News and Views

What Are the Best Bets on Reading This Season?

07 October 2019
By Hob Nob Anyone?

Whether it's live roulette or online slots, we all love a flutter every now and then. Sports betting is no exception. But with so many teams and an array of markets, it can tricky finding a successful route.

While many punters opt for the safe bets like Manchester City and Liverpool, these often come with narrow – and fortune favours the bold! If you want to win big, you're much better looking for more specific markets in games where the result is a bit less predictable.

So, what about Reading? Despite a poor start to the 2019-20 season, there are still a range of decent bets on the Royals for supporters or just neutrals...

Don't back Reading - yet

After 8 points from their opening 11 league matches, it's fair to say you shouldn’t back Reading just yet this season. The Royals opened the season with back to back defeats, before gaining seven of their eight points in a string of three league fixtures to close August.

Since then, they've lost five and drawn one away to Swansea. Unfortunately, that's left Reading 22nd in the Championship table just short of safety, with Huddersfield above on goals scored.

Broken down into home and away form, there's a bit more success on the road. Reading have picked up five points away from home, compared to three at the Madejski, with both their draws coming in away matches. By and large, however, it's nothing worth betting on, and there are some more interesting trends to look at...

Both teams to score

Results aside, one thing that is promising is that Reading have a tendency to score goals, even when they don't manage to win the game. The Royals have only failed to score in three of their eleven matches this season. Considering that their leaky defence has kept just two clean sheets in the league, both teams to score could be a good bet.

That's especially the case on 22nd October, when Reading travel to QPR for a midweek clash. Sitting 9th in the table with 19 points from 11 matches, the Rs have had a relatively good start to the season. However, they've still conceded 19 goals - the fourth highest number in the league.

Quite impressively, they've managed to stay within touching distance of the playoffs without keeping a single clean sheet. Needless to say, it&'s pretty likely both teams will score in that one.

Over 2.5

Football is a low-scoring game, with 0-0, 1-0 and 0-1 the most common scores every season. However, with Reading freely scoring and conceding goals, they're quite a good team to back for matches to exceed the 2.5 mark. Out of Reading's opening 11 matches, almost half (five) have had three goals or more.

More specifically, four of their five league matches at the Madejski have exceeded 2.5 goals. The only exception being a 0-2 loss to Charlton, where a strong save prevented John Swift's late free kick from taking the match total to three goals.

Of course, this still requires some judgement. After facing Preston, Millwall and Luton at home, Reading will come up against Leeds at the end of November. With league's strongest defence, it's fair to say the Leeds fixture could be an exception to the rule when it comes to backing over 2.5 goals. They've kept a league-high five clean sheets and conceded just seven goals in 11 games.

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