When : Saturday, 7th December, 3pm
Where : Madejski Stadium, Reading, RG2 0FL
Capacity : 24,161
Birmingham City are the next team to come and test their mettle at the Mad Stad and no doubt it’ll be another hard struggle to get anything.
The blues are fourteenth in the division and four points better off than Reading so the Royals need the points to start making inroads and climbing into some nice safe mid table obscurity alongside their midland opponents. Until recently Birmingham had been specialising in the erratic by regularly winning and losing games but now the wins seem to have petered out and been replaced with draws putting the club onto a run of five games with only three points to show for their efforts. The points though have all come by 1-1 in each of their last three games so perhaps some sort of consistency might be finally emerging for our friends from St Andrews.
Brum should not be taken lightly as they have notched up one or two useful wins including away at Brentford and they also seem to be very useful at keeping things tight with games tending to be decided by just one goal in either direction so there is going to have to be some real invention and creativity from a Reading to try and break that mould. As usual Lukas Jutkiewicz is the main threat and again he is leading the way for them with five goals from eighteen starts, while other names that are usually ones to watch are Jacques Maghoma and Kristian Pedersen.
Pep Clotet is caretaker manager at the club having moved up from assistant when Garry Monk left in June however his tenure is becoming ever more slight as results continue to fall short of expectations and ex Royal Mark Robins is being rumoured to be the next one in line.
Marc Roberts is likely to be missing for Birmingham through injury while Reading will be without John Swift though Jordan Obita is expected to at last be fit enough to be considered.
Referee
TBC
Previously
Historically
No meetings before 1986 in any competition
It took 8 games to record the first home win
In 17 previous home league games Reading have managed just 4 wins compared to 6 from Birmingham so really need to start putting that statistic to rights.
How to follow the game
- Get a ticket and travel to the Mad Stad
- Listen to Radio 5 Live and/or a myriad of other radio stations for score flashes
- Ring/text a mate for updates
- Use an iFollow subscription
- BBC Radio Berkshire (FM : 104.4, 104.1 or 95.4 depending where you are in the area)