Brighton's edge is blunted

Last updated : 10 March 2002 By Bob Gear

Match Report From the Observer

Ian Ridley at Madejski Stadium

Sunday March 10, 2002

Reading 0 Brighton 0
The Madejski stadium was brimming and passions ran high but stubbornly a tense, turbulent, five-booking, top-of-the-table contest refused to yield a goal. Thus do Reading remain five points clear in the Third Division, though Brighton will reduce it to two if they beat Northampton Town at home on Tuesday. The best result for both was Stoke's defeat at Wycombe.

Brighton should be the happier with both point and performance. Their manager Peter Taylor cannily recognised that the space would be on the flanks and they used it well. A deserved win was denied in added time when Gary Hart netted only for the referee Mike Dean to rule that Junior Lewis had fouled the Reading goalkeeper Phil Whitehead.

It was a fixture to show why the English game is envied around the world. The car parks of a new, well-appointed stadium filling two hours before kick-off?

More than 20,000 for a game on the third rung of the national ladder?

Some Bundesliga , Primera Liga and Serie A clubs, would give much for such a day. It was a special one in the Second Division's calendar, mind. Top versus second, promotion nearing for both. 'Make some noise,' the tannoy announcer urged just before kick-off but he needn't have bothered. Brighton's travelling 3,000 and everyone else were in full throat for this one. They may be trying to take the FA Cup off us on a Saturday but Reading were doing their best to provide us with a cup tie.

As might be expected, given the importance of the occasion, the early play was as messy as the pitch. Nerves betrayed best efforts to pass the ball. Neither had the recent runs of both sides filled either with confidence.

Reading had drawn with Cambridge and Bournemouth. Until midweek, Brighton had taken only two points from three games. Then came Bobby Zamora, back after missing those three games through suspension, to score twice in a 4-0 win over Wycombe Wanderers and take his tally for the season to 28. Yesterday was a good day to judge what the fuss was about.

Leggy, rangy, there is a look to him of a young Stan Collymore before the fire in his belly went out. The doubts expressed about Zamora by Premiership clubs who have viewed the merchandise - notably Everton, who declined to pay £2.5 million for him last month - concern his all-round play. 'Just' a finisher, and questionable whether he can repeat it against better defenders, goes the argument.

They shouldn't be so sure. He ran willingly, even intelligently, off the ball and held on to it neatly at times to ease the pressure on his defence, even if it was predictable from Reading. You always sensed, too, that if a chance came his way he would take it. At 21, the raw, teachable material is there. Being left-footed also offers something different.

He played a part in Brighton's first-half superiority. John Salako looked as if he might have the wit to undo a stout, well-organised Albion defence but Reading, Jamie Cureton in particular, were clearly missing their own joint leading scorer Nicky Forster and they went 45 minutes without creating a clear chance.

Brooker had the best chance of the first half.
Paul Brooker
To Brighton fell the one and only of the period. Hart crossed from the right and Paul Brooker volleyed straight at Whitehead. Thankfully, the half-time tea made a difference. Richard Carpenter's fierce 25-yard shot for the visitors was tipped over by Phil Whitehead. For Reading, Salako headed Sammy Igoe's cross over the bar and Jamie Cureton finally sprung to life, though wasting a good chance, with a cross-shot after Phil Parkinson's clever backheel.

Brighton made the better openings, however. Zamora did well to control Brooker's sliced shot and Paul Watson's free-kick glanced off Parkinson's head onto the underside of the Reading bar before being hacked away. Cureton wasted another good chance for Reading, sidefooting over the bar after Simon Morgan had allowed him to escape, but it was destined to become the old footballing story: much ado about nothing.