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Let's make this brief then shall we?
Reading made three changes from the draw against Millwall with goalkeeper Alex McCarthy replacing Adam Federici, Hal Robson-Kanu in for Adam Le Fondre and the injured Wayne Bridge replaced by Stephen Kelly.
Reading actually started the better of the two teams but just as happened so often this season, pressure and patience failed to yield a goal and 18 minutes in a long cross field ball had Stephen Kelly hopelessly backpeddling against former Royal Michail Antonio who got to the byline and passed the ball back across the box for Matty Fryatt to slot home.
1-0 was bad but perhaps it was the wakeup call that would rally the side and ease the pressure...
No that's not what happened I'm afraid.
By the 25 minute mark it was 2-0, as Antonio once again turned Kelly inside out before hitting a well struck shot past a helpless McCarthy.
With fans already venting in full force across the internet, Pavel Pogrebnyak got Reading back in the game with a well placed header from a Gunter cross but once again some embarrassing defending saw new loan striker Conor Wickham free on the edge of the box and whole his shot was saved by McCarthy it rebounded into the bacl of the Reading captain and trickled home.
That knocked the stuffing out of any Reading comeback, although Garath McCleary will have felt hard done by to not get a penalty just before the half-time whistle.
Any faint hopes of a comeback died within the first 17 minutes of the restart as Wickham added a fourth and Fryatt completed his double. A late Le Fondre penalty added the faintest tinge of respectability but there was no getting away from a dismal performance to rival the worst we've seen at this level since the painful days of Brendan Rodgers' early days.
I'm sure I could find a fair few excuses for this result... injuries, bad luck, lack of investment etc etc but whatever the reasons behind it Reading's weaknesses have been exposed to all and right now we look far short of the consistency required to get back out of this division.... well, at the right end.
As mentioned Dave will be here with a full report over the next 24 hours, while we'll try and break down just what's going wrong over the coming days so stay tuned to the website.