The Royals made heavy work of seeing off non-league opposition: Mamadi Camara, Charlie Savage and Adrian Akande struck in regular time, but Chem Campbell’s extra-time brace was required to seal the win.
If you’d offered me five Reading goals and a win against Harborough Town today I’d have enthusiastically accepted it. I’d probably even have been fine with a 5-3, were it on the table. The reality of sitting through this game today though was something else entirely.
Reading started pretty well, went behind, equalised, conceded again straight after and limped into half-time 2-1 down. In the second half the Royals dragged themselves back to 2-2 via Charlie Savage’s long-range effort, then to 3-2 through Adrian Akande’s close-range finish, before Abraham Kanu’s red card ensured a nervy finish - in which Harborough equalised. Chem Campbell took the game by the scruff of the neck in extra time to make it 5-3, with Reading subsequently managing the game well in a period of relative calm - which felt all the more unusual for just how mad the game had been to that point.
Got all that?
I don’t know about you, but I feel like I’ve aged about 10 years today. I need a lie down. Or a drink. Or both. What a way to feel about a game that, on paper before kick-off, only had one winner.
At one point late in the second half it dawned on me that this was surely the most stressful Reading game I’ve ever experienced. Promotion battles and relegation scraps: neither have been quite as mentally taxing as watching 10-man Reading holding out against a Harborough side giving it everything they had and then some.
Typically, just as I was about to tweet that from the TTE account, Harborough made it 3-3. That goal expunged much of my stress, albeit at the expense of replacing it with the anxiety of realising that Reading were now perilously to being knocked out of the FA Cup by a seventh-tier side. At home. Having led 3-2.
Fortunately that didn’t happen of course, but although Reading did the most important bit today - getting into the next round - they still came perilously close to disaster. I’m relieved we didn’t go out today and am glad to see Reading in the hat for the next round, but I’m left with a bittersweet feeling nonetheless.
Hats off to Harborough who fought like lions today, were a credit to the competition and should have been rewarded with a replay. It’s still a disgraceful decision that they were abolished. But from a Reading point of view, that game was far harder and much less straightforward than it needed to be.
The afternoon started with Ruben Selles making a swathe of changes (side note: I love the word ‘swathe’) as he put out a young team that still featured some first-team quality.
Reading (4-3-3): Button; Ahmed, Holzman, Kanu, Garcia; Elliott, Wing, Camara; Akande, Wareham, Tuma
Subs: Rhone, Dorsett, Dean, Bindon, Craig, Savage, Sackey, Campbell, Smith
Reading were fired a warning shot in the first few minutes when the visitors had an early corner that dropped to one of their players in space in the area. Fortunately he was offside, but that moment acted as a Harb-inger (get it?) for set pieces yet to come.
For a time the game settled into the anticipated pattern: Reading had plenty of possession and territory, as well as creating some decent opportunities, with Ben Elliott’s shot blocked, Lewis Wing forcing a good save with a deflected shot and Louie Holzman’s header going straight at the ‘keeper. Carving out high-quality openings and actually getting the ball in the back of the net was another matter though.
“There are 18-minute spells in FA Cup games when nothing happens and three-minute spells when everything happens,” as Vladimir Ilyich Lenin may or may not have said. OK, that could possibly be a slight misquote, but from minutes 18 to 21, the game flipped back and forth in dramatic fashion.
First, Freddie Robinson nodded home at the back post from a corner, giving the visitors a shock lead and sending the thousands of travelling fans into raptures. Reading responded immediately - Mamadi Camara stabbing home via a deflection which may have been enough to classify it as an own goal - but then fell foul of another set piece. This time it was a long throw, launched in from the right and not dealt with, allowing the unmarked Riley O’Sullivan to rifle in from close range at the back post.
In the first quarter of an hour there seemed to only be one winner, but that brace of set-piece goals flipped the script. Reading were looking vulnerable from balls into the box - a real leveller despite the mismatch in overall quality between the two teams - and that remained the case for the rest of the half.
The Royals tried to respond again but looked largely incapable of doing so. If the equaliser had given Reading any confidence boost it was snuffed out by Harborough’s second, with the hosts seriously unconvincing in their attempt to unlock a stubborn, deep-lying Bees defence.
Getting the ball forward wasn’t the issue, but there was a distinct lack of composure and ingenuity in the final third. While Reading’s front three of Adrian Akande, Jayden Wareham and Basil Tuma have pace to burn, they were sorely lacking in the intricacy, patience precision required to pick holes in Harborough’s back line.
The Royals’ best bet of finding a way back into the game seemed to be via long shots - an option particularly suiting Wing. He came the closest of any Reading player to restoring parity before the break when, around half an hour in, he forced an excellent save in the top corner with a strike from the edge of the area.
Selles made two changes at half-time, bringing Charlie Savage and Michael Craig on for Camara and Elliott to freshen things up in the two midfield spots ahead of Wing. Getting Savage on was the right call and resting Elliott made sense, but I’d have retained Camara: moving his trickery and close control to the left wing in place of Tuma. Swapping off Kanu (on a booking after a foul on the halfway line) for the more experienced Harlee Dean would have also been a wise choice, and hindsight wasn’t required on that note.
Reading started the second half fairly well, with Savage busy, involved and productive in the middle, forcing some saves with efforts from range. Wareham also had a couple of chances that he should have done better with, albeit to different degrees: a header right after the restart was put straight at the ‘keeper and he later really should have tucked home a low Akande cross but failed to connect properly.
The Royals were probing but not quite getting there... until Savage stepped up to the plate just before the hour mark. He found space around 25 yards out, had time to pick his spot and did so expertly, finding the bottom corner with a sweetly struck hit. Game on.
Six minutes later we went one better. A left-wing Tuma cross wasn’t dealt with, the ball bounced around the Harborough box and Akande was eventually on hand to stab home from close range, giving Reading a belated lead and opening his account in senior football.
Reading desperately needed to build on that goal and establish a bigger cushion, but they failed to kick on. Selles had introduced Campbell for Wing at 2-2 and then brought Jeriel Dorsett on at left-back at 3-2, with Andre Garcia taking Tuma’s left-wing spot, but neither of those changes kicked the Royals into a higher gear.
Instead the game flipped. Again. Kanu had already been booked for a sloppy foul on the halfway line in the first half when he did the same thing again in the 75th minute and was accordingly dismissed. Anticipating pressure from the visitors, Selles brought Dean on for Akande, and an onslaught did indeed arrive.
The final quarter of an hour or so of the game was one of the most anxious spells in a match I’ve ever sat through. Reading struggled to keep the ball or get up the field, with the visitors relentlessly sending it into our third, roared on by a bumper support behind David Button’s goal.
Eventually they had their equaliser. The ball came in from their left - Ashqar Ahmed not strong enough to shut down the crosser - it was knocked down and Kai Tonge converted from close range. That goal had been coming and, truth be told, at that point you wouldn’t have bet against another for the visitors, although Wareham went close again when he met a Garcia cross at close range seconds before full-time, only to be denied by the ‘keeper.
Overall Harborough ended normal time in the ascendancy, could well have won the game inside 90 minutes, and would rightly have been in high confidence heading into extra time. In the end though, a double tap of quality and some superior fitness saw Reading through to the next round.
The Royals came out into extra time strongly and soon took charge. Campbell cut inside from the left in the 93rd minute and slammed the ball into the bottom corner, before dancing into space on the edge of the area a few minutes later and slotting across the ‘keeper for 5-3.
The game was pleasingly short on incident from then on in. You could tell the stuffing had been knocked out of Harborough by Reading’s fifth goal, and as extra-time dragged on players on both sides tired, although the Royals’ overall fitness advantage was apparent. An eight-goal thriller of a match ultimately had no final plot twist.
The bottom line is that Reading got the job done. Failing to get past Harborough would have been a disaster and, despite going down to 10 men, the Royals eventually prevailed. We’ll be rewarded with a valuable cash bonus for getting into the next round and drawing a big club away from home would significantly increase that haul, making it the best outcome for a club that’s openly accepted it’s “navigating cashflow challenges”.
For me there was a clear reason why Reading struggled to see Harborough off today: a lack of composure, particularly among the younger players. Their effort is never in question and I firmly believe all of them have potential, but translating all of that into a top performance in a psychologically challenging game such as this one is a tough ask.
Reading came into this match as clear favourites, with the onus on them to play on the front foot, impose their game on Harborough and win comfortably. The visitors however had nothing to lose but did have the mental boost of playing in the biggest game of their lives - the kind of special occasion they would have been desperate to rise to.
Such a match-up piled pressure onto Reading - the kind of pressure that players only get used to with extensive first-team experience, not in academy football. Sending youngsters out on loan is a valuable aspect of their development, but that’s something Reading haven’t able to do a lot recently, with young players generally going straight from the academy into the first team.
The pressure, lack of experience and lack of composure were apparent in various aspects of the Royals’ performance: in the slack defending at set pieces, the lack of cutting edge in the final third and the poor game management during the 90 minutes.
None of this is to say that anyone who played today should be written off. Not at all - never after one game and certainly not after a match as unique as this one. But it’s still fair to say this game threw up a tough challenge for Reading which they struggled to deal with - and would do well to learn from in the future.
