L-W-D-L-W

By: Prederick | November 4th, 2008

If you haven’t guessed or don’t know, the title of this post is Reading’s form since I last posted. Five games, seven points from a possible 15. Not exactly scintillating stuff, and the obvious reason why Reading are three points out of the automatic promotion places and only a point ahead of Burnley.

I had a sensation this season was going to be the kind where Reading do a Championship imitation of Arsenal. Not neccessarily in the sense of attempting 75 passes too many before scoring, or being utterly prepared to deal with scrappy ex-Championship sides featuring Irish missile platforms in midfield. I mean in the sense that, when Reading win, it’s usually of the cutting the opposition to pieces variety. Meanwhile, when Reading lose… well, I imagine it’s better to lose games by scores like 2-1 and 1-0 rather than lose 5-4.

So, Assistant Manager Kevin Dillon thinks there’s too much fixture congestion. And surely he has a point, five games in 14 days is immense. That said, it’s just as bad anywhere else in the Football League, where teams have to play 46 games to decide who goes up and who does down, not counting the FA Cup, League Cup, and the Johnstone’s Paint Trophy (for League 1 and 2). So it’s entirely reasonable that some teams may play in upwards of 60 fixtures. In essence, meh.

That’s not the best part of that little story though.

Despite having a shorter journey on Saturday, travelling down the M4 from Reading to Bristol, Dillon said even that was not a problem-free journey.

“We travelled up on the day of the game for the first time in many years and we were late.

“The coach driver got lost on the way to the stadium - we thought it was Halloween and they were winding us up.

“Liam Rosenior, who played for Bristol City for quite a long time, took us completely the wrong way and got us lost.”

I can imagine this scenario in my head, and it plays out exactly like when you go on a school trip and the busdriver gets lost. Steve Coppell is the harried teacher just trying to ignore this problem until the bus gets back on track, Stephen Hunt’s loudly singing filthy driving songs, and the exchange student (Jimmy Kebe) has no idea what fresh hell he’s been dragged into and can’t wait to get back home.

Meanwhile, Norwich, feel free to hang onto him for a while, with my blessing.

This weekend, Reading clash with Derby County, who, after a disastrous continuation of their putrid form last year, have finally remembered they are, at least theoretically, a proper football team. But noone’s managed to off the Royals at Fortress Madjeski so far this season, so a 3-1 victory should be a reasonable ask.