Royals search hits buffers

Anthony Smith • Published 16 Dec 2010 11:30 Comments 1 Comment

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READING boss Brian McDermott has played down their chances of landing a new striker in an effort to cure their goalscoring problems.

Royals have failed to score in their last two Championships fixtures while fans have singled out misfiring striker Shane Long for criticism after missing a hatful of chances.

The Republic of Ireland forward has netted four times in 19 league games this season and wasted a glut of opportunities in last Saturday's stalemate against Coventry City.

And with Noel Hunt and Simon Church the only back-up options, Royals could be tempted to draft in reinforcements in the January transfer window, amid fresh rumours of interest in Leicester's out-of-favour Matty Fryatt.

However, McDermott knows what a tough job it is to persuade rival clubs to release players at the midway point of the campaign.

"We will keep working hard with the players we've got and hopefully a solution comes from within the club," he explained. "If it doesn't we will have to look at other options, if we can find one.

"But it is complete nonsense for people to think it is easy to go out there and get a striker who will come straight in and score 20 goals.

"There isn't a club out there that will simply give you one of their experienced strikers who have scored plenty of goals at this level, it just doesn't happen. To suggest there are top players just lying around is utter rubbish."

And he added: "The fact is it's really hard to find quality strikers out there, trust me we're looking. And the fact is it can be even harder in January when clubs are more reluctant to let players go.

"But if we can't find something we will keep working with the players that we have got, including the young ones, to try and find the answer."

Reading's last league win came against Doncaster Rovers at the end of October and McDermott stated: "The bottom line is we haven't won for a while and people become frustrated with that.

"But no game in the Championship is easy and we've come up against some very good sides in the last five games.

"Take Coventry, they're big and strong and are difficult to play against. We still managed to create chances against them but unfortunately we can't get the results we're looking for at the moment."

This article appeared in Reading Chronicle 17 Dec 10

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Bowman
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Dec 16, 21:41
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The Doncaster victory was the end of October actually. Shoddy.

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