The Alternative View: Exeter City 2-1 Reading

On the back of two uplifting wins, Reading headed to St James Park full of confidence with an amazing 1,261 fans backing the Royals.

In the first half Exeter City dominated with waves of Grecian attacks, with Reading snatching an unlikely equaliser towards the end of the half. The second period from a Reading perspective was much better, and as the game seemed to be petering out to a draw, up popped Cole to bury a shot into the back of the net.

As games go you cannot say there was a lack of effort or application from the Royals side, probably if anything the exuberance of youth contributed to not having that knowhow of seeing a game out as a team.

Understandably the Grecians fans were delighted with the result and their tweets bear that out.

Social

Nothing better than a capacity crowd

While you win, it tastes even better if your rivals lose!

Legacy simply amazing

Nothing like a good start

You’re five games in!

Signings never can tell

Media

A quick whizz around the media and the BBC’s report is not bad. They comment about Exeter dominating the game, smart work from David Button to deny the hosts and Femi Azeez hitting the post, with possible the best misspelling of his name ever!

DevonLive have a decent amount of coverage, with a nice piece on Cole’s rise from the seventh tier of the footballing pyramid to playing in the first team of a League One side.

At this point I would switch over to GetReading, but there’s little point as there’s no coverage, which is hugely disappointing.

Summary

For some reason, I didn’t mind this defeat. It seemed like one that we can learn from without the ramifications of team selection, poor performances, individual errors and that little bit of scapegoating.

This league is competitive and we won’t win every game, but the dedication and effort were there to be seen. Maybe we missed Tyler Bindon in defence, maybe Charlie Savage got a little marked out the game, but these are things that this side will learn from. Tuesday’s selection will be interesting: will Ruben Selles rotate the team and bring some of the old guard back? That is always a hot topic of debate.

The transfer window ends this week. Personally I feel like we are a couple of players short of being competitive enough to do something in this league and the outgoings this week potentially could rival the incomings for tweets from the Reading faithful.

We can’t win every game, but contrary to Tim Dellor’s thoughts, no it’s not an amazing start to the season, but one that does show a little promise.