Bolton Wanderers 0-1 Reading FC: Immediate Reaction

I truly cannot wait for this season to be over. What it has lacked in excitement is more than made up for with sicking results. There have been so many games this year where we have absolutely dominated or just had the better of the chances and we've ended up losing. Against Reading it looked like we might have finally had a bit of the luck other teams enjoy with Wanderers being battered for 90 minutes and still holding the score at 0-0. Alas it wasn't to be.

There was a fair amount of buzz pre-game. Nial Maher, long term under 21's captain was making his starting début at right back. If this was an audition for League 1 then he more than passed. He and Derik stopped absolutely everything in the first half.  The main news was 17 year old, Alex Samizadeh had made the bench after a stellar year for the under 18's and under 21's.

We lined up 4231 with Clough and Dobbie out wide and Derik and Vela in centre midfield. Derik looked very impressive there before he was moved to cover Rob Holding post his red card. I want to see more of Derik there in the future. Clough out wide though? Phillips more hell bent on misusing Clough than Lennon was.

Holding was sent off in the 22nd minute and Reading got a penalty. It's hard to comment if it was or not but most agree the red card was harsh and somewhat ruined a game early on. I'll take this chance to say how stupid it is to have a triple punishment of a penalty, red card and a ban. The penalty was saved and Wanderers lived to lose another day.

We defended like absolute champions for the entire game but Ben Amos really kept us in in. On the occasions they broke through, he thwarted them with fantastic saves. If we still had that other shitehouse in goal we'd have lost this by 4 or 5. Definitely gets my vote for Man of The Match.

The disappointment of getting battered and having sod all possession at home was compounded when Heskey came on for Zach Clough; our last substitution and no sign of Samizadeh.

The Bolton script finally reached it conclusion with a lovely screamer from Ola John. 1-0. How very Bolton. How very disappointing. How very meh.