WBA 2-3 Reading F.C.

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so ends this year's adventure in the last romantic dream of heroics still available to a club like the albion. it was dramatic, heartbreaking, and completely unnecessary. with a 2-1 lead and only seconds left the albion should have held on to this one. in a moment echoing the first nine seconds of this fixture's reverse encounter, gianni zuiverloon failed to control and clear a routine ball that allowed jimmy kebe to once again roast the young dutch fullback, setting up the equalizer for brian howard with about a minute of injury time left to play.

barring the possibility that the baggies might still win the day by taking this one to penalties, the momentum had, in a moment, swung to reading and their superior late-going tactics proved the albion's undoing. the royals - knowing that they now had to hit early and protect the lead against a tired baggies attack, did just that. within three minutes of the kick-off in extra-time, reading jumped on abdoulaye meite's failure to clear the ball and gylfi sigurdsson fired a shot from about 25 yards out that completely beat the baggies' defense, caught scott carson off his line and curled into the back of the net.

in watching the post-game interview with baggies' head-coach, roberto di matteo, you could see the puffiness and swelling around his eyes from where he had been fighting back the tears. it was evident that he was distraught, and possibly suggests the deeper implications as to what difficulties the gaffer has to face in managing a thin squad over the next few weeks and still maintaining progress in the league.



while good old tony mowbray had a cool detachment and a technical analysis of the situation that always made me feel better about being an albion supporter on the worst of days; roberto di matteo is much more of an emotional character, and with his understanding of just how english football works at its best, he gets my sympathies for having to bear how utterly frustrating and upsetting it can be at its worst.

di matteo was truly pained by this, and i could feel his pain like it was my own. in the modern game of english football, a young, talented side like the baggies has so little time to accomplish anything before the big clubs start sniffing around and players begin looking towards furthering their own careers. in some cases it might be a move to help with their international aspirations and in others simply for the better money and big-club prestige.

one could see in the gaffer's face the frustration of working under conditions where the high level of expectations that must be met within the space of a single season is absolutely over-whelming. while kevin phillips is lauded as a modern day hero at this club, we've got to remember, he was only here for two years. tony brown was here for 17 years - and stuck with the baggies through relegation and three years in the second-division without whining how he deserved better and asking for a transfer to fulham or bolton. in 1976 he scored the famous goal at boundary park that took the albion back to the top-flight. they don't make players like tony brown anymore.

to their credit - and inside the framework of the 90-minutes - the albion were the better team. they carried almost a 2-1 margin of superiority in all aspects of play. this, of course was reflected in the score (2-1) and how it appeared the game was going to end. the albion were set to win on a brace of goals by robert koren against the single first-half equalizer of jimmy kebe, as these two continued their personal goal scoring duel which they had established in the initial fixture.



this wasn't the first time this year where i was really hurt by a result, but this one runs deeper than most. i continually woke up throughout the course of the night depressed and still in disbelief that things had unraveled so quickly. to be so close and then see it all evaporate in the space of a few minutes was devastating.

as the half-filled hawthorns would testify, the FA cup has become so devalued and winning promotion to the premier league takes such a much greater precedence that only a team like reading - who really have nothing to lose - can realistically focus on a cup competition anymore.

the only good news of the day was the return of james morrison after more than a year out through injury. however, roman bednar picked up a groin-pull which might see him unable to start this saturday against derby.

today i feel as if my faith has been destroyed by the state of english football as it is in the year 2010. with the baggies now winless in four games, a victory against derby this weekend is desperately needed just to cheer us up - forget the FA cup, forget the league table, forget promotion, forget the premier-league... let's just get a win and enjoy the day!