And that’s all from me. It’s really been very fun indeed. Commiserations to Fulham, who were at the very least Reading’s equals tonight. Congratulations to Reading, who scored one goal more than their opponents. Bye!
The penalty looked pretty clear-cut on first viewing, but the decision looks harsher and harsher with every viewing.
Jaap Stam grins at a Sky microphone. He really speaks very fast, but I did my best:
Well, it’s one of the top moments of my career. It’s great to come here, to work with a club with potential, with players who are willing to work very hard to get somewhere. We did it. To get this result today, a win against Fulham, a very good team … we go into the final. When you platy against a team with a lot of qualities, you know you need to be aggressive, but you need to take initiative on the ball yourself, which we’ve shown throughout the season. In the first half we did quite well, second half we started well, scored the goal. After that you want to keep on going, but the other team takes more risks. They controlled the game, and we needed to make some changes. We really needed to dig in and we got that win.
Ali Al-Habsi’s been great throughout the season. The players are very happy with him, he’s a player with great reflexes as well, today again a terrific game from him. We knew what we needed to do to get a result against them, to work very hard, and that’s what we’ve done. I don’t care who we play. They’re both very good teams. You can’t say you’re going to win in the final against those teams. They’ve got quality, so they can make it difficult for us but we can make it difficult for them as well.
That was a fabulous play-off game. Two fine sides, attacking each other without pause for 90 enthralling minutes. Chances, controversy, saves, drama – I’d gladly have taken another half an hour, but otherwise I can have no complaints.
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I’ve got a proper actual match report for you:
Ali Al-Habsi, the man of the match, speaks to Sky:
It’s been a fantastic season. At this level, it’s really hard to play week in week out, but we showed today, it’s been fantastic. We’ve been fantastic all season at home. That’s why, when we got a draw at Fulham, we knew when we had a job here we’d do it. It would be fantastic to return to the Premier League. I’ve been there, but for the lads it would be great. We said before, we have three cup finals. We did two, and now the big one.
Fans stream onto the pitch! What a win for Reading, but Fulham had enough chances to equalise, and probably to win. A combination of poor finishing, a few fabulous Al-Habsi saves, and Reading’s hard work and defensive numbers denied them.
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Final score: Reading 1-0 Fulham (Reading win 2-1 on aggregate)
90+6 mins: It is!
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90+6 mins: Fredericks, who has had an excellent game, gets to the byline but his cross goes behind, and surely Al-Habsi’s clearance will be the game’s final kick.
90+5 mins: Thirty seconds to go. Fulham hoist the ball forward …
90+4 mins: Johansen tries to cross but hits only a defender. It bounces back to Johansen and this time his cross is a beauty, but Martin’s header flies wide!
90+4 mins: It’s not a great corner, but a few moments later they have another, and Bettinelli remains in the area!
90+3 mins: Aluko’s lovely disguised pass looks like it’s about to release Fredericks in the area, but a defender gets a boot to it! Corner! And the keeper’s coming up!
90+2 mins: Kelly intercepts a pass, and sets off on a break. He tries to kick the ball past Ream, beyond whom lay nothing but a lot of grass and an ill-guarded net, but the defender intercepts.
90+1 mins: The fourth official raises his board. Five minutes! Will that rouse the visitors?
90 mins: Sessegnon swings in an optimistic cross, and it’s booted clear. Fulham are visibly wilting.
89 mins: Fulham win a corner, make nothing of it, and it goes out of play for a goal kick. Reading take an absolute age over fetching the ball and getting it to Al-Habsi, and when they do the board goes up, and they take an age over making a substitution. At the end of it all Kermorgant is off, and Joseph Mendes is on.
88 mins: It’s a 10-man defence now for Reading, and Fulham keep crashing up against it.
85 mins: Cairney, tension having totally taken over his body, criminally gifts the ball to Reading as Fulham work the ball from right to left in search of a chink in the home defence.
83 mins: Fulham give the ball away, and Grabban leads a three-on-three break that eventually peters out disappointingly, and the home side play the ball all the way back to their own goalkeeper.
81 mins: Fulham absolutely should have equalised by now. However, they haven’t, and the clock is ticking loudly. The more desperate they get, the more players they throw forward. And the more players they throw forward, the more chance there is of a dramatic, decisive counter-attack. This remains great.
79 mins: Another good moment for Aluko, who bursts into the box and crosses low to Martin, who attempts a backheel flick into the net, barely makes contact, spins, sees the ball is still next to him, swings his left foot and boots Al-Habsi, who has just dived onto the ball!
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78 mins: Aluko’s 360-degree spin to escape from the defender on the right wing there was superb.
77 mins: Incredible save/terrible miss combo! Aluko does lovely work to get free on the right, he lays the ball back to McDonald, and he absolutely should have scored! Instead, he gives Al-Habsi a third of a chance to save it, and save it he does, tipping over the bar with a flying right fist!
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75 mins: A second Reading change: Kelly comes on, and Swift, who in most alternate universes scored his side’s second, is off.
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74 mins: This is absolutely great stuff. It’s been a fabulously fun game for a neutral. Fulham have a corner on the left, and as its played in four players contrive to attempt to kick it and miss, one after the other. They may have been trying to emulate this, but I doubt it.
73 mins: Chris Martin comes on for Malone, who was influential in the first half but has done little in this one.
73 mins: A chance for Fulham, Aluko getting the ball on the right of the area, checking onto his left foot, and then curling disappointingly high.
72 mins: Johansen has the ball for Fulham, a yard from the byline on the left edge of the area. Bizarrely, he tries to shoot. If he tried that 1,000 times it would never go in. This one flies over and wide.
70 mins: Interesting: slow motion replays show that the first contact on the bouncing ball in the penalty area in the moments before the penalty award was with … Kermorgant’s fist, from which it bounces onto Kalas’s arm!
69 mins: Ready break well, but Williams is closed down just as he prepares to shoot from the edge of the area, and Kermorgant’s follow-up effort is very emphatically wide.
69 mins: Fulham are knocking on the door, but Piazon ends a good move disappointingly, by going down way too easily inside the penalty area.
67 mins: Aluko’s nice first-time left-foot pass over his shoulder sets Sessegnon free down the left, but he shoots puzzlingly early and disappointingly weakly.
66 mins: Reading’s first substitution sees Blackett leave the field (very slowly) and McCleary replace him.
65 mins: Scott Malone has been booked for dissent, after his ridiculous exaggerated dive is ignored by the referee.
61 mins: Now Fulham miss a wonderful chance! The ball is pulled back from the right to Piazon, whose first-time shot was surely goalbound until it smacks a defender in the chest and goes wide! There was a lot of goal to aim at there, but he picked out a defender!
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60 mins: Fulham, leading the corner count 8-3, send another one into the mixer. It is headed away.
58 mins: Johansen stops Williams escaping in midfield with a cynical trip, and is booked for his troubles.
58 mins: A double substitution for Fulham: Sessegnon and Piazon are on, and Ayite and Kebano are off.
57 mins: Fulham immediately scream down the other end, where Aluko’s low cross is beaten away. Is shouldn’t be, but is, still on a knife-edge.
56 mins: It was another fine, fast move, and it ended with Gunter’s low cross from the right picking out Swift at the far post, but with seven-eighths of an empty goal to aim at, he picks out the one-eighth with a goalkeeper still in it!
56 mins: Impossible miss! Reading should have won it there!
53 mins: Fulham haven’t started their second half yet.
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52 mins: Now Moore is booked, for a late sliding lunge on Aluko.
51 mins: Kermorgant is booked for a foul. If the first half was manic, this is manicker.
50 mins: Nearly another! Grabban bustles into the right side of the area and blasts a shot towards the near post, but this time Bettinelli does save!
GOAL! Reading 1-0 Fulham (Kermorgant, 49 mins)
Kermorgan’s shot goes low and hard. Bettinelli goes the right way, and the ball goes nowhere near the corner, but it’s hard enough to fly underneath the keeper!
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Penalty to Reading!
48 mins: Kalas and Kermorgant jostle for the ball out on the left-hand side of the area, and the ball hits the defender’s left arm, and he then pushes it into his path. The referee spots it, and blows his whistle!
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47 mins: Lovely move from Reading! They keep the ball well under pressure deep in their own half, sweep up to the other end and Kermorgant’s cross picks out Grabban, whose header is a bit tentative, and is saved.
46 mins: Peeep! Fulham get things re-started.
The players are on their way back out. More of the same please.
In case you’re wondering about away goals and stuff, the official regulations simply don’t mention them. It doesn’t matter where you score your goals in this competition, only how many of them you score.
It’s been as thrilling a goalless half of football as you could hope to see. Really a lot of fun, and if there have been no goals it’s largely because – and this is really the only possible gripe – the quality of crossing hasn’t really been up to scratch, while the quality of the goalkeepers has been.
Half time: Reading 0-0 Fulham
45+2 mins: It’s headed clear, and the whistle immediately goes!
45+2 mins: Right at the end of the minute, Ilori concedes another corner. This will be the last action of the half.
45+1 mins: Into the first and only minute of first-half stoppages, and the corner is cleared.
45 mins: The ball is passed back to Al-Habsi by Ilori, really very hard indeed, and the keeper miscues his clearance. Fulham have a corner.
42 mins: Reading spend a while with the ball just outside Fulham’s penalty area, looking just about to create a fantastic shooting chance for a while. In the end they don’t create a fantastic shooting chance, only a quite good one, for Swift, and his shot, or perhaps it was a cross, is cleared behind for a corner.
38 mins: The night’s first booking, and I’d wager not the last: McDonald is shown a yellow card for a foul on Williams.
38 mins: Reading break quickly, and the move ends with the ball looping off a defender into the path of Grabban, whose volley is charged down by Ream. A half-chance.
36 mins: Fulham gets two chances to cross from the left. The first doesn’t get off the ground, and hits a defender. The second gets too far off the ground, and ends up with a Reading throw-in on the other flank.
34 mins: Fulham break, the ball is played wide to Malone, and with two team-mates to aim at his low cross is behind both, and cleared. Moments later they get forward again, the ball is played back to Aluko, and he scoops his shot high!
33 mins: Now Reading get forward, and as the ball is played in to Grabban his marker, Kalas, collapses to the turf, allowing the striker to control, turn, and then fire in a disappointing shot.
31 mins: Oooh! Fulham’s corner from the right is a cracker, and it dips and curls to Ayite at the back post, and that should have been a tap-in! Instead, it was a tap-wide!
28 mins: Save! And another save! Cairney’s free kick is very good, dipping and curling and with plenty of pace, but it’s not quite close enough to the post and Al-Habsi flings himself to his left to claw it away. The ball bounces to Aluko, whose first-time follow-up effort hits the goalkeeper’s legs!
27 mins: Fredericks runs again. He goes down on the edge of the area, but the ball runs to Ayite, who is beyond the defence and in the area … but then Martin Atkinson blows his whistle, because Fredericks was fouled. He could have played the advantage there.
26 mins: Reading break, and try to release Kermorgant, but Ream deals with the situation bravely, and well.
25 mins: Fulham are having a good spell, dominating possession for the last quarter-hour or so, but their crossing has been poor.
23 mins: “Why are Premier League referees officiating the Championship play-offs?” wonders Lord Andrew Dennett on Twitter. “Nothing wrong (for the majority) with Championship referees all season!” Because they are (supposed to be) the best officials in the land, and thus wheeled out in the most important fixtures. If a Championship referee really does nothing wrong, they should eventually make the Premier League list too.
22 mins: This is better from Fulham. Fredericks comes forward again, but after a good run his through-ball is cut out.
20 mins: Kebano sends in a lovely cross from the right for Fulham, but there is but one red shirt in the box, and it’s nowhere near the back post.
18 mins: Now Al-Habsi is forced into a save! Fredericks dances down the right and cuts into the area, beats a defender and then drives a left-footed shot low and hard towards the near post. Had it gone towards the other corner it might have gone in, but as it is the keeper saves.
17 mins: It has been a particularly uplifting start for Reading, who have spent all but a couple of minutes putting Fulham under pressure. No goals, but all sorts of encouragement.
15 mins: Space opens up ahead of Kermorgant as the defender he was busily jostling with falls over. The referee doesn’t blow his whistle, but the linesman does raise his flag, and the attack is curtailed.
14 mins: A great start to this game: crowd in full voice, ball zinging hither and yon. Keep it up.
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12 mins: Save! The ball is played in from the left towards Kermorgant and Grabban, practically standing on each other’s toes in the penalty area. It falls at Kermorgant’s feet, and his low shot is heading towards the corner but very well saved by Bettinelli!
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9 mins: They’re still pushing, though. A corner from the left leads to a corner from the right, but Kermogant heads clear.
8 mins: Fulham get a chance to do some attacking, but Aluko’s cross from the left is poor and goes out for a throw-in.
6 mins: Still pretty much one-way traffic, though the game is largely being played in the central third.
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3 mins: They try something from the training ground, passing the ball back and immediately chipping it into the mixer, which ends with the hopelessly offside Lewis Grabban heading over.
3 mins: Reading have started very much on the front foot, and after their first foray forward ended with a goal kick, their second has brought a corner.
2 mins: Sky’s handy cut-out-and-keep tactical guide, for your reference:
Here's how @ReadingFC and @FulhamFC line up at the Madejski. Watch live on Sky Sports 3 HD or follow it here: https://t.co/i4DsQiU5k5 pic.twitter.com/l9XYbMWB7F
— Sky Sports EFL ⚽️ (@SkySportsEFL) May 16, 2017
1 min: Peeeeeep! We’re off, Lewis Grabban doing the honours from the centre spot.
The players are out of the tunnel, and are about to start playing football!
The players are in the tunnel. None of them is visibly quaking.
Jaap Stam talks to Sky, but won’t reveal if he’ll be playing 4-3-3 or with a back three:
We’ve got a good home record. We know what their strengths are, we’re aware of that. It’s no use for us to sit back, wait, prevent them from scoring and not go forward tonight.
Slavisa Jokanovic, meanwhile, says his team is here to win the game in style:
Somebody must win the game today. We arrive here with the same mentality, a desire to win the game. Pressure in this profession is normal. I expect they will be extra motivated and extra concentrated, it’s part of this kind of game, and we must manage ourselves.
Steve Sidwell, having a) won promotion this season; b) played for Fulham; and c) played for Reading, is uniquely and perfectly qualified for the role of guest pundit that he seems to be playing on Sky this evening. He thinks Fulham are the favourites, which I suppose they must be, despite Reading’s excellent home record.
Reading will be without their captain, Paul McShane, who was sent off in leg one. They are, notably, unbeaten at home against the entire top third of the table.
Those teams again, this time in text-only format for those with an aversion to Twitter or graphic-unfriendly internet connections:
Reading: Al Habsi, van den Berg, Tiago Ilori, Moore, Gunter, Williams, Evans, Blackett, Swift, Grabban, Kermorgant. Subs: Beerens, Mendes, McCleary, Popa, Gravenberch, Jaakkola, Kelly.
Fulham: Bettinelli, Fredericks, Ream, Kalas, Malone, McDonald, Johansen, Ayite, Cairney, Kebano, Aluko. Subs: Odoi, Parker, Cyriac, Piazon, Martin, Button, Sessegnon.
Referee: Martin Atkinson.
The teams!
The team sheets have landed, and these were the names upon them:
Reading starting XI vs Fulham: Al-Habsi, Gunter (c), Blackett, Ilori, Moore, Van den Berg, Evans, Williams, Swift, Grabban, Kermorgant.
— Reading FC (@ReadingFC) May 16, 2017
Reading subs vs Fulham: Jaakkola, Beerens, Mendes, McCleary, Popa, Gravenberch, Kelly.
— Reading FC (@ReadingFC) May 16, 2017
TEAM NEWS: Here is your #FFC side, in association with @Coral, that will battle for a place in the Play-Off Final this evening #WeAreFulham pic.twitter.com/Xf6ZQsRUx7
— Fulham Football Club (@FulhamFC) May 16, 2017
A brief history of the two clubs in facemasks.
Stumbled across this picture today...Best of luck @ReadingFC tonight! BigBadWolf pic.twitter.com/6QBxUAHwNv
— Kaspars Gorkss (@EsUnPiens) May 16, 2017
Hello world!
For one of these two teams, the season ends tonight. The play-offs are a harsh and brutal place, but reliably dramatic. Tonight, I’m confidently predicting, will be a cracker.
We approach the second leg with the tie more delicately balanced than a Michael Caine getaway bus. We must therefore consider the possibility of the evening ending with a penalty shoot-out, a prospect that will have both the Reading players (50% conversion rate from 12 penalties this season) and Fulham’s (a truly miserable 31% of 13) shuddering with horror. Jaap Stam and his Royals will also be troubled by memories of December’s 5-0 thrashing at Craven Cottage (Daniel Williams was sent off after 54 minutes, but they were already a couple of goals down at that point), while Slavisa Jokanovic’s Cottagers will find their superiority complex lasts only as long as it takes to remember their 1-0 defeat at the Madejski in January. It is, as they say, anyone’s game.
We can expect goals. Fulham hardly ever fail to get on the scoresheet – no team in the division outscored them (though Newcastle and Norwich also scored 85 times), and they have drawn just one blank in the league since they lost to Reading, and even that was more than three months ago. But they have also kept only two clean sheets in that time, and one of those was against Rotherham. Reading’s home record is impressive, with only two defeats in their 23 games putting them second only to Brighton in the Championship’s home table, but then so is Fulham’s away record, with 12 wins in their 23 games making them second only to Newcastle.
You may want a reminder of what happened in the first leg, so here’s our match report from Craven Cottage:
And in the meantime it only remains for me to say hello and welcome. Hold on tight, it’s going to be a hell of a ride.
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