Wembley Bound…

Walking out of Wembley station and seeing all the blue and white shirts made me feel so proud. There was omens everywhere which made us feel all the more positive - a KFC type place called “Royal Chicken” and then further down the road, a pub called “The Royal Lounge”!!

Paul Allen did a great job in getting the crowd going but I don’t think it would have taken much anyway. The noise around the ground was simply amazing!

As we went 2-0 and then 3-0 down, the haunting memories of the Bolton and Walsall games came back to me, my brother, my dad and my best friend. Half time was agony.

It was almost two completely different games. We came out in the second half and ran Swansea ragged. Jem and Legs were running things in midfield and Shane and Hunty were running themselves into the ground. It was a boost to see Kebe starting but in the second half he was more guilty than most with his misplaced passes and lack of ball control. Would have like to have seen HRK introduced for him early in the second half. It was more Colin Kebe than Thierry Kebe!!

When Hunty and Mills scored in front of the Royals fans, it gave us a huge lift. The crowd started to believe we could overturn the scoreline and win. However, the more we pushed forward, the weaker we looked at the back and Swansea took advantage of that by catching us on the break.

I looked a dejected figure as I left the ground. I’d been to 3 play-off finals and see us lose everytime. Failure is hard to accept in any circumstances but I know we’ll come back a better side. Yeah it may not be next season, or the season after, but we’ve shown over the years that we can re-invent ourselves. If Shane Long goes then someone will stand up and take his place. We’ve been through this so many times before - remember how we felt when we lost Quinn, Osbourne, Lovell, Taylor and even Cureton, Butler & Forster?

Pain is temporary, pride is forever…..

Inflatables Day 2011 :D

I went today and besides the actual game, I had a fantastic day! The atmosphere in our end of the ground with our 2,800 odd fans was awesome! So many people turned up in fancy dress and there were so many inflatables the stewards couldn’t keep up with clearing them away! My best friend’s brother also turned up as a horse/donkey which we nicknamed “Rasiak”. Don’t think the City fans knew what to make of it all and we clearly outsang them for long periods of the match.

On the pitch though, was a different story. City had more than enough clear cut chances to take all 3 points. It was just their poor finishing, the post and Fedders keeping them at bay. In fact, I’d go as far as saying that A-Fed was our Man of the Match.

It was probably a really good match to watch as a neutral fan but as a Royal, it was a tad frustrating. We looked tired and unable to keep hold of the ball in the first half. Things changed in the second half when Howard came on but we never really looked like scoring. I’m sure City will see this as 2 points droppped rather than 1 point gained.

The Royals win on Merseyside AGAIN!

More FA Cup Dreams….

So Reading FC’s love affair with the FA Cup continues into the 2010/2011 season.

A win over lower league Stevenage Boro set-up another clash with West Brom, who we knocked out last year after a replay! However, no replays were needed this year as we sent them out of the competition again with a 1-0 win at the Madejski Stadium.

The next round saw another trip to Merseyside to face Everton. I have to admit, I wasn’t feeling too confident, what with the amount of injuries in the team and Shane Long continuing to play whilst having pain-killing injections into his hip before the game. However, it was Matt Mills who’s performance shone the brightest that night. Captain Fantastic scored the only goal of the game and then kept the Toffee’s at bay. It won him the “Player of the Round” award from the FA.

This Sunday sees the Royals travelling to Manchester to take on megabucks City at the COM Stadium. Once again injuries plague the team, with Matt Mills, Jobi McAnuff and Adam Federici all looking like they’ll be missing from the first team. As before, I’m not feeling especially confident but I think we can be proud of ourselves even if we go and get beat. At least we can say we made it this far.

The optimist in me says another Royals win and a trip to Wembley for the semi-finals on offer. If we make it, it’ll only be the 3rd time we’ve ever been there and the first time we would have been to the “new” Wembley.

Keep the faith… URZ!

It’s been a long time….

Firstly, I’m sorry that it’s taken me soooooo long to get round to blogging again. Life is manic right now and I hardly have time to catch my own breath!

The Royals are currently 11th and 6 points of the play-off places after a 1-0 defeat by QPR. This came after 13+ games without a defeat. Most people are down in the dumps about losing to some call our rivals. I don’t see QPR as anything other than another Championship side. They may think that we’re rivals because of the hoops but, in my eyes, Reading FC’s rivals are Swindon Town, Oxford United and Aldershot Town. They always have been, they always will be.

In other news, I’ve joined up with some other Royals fans and opened a new forum called “The Royals Rendezvous - The 1871 Club”. It’s basically a follow-on site from the BBC 606 board (which is closing at the end of the season) without all the WUMs and slack moderating. So far we’ve reached 107 members and over 3000 posts! It’s all going really well although I have had a few run-ins with another user who seems to like winding me up.

Anyway, if you want decent chatter and banter with other Royals, without the fear of WUM’s or other idiots, come and check us out

www.royalsrendezvous.co.uk

Big Week Ahead…

As I mentioned in my last post, we had a game against Donny Rovers in the run up to two of the biggest games of our season so far - QPR away and Cardiff at home. We were hoping for a decent result to boost the confidence for our trip to Loftus Road to face an unbeaten QPR. I didn’t go to watch this match as I wasn’t feeling especially confident even after our win at Turf Moor a week before.

I checked in after an hour to see what the score was and there it was, scored first and then conceded 3 times!! Shocking!! However, in the time it took me to get from my sister’s house back to mine, the Royals had pulled it back to 3-3 and then a Simon Church goal settled it at 4-3. Exciting stuff at the Madejski but I wasn’t impressed after conceding 3 sloppy goals against a mid-table side. I honestly believe that if we play like that against QPR and Cardiff, we’ll get completely and utterly destroyed!

Still, if we get a win in London tomorrow, maybe Sky Sports will start giving a fuck about “little old Reading”!!

URZ!

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Captain Fantastic - Matthew Mills

Wears his heart on his shirt and puts his body on the line for the Royals

Quick Catch-Up!

So here we are again, the season is in full flow and already I’m feeling like it’s all a bit of an anti-climax. The Royals lost to Swansea (with ex manager Brendan Rogers) at home and then lost to the bottom side Bristol City. They were only slender defeats though with the lads playing some decent football at times. However it’s very obvious that we need a striker with 20+ goals in him. Maybe we can do some deals in the loan market or spend some of the £7million we got for Sigurdsson in January. Saying that though, with the exception of maybe Simon Cox, I can’t really think of anyone who could be worth signing. Cox left us to go to Swindon many moons ago and was snapped up by West Brom in their promotion season last year. He’s a Reading boy at heart and I think he’d be up for coming back to his first club to prove a few critics wrong. McDermott has also, apparently, send a few scouts to Ireland to look at two lads who we could get on the cheap. He’s done it a few times before as it was McDermott who found Kevin Doyle and Shane Long!

Now let’s look at our previous match away at Burnley. No-one was expecting the lads to get anything from it to be honest. Looking at the last few matches, we were on real relegation form - 2 defeats and a draw. Burnley had a really good home form and had yet to lose at home this season. So imagine my surprise when we opened the scoring with a Shane Long penalty after 8 minutes!! Jobi McAnuff, Michail Antonio and Simon Church scored in the second half to give us a 4-0 away win (our biggest away win for 20yrs according to the Even Post!!) and a HUGE confidence boost. We’re going to need another big performance from the team against Doncaster this Saturday to set us up nicely for the trip to Loftus Road on 6 November. I’m hoping for a 2-0 win against Donny and then a 3-1 win against QPR. It might be a bit optimistic but it seems the lads have finally got their shooting boots on so anything is possible!

URZ!

Catch-up Anyone?

Right so I’m sorry it’s taken me soooo long to blogging this week and a bit. We’ve had two match days - ending in a win against Ipswich and a draw against Preston - and life is looking good for the Royals. We’re in a much healthier position in the league, with only QPR failing to keep their side of the bargain! Those fake hoops are STILL top of the Npower Championship and look to be breaking away from the rest of us. Here’s hoping we can do something about that when we’re up at Loftus Road in a few weeks!!

Away from football, life is looking pretty sweet. I’m actually becoming rather settled with this relationship malarky!! Booked tickets to see Little Fish in November and I can’t wait to see them now!! I’ve really enjoyed chatting to Juju on Twitter too.

Can’t really think of much more to put now. I’m sure I’ll have more to say after next Saturdays match against Swansea. Should be a great game as it’ll be the first time that Brendan Rodgers has returned to the club after he fucked us over last season!!

URZ!

Happy Days…

Match day was here once again and I think I can be forgiven for not feeling positive as the Royals took on Barnsley at Madejski Stadium. After last weekend, I felt very uninspired with McDermott and the lads but I’m glad I’ve been proved wrong, though I did have to wait until the last 20mins of the game for things to liven up. The legend that is Jimmy Kebe opened the scoring with Ian Harte and Hal Robson-Kanu adding goals in “Fergie Time”. All that after Zurab had been sent off for a second bookable offence…shocking really as I didn’t see anything wrong with the challenge. The lino and the ref should be ashamed, it was a poor performance from them. Now we’ve scored 6 goals in 2 home games and yet our strikers couldn’t hit a cow’s ass with a banjo!! Nice to see Hunty get a run out too, I wonder how long it’ll be before he’s allowed to start. He’s far more effective than Church and wins a lot more headers.

In other news, the missus is back from Suffolk and straight into working nights. Delightful. Here’s hoping I can grab a few hours with her in the week. I think she owes me BIG TIME!!!!!

URZZ!!

A Shocking Performance…

Right so last Saturday was the game against Boro at the Riverside and to be honest, I wasn’t expecting much. If we could have come away with a point, I would have been really happy. Boro still have a lot of Premiership quality amongst their ranks so we always needed to be on our guard. What I wasn’t expecting was the horror show that unfolded - conceding in under a minute and ending up with only 10 men on the pitch after Brian Howard was given a straight red.

To be honest, it pretty much summed up my entire weekend because the following day, the missus decided to “finish it” with me for a totally stupid reason. On the Monday though, I got the real reason and I ended up rushing to Reading to be with her. Turns out that the dreaded C word had made an appearance again and she didn’t want to force me to stay with her. She thought I deserved better. Needless to say my rushing to be with her wasn’t in vain and we’re still very much together.

She starts her treatment on Monday so send her lots of good wishes and that. It’s going to be a long old trek but I wouldn’t leave her for the world. Before then though, Barnsley are the visitors to Madejski Stadium on Saturday so let’s back the boys and make some noise!!

URZ!

Into The Lions Den…

Right, firstly I’m sorry for not blogging about this sooner. It’s been another busy week so grabbing time to write this has been hard. Secondly, we were kept so under the thumb by Millwall, I couldn’t really think of anything to write about! However I think a mention should go to Adam Federici as his performance kept the scores at 0-0.

Apparently Jimmy Kebe had a perfectly good goal ruled out for off-side. To be honest, I was glad that we came away from the New Den with a point. Millwall are very good as home and we were up against it right from the off. Also ex-Reading midfielder James Henry was playing his first game against us since leaving in the summer so he was really up for scoring.

All in all, it was a decent performance and we’re now unbeaten in 5 league games. It’s Boro away tomorrow so I’m hoping we can keep Leroy Lita quiet and bring 3 points home to Berkshire!

URZ!!!

Things Are Looking Up…

A lot of fantastic things have happened this week. The Royals picked up their second win of the season with a 3-0 win over Crystal Palace at the Madejski. Shane Long, Ian Harte and Jimmy Kebe scored in an impressive performance against a poor Palace side without midfielder Edgar Davids, who had to return to Holland as his father was ill…or something like that anyway! I’m hoping we can start a decent run now although we’ve got Millwall away in the week and then away to Boro next Saturday. If we can get 4 points from those matches, I think I’ll be a little happier!

The other great thing that has happened this week is the few days I managed to spend with SJ in Reading. She’s moved into this new flat and we spent ages just trying to make it feel like home. I really enjoyed all the snuggles on the sofa afterwards. Most Haunted is always so much better when you’re curled up with someone! :oD

So yes, it’s been a successful week, long may it continue!!

URZZ!!

So Gylfi Sigurdsson has gone to Germany for £7million - a club record. However, for once the club have been busy in the transfer market before the window closes in under 2hrs.