Hector was the best

Scruffy win in the end with a helping hand from a ref that owed us one. We don't need to win in style every week at this crucial stage of the season. We'll take that and hopefully we've saved our best for Saturday. 

Job done. We were the better team but did have a helping hand from the ref for once. Little annoying we didn’t push the 1 man advantage and run up a bigger score but 3 points and a win is reward enough.
Everyone played their part but Barkhuizen, Adams, Cashin and Nelson stood out for me. 

I would absolutely hate to lose a game like that.
Got to be honest, I don’t really like winning games like that either.
Leave that kind of thing to Patrick Bamford. 
We can do better than that.

GET IN
My nerves are f***** 

Where's our press gone? They're down to 10 for goodness sake!

Derby County vs Reading
Tuesday 12th March
Pride Park   KO 1945
 
Opposition Bio: Reading have made more headlines off the field than on it in recent times as they find themselves in financial strife as a result of incompetency by their owner. Sound familiar? 
The EFL have seemingly cut them more slack than they did with ourselves but their patience must be wearing thin as deadlines to deposit sufficient funds regularly pass. The latest failure to pony up saw them docked further points and their season deduction now stands at six points in total. 
There was a further deduction of three points doled out, albeit suspended, after their understandably fed up supporters invaded the pitch and caused the early abandonment of their home match with Port Vale, the latters best result in recent months.
Where we had Mel Morris, Reading have Dai Yongge. This proves the old adage of being wary of baldies or fake Welshmen baring gifts.
Any sympathy we have for them should be tempered though by the thought that they are probably still laughing at us paying £3m for Nick Blackman.
Reading FC are known as the Royals, a distinctly naff nickname acquired after a young Prince Albert played a dozen games for the club before marrying Queen Victoria. Plus they hail from the royal county of Berkshire. They are also known as the Biscuitmen due to the town's association with the biscuit makers Huntley & Palmers. 
They are managed by Spaniard Ruben Selles and, having been relegated last season, will be looking to secure League 1 survival this season and kick on in 2024/25 under different ownership and without points deductions.
Reading are the proud holders of two notable records. In the 1985/86 season they recorded 13 straight victories at the start of the season in what is now this division and they also hold the record for the highest points total for their whopping 106 points in their 2005/06 Championship campaign. 
Opposition Form: Not too shabby in fairness. In the ten matches played since they beat us 1-0 at their place they have won a further four games with three draws and three defeats.
They arrive at Pride Park on the back of a 2-1 home defeat to Wycombe and in 18th place with a record of W12-D9-L16. It should be noted, however, that without their points deduction they would be in 14th position. 
Their away record is perhaps misleading as the bare stats of W3-D5-L10 needs to be looked at in the knowledge that they contrived to lose their first eight matches on the road. They all count obviously but their more recent form away since then reads W3-D5-L2. 
Their away wins have been at Wycombe (2-1), Stevenage (1-0) and Carlisle (3-1). They have also managed decent draws at Oxford and Peterborough.
In those 18 away games they have only failed to score on four occasions. Promisingly from a Rams perspective, they have only kept the one clean sheet on their travels.
Opposition Players: Going purely off the stats it would appear their chief dangermen are top marksman Harvey Knibbs (10 goals, 6 assists), Sam Smith (9 goals, 10 assists) and possibly Femi Azeez and Lewis Wing. They also have Robbie's son Charlie Savage, the experienced Harlee Dean and the wonderfully named youngster Jacob Hammond-Chambers-Borgnis who I hope gets a runout as I'd love to see if they put his triple-barrelled name on his shirt.
Rams vs Reading History: This will be the 48th league clash between Derby and Reading and the 54th in all competitions. The clubs' first meeting was a League Cup clash in October 1965 (1-1) but it wasn't until 22nd September 1984 that the Rams and the Royals met in a league fixture for the first time and the long wait proved barely worthwhile as we played out a goalless draw at their previous home, Elm Park. The return fixture would prove to be more memorable, for us at least, as Reading's first ever league visit to Derby in April 1985 saw the Rams win 4-1 with goals from Bobby Davison, Steve Buckley, Trevor Christie and Gary Micklewhite in front of a bumper crowd of 7,945 (really?).
That was not a taste of things to come in this fixture though as Reading have had by far the better of it. Our record on their turf is especially poor with just four wins in 24 visits. On Derby soil, though better as you'd expect, it is still deeply unimpressive. Our last victory at home to them was a 1-0 success in September 2021 but our overall home league record against Reading is W10-D3-L10. 
Expected Team: Same again one might think. Possibly a change in the middle to give more legs with Smith or Thompson in for Hourihane. 
Other Fixtures of Note: Something similar to Saturday would be nice. A Derby win and at least one of our rivals for automatic dropping points please. Their games midweek are:
Portsmouth vs Burton
Bolton vs Oxford
Carlisle vs Barnsley
Peterborough vs Stevenage (Weds)
COYR
 

Great result yesterday, a good day out again with our away form so good, 
Probably one of our best performances of the season.
First half we dominated without scoring, a few good balls in from Ward some lovely play aswell we were probably unlucky not to in at HT without the lead. 
 
Was nice to see us come straight back out and get straight back on the front foot something we’ve not done much, we got our reward and fair play to Gayle for throwing his head at it, then a lovely goal from Barky!  15/20 min spell were they were always going to give it a go but didn’t really create or cause anything of note, wrapped it up late on finally after we should of wrapped it up earlier.
Big big win with 9 to go we made a decent side in decent form look very average. Big week ahead now! COYR

I feel the same, we’ll know more this time next week after the Bolton game.

They still have some work to do, 4 of their next 7 games are Posh, Barnsley, us & Bolton. They're away at Posh the same day as we play Bolton at home, then we have Northampton the same day as they have Barnsley.
We're 5 behind them at the moment, if we're less than that by the time we play them then it could be a nervous situation for them, and we will hopefully have our tails up. I don't think we'll catch them unless we beat them at their place, so it's a really tough ask, but 4 teams neck and neck chasing them down is going to cause a lot of pressure. Two or three bad results and they don't just lose top spot, they could quite easily fall to 4th or 5th.
They're favourites by far, but it's going to go right to the end.

2-2 Bolton full time

People often wonder what Warne’s tactical plan is and I always feel that’s a big part of it, get ahead and keep going. What I will say is it’s a shame looking at the table to see we’ve won as many as Portsmouth to think those games we haven’t pushed on from a winning position could have seen us way more comfortable at the top of the league 

I'll be there. Heading over to my son's for lunch and a 45-minute walk from there to the ground. No chance of away tickets, so I'll be standing amongst the Pirates on the side terrace.
Hoping for plenty of rams goals for me to practice my non celebration!
COYR

Game day breakfast.

His hold up/lay offs are better than I thought as well. Still has a bit of spring for his size, too. 

His positioning and movement is still class, first goal he was right there but got played behind him. We whip balls across the face he'll score for fun.

I think Gayle upfront has dictated we play more football to be honest, Warne said he got all the attacking players together to go through scenarios in the week. You could see Gayle shouting at wide men all the time, he lost it when Mendez-Laing tried to round the keeper rather than slide it across for an easy tap in.

As proven in the Charlton game, we are capable of losing to very average teams. I hope we win enough of our remaining games to achieve promotion, but to do so, our performances will need to go up a level for the run in. 

Hopefully, this will dent Barnsley's confidence a little. Lately, everything has been going their way, but tonight they were 2 up and cruising, then fell back to earth.
Every Barnsley fan and player will be feeling gutted atm.

Surely that is the perfect result for us? We have Bolton to play at home. 

1 win in 4 play off finals at Wembley 🤔 Think I would take a top 2 finish 😊

We need automatic, nothing less. As much as I Love London, our latest trips to Wembley have not been a bundle of fun, the  play offs are too much of a lottery for my liking

Agreed on Referee. Compare and contrast with Jeremy Simpson! Yesterday was composed, not fussy, and got nearly everything right (despit couple of iffy Lino’s) Well done ref.

I’m not exactly asking him to playing 90 minutes every week. We’ve just had Hourihane (who’s legs have gone, let’s face it) out injured for a few games and he’s not played a minute. Seems ridiculous to me when we so often lack energy and athleticism. 

Thought ward looked fitter than most yesterday, looked quick, sprinted often and made some great tackles. Really impressed 

Currently looks like the grounds staff are heavily watering the end of the pitch we’re defending second half, wonder what the thinking is there? 🤔