Reading can get back into top six
Danny Drinkwater believes Reading have the potential to make a charge for the top six, after their thrilling 3-2 win at Swansea City on Saturday saw them return to winning ways.
The Royals entertain an in-form Hull City side who will arrive in Royal Berkshire on Saturday on the back of four straight wins which have propelled them up to 19th, a point and two places above Veljko Paunovic’s men after they beat Millwall 2-1 courtesy of goals from George Honeyman and Ryan Longman’s first for the club.
Drinkwater, the former Leicester City and Leicester midfielder notched the winning goal in South Wales to end what had been a difficult week for the club, after being hit with a six-point deduction by the EFL, drawing with Nottingham Forest and losing to Sheffield United.
The morale-boosting win leaves the Royals 12 points off the top six, albeit with a far inferior goal difference which effectively makes it 13, but with more than half of the campaign to go, Drinkwater believes Reading will not be the only ones eyeing up a second half surge if they can register a succession of wins.
“I just hope we can use this now to kick on, instead of just feeling comfortable. I don’t think it’s out of the question that we can get up back into that top six. In fact, with this league, as it is, almost any team can get into that top six. It’s such a crazy league,” the ex-premier League winner told reporters.
“But we need to build on games like this, rather than take one step forward and then two steps back. We need to use games like this to create a structure and a base and build from there.
“We just need to build on this. It was a strange week with things happening off the pitch, but we’ve delivered a good performance after a sloppy performance before and now we need to move forward from this.”