This weekend sees the Royals facing a Blackburn side still fighting for a UEFA Cup place. The Royals will be looking to add to the victory they achieved against Birmingham last weekend, while Blackburn will be looking to add another victory against Premier League strugglers after picking up a 3-1 victory over Wigan at the weekend.
The Royals have no major injury worries. The usual lot will remain sidelined and will be joined by Jimmy Kebe who is doubtful after picking up a knock in the midweek internationals, so that won’t make any difference to the first team squad as Oster looks to be firmly the first choice right winger, until Glen Little returns from his variety of injuries.
Blackburn will be without their central defender Christopher Samba, which might make things a little easier for the Royals strikers and maybe Bikey will be able to exploit his absence from set pieces. It’s also unlikely that Roque Santa Cruz will feature.
We have never managed to beat Blackburn in three games in the Premier League so it would be nice to beat them at this stage of the season, especially as they were the team that cost us a UEFA Cup place on the final day of last season. A victory could see us rise to 12th and would almost certainly assure us of a third Premier League season.
Mark Lawrenson has irritatingly predicted a 2-1 victory for Reading, which is what I would have predicted. So being the pessimist I am, I’ll go for 1-1.
Charlton have today extended the loan deal of Royals exile Leroy Lita to the end of the season. Great. But at least this time we have an option to recall him, though I doubt very much the manager will. So in the meantime Reading will continue to scrap for Premier League survival with Kitson (where’s his England call up??), Doyle (he and the goal have seemed to have had a falling out) and Long (who lets face it, it’s a miracle when he does manage a goal, even though he’s still got more than Lita).
Of course Lita has only got one goal to his name all season and that was in the Carling Cup and he has failed to score in the four games he has played with Charlton, but still it’s a mystery why this guy isn’t anywhere near the Reading first team squad.
This is the same player who only last summer finished the Royals top goalscorer and represented the England Under-21’s in the European Championships. After a laughably bad miss in the first game, he settled down and was one of the stars of the show, even going as far to being named in the UEFA Dream Team for the tournament. And in the wake of the England senior crisis, there was even speculation that he should be named in the senior side. But seven months later he is plying his trade at a Championship club and it’s more than possible his Reading, and Premier League, career could be over.
That is a baffling thought as Reading have lacked goals from the strikers, except Kitson. I have no doubt that Reading could have a deadly trio of strikers in Kitson, Doyle and Lita. All three I feel could score at least 15 league goals a season, even more if they were with a top side. Even Shane Long could one day match those three. But Lita has now plunged to the role of the fourth striker because of, what seems like, a massive falling out with the manager.
A bit late this week, but Reading secured a vital win against Birmingham at the weekend to increase the margin from the bottom three to five points.
This was an important game and five points gives us a bit of breathing room heading into the final seven games.
Andre Bikey capitalised on poor defending by Radhi Jaidi not once, but twice from set pieces to give the Royals a 2-1 victory over their fellow strugglers.
Yet again the Royals let another player score his first ever goal for his club against us. Mauro Zarate, on loan from Al Sadd (who?!?), bundled the ball over the line and gave us fans a scare before Bikey scored the winner a few minutes from time.
Blackburn at home next week should be a challenge but it’s not impossible to think we should come away with all three points.
Fellow strugglers Birmingham City will come face to face with the Royals at the Madejski Stadium on Saturday. This is a massive game for both clubs as a win would give either side a bit of breathing room between them and Bolton, who occupy the top relegation spot at present.
Unfortunately for the Royals the odds seemed stacked against them after ‘ace’ pundit Mark Lawrenson has predicted a 2-1 for us, which is worrying because he has a habit of being wrong.
Reading should be fielding a relatively unchanged lineup that has done well since ending the run of eight straight defeats, though Kitson may feature as a starter after Shane Long’s little shirt throwing incident in last weekend’s defeat at the Scousers. If they can manage to keep a clean sheet then it will be Marcus Hahnemann’s 100th clean sheet in English football.
Martin Taylor could return from his suspension so expect angry FIFA representatives protesting outside the ground before the game.
Providing things go right for us, a win could take us six point clear with seven games left in the season easing the pressure a little bit. But there is stil la long way to go.
January signing Marek Matejovsky’s superb opener was the highlight for the Royals as they slipped to their first defeat in three games at Anfield. The defeat is no big disgrace and I would have gladly taken a 2-1 defeat before the game, because as at least it doesn’t hurt the goal difference too much which at this stage is vital.
Yet again the manager decided to leave the top English goalscorer on the bench and go with Shane Long, I guess his goal last week kept the manager happy, but hang on didn’t Kitson score as well? I just think at this stage of the season where we are in a relegation battle we need to be playing our strongest players and I believe Kitson, Doyle (who hasn’t scored in god knows how long but has still looked good in recent weeks) and even Lita (remember him? He’s in the wrong division right now) should be getting in the side ahead of Shane Long who always gives me the impression that he has only just taken up football, which in theory he has. Maybe he should be at Charlton right now gaining experience. The guy has alot of potential but I don’t think at this early stage we should be relying on him to keep us in the Premier League.
Matejovsky’s goal was stunning. The guy is a very good player and at last we may have found someone to replace Sidwell. He used fantastic technique and it should be a real contender to win Match of the Day’s goal of the month, but alot of the credit should go to John Oster who picked out Matejovsky beautifully when he so easily could have swung in a cross that would most likely have been picked out of the air by Reina. A lot of credit to the ref too as it really wasn’t a free kick, but well done Stephen Hunt (a bad advert for English football according to the Mail on Sunday) for winning it.
Unfortunately for Reading though, Andriy Voronin remained sidelined through injury so Rafa the Rotator decided to stick with a certain Fernando Torres. The bastard. The guy is simply fantastic and has to be one of the top five players in the Premier League and, of course, he had to go and score the winner. Ryan Babel also started and seemed to torment poor Liam Rosenior.
And why does Reading seem to be the team that a manager gets his first win against or a player scores his very first goal for his club against? Mascherano decided he would try and match Matejovsky’s goal in a game where shooting inside the area was banned. Makes me a little worried that Newcastle haven’t won yet with Keegan and we will be heading down there in a few weeks.
Liverpool deserved the win and Reading were lucky to not have lost by a bigger margin. It could have been a draw though as the Royals had a last minute penalty claim turned down.
Unfortunately the weekend’s events saw Wigan, Middlesbrough and Fulham all picked up victories and Newcastle and Birmingham got a point against each other so now we are down at 15th and staring perilously close into the relegation zone once again. Birmingham come to the Madejski next Saturday and that will be a vital game for Reading to win if we want to avoid playing Championship football next season.
Hello and welcome to ‘The Royal Club’ which as you can guess is a blog that is focused primarily on my favourite team, Reading Football Club.
I have been a supporter of Berkshire’s finest since 1994 and I am a former season ticket holder, I resided in J230 in the East Stand for two and a half seasons before work commitments forced me to give up my ticket.
I will give my own views on the state of the club as we look to survive in the Premier League and I will also give my own spin on the latest news to come out of the club as well as reports from the games.
I hope you will enjoy my blog and I will be updating it very soon.
