Sent Off From The Bench

Adam Le Fondre notching 39 goals in 104 league appearances doesn't tell the whole story of a player who's scored more goals from then bench than any other player in a Premier League season. So often left out of the starting XI, but still finished the club's top scorer in all of his three seasons here. ALF seems to have always been disenchanted with his role at the club, seeing himself as more than a 'super sub', and the statistics would somewhat agree with him. Of the 27 games he started this season we won 13, or 48%. When not in the team that figure drops to 6 from 21, or 29%. Admittedly he was on the bench for the tough December run, and in matches away at Burnley, and Wigan, which may slightly skew this in his favour. For a team who were 16th in terms of goals from open play, and 20th in shots per game a clinical goalscorer is key. Le Fondre had the second best conversion rate, behind Hernandez, in the Premier League last season scoring on 22% of his shots. U...

News of Reading's sale has been spreading fast ever since Charles Watts and Jonny Fordham revealed on twitter that the club were in talks with two interested parties. It has since emerged that the club is up for a price of £1 (plus debts - which reportedly stand at £38m), a fact that news outlets have been quick to exploit for shallow headlines. According to Fordham, Zingaravich resigned from the board, and handed his shares back in January which would explain the frantic pleas from Madejski for someone to buy us. Indian businessman Mohit Burman , who sits on the board of Dabur India Ltd. , gave a huge sign of intent when offering to help pay the club's upcoming HMRC tax bill of around £3.5m if they entered into exclusive talks with him. He owns 46% of the King's XI Punjab - a team who have finally turned turned profitable three years after initial estimates. Slightly worryingly in 2010 there was a warrant for his arrest after "failing to appear [at] a hearing on ...

Charlie Watts has announced The Royals' pre-season fixtures. As announced on twitter last night there will be no overseas tour, and instead all the fixtures will be domestic. Another Swansea home fixture, which is always lovely to be reminded of your shortfalls. Without further ado, the fixtures. Reading FC’s pre-season fixtures Tues, July 15 - Exeter City (a) 7.30pm Sat, July 19 - Yeovil Town (a) 3pm Sat, July 26 - Wycombe (a) 3pm Tues, July 29 - Stevenage (a) 7.30pm Sat, August 2 - Swansea (h) 3pm

Just three days since the end of the season, and the club have announced that five players are the leave in the off-season when their contracts come to an end. Jobi McAnuff, Mikele Leigertwood, Kaspars Gorkss, Stuart Taylor, and Wayne Bridge have all played their last games for the club, and the latter has played his last game in professional football as he's simultaneously announced his retirement. Although this announcement isn't a particular surprise there's a definite sadness in letting three key members of our 2011-12 Championship winning squad. Jobi McAnuff 2009-2014 | 206 apps, 16 goals Jobi followed Brendan Rodgers across from Watford where he immediately cemented his place in the team. In 2011 he was handed the captain's armband, and has led from the front since - taking part in every Premier League game last season. Although not a prolific goalscorer, his strike to cement our place in the 2010-11 play-off final will live long in the memory. Mikele L...

It's hard to see this season as anything other than predominantly disappointing. Had other teams taken chances when we slipped up then it would look a lot worse, and in the end achieving the points tally we did is slightly misleading. Then again, as we're often told teams finish where they deserve in the league and there are numerous reasons why this Reading side only just missed out on the play-offs. Had we picked up an extra point from somewhere then we'd have achieved our, maybe slightly conservative, aim for this year; but hey-ho if you finish sixth on goal-difference it's effectively the same as comfortably finishing third.   Poor Performances Obviously the main reason for any side not reaching their potential is under-performing on the pitch for whatever reason. I've split this up into four main areas: games against the top half, home form, games where we conceded the first goal, and dropping easy points. Record Against Top Half (5-7-10 22 pts out of...

A good performance ultimately ended in disappointment, as an injury time winner for Brighton saw Reading finish seventh. However, this was the kind of performance that fans had expected all year, but, sadly, very rarely materialised. Within a minute appeals for a penalty were turned down, as Jason Shackell handled in the area. I must admit that I was still coming into the ground so haven't seen the incident yet, but the consensus of those around me, and the opinions I've seen from twitter seem to be that the referee got it wrong. A beautiful counter-attack, reminiscent of days gone by, saw McAnuff try to cut the ball across to Gunter, but Kieran Trippier managed to get to the ball first before turning the ball into his own net. A similar situation unfolded not long after, but this time the deflection hit the Burnley keeper. Obviously any win would have seen Reading finish in the top six, but the lead only last four minutes. A somewhat soft free-kick was taken quickly, which...