Reading forge ahead despite loss of Sidwell
Coventry City 1 Reading
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Your support makes all the difference.Alan Pardew is five days away from the inevitability of a vitriolic first return to the Madejski Stadium. One of football's most tiresome habits will demand that his Saturday lunchtime in Berkshire is turned into an insulting, highly personal battering of his ear-drums.
Well, let's face it, Royals fans might think, anyone who sees West Ham United as a bigger club than Reading, richer in potential as well as tradition, deserves all he gets. Such fans may decide they have the right to have a got at a man who deserted them in favour of trying to take the Hammers straight back up.
What they might also reflect on is that Steve Coppell is thus far adding to the good times his predecessor gave them. For a club who have never supped at English football's top table Reading should find the present First Division table much more than mere crumbs of comfort.
Victory at Coventry, secured with 10 men following the controversial 57th minute dismissal of the midfielder, Steve Sidwell, for two bookings, means they are three points off Pardew's fourth-placed team. And all this after reaching the play-offs last season in their first year out of the Second Division.
Only West Bromwich Albion can better Reading's tally of eight League away wins and the fact that Coppell is nursing an injury-ravaged squad underlines this as another very worthy challenge. Coventry's own play-off hopes probably disappeared with the end of a run of three successive high-scoring home victories, although their manager, Eric Black, saw enough in their performance to cling to hope.
They were very much picked off on the counter-attack - by a wickedly crossed early free-kick from John Salako that bounced straight in and then by a neat side-foot finish from Shaun Goater. Gary McSheffrey, having achieved the considerable feat of hitting the bar twice with the same header, nodded in his ninth goal in 12 starts, but Reading withstood the late rally.
They will now try to have Sidwell's dismissal rescinded and no doubt try to inconvenience a certain former favourite next time out.
Goals: Salako (10) 0-1; Goater (54) 0-2; McSheffrey (67) 1-2.
Coventry City (4-4-2): Shearer; Deloumeaux, Konjic, Davenport, Staunton; Doyle (Olszar, 60), Gudjonsson, Kerr, Warnock (Barrett, 85); McSheffrey, Joachim. Substitutes not used: Ward (gk), Shaw, Pead.
Reading (4-4-2): Ashdown; Murty, Newman, Ingimarsson, Hughes; Morgan (Brooker, 66), Sidwell, Harper, Salako; Goater (Watson, 58), Kitson (Savage, 75). Substitutes not used: Young (gk), Boucaud.
Referee: A Butler (Nottinghamshire).
Bookings: Coventry: Doyle, McSheffrey. Reading: Sidwell. Sending-off: Reading: Sidwell.
Man-of-the-match: Salako.
Attendance: 15,811.
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