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Club Focus - Reading - Royals achieve safety with plenty of room to spare
It has been a sign of the recent resurgence of Reading that all the talk has been about a push for the play-offs rather than of a relegation fight. The goalless draw on Saturday with Cardiff City may have been a blow to the hopes of ending up in the top six but it was enough to mathematically end any chance of dropping down to League One.
Whilst talk of finishing in the bottom three may seem irrelevant considering the comfortable mid-table spot the club has held for several weeks, it was only as recently as January that the Royals were four points from safety having just lost to Sheffield United. Just three short months ago, the prospect of guaranteeing survival in the division with five games remaining was light years away from being achievable. Thanks to a run of just two defeats in 15 matches, most of which have ended in victory, Brian McDermott has seen his team achieve their biggest goal from the time of his appointment with plenty of room to breathe.
It is a sign of just how big the turn around in fortunes at the club has been that it was the statisticians rather than the average fan who will have been most concerned with when the club reached the safety mark. After coming away from Bramall Lane with yet another defeat in a game in which the team had actually played well throughout, anxious eyes throughout Berkshire were expecting to spend the next four months glued to the bottom of the Championship table, hoping to see the team rise out of the drop zone before May. Even when the players started picking up the wins their efforts had deserved, it still took time to move out of the bottom three due to the original deficit and other teams collecting points of their own. Few would have been surprised if the mini-revival came to a brisk end and many would have anticipated a struggle for the team to keep their heads above the water. What they have got is a stunning run of form that would have been worthy of a push for automatic promotion if only the first half of the season had yielded more points. If the play-offs might just be out of reach, then the reward for this excellent streak is the luxury of being blasé about achieving safety from relegation.
The lack of a goal from a team who have been freely scoring in recent weeks was disappointing but the clean sheet against Cardiff will have been greatly received. Robbed of Ivar Ingimarsson through injury and Matt Mills through suspension, it was encouraging to see a partnership struck up by their replacements Zurab Khizanishvili and Alex Pearce. McDermott reserved particular praise for Pearce, a player who seemed particularly affected by the poor form of the side in the first half of the season. Having kept the big summer signing Mills out of the team and received glowing references from Brendan Rodgers, the Scotland Under-21 international appeared to lose his way with the Reading backline going 12 games without keeping a clean sheet between mid-September and the start of the December. Part of the problem was that Pearce lacked pace and was playing alongside the similarly sluggish Ingimarsson. Experience can make up for a lack of foot-speed through knowing where to position yourself, but the inexperienced Pearce was making mistakes and getting caught out too often. With the Icelander not able to provide effective cover, the youngster’s confidence was quickly dented. McDermott and his staff have spent time working with Pearce on his game during his period out of the side, and he looked a better player for it. Mills still has three games left to serve of his ban so Pearce should get a beneficial run in the team.
Safety might be assured but do not expect Reading to take their feet off the gas. The play-offs are still a possibility if Reading can take advantage of their games in hand, but after a disappointing first half of the season, there is plenty of pride left to play for in finishing the campaign as strongly as possible. The twice-postponed match with Newcastle is next up on Tuesday at the Madejski Stadium, but while Newcastle have already sealed promotion, it will not be easy. A win for the Magpies would as good as seal the title for Chris Hughton’s team with their goal difference insurmountable for second-placed West Bromwich Albion, and the Geordies will be keen to collect the trophy as soon as possible. With something still to play for, Newcastle will offer a good barometer for where this Reading side is at, and a victory will go someway towards easing the memory of the poor performance in defeat at St James Park in August that set the tone for a disappointing first few months to this season.
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