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2000/01 Reports

Reading goals: Hodges, Cureton, Butler, Jones
Gamebreaker: Reading's first goal
Attendance: 5,643

Reading line-up: Whitehead, Newman, Gray, Parkinson, Mackie, Viveash, Jones, Igoe (Gamble), Butler, Cureton, Hodges (McIntyre)
Subs not used: Howie, Hunter, Rougier

Well, I said at the end of the report on last week's debacle against Colchester that if we played as badly in this match we'd only win by four goals. And I think I was more or less proved correct. This was another awful performance from Reading against opposition of the absolute lowest quality who had not one idea between them.

Before the match Grays had said that they would not come just to defend - they lied. Had they done what they had said, then Reading might well have run up a cricket score, but in fact we faced nine players who didn't leave their own half from the start of the match to almost the end. I thought that once we'd scored, Grays would come back at us, but no! At 1-0 down, they were still happy just to defend. It was the same at 2-0 down. They even made time-wasting separate substitutions rather than bringing on players together! Only at the end of the game when the Reading players had (shamefully) given up trying to play at all did Grays manage something even resembling an attacking move. And even then they failed to get a shot within barn door distance of Phil Whitehead's goal.

And so this is the point where I have to apologise to Wycombe Wanderers. Whilst they may still be a non-league level club who came to Reading purely to defend, at least they appreciated that they needed to attack once they were behind (even if they weren't good enough to actually score against us). Grays came into the biggest match of their players' lives and just awarded the tie to the opposition. You won't get any crap about plucky non-leaguers from me - I've watched a lot of semi-professional teams and I can think of a few much lower in the pyramid who would have been ashamed to play like Grays did at Reading.

Rant over - let's have a look at the only football side on view today. Alan Pardew brought in Stuart Gray and Sammy Igoe to replace the suspended Andy Gurney and Darren Caskey. He also added Joe Gamble to the bench.

From the start it was clear what the pattern of the game would be, and I think also clear that one goal was going to be enough to win it for Reading. After a couple of near misses, that first goal came from a nicely worked move. Jamie Cureton got the ball in midfield, and set Sammy Igoe off down the left wing. With Martin Butler unmarked at the far post, it looked as if Igoe played the cross in his direction, but Lee Hodges rushed forward to connect with the ball instead. His shot was quite near the Grays goalkeeper, but the keeper's touch was not enough to stop the ball finding the net.

Our other best chance to score in the half came late on when the goalkeeper managed to push a Ricky Newman shot against the post. And the only other incident of note was when Jamie Cureton went off with a head injury - I'm not sure, but I think he may have needed some stitches because he was off the field for a few minutes.

The second half was a similar story, except that Reading did create more chances. Both Cureton and particularly Butler were guilty of missing many simple chances, usually by kicking the ball just over the bar. (Given the keeper's obvious lack of ability they might as well just have aimed it at the middle of the goal, incidentally.)

We also had quite a lot of corners, but wasted most them. I think that at least in part we were missing Darren Caskey's inch-perfect near post corners. A near post corner only has to be slightly out and it becomes easy for either the first defender or the keeper to deal with them. Of course, this does call into question why we kept using this tactic. Ironically, the only time one of these produced a good near post flick-on was when a defender misjudged his header away, but there were no Reading players in the remainder of the penalty area to take advantage.

Despite the wasted opportunities, we did manage to score three goals. For the second, Jamie Cureton ran onto a through ball and shot just inside the post. Again the keeper should have saved it, but his touch was so weak that the ball continued in the same direction and into the goal. Butler scored after he and Cureton had beaten the offside trap - Cureton got the ball and squared for Butler, who had an easy shot to score. Finally, right at the end Keith Jones scored his first official goal for the club, shooting low and seeing the ball go in off the post.

Inbetween Grays managed one shot, which was about 20 yards wide, and had a few corners. However, they certainly didn't deserve the applause they got from the away end or (disgracefully, in my opinion) from the Reading fans.

We had brought on Joe Gamble for Sammy Igoe, but played Gamble wide on the right, where he was unable to really get into the action. A bit of a shame, but I guess it will have helped him gain some sort of experience. Although I would have preferred to see Alex Haddow at left back, Stuart Gray must get credit for playing strongly for the full 90 minutes. We all know he lacks pace, but he has enough of a footballing brain to work out that he was quicker than the opposition, and used this to good effect. He also got a couple of rocket-like shots in that were blocked.

In fact, all of Reading's defenders seemed to be more or less trying to play their normal game, as was Phil Parkinson. And of course, it wasn't Phil Whitehead's fault that he had literally nothing to do all game. The rest of the midfield, plus the forwards, really took as little interest as the thousands of fans who failed to turn up.

At the end of the match, we were through to the next round comfortably, which I guess is the bottom line. But Reading had failed to play up to our true standard, and I didn't feel that I'd got anything approaching value for money from the day.

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