When : Saturday, December 14 2024, 3pm
Where : Madejski Stadium, Reading, RG2 0FL
Capacity : 24,161
First, shock of all shocks, this home game is a 3pm kick off on a Saturday. Reading's first excursion into the realms of normality for Saturday football at home since Leyton Orient visited in September, and we all know what happened there so perhaps the club should actually have pleaded with SKY to cover it so they'd have real justification to put it back to the 12.30 slot.
Anyway, hoping that Reading are ready to face the realities of league football at home at 3pm on a Saturday as the game will be a real battle with Steve Bruce's team more than capable of knocking a few houses down. They've not had a game to play since winning at Shrewsbury on 4th December which will mean 10 days between the two games, so they're going to be fresh and more than ready to drop a spanner into Reading's home record.
The Tangerines have lost only one of their last 5 games (2-1 at Bolton) but have only won 2 of their last 10 league games. However they are also in a run of 2 successive away league wins having won at both Bristol Rovers and Shrewsbury before this one, so they appear to be coming back into some form after a bit of a malaise, therefore Reading need to be very wary of them and in top form to return the Seasiders to their earlier malaise.
Over the summer Blackpool brought in 5 players on permanent deals including Jordan Rhodes from Huddersfield and one time multi-million pound striker Ashley Fletcher from Watford, they also added a further 4 players on loan from Premier League clubs. Despite the presence of the experienced Fletcher and Rhodes it’s young forward Kyle Joseph who is leading the goal scoring charts with 7 strikes so far in the league. Defender James Husband has scored 3 goals and is the next highest scorer for Blackpool which would suggest it’s probably going to be a good idea for Reading to avoid giving away set pieces as much as possible. Lastly one of the loans is striker Dom Ballard who has now recovered from the awful injury he received while on loan to Reading last season. Hopefully he will not provide a haunting manifestation on Saturday.
As the Walsall game was limited to just youngsters, with only Charlie Savage getting an hour or so from the more senior players, Reading should be pretty fresh and able to combat Blackpool’s challenge reasonably well. Ben Elliott and Sam Smith are both a booking away from a 1 match ban but will get themselves another 5 bookings grace if they can get this, the 19th league fixture of the season, out of the way without attracting negative attention from the referee.
Referee
Anthony Backhouse
Previously
01 Jan 24 > Reading 3-2 Exeter City
19 Aug 23 > Reading 1-0 Stevenage
Historically
Previous league games between the clubs have returned 19 Reading wins to 16 for the Seasiders from 46 games played and of those 46, 40 have been played since December 1979.
In Reading there have been 14 wins for the Royals against 3 for Blackpool and Reading have won 7 of the last 8 league games played at home.
How to follow the game
- Get a ticket and travel to the game
- 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)
