New York, Berkshire and the Bottom Three

By: jacob | February 14th, 2008

Hello everyone, pleased to meet you all. I’m Jacob, and I’ll be your new host here at The Offside’s own Reading F.C. blog. I hope you’ll accompany me for the next few weeks as Steve Coppell’s men desperately try to avoid away games to Barnsley next year.

First, of course, a bit about myself. I’m a not-so-recent college graduate from New York who fell in with Reading soon after I fell in love with the beautiful game. My interest immediately shifted towards the English game, mostly out of ease of translation and the larger amount of English-language material available, and I began scouring teams, looking for one with an interesting history to throw myself behind. It was some time in 2004 that I stumbled upon The Royals, and I’ve been following them since. Admittedly, it was a bit difficult keeping track via results from BBC Sport and ESPN Soccernet, but you make do with the resources you have (special mention to “Hob Nob Anyone?”, which is required reading for any Royals fan).

The 2005-06 season was obviously a glorious one, and 06-07 was even better. But you can’t run a team on history alone (insert lazy Liverpool joke), and obviously, this year’s been a great deal less entertaining.

There have been some great moments this year, the 3-1 win over the ‘Pool at home sticks out, but then there’s that 6-4 embarrassment at Spurs, the 7-4 hiding from Portsmouth, and most recently, of course, the scrappy 1-0 loss to Everton that has put Reading into the danger zone.

Everyone was talking about “Second Year Syndrome” this season, and obviously, now, they seem to be right. Reading must stop the rot ASAP if they want to stay up, as, on current run of form, Sunderland won’t be headed back down towards the bottom three anytime soon. And sure, while it may be the comment du jour for pundits in various places, Newcastle’s not going to end up getting relegated (as hilarious as it would be).

The current problems are obvious. None of the strikers are converting any chances whatsoever (in the past six games, Reading have scored once) and we’re winless on the road. There’s no consistency anywhere in the team, essentially, things aren’t looking good.

What Reading fans have to hope for now is that Fulham doesn’t have the resurgence that Bullard and McBride might bring, and that Wigan, Birmingham and Bolton all go belly-up soon. Saving ourselves isn’t out of the question yet, not by a longshot with 12 games left to play, but we cannot afford another six-game winless streak.

So here’s hoping. This weekend, Martin O’Neil and Aston Villa come to visit. Right now, even getting a point seems like a lot, but it’s got to start somewhere.