Agree with the report on the game – it’s 3 points, much needed and that’s about all one can say – performance dire, opposition dire but at least it was a sunny day! I’m not sure if there weren’t any viable options but I’d expected some changes to the team for this one. However, they got the result so you can’t argue too much. Defence should be better with Sonko back and possibly Bikey - both provide a lot of iron – so I’m feeling that part of the team should improve – if it doesn’t we’re in trouble. Up front also should be ok. So that leaves midfield and here I’m not feeling too good. Gunnarson is not doing well and seems off the pace. For all the criticism, at least Oster gets the ball down and makes a pass to feet (but please shoot on sight!). Harper’s best work should be done further forward – he’s tricky and can beat a man, so playing in the hole could be a good place for him. The problem is he is the only outlet ball at present, the full backs are either closed down or don’t want it and we seem a bit clueless in terms of building an attack – is this confidence or the opposition getting to know us? Our loss with Sidwell, seems to me to be someone getting forward and adding numbers to the attack. In this arrangement last season, Harper would sit deep. Gunnarson also seems to be sitting deep so we’re not offering any support gong forward. The question is have we bought the players in that can make this better and when will we see them on the pitch?
Good to hear talk of buying players in during January but I go back to a point I’ve made before – at the prices and wages we’re prepared to pay and the fact that it’s Reading, I wonder who realistically we’re going to attract.
But two weeks off, three points in the bag, feels a lot better than the alternative.
Nick,Tilehurst

If there was a team Reading would have chosen to play after conceding seven in their previous match, Derby at home would surely have been top of the list. Not so much rams as lambs to the slaughter away from Pride Park, the Premier League's bottom side once again failed to trouble the scorers. However, their manager, Billy Davies, was entitled to take a certain consolation from conceding only once and an improved second-half showing which, with a little more confidence in the penalty area, might have resulted in them picking up a first point on their travels... ...if moments of genuine creativity were desperately few and far between, the home team were responsible for them all, and Doyle's winner, a well-placed header back across the goalkeeper after Graeme Murty's cross skimmed off the head of Steve Howard, was deserved. But then, under the circumstances, no one should have expected a classic...
Richard Rae, The Guardian

...it was no more then Reading deserved for their enterprise in attack, while boss Steve Coppell will have been buoyed by the clean sheet after the same starting XI shipped seven goals in last Saturday's 11-goal thriller against Portsmouth.
BBC Sport