Pre-season ends with Swans defeat

Reading’s final pre-season friendly ended in defeat, as Swansea proved too strong for us at the Madejski Stadium in a 3-1 win.

It was pretty much the strongest starting line-ups for each side, but was a mainly even opening to the game. Wilfred Bony missed an early penalty though, as Pearce (I think) handled stupidly in the area, but the Ivorian forward smashed his effort against the post.

This would become irrelevant though, as Routledge broke the deadlock, as he broke the offside trap to round McCarthy to put the ball in an empty net. It was to get worse minutes later, as the same player doubled the lead, this time finishing cooly after a quick break.

Just as it seemed it was going to become a whitewash, Nick Blackman scored a superb long-range effort, giving Fabianski no chance in the Swans goal. Into the second half, a mix up between Morrison and Hector allowed Gomis to chip Federici from a one-on-one chance.

It finished 3-1 and deservedly so to the visitors, who were much superior to us in every department. I wouldn’t say it was a bad performance though, as we played some decent passing football at times, but was often too slow, with Swansea able to read the play.

Defensively we looked shaky, but we need to face the reality in that we will not come up against an attack that strong in the Championship this season. Blackman was probably our best player out there, but all the player ratings from the game will be up later today.

Reading: McCarthy, Gunter, Pearce, Morrison, Obita, Hector, Akpan, Blackman, Edwards, Taylor, Pogrebnyak

Swansea: Fabianski, Tiendalli, Bartley, Williams, Taylor, Ki, Shelvey, Sigurdsson, Routledge, Bony, Gomis