| Competition | Date | Opponent | Venue | Result |
| Division 2 | Saturday, 20th January (3pm) | Bristol Rovers | Home | Won 1-0 |
Reading goal: Cureton
Gamebreaker: Final whistle
Attendance: 11,767
Reading line-up: Whitehead,
Newman, Gray, Parkinson, Viveash, Hunter, Murty, Caskey (Jones),
Cureton (Butler), Rougier (Igoe), McIntyre
Subs not used: Howie, Hodges
Well, how to start. This was an immensely depressing game, except for one aspect - we won and got the three points! I ought to be happy about that, but when I think how poorly Reading played against such truly awful opposition, then I get worried. And seeing how Wigan and Walsall managed to comfortably win their home games against poor opponents on the same day doesn't help matters at all.
After the decent performance at Stoke, it was no real surprise that Alan Pardew named exactly the same starting eleven and the same substitutes. One change in evidence, though, was a different PA announcer - I didn't think that the replacement was too bad but I'd rather have Jonathan Richards back. There was also a change to the pre-match music - the teams came out to "Also Sprach Zarathustra" again, and the two previous pieces of music were clearly intended to help build the atmosphere.
Reading started off quite brightly but after the initial attacks had produced nothing more than a Jim McIntyre shot across the face of the goal, it was Bristol Rovers who had more of the play. Their right winger made a lot of dangerous attacking runs, easily beating our defenders and getting to the by-line to put over some good crosses. It was strange because he bore a close resemblance to a player once at Reading who never bothered to run with the ball, take on opponents or put in crosses. He even had the same name "Meaker" on the back of his shirt, but it was obviously someone different.
The away side had one glorious opportunity from one of these moves, as the cross from the right found a completely unmarked player on the edge of the six yard box. He had time but placed the ball straight at Phil Whitehead, at a nice easy height and with no real power in the shot.
Reading hit back with a long shot from Stuart Gray. He got some power on the ball but it was six yards wide of the goal. For the next twenty minutes or so, the game produced no decent action and the main competition appeared to be to see which team could give the ball away most quickly. There was one shot of note, when Bristol Rovers took a free-kick from a long way out and fired just wide of the post. I'm not certain that Whitehead would have got there in time had it been on target.
Then just before half-time, we had a decent move. Phil Parkinson won the ball in midfield (my immediate reaction was that he had handled it but the referee didn't agree, fortunately) and played it out to Tony Rougier on the left wing. Rougier took the ball forward and hit it across goal, behind three defenders and to the feet of the unmarked Jamie Cureton. Only a few yards out, Cureton has missed a few of these this season, but he fired this one into the top corner on the other side of the goal. After putting the ball into the net, Cureton stood provocatively in front of the away fans, his hands cupped to his ears. Different people have different views about this sort of thing. Personally, I love it! More please, Jamie. The referee spoke to Cureton afterwards, but did not book him.
Sadly this goal was marked by the playing over the PA system of a short blast of "Song 2" by Blur. NO! How many times have we made it clear that we do not want aids to goal celebrations - we are perfectly capable of making noise at that stage of a game on our own, thank you very much.
Cureton had received predictable abuse from the away fans before the goal, and obviously got even more of it during the rest of the game. Needless to say, none of the stewards or police took any action at all over that - they were too busy getting on with the important stuff like confiscating large flags that werent doing any harm at all.
It was half-time soon after the goal, and we were treated to a new quiz, based on The Weakest Link. One fan from each of the home stands was asked an extremely easy question with the last one not to make an error declared the winner. Sample question: Which Reading player is a Welsh international? You get the picture. I think it would be nice to include a fan from the away end in this - they'd obviously lose because they'd be asked questions about Reading!
Both managers were obviously happy with the dross on view in the first half, as they made no changes at the break, except that I think Bristol Rovers had swapped their right winger. The new one still looked like the player who used to be at Reading, but now he did absolutely nothing. Much as I remember, in fact.
The game continued in much the same vein - Reading were slightly the better side but neither team was really doing anything. There was one good move where Rougier and Cureton interchanged passes as they headed towards goal but the final shot came to nothing. The only other Reading attacks I can remember ended firstly with Barry Hunter completely missing the ball after a corner was flicked on, and then with a Rougier shot from a titght angle which was so wide that it went off for a throw-in.
At the other end, the best attempt on goal was another long range free kick that went just wide. This time it looked as though Whitehead had got down to the foot of his post in time, and so would have saved it in any event.
There was so little action on the pitch that it was quite easy to keep an eye on the subs warming up. Keith Jones took off his tracksuit bottoms but continued to warm up for some minutes after, often standing directly in front of the away bench, "The bloke behind me" suggested that we weren't going to bring him on at all, but instead Pardew was just trying to annoy the Bristol Rovers manager Ian Holloway, who had been surprisingly restrained all game.
Eventually, Jones took off his tracksuit top and prepared to come on. As he did so there was a cheer from the East Stand - for a moment I wondered what was going on until I saw that Martin Butler had just done the same thing. We made a double substitution, with Butler replacing bargain goalscoring hero Jamie Cureton, and Jones coming on for Darren Caskey.
Now I don't understand this at all. There's no doubt that our number one forward partnership is Butler and Cureton. Whilst I fully understand why Butler is currently starting on the bench, it surely makes sense to play the two as a pairing for the end of the game. In this case either of Jim McIntyre or Rougier could have gone off, with the other remaining wide on the left. I didn't think that either of them had played particularly well whilst I still thought that Cureton could have scored another goal.
Caskey had done nothing at all during the game, and I could see why Pardew would want to shore up the midfield, but I still don't think that substitution was right either. Nor did anyone else, which meant a large round of boos both as Caskey went off and as Jones came on. Some of the booing was obviously for Pardew's decision but I am sure that Jones was left in no doubt that a lot was also for the fact that he was coming on. I don't agree with booing a Reading player onto the pitch, but the fact is he again did little to justify his place.
Reading at this stage were really just trying to play out time. Surpriusingly we managed to do so without any real scares. The only player who really looked to be putting in the work was Butler, who was back to the chasing and harrying of old.
Dead on 90 minutes, with three minutes of added time shown, Ricky Newman was booked for a reckless challenge in which he managed to injure himself. Although this all took up one minute, the referee still blew up after 93 minutes. I thought I ought to mention this because I complained bitterly about the ref at the Memorial Ground when he did the same sort of thing. In fact, overall, I thought the ref was slightly biased towards us today, and that's the first time I've thought this all season.
I suppose the only other good point from the game was that we did keep another clean sheet. Then again, playing against a side with no forwards and indeed no ability in any other area of the pitch, that's not such a great achievement. We've got a run of games against really poor teams coming up, starting at Luton next Saturday - we really need to make sure that we keep getting wins, and perhaps the decent football will follow.
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