Nothing typifies and demonstrates our current dilemma that this abject performance against Villa . It's like somebody has pulled the plug out and everything we achieved and stood for last season has just simply disappeared down the hole . With eleven games left we need at least five wins , not impossible but almost after our eighth consecutive defeat. Anger is the immediate emotion as it's as clear as night follows day that the clubs naive and unbelievable decision not to invest in the squad as backfired with disastrous consequences and will haunt the club for who knows how long ? It's no good JM whirling his arms around before kick off trying to stir the fans up , there's no problem with fans , it's the so called upstairs management of the club he should be firing up with a rocket up their backsides . The likes of Wigan , Bolton ,Sunderland and Birmingham will be laughing their socks off as we go down like a lame duck . All those sides have invested , not breaking the bank in the process and look where they are now . We are simply not good enough and certain players are now becoming a liability , they've simply have run out of ideas and steam and find themselves playing out of position .No point naming names we all know who they are . We now need a miracle to stop this slump and stay up , who can hand on heart say that will happen , not me .
Nick Newbury

When the local newspaper offers impassioned support to its leading football club, you know the team are in trouble. Thus, the “Keepy Uppy” campaign of the Reading Evening Post says it all. The town’s side are in free-fall and the statistics are damning. Reading’s eighth successive league defeat, against Aston Villa yesterday, set a club record. It was also their twentieth consecutive match without a clean sheet. Until Nicky Shorey clipped in a 25-yard free kick deep into stoppage time, Reading had gone 544 minutes without a goal. The “cauldron of optimism” that John Madejski, the chairman, had called for before kick-off had long become a hush of frustration. If the result was poor, the display barely merited anything better. It was no way in which to mark Steve Coppell’s 800th league match as a manager, though it did at least give him the ammunition to make wholesale changes. His patience has snapped. “Maybe I’ve been too loyal to the players,” Coppell said. “There might be four or five changes for the next game [away to Middlesbrough]. Some players are just not delivering. We’ve got to break the cycle.”
Russell Kempson

...the loss was their eighth on the trot and the foundations for it were set early on. The home side's defence had looked uncertain at the start and it was a sign of things to come as they gave the home fans plenty of cause for concern. Any promise that James Harper's early shot, which stung the hands of Scot Carson, had briefly given the Royals quickly evaporated by a shaky back-line.
The BBC