When : Saturday August 22, 3pm
Where : Cherry Red Records Stadium, Plough Lane, London, SW17 0NR
Capacity : 9,215
Second game of the season and as pretty much usual Reading are still looking for their first point of the season after last week’s effort was wrecked by yet another second half from hell.
This time last year Reading were in the same position only they’d lost the opening two league games and the Wombles were the visitors to Reading and as we know the jinx that is Wimbledon struck again and the club got gubbed by two to one.
Wimbledon have so far brought in seven players; Ollie Harrison arrived on loan from Chelsea, Jayden Stockley from Port Vale, James Tilley from Wycombe and Andy Yiadom after being released from Reading. Before those four arrivals the Wombles had also grabbed the services of Luton’s Zack Nelson, Stevenage’s Dan Sweeney and Wigan’s Stephen Sessegnon as soon as the last season ended so have brought in almost double the amount of talent that has so far wended its way into RG2.
Leaving Johnnie Jackson’s squad were Patrick Bauer to Cambridge, Sam Hutchinson to Farnham and Josh Kelly to Woking so overall their squad has gained some depth on last season and isn’t the threadbare unit that’s currently haunting Reading.
Wimbledon lost their opening fixture too, going down 3-0 at one of the promotion favourites Huddersfield. That result was the biggest win/heaviest defeat in the division last week which obviously has dumped Wimbledon to the foot of the new table a full seven places below Reading on goal difference.
Andy Yiadom is probably going to be the main worry as he’s bound to have a blinder if he plays and despite Reading knowing everything about his strengths and weaknesses you can be fairly sure little of that information will filter its way into any gameplan.
Reading don’t really have any injury concerns (yet) other than the obvious “how long can we give Jack Marriott this week”? And that’s the real issue at the moment. Reading probably need two strikers in rather quickly; a) the backup for Jack that they also needed last year and b) the replacement for Kelvin “with an E”. Yes Jacob Brown arrived, but does he really look like a striker from what we have seen so far?
No rumours are abounding whatsoever over Reading signing anyone so god knows what’ll happen over the remaining ten days or so of the window but if there’s no real headway in getting it sorted then Leam is being set up to fail.
Reading have not won a league game since March, a run of what is now seven games while Wimbledon have lost eight of their last nine league games and haven’t won at home since beating Blackpool back in early March. Their last four home league games have seen them concede twelve and score just one with zero points gained - so here we go again into prime charitable jinx territory
Referee
Michael Barlow
Previously
Nothing
Historically
A trip to Wimbledon has never been much to look forward to for Reading as the Biscuitmen have a pretty miserable record in this part of London. Back in February Reading trekked over in what should have been a reasonably confident frame of mind as their opponents had only managed to score 1 goal at home since the preceding November but of course this is the jinx that is Wimbledon and Reading decided to turn the game into the standard charity event and promptly lost 3-2. Embarrassing or what?
Away games at Wimbledon are utter cr@p. Reading have never ever won a league game there. The one game they did manage to win came when the Wombles were playing out the last of their days, before being dumped on by their owners & the FL/FA, at Selhurst Park.
This is the eighth season the two clubs have shared under the two guises of Wimbledon and the best to date, other than the victory at Palace’s place, is just 3 draws so there is very little to get excited about over this fixture and generally zero expectation.
How to follow the game
- Get a ticket and go
- Listen to Radio 5 Live and/or a myriad of other radio stations for score flashes
- Ring/text a mate for updates
- Use a RoyalsTV subscription
- BBC Radio Berkshire (FM : 104.4, 104.1 or 95.4 depending where you are in the area)
