| Competition | Date | Opponent | Venue | Result |
| Division 2 | Saturday, 12th February | Millwall | Home | Won 2-0 |
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Match report:
Alan Pardew had asked that his players take some sort of revenge for their abject surrender to Millwall back in November, and the new-style Reading team did the business.
A group of "people" who have failed to change their spots, however, are the so-called fans of Millwall, who I will not dignify by mentioning again in this report. A more welcome visitor from South London was Michael Gilkes, making his first appearance at the MadStad. Gilksie received restrained applause before the game and none afterwards, which I think is about right.
Another new arrival was the East Stand drum, accompanied by other percussion instruments and drummers. There's still some way to go before this works properly, but it clearly showed some potential for the future.
It was no surprise at all that the only change to the Reading line-up was the forced one of replacing the suspended McIntyre with Hodges. However, the performance at the start of the game was not up to the standard of the last two away games. Partly this was because Millwall were playing some reasonable, if aggressive, football but I wondered if it was more the pressure of playing at home. Pardew had said that away from the MadStad he would play Butler in a deeper role, but at home he would play alongside Forster. I can't say that I could tell any difference in formation, but it was clear that something wasn't working.
The referee excelled himself by booking Butler in the first few minutes for a relatively innocuous incident. This meant that to be consistent he had to book anyone committing any foul that was worse than Butler's for the rest of the game. He kept this up for about 30 minutes, but soon realised that the entire Millwall team would be off the pitch before the final whistle if he continued, so he let their players get away with some diabolical challenges throughout the remainder of the game.
Reading had the best chance of the first half. In a quick break involving Butler, Caskey and Forster, the ball fell to Peter Grant on the six-yard line. He had a clear sight on goal but hit the bar. Yet again Grant has shown the ability to make these runs into dangerous positions - we can only hope that his finishing will improve! The ball rebounded off the bar and into a Millwall player who appeared to control it with his hand. The ref gave nothing, and in any event it looked as if the ball might still fall to a Reading player in the box. However, Millwall scrambled it away.
Gurney had at some point picked up an injury, and was replaced by Bernal. Gurney at least did not need a stretcher this time, and hopefully will be back soon.
A poor first half ended, and the best we could say was that we had at least matched a team in the play-off zone. And we also won the half-time relay race between the Junior Royals and Junior Thugs, particularly because of two superb legs by Kingsley Royal against the impostor fake lion mascot from Millwall.
At the start of the second half, Reading fans were horrified to see Primus replaced by Stuart Gray. This meant that Bernal switched to the centre of defence and Robinson to right-back. Primus had made several good plays in the first half to break down Millwall attacks, and had used his pace to good effect on numerous occasions. Gray on the other hand started off badly by giving the ball away in a dangerous position, and was outpaced on several occasions.
At the other end, we were getting more of the game, and the Millwall keeper was looking shaky. First he spilled a really tame shot, and then did the same with a Robinson shot after he'd taken the ball 30 metres right through the heart of the Millwall defence. The keeper did however block a close-range shot from Butler, and managed to get to the second shot after a rebound as well. That was a golden opportunity for Butler to open his Madejski Stadium account, and he will be unhappy with the miss.
Then we got the breakthrough we had been threatening. Caskey released Forster down the right by passing the ball through a static defence, Forster crossed from the byline, and Parkinson was there to stab the ball home. Like Grant in the first half, it is excellent that our midfielders are getting into these positions. Parky went mad after getting the goal, but ran to the West Stand rather than the East.
Millwall came back into the game a bit, and brought on another Reading reject in Moody. His height gave us some problems, but Bernal and Hunter were mopping up almost everything. The one time they failed, Scott Howie made a good diving save to keep us in the lead.
The Millwall fouls got worse as well, with the referee now only booking players who had not been booked before. One Millwall attack started when they fouled Grant badly in the Millwall half. Play continued with him on the ground, and at the end of the move Howie and Hunter were also both injured. We had three players needing treatment, and the ref still couldn't see a foul! Fortunately all were able to continue.
Nicky Forster's runs were getting better as the game wore on, and he was linking particularly well with Caskey on the right side. When given the ball on one occasion, he cut inside, beat a couple of players, and sent in a curling shot that looked goalbound and would probably have made goal of the season. It hit the inside of the post and bounced out. For a moment I thought it was going in off the other post, but it bounced harmlessly away instead.
Not to be denied though, five minutes later he scored his first home goal. We broke quickly, Butler flicked the ball on to Forster still 60 metres from goal, and Forster just ran past the defence. He fired a low shot past the keeper and into the net. The game was won, and the stadium erupted.
There was still time for several more bad challenges from Millwall. In one Hunter was elbowed in the penalty area, and the officials pretended not to see it. Then an already-booked player upended one of our players right in front of the linesman. Still nothing more than a free-kick, and the referee blew up almost immediately afterwards to avoid more problems.
This was another good performance from the Royals, and the three points mean we can start to worry less about the wrong end of the table. If we keep this up for the next two away games, we can start to think about moving up some more places.
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