Reading have been relegated to the Championship at the end of their first season back in the top flight. The Royals had gained automatic promotion the season before but, unlike fellow promotees Southampton and West Ham, they failed to make the grade. They had to wait for their 11th game to claim their first league win and never recovered from this start, staying in the lower regions of the table throughout the campaign. Brian McDermott returned at the helm at the start of the season, bringing in Premier League players Pavel Pogrebniak, Nicky Shorey and Danny Guthrie on free transfers, along with Garath McCleary, Chris Gunther, Adrian Marriappa and Nick Blackman from the Championship. With hindsight, Reading lacked the quality, particularly at the back to survive at this level. Before winning their first game at home against Everton in mid-November, they had dropped points from winning positions on six occasions. Brian McDermott made repeated attempts to address the problem, reshuffling his defense but it didn’t help keep the goals conceded count down. Adam Federici started the season between the sticks but Alex McCarthy had a good run in the side midway through the campaign. The young Reading keeper suffered an injury midway through and returned in the final stages in impressive form, although it wasn’t enough to keep Reading alive late on. Kaspar Gorkss and Alex Pearce remained the central partnership of choice at the beginning of the campaign but Sean Morrison and Adrian Marriappa started to get a few starts going into the Christmas season. Veteran Ian Harte and Nicky Shorey competed for the left back spots early on with Cummings and Gunther available on the right side. Mikele Legeirtwood, Jobi McAnuff Jay Tabb and Danny Guthrie were regular starters in midfield while Jem Karacan’s season was reduced to only 21 starts by injury. In the attack, Adam LeFondre was used in a supersub capacity by McDermott, who never seemed to trust the striker for the whole ninety minutes. The Channel Islander would score 12 for the Royals in spite of only 9 starts. Pogrebniak, by contrast, only managed 5 goals from 23 starts in the season. A rather feisty Reading attack, with Jimmy Kebe, Hal Robson-Kanu and Noel Hunt getting in on the act, gave the crowd at the Madejski Stadium some moments to remember but it often end on a sour note due to an ever leaky defence. The Royals led 4-0 before yielding to Arsenal in the League Cup at the end of October, going on to lose by 7-5 at the Madejski in extra time. A month later, Manchester United were made to battle hard in a memorable first half to come away from the Madejski with a 4-3 League victory. The Royals seemed to hit a better vein of form at the turn of the year when they got back to back wins, including their first away win at Newcastle on January 19th. Still, they couldn’t pull away from the drop zone, due mainly to their inability to get points against teams around them in the table. They had a catastrophic run of seven straight defeats either side of Easter which sent them to the foot of the table. Brian McDermott was sacked by the Reading board, who appointed Nigel Adkins in his place. It did little to revive Reading fortunes and they had to accept their fate two games before the end of the campaign when they drew with QPR, who were also relegated on that day.
