INCOMPETENCE Reading 3-1 Swansea (after extra-time)

On a night of Carling Cup shocks elsewhere, Reading narrowly failed to contrive an upset entirely of their own making by dominating and failing to beat League One Swansea inside 90 minutes on Tuesday evening. Despite having the vast majority of the play, Reading failed to add to Kitson’s neat lobbed effort in the 14th minute; Kitson himself going close to a second goal with a header against the crossbar and Sidwell having another header ruled out. The inevitable happened with barely 10 minutes to go, as Akinfenwa headed a soft equaliser after hesitant goalkeeping from the unimpressive Graham Stack following lapse marking from the shaky looking duo of Sonko and Ingimarsson.

Fortunately, Swansea had Ijah Anderson sent off before the end of 90 minutes and Reading went on to cruise through extra-time with a man advantage. Kitson rounded Gueret at the start of the first period to put Reading in to the lead again and substitute Lita buried the third goal at the end of the second period after good work by Harper to finally kill off the Swans. Steve Coppell had decided to freshen things up and made one or two team changes and Floyd on Football was singularly unimpressed by new boys Stack and substitute Gunarsson, who himself was fortunate to stay on the pitch. The other new faces Makin and Hunt looked ring-rusty at best and John Oster lasted a mere ten minutes of his full debut before limping off injured. As usual, Reading made heavy work of beating a clearly inferior, if spirited, lower division side.

Reading: Stack, Makin, Shorey, Ingimarsson, Sonko, Oster (Little, 10 (Lita, 82)), Sidwell, Harper, Hunt, Doyle (Gunarsson, 71), Kitson. Subs not used: Hahnemann, Convey.

Floyd’s Favourite: Sidwell. Stand-in captain stamped his authority over Swansea.