Report and free match highlights from the Sky Bet Championship clash between Reading and Preston North End at the Select Car Leasing Stadium as Ched Evans scored either side of a Lucas Joao penalty to lift Ryan Lowe's men up to fifth
Saturday 5 November 2022 07:23, UK
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.
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.
Lee Hendrie on Sky Sports Football:
"There's only one player that has really stood out. This man has been excellent. A superb work ethic and two goals that have earned all three points for Preston."
Reading's Paul Ince: "I thought we were poor in the first half. I thought we looked tired, lethargic, our passing was off, there was no tempo and no intensity to the game. We're not a team that has a lot of possession, but we are a team that are structured; we fight, we get the second balls, when we get into the final third, we have quality into the box. None of those things were there in the first half.
"You can put it down to three games in six days, we're asking the same players to go to the well all the time. Maybe I'm looking at that as a reason why, but then again, when we got the goal, the momentum changed and it looked like we were going to go on and win the game. I said to the players, 'if you ain't going to win a game, make sure you don't lose it'. We're making silly mistakes, and that's the disappointing thing.
"There was not much between the teams; they weren't better than us, we weren't better than them, it was just a case of concentration for 96 minutes. We lacked that and that cost us the game."
Preston's Ryan Lowe: "I asked Ched again yesterday, could he go again, and he said yes - and when he says yes, you've got to trust him because I thought he was excellent on Tuesday and he's replicated that today, so I'm really pleased for him. Well deserved man-of-the-match award and I'm delighted he scored two goals.
"They are well-coached, they take on instructions very well, we sit them down in unit meetings and get information from them about what they feel is right. They change things around themselves in play and they have been a credit to work with.
"We've said that all along, but we don't want to get too carried away. We just want to keep winning as many games as we possibly can, collecting as many points as we can and see where that goes."
Reading are next in action at 7.45pm on Tuesday November 8, when they travel to Vicarage Road to take on Watford, live on Sky Sports Football.
Meanwhile, Preston return on Saturday November 12, when they host Millwall at Deepdale in their final match before the international break.
