Five talking points from the Stevenage game

It was a rare win on Tuesday night against League Two outfit Stevenage in the FA Cup third round replay, but still plenty of talking points.

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In all the recent adversity, Gunter is one of the few players to hold his head high – There is clearly a lot of negativity flying about at the moment, but the one player is seemingly not fazed by it, despite having his fair share of doubters, is Chris Gunter. The Welshman got three assists to his name from left-back the other night, in what was his 250th Royals appearance, but in recent weeks, he has arguably been one of our most consistent performers. The incident at Stevenage also where he tried to convince the players to applaud the fans at full-time was also massive for me, he really does care.

Jon Dadi shines, but I still doubt he’ll start on Saturday – The other night was Jon Dadi’s night, his first hat trick in English football and a superb second goal too. He has had a few injury knock backs and Stam’s apparent unwillingness to start him in games has raised potential doubts, but he proved a point the other night. Fans will be calling for him to start and in my opinion he should, now he is high on confidence, but I still think he will be finding himself on the bench on Saturday, with Yann likely to lead the line.

How much should we read into Liam Moore’s exclusion? – There was no sign of Liam Moore in the squad on Tuesday, which has led to some raising even more question marks over his future. The club said he had an ankle injury, despite no sign of it against Hull, so were the club being clever and keeping him un-cup tied for the FA Cup to increase his value? Who knows, but something is definitely up.

A win is a win, but the players still look low on confidence – A 3-0 win obviously looks very convincing on paper, but after a shaky first half an hour, it could have been a lot different. We settled down a lot more after the first half goals, but there are still quite a few players clearly lacking confidence in this style of football. This result will only paper over the cracks until Brentford on Saturday, which is a massive game for us.

Aluko fails to make an impression once again – A potential record deal for us and despite a promising start, the former Fulham mans form has nose-dived massively and despite trying to make an impression on Tuesday, nothing worked out for him. He obviously has the ability, but poor deliveries from wide areas and guilty of holding onto the ball too often, he is struggling to find his feet here.