Published: Thursday, 8th May, 2008 09:00
Rosenior: `We have upper hand'
By Anthony Smith
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Fighting for survival: Liam Rosenior explains why Reading have a more favourable fixture on the final day than their relegation rivals.
LIAM Rosenior is convinced Reading still have the upper hand on their relegation rivals despite dropping into the bottom three after a 1-0 defeat by Tottenham.
Royals go to basement side Derby County this Sunday while Fulham travel to Portsmouth and Birmingham City host Blackburn.
Their future is now out of their own hands and realistically Steve Coppell’s side must beat the Rams and hope that Fulham fail to win at Fratton Park and the Blues lose or draw against Blackburn.
Rosenior said: “We knew that if we didn’t get a point or three points against Spurs we could be in the relegation zone. That’s happened and we need to put it right.
“It’s out of our hands but other clubs have got extremely tough games. We have a tough game but I’m sure the teams in our situation would probably take ours over theirs.
“It’s up to us to produce the performance now. You can’t rely on other teams drawing or losing.
“We’ve got to use that to our advantage, be strong characters and go and win. If you look at the table too much what’s it going to do? It’s not going to affect anything.
The Royals have not won in six games and have failed to score in nine hours and 11 minutes of Premier League action.
They will surely never have a better chance of ending that run than against rock-bottom Derby who are going down with the least number of points in Premier League history and have a shocking defensive record.
And Rosenior confidently declared: “Of course we will beat Derby, I have no doubt about that. That’s not because it’s Derby who are bottom, we will go there and play our best.
“If we do that we know we can get a result against 80% of teams in this division. If we lose it’s all over. That’s enough motivation for me to do the best I can.”
Rosenior has first hand experience of a relegation dogfight with Fulham last season when they defeated an under-strength Liverpool in their final home game to ultimately stay up.
“It’s amazing how similar this season has been to last season with Fulham,” he recalled. “Everyone said we were safe and too good to go down.
“This year has been the same with people saying we will get out of trouble. But you find yourselves on a spiral which is hard to reverse.
“At Fulham we expected to win games and it didn’t happen. Before we knew it we couldn’t turn it around. Then it took a lucky deflection to win our last home game against Liverpool and we were safe.
“I’m sure there squad at Reading is better and I’m sure that if we get one goal we will get two or three. It’s just getting that goal that will lift everyone.”
Rosenior was the closest to ending Reading’s goal drought last weekend when his last-gasp effort was superbly clawed away by Spurs keeper Radek Cerny.
“I lay on the floor thinking we had got a point,” admitted Rosenior, 24. “It was the save of the season for me. I don’t know how but the keeper managed to get a hand to it.
“The run is unbelievable, we don’t know where a goal is coming from. We had things flashing across their box, shots were deflected and their keeper pulled off an unbelievable save.
“You can’t say there’s a lack of quality strikers here. Dave Kitson, Leroy Lita, Kevin Doyle and Shane Long have all done it for a number of years now.
“They are fantastic strikers. Maybe we have to look at those who are crossing the balls in. Mine could have been better, like our set pieces.
“We have to make sure we give them the opportunities to put the ball in the net because I’m sure they will.”
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