Reading v Wolves Preview
Posted on | January 26, 2009 | No Comments
This is undoubtedly the pick of the midweek games as 2nd play 1st at the Madejski Stadium. Wolves were running away with the league not so long ago yet after some poor form, Reading have now caught them up and just five points lay between them now.
While Wolves may not be on the best of runs at the moment, neither are Reading. The Royals have won just once out of their last five and while Wolves have given them the opportunity to close the gap even more, Steve Coppell will be disappointed they haven’t taken advantage. A 4-0 victory over Watford a couple of weeks ago indicated that Reading may be close to getting back on form, yet they followed that result up with a poor 2-0 defeat away to Swansea. With draws against Southampton and Cardiff also being thrown in there, it looks like Coppell’s men have hit their sticky patch for the season and need to do everything they can to get out of it if they are to stay in the top two. Their home form has been quite solid this season and if they can notch up another result at the Madejski on Tuesday, they’ll be just two points behind opponents Wolves.
It was just impossible for Wolves to stay in the sort of form that they started the season in, as Mick McCarthy’s side looked absolutely unstoppable and were yards ahead of the pack at one point. Recently though, they’ve been brought back down to earth and results haven’t quite been as McCarthy would have liked. They haven’t won in the Championship in their last four and although they recorded a win against Birmingham in the Cup not so long ago, there’s no doubt that the league is taking priority. They were slightly unlucky against Middlesbrough in the last round of the Cup where a late goal won it for Boro, but other than that they’ve looked a shadow of their former selves and that makes this game vital.
As for team news, Reading will be missing at least two players with Liam Rosenior and Andre Bikey both out through injuries, although Steve Coppell has a readymade replacement for the former as Julian Kelly looks to step in. As for Wolves, Mick McCarthy is hoping to hand a debut to new signing Nigel Quashie. Elsewhere, Richard Stearman returns from suspension, but McCarthy is likely to make plenty of changes having left a lot of players out of the Cup game against Middlesbrough.
This is a tough one to predict. Both teams have fantastic squads on paper, yet both are suffering from poor form at the moment. However, we think Reading could come out on top – they’ve been good at home and it wasn’t so long ago they had experience of these promotion-deciding games. We’ll predict a 1-0 win for the Royals.
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