RAFA REJECT GAYLE DRUMS UP A STORM
RAFA, what have you done? Newcastle manager Benitez swapped Dwight Gayle for West Brom’s Salomon Rondon for a season – and the Baggies have got the best of the deal.
Gayle, Championship Player of the Month for September, got his seventh and eighth goals of the season to start off October in style.
West Brom are second in the table, a point behind Sheffield United, and have banged in 31 goals with Gayle outscoring the whole Toon team he left behind.
Rondon, meanwhile, has one Carabao Cup strike as he struggles to overcome injury.
Leandro Bacuna put Reading into a surprise lead with a superb eighthminute effort.
Saeid Ezatolahi’s 30-yarder was pushed behind by Baggies keeper Sam Johnstone, but from the corner Bacuna exchanged passes with John Swift and drilled an angled shot into the net off the far post.
However the Baggies crushed the visitors in the second half with Gayle starting the comeback after 49 minutes.
Tyrone Mears lofted a hopeful cross into the area which deceived keeper Sam Walker and fell to Gayle, who headed home at the far post.
The Baggies went 2-1 up in the 65th minute, Gayle deflecting the ball into the net after Kyle Bartley had diverted Harvey Barnes’ header goalwards.
Gayle’s influence is immense. In his last 10 league starts he has scored eight and won four penalties – all of them safely tucked away.
Barnes made it 3-1 in the 72nd minute when he raced onto a pass from Jay Rodriguez and fired a low angled drive past Walker, and Bartley headed home a Chris Brunt corner eight minutes later.
“At half-time I said we would have to find a way to break down a stubborn rearguard,” said Baggies boss Darren Moore.
“It was Gayle’s first goal from Tyrone Mears’ cross that knocked the wind out of their sails,” added Moore, who is now on an unbeaten seven-game league run and clearly focused on promotion.
“That gave us fresh impetus to go on and win.”
Royals manager Paul Clement said: “We played well in the first half, possibly the best we have played this season, and if we had got the second maybe it would have been different.
“In the end it’s become our heaviest defeat of the season.”