Pre-Season Continues With Another Win

By Hob Nob Anyone?

Reading continued their pre-season preparations with a convincing 4-0 victory away at Newport County last night, securing a second clean sheet after Saturday's 2-0 win at Woking. Jacob Brown opened the scoring early on with his second goal in consecutive games, before Josh Stokes doubled the lead shortly after the half time break. Youngster Jerae Jones then sealed the win after coming off the bench to play the last thirty minutes of the game scoring two goals. Despite late pressure from the hosts, and some robust play for a friendly from Newport, Reading remained solid defensively for that clean sheet ahead of their final pre-season fixtures at Crawley Town on Friday and Charlton Athletic at home on Saturday.

From the Discussion

CR Crusader Royal 29 Jul 2026 · 9:04am

I’ve not seen Reading play for a year, and the last time was another preseason friendly so any observations are difficult. Even harder when shirts had numbers but no names and the squad list in the programme had names and no numbers so I struggled to know who any one was. At least we had numbers, Newport had no numbers on their shirts so I was looking forward to seeing the 4th official hold up a blank board for substitutions. General observations - we played the ball around quite nicely and moved it up the pitch well A few sloppy moments when we gave the ball away in midfield which would have been punished by a better team Defense… More →
JE JedMaxwell 29 Jul 2026 · 12:00pm

I went yesterday evening. Overall we looked OK I thought, some sloppiness in midfield and a few moves didn't quite get going but that's what pre-season is for I suppose. The move for the second goal was really good and the youngsters all gave a good account of themselves. Newport were very bad and overly physical. Godwin-Malife was targeted for some reason and had to come off injured, then when Ahmed replaced him at HT about two minutes in one of the big lumps up front lunged in two-footed on him. It was crazy and there was a lot of holding and blocking off-the-ball, which we got dragged into a few times. It felt less like a… More →
CR Crusader Royal 29 Jul 2026 · 12:13pm

I think we started the physical stuff, our left back ploughed through his man a couple of times early on. It did seem a bit out of place for a warm up game,
WE WestYorksRoyal 29 Jul 2026 · 12:40pm

How much can you read into games like last night? This a team who barely stayed up in L2 last season, and obviously would have been treating it as a friendly too. I feel like pre season can only really give bad pointers but anything positive is caveated. Injuries picked up? Bad. Toil against a non-league team? Bad. Fail to even lay a glove on a Championship side? Bad. But beating Newport 4-0 can't be read into too much for reasons articulated. But the absence of anything too bad is good.
BE Beaulux 29 Jul 2026 · 12:52pm

Apparently 307 made the trip, impressive for a friendly. Photos of pretty much everyone in the away end on the club website. Anyone going to identify themselves?
AN andrew1957 29 Jul 2026 · 12:57pm

Does anyone know how the Academy side got on at Windsor and Eton last evening?
FO Four Of Clubs 29 Jul 2026 · 1:52pm

...buried away in W&E's 'X' account - Royals W 3-0 no further details forthcoming yet ....

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