Watson magic inspires Royals

By Matthew Grant
August 17 2003

Royals swept aside promotion contenders Nottingham Forest at the Madejski Stadium. It was a shame only 16,000 bothered to show, After Reading had been outplayed for the first half an hour Pardew decided to change it and bring on Kevin Watson to replace the uneffective Salako.

And it seemed to do the trick with Watson creating a number of chances with telling passes to the flanks.

Reading were awarded a penalty after Ward brought down Sidwell but he redeemed himself with a good penalty save from Shorey's shot.

In the second half though Reading started to dominate with fantastic one touch football.

The breakthrough finally came. Watson's corner to the edge of the box was volleyed home by Sidwell via a deflection that wrong footed Ward. Then after Watson captialised on poor defending from Forest with another telling pass to Murray who came inside and hit a low shot that creeped under Gavin Ward. Then the mommet Reading fans had waited for, Goater was played through and he shot into the bottom left hand corner to finish off the game.

Man Of The Match= Hard to choose but Watson gets it for changing the came when he came on. Must start on Saturday at Derby County.

Ref Watch= Did fairly well but did make a few odd decision for either team, though a lot better then the one last Saturday at Ipswich!