News and Views
Wigan Embarrass Reading At The Madejski
25 February 2013
By Hob Nob Anyone?
Reading's great run of form in January, which saw Brian McDermott collect the Premier League manager of the month award, quickly became a distant memory with an embarrassing home thrashing against Wigan Athletic this weekend. It was Reading's third straight defeat. After making good progress at the start of the year talk was of an FA Cup run, until the draw landed us with Manchester United away, and Premier League survival. Since then Reading have made an exit from the cup and league defeats at the hands of Stoke, and now relegation rivals Wigan, have left Reading second from bottom in the table. Saturday's 0-3 home defeat in a crucial "six pointer" has set the alarm bells ringing once more as survival has again become an uphill struggle. Many were quick to compare this defeat to the Fulham defeat in April 2008 which proved decisive in our relegation from the Premier League that season. Should Wigan finish above Reading we might well look back at this game as the one that sent us down. Having said that, that Fulham defeat came with just four games to go, while we have 11 games of this season to redeem ourselves.
After a reasonable opening forty minutes or so from Reading, we were defeated by half time after two goals from Kone just before the break. After the restart the visitors increased their lead to three goals, and Reading had gone from level terms to beaten in the space of 4 minutes of play either side of half time. From then on Reading offered very little and were out of ideas well before Pogrebnyak got his marching orders with 55 minutes on the clock. Wigan then cruised to victory in front of an increasingly empty Madejski Stadium.
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