Sent Off From The Bench

With Reading failing to score far too often - ten matches this season already - there's fierce debate over whether Glenn Murray is the right person to bring in on a permanent deal after a solid loan spell. Reading actually have a better record without Murray in the team (winning 42% as opposed to 33%), and equally even with Murray's goals he was still a part of 60% of games where Reading failed to score. Obviously the headline figure is Murray has eight goals to his name, tied with Cox as the club's top scorer. The only other viable option to fill the role - Pogrebnyak - only has one, but with only a third of the playing time. Interestingly though if you look back at Pogrebnyak's 13/14 season he's far more efficient, scoring every 5.5 shots (he's taken twelve for his single goal this season), compared to Murray who fires home every 8. Murray also loses the ball more often, on average being dispossessed 1.3 times and hitting 3.1 misplaced passes over 90

Normal service resumed at the Madejski as The Royals didn't manage to find the net for the fourth time in the last six home matches. The point leaves Reading seven points from the relegation zone, but also only a measly eleven points from the play-offs with a run of games against those outside of the top six. The game itself was interesting for a number of reasons: the first league match without Glenn Murray, who doesn't look like he'll be joining Reading any time soon; the continuing re-emergence of Gunter, freed from the captaincy; and the strange sequence of decisions that tend to make up a Saturday afternoon for Michael Hector. It was obvious from the outset that Boro were going to cause problems, and as they should sitting fourth in the table, twenty-one goals to the good in GD column. Hector's first error of the match was to try to win the ball back after he'd miscontrolled it, effectively leaving Pearce with a two-on-one to deal with, but thankfully