasions we were giving it away or conceding goal kicks. Oxford left one player up front for these corners, whilst we kept five defenders back, so it was obvious what out tactics were. Although we did hold the ball well some of the time, I still think that this was completely the wrong way to approach the last five minutes. I'm hoping that Alan Pardew agrees and that it was the players' decision.
Even with these tactics, we did nearly get a fifth goal, as Caskey got the ball in some space and chipped the keeper. However, the ball went just over the bar.
The final whistle went and the celebrations started. They were helped by an announcement that Walsall had lost so that we were now top of Division 2.
I have to say, though, that despite seven goals and three points, I did not enjoy this game much. The bottom line is that we won, but I don't think we played anywhere near what we are capable of. Hopefully this was due to the weather or an off day, and we will be back to our proper attacking style for the next match.
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