Reading 1 – 2 Preston

November 4, 2022 admin

Ched Evans scored a second-half double to lift Preston into the Sky Bet Championship play-off places with a 2-1 win over Reading at the Select Car Leasing Stadium.

Following an underwhelming first half which saw just one shot on target, North End broke the deadlock when Evans’ glancing header beat Joe Lumley in the Royals’ goal (51), before substitute Lucas Joao coolly dispatched a penalty to bring the hosts level (71).

But, with just over 10 minutes to play, Evans was afforded so much time in the box to drill a shot home unchallenged to seal a significant win on the eve of the penultimate weekend of fixtures before the World Cup in Qatar.

A sixth win in nine league outings sees Ryan Lowe’s men leap to fifth ahead of the rest of the weekend action. Reading, meanwhile, stay in 11th, three points off the top six.

How upwardly mobile North End triumphed again

With Reading boasting the fourth-best home record and Preston having shipped just eight on the road on the way to the third-best away record, perhaps the writing was on the wall as to how the encounter would play out on a chilly night in Berkshire.

Defences were on top, perhaps due to a lack of quality in the final thirds, and the only save either goalkeeper had to make in the first half came in the very last second, when Robbie Brady’s stinging shot was pushed round the post by Royals goalkeeper Lumley.

That said, North End could easily have been ahead at the break, were it not for a glaring miss from Brad Potts with half-an-hour gone. Brady delivered a teasing cross from the left which he attacked in the most unorthodox, mis-judged scissor kick-like style that left him with his head in his hands.

They were ahead shortly after it, though. The influential Brady found space just outside the box, after a corner was kept alive, and sent in a beauty of a cross which Evans glanced past Lumley and into the bottom-left corner of the net.

With around half-an-hour remaining, Paul Ince made a triple change to refresh the Reading attack, with Joao, Shane Long and Tyrese Fornah joining the action – and it, initially, proved to be a masterstroke, when Joao fired his penalty far into the bottom-left corner after Andy Yiadom had been tripped on the byline.

Parity, however, was short-lived. Ben Woodburn held the ball up on the edge of the area and released Evans, who tip-toed inside the 18-yard box and, when he realised the opposition were sitting off, he fired a neat low shot across Lumley and into that far corner once again.