| Competition | Date | Opponent | Venue | Result |
| Division 2 | Wednesday, 24th November | Burnley | Home | Drew 0-0 |
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The manager of Burnley is Stan Ternent, who only know one way to play football. He builds teams containing large numbers of accomplished tall defenders, plays at least three central defenders in every game, and hopes that his forwards might nick one goal. His teams are also full of dirty cheating fowlers.
So a 0-0 draw on Wednesday should really have come as no great surprise, particularly the "Reading 0" bit.
Reading's only change from the Halifax game was to bring in McIntyre for the injured Williams. Pardew also shuffled the subs slightly, so that the only youngster who had made it as far as the first 16 was shifted out. You can't be too careful, you know.
Following on the theme from Saturday, Forster again failed to make one single pass to McIntyre for the 87 minutes that he was on the field. What do we think? Is he a greedy git, or does he want to make sure that no-one else can get any glory?
Very early on, Forster made a good run through the right channel, but carefully pulled the ball back into an area where there were no Reading players. In the second half he shot high and wide with his left foot after a delightful flick-on from McIntyre when the best option would have been to pass to our spare man. (Of course it might have been the shock that got to him. When did we last have a spare man? I'm so much in shock that it didn't even register who it was.) Also after more good work on the right, Forster fired a low drive through the six-yard box. A defender nearly put it in, but Forster could have tried passing the ball to the unmarked McIntyre instead. On another occasion Forster hit the top of the bar with what many thought was a cross - of course, it wasn't a cross! He was shooting.
Well, I've made up my mind about him, anyway. But he is still a damn good player.
I think that little rant has covered all of our realistic goal attempts. Burnley had only three all game. Their best move of the match came when two players running from deep created an overlap on the edge of the penalty area, and left Andy Payton with a one-on-one with Whitehead. Although Payton has the habit of always scoring against us, this time Whitehead made a good save.
Burnley's other two attempts were from direct free-kicks just outside the area in the last few minutes. Let's be clear about this - neither of them should have been awarded, as the ref had let similar infringements go all game (for both sides, but more often from Burnley because of the type of defender they have). Anyway Steve Davis interestingly put the first two yards over the bar. The second was a few yards further out, which might have been just right for Davis. Instead Paul Cook placed it just wide of the scoreboard. Based on that shot, I'm surprised that we never managed to sign him when all those rumours were flying around a few years ago.
The referee also distinguished himself by booking players who probably shouldn't have been, and letting others get away with things. Just before half-time, Caskey fouled a Burnley player but the ref played advantage with Burnley attacking. The fouled player took his revenge off-the-ball and amazingly the ref saw it! He booked both players, but of course we got the free-kick. Two minutes later the same Burnley player fouled Murty badly, and was lucky not to get sent off. The whole incident was reminiscent of Parkinson on Saturday - it's a shame that we didn't get the two refs the other way round.
In the last 20 minutes, Reading clearly settled for the draw. I guess this is hardly surprising - had we pushed up for a winner and got caught, we would still be in the bottom four, and we the fans would have been issuing a lot of stick. It's still difficult to accept though, because to be quite frank Burnley were nothing special. It just shows how we have missed a golden chance in this division this season.
Our player of the match was undoubtedly Jim McIntyre, and I must also mention that yet again Paul Brayson failed to score. OK, so he was only on for three minutes, but that's not the point. He's had 18 months to score and he still hasn't managed it.
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