| Competition | Date | Opponent | Venue | Result |
| Division 2 | Saturday, 3rd February (3pm) | Port Vale | Home | Won 1-0 |
Reading goal: Butler
Gamebreaker: Reading's goal
Attendance: 9,026
Reading line-up: Whitehead,
Newman, Gurney (Gray), Parkinson, Viveash, Hunter, Igoe (Butler),
Caskey, Cureton (Jones), Rougier, McIntyre
Subs not used: Howie, Gamble
Compared with Tuesday's match, Reading's line-up showed two changes. Phil Whitehead returned in place of Scott Howie and Andy Gurney came in for Graeme Murty, with Ricky Newman switching to right back and Gurney playing on the left. If I heard the tannoy announcement correctly, Murty is injured but is expected to be fit for Tuesday's visit to Bournemouth. Stuart Gray was on the bench having recovered from a short illness.
In my brief match preview I described Port Vale as the worst Division 2 team I'd seen this season, and they did nothing in the opening stages of this game to make me change my mind. It also appeared that Reading had made a conscious decision to move away from the long-ball tactics we've seen of late and back to some sort of passing game. The main problem with this is that the pitch, especially towards the southern end, is starting to cut up badly and there were a number of times in this game when players lost control of the ball when it bobbled on the pitch. We all know what the sure remedy for this particular problem is!
Anthony (!) Rougier was up against his old club and was certainly more involved in the game than normal, although he didn't seem that keen on passing the ball too often. Playing up front alongside Jamie Cureton, it was inevitable that both of them would see a lot of action because Port Vale were unable to retain possession for any lenth of time.
The first 20 minutes of the game were fairly scrappy with neither goalkeeper particularly involved in the action (unless you count the occasion when Phil Whitehead gently threw the ball out to a Port Vale attacker instead of the intended recipient Andy Gurney, although the subsequent attack broke down quickly). The first decent chance fell to Rougier when he was able to get a shot in across the goal, but the Vale keeper was easily able to get down and save it.
A few moments later we had a much better chance when Jamie Cureton received the ball on the edge of the six-yard box after a good run from Rougier. Cureton controlled the ball but then put his shot a long long way over the bar. At this stage of the match, Reading were starting to control the game and we had a number of corners. From one of these we tried our set move where Phil Parkinson attempts to lose his marker whilst Darren Caskey plays the ball to him about 12 yards out and at a bit of an angle to the goal. This worked perfectly with Parky getting in a good hard shot that took another touch and was only just cleared off the line. I have a good view of that end and the ball definitely didn't go in, although we did all try appealing to the linesman!
A couple of minutes later we had another corner on the same side and tried exactly the same move! And it worked again! I can only assume that the Port Vale players thought that they didn't need to mark Parky this time as we would try something different. Although Parkinson got the ball into space, he was unable to direct it into the danger area and so we didn't actually get anything from this corner, though.
Port Vale subseuqently had what proved to be their best move of the game. One of their forwards got the ball in what looked like a clear offside position and had only Whitehead between him and the goal. Although he got his shot in, Whitehead saved well.
During another rare Port Vale attack, Andy Gurney was clearing the ball when a forward fouled him badly in one of those studs-up, calf-high challenges that can result in a broken leg. The ball went out of play, and Gurney was taken off. The stretcher buggy came onto the pitch but Gurney chose to limp off instead, suggesting that he was not too badly injured. Stuart Gray replaced him, which did at least mean we were able to make a straight swap. Not only did the referee fail to book the culprit, we didn't even get a free-kick!
The change didn't affect the way Reading were playing at all and we still had more of the play. Darren Caskey tried a long shot which went well wide, and we then won a free-kick in midfield. As the ball was played back the Port Vale number 11 kicked it away, and got booked for his trouble. This also meant that the ball was moved forward 10 yards and into a shooting position. We used the second of our standard moves where Parkinson and Jim McIntyre pretended to mess up the taking of the free-kick, and whilst they argued Darren Caskey shot towards goal. As far as I could tell Port Vale totally fell for this deception as well, with their keeper moving forward whilst the ball was already in the air and heading towards his goal. This meant that it went over his head, but although Darren had got an excellent dip on the shot, it hit the bar and bounced away to safety.
Soon after that Jim McIntyre just shaved the post with a volley from the edge of the penalty area. Again the goalkeeper was beaten. In injury time, McIntyre had another chance when the ball was played to him in a position very close to goal. However he couldn't get the ball out from under his feet and failed to even get a shot in before a defender was able to tackle him and clear the ball away.
That was the last significant action before half-time, when we discovered that Jerry Williams and Shaka Hislop were on hand to make the Golden Gamble draw. The East Stand won the "Weakest Stand" competition, having worked out that it was possible to chant an answer for the contestant to hear when she didn't know it.
At the start of the second half we were unable to get going in the same way as we had played at the end of the first half, and very little happened for quite some time. After about 15 minutes, Martin Butler came on for Sammy Igoe, with Rougier moving out to the right wing, in an attempt to shake things up. This worked pretty well, as Butler was back to his all-action best, and we got more of the ball from that point on.
For a while, though, it did look as if the game might drift on and become another goalless draw. We had half-chances but things were just not quite falling right. Cureton had an opportunity where Gray drove the ball across goal, but couldn't get a decent touch. Then Rougier had a shot that went just wide when he should have done better, allowing the few Port Vale fans to half-heartedly chant "What a waste of money".
Port Vale had by now brought on their extremely tall new Jamaican signing, who caused us some initial problems with both his height and some surprisingly good ball control. The only real time he threatened the goal was with a short-range header where he climbed all over Barry Hunter to get the ball, but still put it wide.
Then, about 15 minutes from time, we made the breakthrough, and it was Butler's goal-scoring instincts that made the difference. Darren Caskey played the ball throught to him, where Butler received it in an inside-right position on the edge of the area and with his back to goal. Butler turned and went past a defender before knocking the ball across the goalkeeper and just inside the far post. That was his first League goal since late October and you could tell from his celebration how happy he was.
We almost got a second just after the restart when Rougier went on an excellent run past several defenders and played the ball forward to Butler, but this time his shot was blocked and the goalkeeper was able to drop on it. After that chance we settled down and were clearly looking to hold on for a 1-0 win. Like the Bristol Rovers game, our defence looked really comfortable at this stage, and we were also able to run off a lot of time by just holding the ball near the corner, something that I can't remember Reading doing successfully for a long time.
Although there were three minutes of injury time, the result was not really in doubt, and we did indeed hold on for another 1-0 win. That's now 310 minutes of League action without conceding a goal, which almost matches our best for the season. Overall this was not a great game, but there were some signs of a return to better form and in any event the only thing that really matters at this stage of the season is that we got the three points on offer.
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