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Nottingham Forest 2-3 Reading

My trip to Nottingham didn't start exactly to plan, with me and my mate losing our tickets for the match but after making our way towards the City Ground it turns out they beat us there - and we somehow ran into the steward that had a hold of them. Thank goodness!

The Reading end was one of the better atmosphere's I've been in in a while, lots of chanting - and very quickly rewarded with Pavel and Kaspars both seeing the ball cross the line in the opening 15 minutes. The first saw McCleary with some nice play down the wing before sliding across to Pog who bundled the ball in. The latter a well worked corner routine with Gorkss getting his head on the end of it, as so often before.

After the quick start Nottingham came back into the game a bit, and although Reading had some nice passing there was never any killer ball, and never really threatened the Forest goal other than one occasion when McCleary broke through but couldn't score against his old team - striking it from the edge of the area when he probably could have taken it further into the box.

Somebody who did manage to score against their old club, however, was Simon Cox - who played only a handful of games for The Royals. A break down the right hand side saw the ball slid across to Cox, who really couldn't miss. Half time probably came at the right time for Reading with Forest getting back into the game slightly, but they shot themselves in the foot by coming out slowly in the second half - having absolutely no momentum. Maybe showing a lack of confidence in the dressing room, but we just couldn't get anything going.

Another ex-Royal, Darius Henderson, was made to look like Messi as he skipped into the Reading box and rolled it past Alex McCarthy. The goalkeeper had to make a few more stops before McAnuff's introduction just shy of the 70 minute mark seemed to provide the catalyst for The Royals, who saw Jordan Obita's first goal for the club sealed the win.

Obviously a major talking point was Chris Gunter's sending off - especially after being booked for diving last week. I thought that the first yellow was probably justified, the ball had gone out of play and he booted it away - although the way that Cox and Reid appealed for it really got under my skin - and the second was a little iffy - although the Reading twitter says it was deserved so maybe I'm wrong.

We were definitely a lot better at buying fouls too, Billy Sharp and Danny Williams both went down very easily late on in the game. I'm not sure entirely how I feel about us 'diving' but then again it took a lot of pressure off our 10 men and they're only playing the game, right?

Danny Guthrie was very good again, providing the corner for the second and running with the ball a lot although he failed to find the killer pass - like the rest of our players. There needs to be a lot more movement off the ball when the opposition have their men behind the ball to give him a better chance of picking one though.

A win lifts us above Forest, and puts us fourth before today's play which can only be a positive. A battling, 3-2 win should hopefully boost the team and, with some (on paper) easier games to come hopefully we can get a little run going. Although I thought that against Sheffield Wednesday too...

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