Burnley Is A Test As The Royals Get Back To Winning Ways

28 October 2022
By Hob Nob Anyone?

It has been a mixed old start to the 2022/23 Championship campaign for Reading FC and manager Paul Ince.

16 games into the season, we have recently ended our run of three straight league defeats, and we do sit pretty comfortably in eighth place in the table - but we are very much an all or nothing side when it comes to results. Eight wins, seven defeats but only one draw to our name so far. If we can sort out those consistency issues, given we only sit five points off first place and top of the table, even turning a few of those defeats into draws would already have had a significant effect on our placing.

There will be optimism and confidence that we can do just that under Ince though, particularly in light of the most recent performance we put in against Bristol City. Although the visitors better dominated possession, they failed to register a single shot on target on Saturday afternoon at the Select Car Leasing Stadium, and in the second half we took full control of the game to take all three points following goals from Mamadou Loum and Andy Carroll. You can save time on finding bookmaker bonuses with betting.com if you are into that kind of thing, as there will be plenty of twists and turns in the remainder of the season.

Whilst Ince would have undoubtedly have liked to see us test their goalkeeper a little bit more than we did across the 90 minutes of action, but with 15 shots overall there is no doubt we could have slightly increased our advantage and made the game a little bit more comfortable, even though it was a decent day out for the home faithful.

Speaking to the BBC following the full time whistle, Ince was understandably pleased with how we had ended the run of three defeats and got back to winning ways.

"I'm very pleased it was a good performance but there's not really one game in the past six or seven that hasn't been, even if we have lost games.

"So many other teams have lost three in a row so we've got to keep fighting and performing and it's always on the day.

"Today was great and to get a clean sheet with a very young backline is phenomenal."

With a trip to Turf Moor to face Burnley next up on the cards for Ince this coming Saturday, whilst the aim will be to make it back to back victories once again to play catch up after the recent losses, Burnley will be no easy game for us as they are having a pretty decent season of their own, racking up seven wins and eight draws (losing only once) in their opening 16 matches of the year.

With three wins and two draws lifting them into third place in the table, form is clearly on their side right now, but football is not played on paper and this is as good a marker for us to lay down as any as we hit the October and November fixture crush ahead of the irrational and stupidly timed break for the 2022 World Cup out in Qatar.

Whilst the break is not ideal, we just have to ensure we leave ourselves well placed to capitalise when real football returns.

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