Mansfield Town 1-5 Reading: Five Star Royals
Goals from Jayden Wareham (x2) Lewis Wing and Billy Bodin, plus an own goal, earned the Royals a thumping victory in Nottinghamshire.
After a disappointing result on Friday, Reading travelled up to a rainy Mansfield to raise their playoff challenge from the dead, against a team battling against relegation and with it all to play for themselves.
Unsurprisingly, the starting XI saw very little changes. An injury-enforced alteration saw Kelvin Abrefa making way for Tivonge Rushesha – I can only assume that Noel Hunt is carefully managing Andy Yiadom’s minutes because of his recent(ish) return from injury – and a recently under-performing Mamadi Camara making way for Jayden Wareham, taking up his usual position through the middle, with Kelvin “Match Report Surname of Horrors” Ehibhatiomhan going out to the left.
Reading (4-3-3): Pereira; Rushesha, Mbengue, Bindon, Garcia; Knibbs, Wing, Savage; Campbell, Wareham, Ehibhatiomhan
Subs: Norcott, Yiadom, Stickland, Carroll, Akande, Camara, Bodin
Wearing for what I suspect is the last time this season, the turquoise-y (? Sim – what colour is this?) third kit, here is how the game unfolded today...
Editor's note: I'm going to say "teal".
Unsurprisingly Reading started slowly and, for the first 10 minutes, the majority of the play was with Mansfield asking the questions of Reading, with some smart runs and passing, even passing out from the back. The Stags were able to open up the midfield spaces and dominate possession. Quite often we saw Reading parking the bus and getting as many players behind the ball as possible.
Almost out of nowhere in the 15th minute, Harvey Knibbs found himself in space on the edge of the box, but wasn’t able to get a shot off. This resulted in the ball pinging around between him, Wareham, Chem Campbell and Charlie Savage, but ultimately with nobody able to get it under control, the ball bounced off Knibbs and out for a goal-kick. Not great, but still encouraging to see Reading doing something higher up the pitch.
A couple of minutes later, a dangerous ball in from the right from Knibbs nearly found its way to Wareham, but the Mansfield ‘keeper was able to get out to the penalty area and palm the ball away, before the linesman signalled for offside against Wareham.
This period of... well, not quite dominance but looking a bit more alive at the very least... stalled after a few minutes. A dangerous free-kick for Mansfield from the left in the 24th minute saw Joel Pereira make a great save with his feet after Mansfield won the ball in the area. Little was he to know that it was called for an offside, but an impressive reaction stop nonetheless.
The pitch was clearly a challenge for both teams, because of the rainy conditions, with the ball moving quicker than expected and players struggling to keep their grip on the slippery surface. More often than not this favoured Reading, as Mansfield were the protagonists for far more attacks than the Royals, meaning the challenge was for them to move themselves and the ball quickly across the challenging surface.
Then, in the 34th minute, Reading received an Easter gift. The Mansfield centre-back passed the ball out to their right but only managed to find Andre Garcia. Garcia intercepted the ball, quickly played it forward a few metres into Ehibhatiomhan central to him, who almost lackadaisically rolled the ball to Wareham, hovering to his right, just outside of the box.
Wareham took his time, teed up the shot with no Mansfield players challenging him, and beat the goalkeeper with an excellent finish across the goal. 1-0 Reading.
Scoring a goal seemed to give Reading more energy – funny that. We should consider trying to score more goals, really.
Tactical innovations aside, in the 41st minute Campbell went on a run through the middle of the pitch and charged into some Mansfield defenders in the box, with the ball getting away from him and finding its way to Ehibhatiomhan just to his left. Ehibhationhan teed the ball up and took a shot from the left, using his unfavoured left, but was unable to find the target.
The fourth official found four minutes from thin air to add onto the first half. Unperturbed by the extra minutes, Reading came close to adding a second with Knibbs initiating an attack and finding Ehibhatiomhan, who wasn’t able to do much with it. The clearance found Campbell who, with all the time in the world, delivered a pretty poor ball into Wareham, leading to a corner which came to nothing. Knibbs seemed to find a new lease of life in the added time, but unfortunately his teammates weren’t quite able to match his output.
Half time: 0-1
But it was good to see Reading finish the half strongly. Going into half-time, with Reading 1-0 up, Bolton Wanderers drawing 2-2 and Leyton Orient losing 1-0, it’s a shame that we had another 45 minutes of football to play, given Reading were back in sixth and three points clear.
However, if Reading could carry on in the second half the way they finished the first, then at least we could be confident of doing our bit in the playoff race.
Half-time saw Mansfield introduce someone called Caylan Vickers, but almost in direct response to this affront, we carried on as we left off from the first half.
We seriously need to consider signing Own Goal, because they seem to be one of our top scorers this season. In the 49th minute, Wareham put in a cross which reached Savage. Savage took a shot which was blocked, and then when Mansfield went to make the clearance, the clearance cannoned off their own player and bounced in to make it 2-0. Scrappy? Yes. Did it matter? Not in the slightest.
Except maybe to Lewis Wing, who perhaps wanted to add a touch of class to the proceedings. Taking the ball at around 35 yards out from the left-hand side in the 57th minute, Wing remembered he hasn’t scored a worldie for a while and smashed a dipping effort in from far out, leaving the keeper with no chance and making it 3-0.
The challenge at this stage was for Reading to try and keep a clean sheet, and try to see this game out comfortably. However, in the 61st minute, Mansfield remembered what they had been doing in the first 25-30 minutes of the game, crisply moving the ball around the edge of the Reading area. This time they went one better, finding an opening and making it 3-1. This was a warning to Reading that, despite the scoreline, this game was far from over.
Garcia picked up a yellow card in the 66th minute for a shirt tug on a running Mansfield attacker. I thought this was somewhat unfair, as well as him conceding a free-kick for it. Fortunately it led to nothing, but you got the sense that Yiadom would be introduced soon to pick up Garcia’s duties.
But before any Reading changes were made, in the 73rd minute the Mansfield ‘keeper made a mess of a kick, essentially – to use a technical term - shanking it directly to Savage.
Savage played a ponderously slow ball centrally to Wareham. He found Knibbs on the right, who then played the ball to Wing to have an attempt. However, this shot hit the post and the ball found Wareham at the left edge of the six-yard box, and despite him having a bit of work to do, he tucked it away for his second of the game and Reading’s fourth. 4-1 to Reading.
After this goal, Billy Bodin came on for Ehibhatiomhan, with Campbell going over to the left and Bodin taking up his customary-for-us position on the right. Also, as expected, Garcia came off for Yiadom, in a direct swap at left-back.
For a while the game seemed to lose its sting. Reading, quite reasonably, seemed content with the result and Mansfield appeared to run out steam. However, for a spell in the 84th and 85th minutes, the Stags summoned up the energy to give it one last hurrah and attack Reading. While it did stretch us a bit, Mansfield were unable to find a way through.
In the 87th minute, Wareham rightly took his flowers with a standing ovation coming from the fans as he came off for Tom Carroll, in a typically Hunt-esque 'shutting up shop' substitution, and Campbell also came off for Adrian Akande.
Far be it from me to tell Hunt how to do his job but, as I’ve said in other match reports, you do have to wonder why he son often refuses to give any of Knibbs, Wing or Savage a bit of a breather.
While I pondered this, the football continued and the referee added on five minutes of extra time because, well, I guess four goals were scored and nine substitutions made in this half, and that probably ate away at the time a bit.
So, both sides were supposed to go through the motions in the added time. However, Mansfield probably took this a little too literally. In a repeat of the opening goal, the Mansfield defender passed the ball across the face of the goal to their ‘keeper, but Knibbs sniffed an opportunity and chased the ball, intercepting the pass before the ‘keeper could reach it.
He then, very unselfishly, played the ball to the right to an onrushing Bodin, to set him up for his first Reading goal with a tidy finish to make it 5-1, in the 94th minute.
With the goal coming right at the end of the game, things closed up at 5-1 to Reading, and after the disaster on Friday, we’ll happily take that result. We remain seventh, after Leyton Orient came back from 1-0 down to win 2-1 against Cambridge United.
Full-time: 1-5
In terms of performance, did we do much differently from the previous game? Honestly, no. This was another game where we were neither at our vintage best nor most energetic.
However, the difference today was that we were a bit more clinical with our chances, Wing took a shooting opportunity and Mansfield (after the first half of the first half) were all too willing to be generous hosts.
We did what we needed to do, we got the result and we can get back on the road and prepare for our final away game of the reason, against another relegation-battling team in Bristol Rovers.
Certainly, Bodin and especially Wareham will have given Hunt some food for thought ahead of Saturday, because of not only their respective performances, but also due to another, now almost typical, Ehibhatiomhan no-show of a game.
Bring on Saturday!