reading

Awaydays 25/26 – Reading 2-1 Orient

Our latest away trip saw us undertake the short hop into Berkshire to take on Reading.

What was the journey like?
It’s one of the easier ones to get to from London, with frequent trains from Paddington and a journey that is under 30 minutes. However the main train station is nowhere near the ground, so it’s either the football special bus or the train to Reading Green Park for a 15 minute walk to the ground.

What were the pubs like?
In my opinion there’s only one place to head (pardon the pun) and thats the excellent Nags Head. It has a fine selection of real ales, and even has it’s own dedicated bus to the football ground. There was also a healthy crowd of Orient regulars in too.

What is the ground like?
The ground is standard for the ‘Out of town’ bowl type grounds that were built around the same time. The views are excellent but the atmosphere is lacking, particularly when they are only half full.

What was the team?
There were a few forced changed due to the injury situation, with Simpson partnering Beckles at the back, and Sonny Perkins coming in on the wing.

First Half
Orient had the better of the opening stages but, as is becoming a trend, they failed to score when on top early on. (That is genuinely copied and pasted from the last blog I did at Mansfield, and I feel that won’t be the last time). Orient fell behind when Reading, with their first real chance of the game, broke and Marriot’s soft effort somehow evaded Simpkin and found the bottom corner. Reading were now well on top, and a couple of smart stops from Simpkin stopped them extending their lead. The obligatory defensive injury curse struck again, with Beckles having to go off around the half hour mark, and REG having to come in. The score somehow remained at 1-0 when Orient cleared one off the line before a bizarre incident when Ahmed produced the most blatant deliberate handball you are going to see, but the referee opted not to book him for it. Of course with Wellens being Wellens his over the top protests ended up with him being booked instead.

Second Half
It was clear to see that there had been a ‘Richie Rocket’ at half time as a rejuvinated Orient took the game to the hosts and El Mizouni scored a fantastic individual effort to pull us back level. Just two minutes later Perkins missed a golden opportunity to level when he was put through by Mitchell’s esxcellent pass, but he never looked confident and his weak effort was easily saved. Orient were well on top, but didn’t really look like scoring, and then the old Achilles heel of not being able to defend the box reared it’s ugly head. A simple ball forward wasn’t dealt with and Frasers shot deflected past Simpkin. With ten minutes of stoppage time Orient tried to force an equaliser, but a deflected effort from Charlie Wellens was the closest they came.

Summary
I’ve seen a lot of people bemoaning a bad ‘performance’. I don’t think the performance was bad, we were just poor in both boxes (Not for the first time this season). Some of the play, particularly in transition, was a joy to watch and Reading were carved open at will on occasion. The old frailties reared their ugly head though, with poor choices/finishing at the sharp end and a frustrating inability to defend basic balls into the box. If we can address those then you would expect things to click. If we can’t address them then I fear we will be looking behind us every week rather than further up the table.

Next Up
Next up we have Stevenage at home in another enthralling treat for the Sky viewers, before one of the most anticipated trips of the season into Wales to take on Cardiff. See you there.

Orient Away 24/25 – Reading

Following the postponement of the Peterborough game due to international callups, we approached the first of 3 away games in a week with the short trip into Berkshire. Getting to Reading is a breeze with frequent GWR trains making the short journey from Paddington, or you can sit on the Elizabeth Line all the way from Whitechapel if that sort of thing floats your boat.

The ground is quite a way from Reading station and you can either get the shuttle bus (Which in our experience is hit and miss), a taxi, or jump on a local train to Reading Green Park which is a 15 minute stroll through the Business Park to the ground.

There are numerous pubs in Reading, but my advice would be to head out to The Nags Head which is around a 15 minute walk from the station. Theres something here for everyone with numerous real ales available, a good food offering and they even do their own shuttle bus to the ground. If you don’t fancy getting their bus you can walk down the road to Reading West and hop on a train to Green Park.

The Select Car Leasing stadium is a decent stadium, and far too good for this level. The view from the away end is a good one from around 95% of the seats, although our ‘allocated’ seats happened to be in the other 5% with some handrails blocking a large part of the pitch. Fortunately with a disappointingly poor away turnout of under 1000 we were able to move to better ones.

There was a lot of bemusement when the lineups were announced, with Orient including 3 full-backs in the line up with Jack Currie making his league debut. There was also a place on the bench for new signing Dom Ball and a welcome return into the squad for Jordan Graham following his long spell out through injury. Following a delay due to a communications problem between the ref and the lino (Insert your own joke here) we finally got under way about 5 minutes late. The opening 25 minutes or so was pretty end-to-end, with both sides having chances to take the lead but being thwarted by their opposing goalkeeper. After 28 minutes though Orient did take the lead through Charlie Kelman. His shot looked to be a routine save, but Boyce-Clarke somehow fumbled it and it ended up in the net. With the amount of goals we’ve gifted the opposition in similar circumstances this season we certainly weren’t complaining about that bit of luck. Orient pretty much controlled the rest of the half, and deserved the half time lead.

In the second half Reading put their foot on the gas a bit more as Orient started to sit deeper. There was an incredible “bodies on the line” moment when Hemming stopped Campbell when he looked certain to score followed by Currie and Brown throwing themselves into crucial blocks. A few minutes after there was another stroke of luck for Orient as Heming was well beaten by an effort by Craig which thumped off the post. Orient introduced Perkins to replace the ineffective Agyei and Simpson came on to replace Happe at the back. A few minutes after we got to see our first glimpse of Dom Ball in action as he replaced Jordan Brown, and Jordan Graham making his first appearance in almost a year as Ollie O’Neill made way for him. Orient, marshalled well by the cool head of Ball on his debut, saw the rest of the game out fairly comfortably to earn a hard-fought away win.

Having lost all four league games, the last of which being the capitulation at Shrewsbury, this was definitely a game where a “Stop the rot” performance was needed. It certainly wasn’t a pretty performance, but the team battled and grafted their way to the three points. Hopefully this is the catalyst to start pushing on in the league, although the upcoming fixtures are very tough.

Next up is a trip to Brentford in the league cup in a game which I doubt will be as feisty as the game refereed by a certain Mr Elleray (Fans of a certain age certainly won’t forget that one), followed by a very difficult trip to unbeaten Stockport. See you there.

Orient Away 23/24 – Reading

Our latest trip was also one of the shortest of the season as we headed into Berkshire to take on crisis club Reading in the ‘Elizabeth Line Derby’. The troubles at Reading are well documented and, due to the actions of another owner that the wonderful EFL deem to be ‘Fit & Proper’ there are a lot of worries over if the club will even exist come the end of the season. Having been there and done that we know exactly what the fans and staff at the club are going through and can only hope that they get decent owners in the same way that we did.

Getting to Reading itself is easy enough. There’s plenty of fast trains from Paddington which will have you there in 25 minutes, or if you fancy it you can stick out the Elizabeth Line all the way from Whitechapel but that will take you over an hour. We opted for the former, not least for the fact that living on the Elizabeth Line we know how poor and unreliable the service is.

Once you arrive in Reading there are plenty of pub options. We opted to eat at the ‘Back of Beyond’ Wetherspoons, which wasn’t as bad as it sounds, before having drinks in The Outlook which overlooks the River Kennet. I’d recommend that place if you like your cocktails/shots. I believe our real ale fans headed to The Alehouse and The Nags Head. If having a drink is not your thing you can always treat yourself to a facial at the ‘Beauty of the Orient’

The ground really isn’t walkable from the town centre unless you fancy a 1-hour hike, so there are three options. Taxi (Good luck getting one after), Shuttle Bus (Again – good luck with the queue after) or train to Reading Green Park and take a 15 minute walk to the ground. We opted for the bus, but I think for future visits we will go the Green Park route.

The Select Car Leasing was a rare new ground for me in the EFL, which bought me up to 84 out of the 92 visited. For me it seemed like one of the better ‘new builds’ in that even though it is a bowl it still had a bit of character. There was also a decent amount of legroom and you didn’t feel crammed in at all. Away fans got part of the South stand and also the upper tier of the corner section.

There was one change to the starting line-up with Ruel Sotiriou coming in for the injured Max Sanders. This was a blow as Sanders has been playing very well recently and a pivotal part of the midfield. Reading had the better of the opening exchanges, as it soon became clear that this game wasn’t going to be the ‘walk in the park’ that some Orient fans were predicting. Orient however did take the lead when the ref spotted a handball in the area and Dan Agyei slotted home the penalty following probably the slowest run up I’ve ever seen. He continued his recent trend of ‘stealing’ trademark opposition celebrations, and this led to him getting some racist abuse on Twitter which was rightly condemned by the majority of both sets of fans. This spurred Reading on even more, and they equalised a few minutes later when Knibbs was left unmarked following a corner as Orient’s run of clean sheets came to an end. Reading edged the rest of the first half, with Orient trying to hit them on the break, but neither side could find a goal to take a lead into the break.

Wellens acted quickly at half time to address the weak areas of the side, with a very poor Sweeney and Sotiriou being replaced by James and Pratley. The second half proceeded to be a lively affair, with both sides being bemused at the decisions of ‘Premier League Ref’ Graham Scott, and both sides pressing for a winner. Orient’s best chance fell to Agyei with ten minutes left, but Button did well to turn his effort around the post. Reading will also be wondering how they didn’t seal the 3 points as James made two outstanding blocks.

I saw some people saying it was disappointing not to win, but this was never going to be an easy match. Despite all their troubles Reading have a decent home record, and it was never going to be as easy as some thought. This point keeps the unbeaten run going, and even the best sides in this division are not going to win every match. Next up is Carlisle at home, which would be ‘Typical Orient’ to lose that one after all the good results recently. Unfortunately (Or fortunately depending on your viewpoint) there will be no blog from Port Vale as I can’t make it, so next blog will be from Barnsley in a couple of weeks.