Reading 1-1 Stoke City
Reading made their return to the Premier League thanks to winning automatic promotion last year with best defensive record in the Championship. Their first game back in the top flight saw them taking on a Stoke City side that had struggled to score through out the previous season (scoring just 36 goals in 38 games), it was perhaps obvious that this wasn't going to be a goal fest, though both teams had invested in quality attackers with Stoke signing Michael Knightly whilst Reading managed to pick up Pavel Pogrebnyak.
It was Stoke's Michael Kightly that opened the scoring with a fair amount of help from Reading keeper Adam Federici who really should have stopped Kightly's shot in the 34th minute which seemed to go through the keeper. Whilst Reading tried to get back in to the match they really struggled. With the clock ticking down Dean Whitehead was shown his second yellow card after fouling Garath McCleary in the penalty area. Up stepped Adam Le Forde who managed to draw Reading level with just minutes to play.
With 10 men Stoke struggled to hold on with an Ian Harte free-kick being the nearest either team got to scoring a late winner before the referee finally blew the whistle to bring the match to an end at 1-1.
Reading's manager Brian McDermott should be proud of his team who showed determination and managed to get a well deserved point by refusing to give up. Whilst Federici's blunder certainly hurt Reading's chances in the match they showed enough to be proud of and Federici is usually a reliable keeper, so I'm happy to just out this down to being a one off. Pogrebnyak is an excellent signing though they fail to really provide him with the service he needs, however as the team gels he'll be a very influential player. If they cannot open up defenses however Reading will be in the same position Stoke where they were closer to the drop zone than they would have liked.
For Tony Pulis he may well view the match as 2 points lost and not 1 point earned however he needs to be pleased at the fact Michael Kightly looked excellent today and Robert Huth, who had been an injury worry looked to be fully fit with an excellent performance. After last season's lowly goal target the addition of Kightly looks to have been an excellent bit of business who should help Stoke bang them in with more regularity. If Stoke can score more whilst keeping the likes of Huth fit they should be a secure mid table team.
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