THE ROYALS FAMILY HAS GIVEN LIAM A BIG BOOST
LIAM MOORE cried his eyes out at missing out on a Premier League title-winners’ medal with boyhood club Leicester and was left distraught again after skying a spot-kick that cost Reading promotion.
So leading the Royals to the top flight would mean the world to the 28-yearold as the Berkshire side look to return to the promised land after eight seasons in the Championship.
Moore swapped Leicester, who he joined as an eight-year-old, for Reading shortly after he had stood on the podium with the rest of boss Claudio Ranieri’s shock 2015-16 champions.
That had been a bittersweet experience for Moore, which he has called ‘one of the best and worst feelings of my life’ as he had spent the first half of the season on loan at Bristol City and was then unable to get back into the side upon his return.
‘At the start of the season Claudio Ranieri said I would need to be patient but there were games there for me,’ Moore recalls. ‘But if I stayed all season and didn’t get enough game time I felt I could be forgotten about, so I made a decision to go on loan.’
He returned to Leicester in the January and got a close-up view, but admits he shed tears of frustration at being unable to play a part.
‘The boys were flying, I was lucky enough to be around it and witness the miracle of the 5,000/1 (title win),’ he says. ‘ To see that run-in first hand – what joy it brought to the players and the fans was something
I wanted a piece of myself. It gave me an understanding of what it takes to be successful — the workrate.’
Moore felt he needed to move on to make his own mark in the game and has made a home from home at Reading.
‘It was tough to leave, emotional. But it was the right decision,’ he says. ‘I made my choice. I needed to find a home but that doesn’t make it easier to leave the same training ground and same people I had seen for 16-17 years. It was the biggest part of my life.’
He signed for Reading and in his first season the club reached Wembley but Moore suffered further heartbreak after his penalty shoot-out miss proved pivotal as Huddersfield won promotion to the Premier League instead.
‘Leading up to the game I felt the story was written in the stars. It was almost too good to be true – the first season we overachieved and finished third and made it to the play-off final,’ he says.
‘I thought that was naturally the next step to go up but football has a cruel way about it sometimes.
‘It was a difficult moment to take but again I can look back with great pride. I put myself in a position that not many would by stepping up – but it wasn’t my time that day and I missed.
‘At least I got married that summer and had the distraction of a young family around me.
‘It still hurt obviously that I didn’t get to the Premier League but it is all about bouncing back.’
Reading struggled badly for two sea203OF
sons but they are at last tasting success again under Veljko Paunovic, the fifth Royals boss he has played under.
‘It is frustrating when you have a little bit of success you want to build on but that momentum was completely lost,’ Moore admits.
‘I have to give massive credit to the manager. The motto of the team is actually just “team”. It is as simple as it gets. Every decision you make on and off the pitch has to be with the team’s best interests at heart.’
Reading head to Nottingham Forest tomorrow just six points off the automatic promotion spots and Moore insists they will not get carried away.
‘We need to level out our consistency,’ he says. ‘We are quite levelheaded because of a few bumps in the road. We had an incredible start but then hit a drought, then we went on a run and then lost a few games.
‘You can’t get ahead of yourself. It is such a hard run-in, every team has something to play for.
‘When I left Leicester I wanted to find a home. I found that at Reading very quickly and a large part of that would be the way the fans took to me.’
IT WAS a rather uncomfortable position for this year’s UK City of Culture that its own football team is playing 20 miles away.
So while it will not solve all of Coventry’s issues, news they have agreed a ten-year deal with Wasps to return to the Ricoh Arena at least means by the time fans are allowed back into football grounds, a home game will be just that.
Playing at Birmingham was not as incomprehensible as their previous ground-sharing at Northampton but the deal, in place for the start of the 2021-22 season, will at least end a nomadic existence for the Sky Blues which lasted for the best part of a decade.
For much of that the club appeared only to be heading south from a footballing perspective – ending up in the bottom tier in 2017.
The job Mark Robins has done as a manager against a background of uncertainty is every bit as extraordinary as the effects his famous FA Cup goal for Manchester United at Nottingham Forest in 1990 had on Alex Ferguson’s fortunes.
Having lifted the EFL Trophy and led the Sky Blues to their first top-six position for 48 years, he has continued the upward trajectory with a second promotion in three years last season.
Gone are the days when the club had an eye-watering turnover of players. Kyle McFadzean and Liam Kelly are the only over-30s in a vibrant side whose enterprising play belies the fact their first target this season was to remain in the Championship. After
Maxime Biamou’s goal saw off Derby last weekend they have a six-point buffer on the bottom three.
The Covid outbreak at thirdbottom Rotherham, who have three games in hand, will hardly ease the nerves of a number of clubs in the second tier and older Coventry fans will remember Don Mackay’s side winning the last three games after everybody else had finished to stay in the old First Division.
But the feel-good factor caused by returning home must be a motivating factor – even if sharing a ground with a rugby club and having to pay rent rather than own a ground of their own remains a far from ideal situation.
Even more important than which division they play in, however, is Coventry has a club it can be proud of again.