| Competition | Date | Opponent | Venue | Result |
| Division 2 | Saturday, 13th January (3pm) | Stoke City | Away | Drew 0-0 |
Reading goals: None
Gamebreaker: Final whistle
Attendance: 14,154
Reading line-up: Whitehead,
Newman, Gray, Parkinson, Viveash, Hunter, Murty, Caskey, Cureton
(Butler), Rougier (Jones), McIntyre (Hodges)
Subs not used: Howie, Igoe
As I approached the Britannia Stadium, I could see that they were flying the Icelandic flag! There were also flags for England, European Union and Stoke City, but it was still immediately obvious how much the Icelandic influence has filtered through the club. Their chairman, two other directors and manager are all from Iceland, whilst seven of the squad are Scandinavian (all of whom played some part in this match). It was therefore pretty appropriate that at two o' clock in the afternoon, the warmest part of the day, I found ice on the pavements near the stadium. Stoke's always been a cold place, but it seems even worse now.
The Reading squad were out on the pitch when I got into the ground - apart from the 16 on duty there were quite a few other players in attendance as well. The best sight was of Nicky Forster firing shots into the net as if he had never been away - however, he didn't take much of a run-up for any of them. Also warming up in a group of players who were clearly not going to be playing were John Mackie and Neil Smith, so that was more good news.
When the Reading team was announced it was very similar to the one that played at Hereford. The only changes were Phil Whitehead for Scott Howie, Phil Parkinson for Keith Jones, and Ricky Newman for Sammy Igoe, with Murty moving forward to play on the right side of midfield. In fact, the Parkinson / Jones change might well have been very late on, because the Stoke scoreboard showed Jones in the starting line-up and Parky as a substitute. Martin Butler got a recall, but only to the bench.
The Stoke PA announcer had promised a special announcement just before kick-off - I was rather hoping that he was going to take the opportunity to slag off Mark McGhee, but instead he said that after discussions with the sponsors, the club were going to rename the end stand where most of the home supporters gather as the Boothen End. That was the name of the home end at the Victoria Ground, and a good example of a club who understands the value of history and the way that their supporters feel. Will anything similar happen at Reading? No, of course it won't.
As the game got going, Tony Rougier got loud boos every time the ball went anywhere near him. Racism? No, he's an ex-Port Vale player. Rougier was involved in almost all of our forward moves, as when we played balls from midfield they always went to his side of the pitch rather than Jamie Cureton's. Rougier usually failed to do much with all this possession, by the way, and that was a feature throughout the match.
However, Reading certainly had the better of play in the first half. We defended in the best possible way, by keeping the ball in the opponent's half of the field. Although we weren't playing at the top of our game, Stoke were no better and there weren't too many clear chances in the first half. Our best play came from a run by Cureton - he dribbled past about five defenders inside the penalty area, but his shot was blocked and went off for a corner.
Soon after that, Parkinson tried a 40-yard lob after the ball fell nicely for him. I think the keeper had probably scrambled back quickly enough to stop it going in, but in any event the ball landed on the top of the net.
Stoke were limited to breaks, although they did look fairly dangerous on those. There were several times when our centre-backs misjudged a long ball, and ended up on the wrong side of the (relatively) speedy Stoke attackers. We were lucky on a couple of occasions that the forwards stumbled over the ball instead of getting a shot in.
In the second half, it was still Reading that had the better chances. The first was from a Parkinson long shot, and then after a good series of passes, Parkinson again found himself with a shooting opportunity. This time he was on the edge of the area, and with no defenders near, but his shot was tame and straight at the keeper. So that could have been a hat-trick, Phil!
Stoke continued to produce very little, and had to rely on their fans even to get free-kick decisions. A major difference between their ground and ours is that all three sides of home fans continually shout at the officials, and it's no coincidence that they get a lot of dodgy decisions in their favour. I can't see the West Stand ever managing anything like that - more likely to be moaning at our own bench.
Martin Butler had been warming up for a while and it was obvious that he was going to come on. What did surprise me was that he replaced Cureton, who had looked lively all game. Perhaps Alan Pardew is looking at different forward combinations again.
Moments after Butler had got on to the field, there was a brawl involving most outfield players. A Stoke player had tried to tackle Darren Caskey and failed. The home player had then fallen over so that the ball was trapped under his legs. Caskey continued trying to get the ball back into play, perfectly legally, but the Stoke number eight rushed over and kicked Caskey. Then everyone else joined in. The referee gave us the free-kick, and spoke to Caskey (why?) and the Stoke number eight, and that was the end of the matter. But their number eight had already been booked and surely deserved another card for this foul. (Just to rub it in, he managed to get away with another bad foul worth a booking a few minutes later.)
In the last ten minutes, Reading had three opportunities to score, whilst the best Stoke could manage at the other end was a goalmouth scramble. Our best chance came after we worked the ball down the right wing, and the cross found Lee Hodges a few yards out from goal with a free header. Hodges had only replaced Jim McIntyre a minute earlier and that can be the only excuse for putting his header straight into the keeper's hands, when anywhere else in the direction of the goal would probably have given us three points.
Soon after that, we got a free-kick on the edge of the area, after a slightly desperate Stoke foul to stop another of our attacks. It was on the wrong side for Caskey but (after the usual comedy routine where we pretend to have messed up) he fired the ball over the wall and only inches from the corner of the post and cross-bar. The keeper was nowhere - if only Darren had got just a little more dip on the shot.
Our last chance fell to Butler - he and Rougier were in a breakaway where Rougier managed to outpace the four defenders near him, and squared the ball to Butler. His left-foot shot was across the goalkeeper's body, but probably not too difficult for the keeper to parry away. On another day, the rebound would have fallen straight for Rougier, but not on this occasion.
Reading mostly wasted time for the final few minutes, including an obviously stalling substitution to get Jones on with only a few seconds left and Stoke trying to take a quick throw. This meant that the game ended goal-less.
It's difficult to be happy with a 0-0 draw (even if it was away to a highly placed team), but at least we kept a clean sheet and looked the better of the two sides. Our defence must have been fairly solid, because I can't remember Phil Whitehead doing anything more than catching crosses (and then normally kicking the ball straight out for a throw-in). As our next match is a against a Bristol Rovers side desperately lacking in confidence, we have a good chance to start a decent run of results.
News . Opposition . Reserves . Academy . Where Are They Now? . Columns . Kingsley . MadStad . Interactive . Links . Site Map