Biscuitmen crumble – eventually

Blues’ good form continues with a 2-1 win against Reading. Andy Munro was watching.

This looked like a typical Blues banana skin with ‘lowly’ Reading just coming into form. Yet Blues started off at a decent pace and were well in control for the first twenty minutes although chances were fairly limited. The returning Maghoma was a real thorn in the opposition’s side but strangely we then went off the boil for the remainder of the first half. Indeed, Reading could have easily gone up a couple to the good, defied by last ditch tackles and a couple of brilliant stops by the still much maligned Lee Camp.

Camp admittedly was nearly forced into an error by a wickedly swerving shot but generally he was excellent so maybe fans need to get off his case now. It was also noticeable that some of the decent-sized crowd got a bit restive as we struggled our way to half-time and some of them need a reality check given our slim and modest resources. To make matters worse the excellent Maghoma then limped off.

Luckily, normal service was resumed in the second period as Blues attacked the Tilton End roared on by a rejuvenated crowd. Gary Gardner slid home a fairly simple goal to cap an excellent performance alongside the even more impressive Kleftenbeld…and to think that old ‘Arry was trying to offload the Dutchman on the basis he had something better in the pedestrian form of the unfortunate N’Doye. Even better was to follow when excellent work by Che Adams led to the Juke scoring with a brilliant textbook header across the goal, of which surely a video clip should be retained to coach aspiring centre forwards.

We could easily have scored a hatful with Mahoney wasting a golden chance although in fairness he was generally excellent. In fact, we were nearly made to rue those misses as Reading gave everybody an attack of the jitters when they reduced the arrears late on. However, we held out to secure yet another valuable three points which in the end were thoroughly deserved.