After the trouble in the reverse fixture earlier in the season by the brainless individuals that use football as a vehicle to vent their personal issues, a 1-1 draw with O*ford no doubt suited everyone.

Crowd fighting in football is something I’ve never been able to wrap my head around. The glorification in some quarters, not least in tv and film, of so-called football fans arranging tear-ups and chaos in the stands and town centres is a reminder of how far evolution still has to go.

Granted, I rarely entered the stands between the ages of 20 and 33. I was on the pitch. Or the bench. But either side of those years I, like almost every other fan at some point, have seen some fairly unsavoury stuff tumbling down from the terraces.

That said, rarely have I been genuinely scared. But that’s not the point. I coached an 11-year-old on Saturday morning, a Reading season ticket holder, whose dad told me they wouldn’t be going to the Kassam Stadium for the game for safety reasons. Now that’s a really sad state of affairs for everybody concerned.

And in fairness, it’s a decision that is not without sense. The one time where the fans genuinely scared me was when the Portsmouth team bus inched its way through the Southampton fans towards St Mary’s. Google the reasons as to why the two clubs hate each other so much if you must, but let me assure you, it is a hatred that is very much alive at the surface.

It doesn’t matter how big the police escort is, it is impossible to stop the amount of missiles raining down on a team bus if thousands of fans decide that that’s what they want to do. Rocking the team bus from side to side is as intimidating as it is unpleasant, and the dash between the bus doors and the changing room doors is as harrowing as any gauntlet that seaman Francis Lanyon had to run.

Football people in this country tend to sneer towards the continent when it comes to crowd trouble, not least France, where crowd trouble is in danger of becoming the norm again, but we all know that there are issues we need to deal with in our own backyard, especially if it means that 11-year-old kids can’t go to a League One match on their doorstep.

A 1-1 draw against a team in contention for a play-off spot was a decent result for Reading on Saturday.

But, with a number of players going through the exit door recently, it was encouraging – and surprising – to see Arsenal’s Under 21 captain Zane Monlouis join on loan until the end of the season.

Caylan Vickers and Taylan Harris have joined Premier League sides Brighton and Luton, but Reading have secured a player with good pedigree.

When I heard the news, it took me back to the days of James Harper and Steve Sidwell, who both joined Reading from Arsenal and were key men in our magnificent 106 season.

It’s a completely different situation now of course. The club I played for is in danger of relegation and the owner seems hell-bent on selling our best assets in a fire sale to squeeze as much out of Reading Football Club as he can before selling.

Vickers, Harris, Tom Holmes, Nelson Abbey and Tom McIntyre have all gone. There were even rumours that we could be about to lose Femi Azeez.

It’s worrying. On the one hand, fans are rightly concerned that we are in danger of playing in the fourth tier of English football for the first time in 40 years, but the priority now is to get the club sold and hopefully that will happen before the end of this season.

So, it’s Charlton at home up next – a clash between two clubs who have witnessed a fall from grace and are now at the wrong end of League One.

As Reading were marching towards an eighth-place finish in the club’s first-ever Premier League season, former Royals boss Alan Pardew was overseeing the end of Charlton’s seven-year stay in the Premier League.

How times have changed. Manchester United, Chelsea, Liverpool and Arsenal finished as the Premier League’s top four in 2006-7, Manchester City finished the season six places below Reading in the table, and Portsmouth, Blackburn Rovers and Wigan Athletic were looking forward to another season at English football’s top table.

That highlights how quickly football can change. Whether Reading start next season in League One or League Two, the hope is that we will have a new owner before then and we’ll be a club that is looking forward to a much brighter future.