ROYALS LEGENDS GO HEAD-TO-HEAD IN UNIQUE ANNIVERSARY MATCH
A plethora of club legends from Reading FC will be putting on the blue and white hoops this weekend to celebrate the club’s 150th anniversary this weekend.
Paying tribute to the club’s two most successful teams in their history, Steve Coppell’s immortal ‘106’ team who won promotion to the top flight for the first time in Reading’s history will face Brian McDermott’s 2011/12 Championship winning team.
Both legendary managers will be in the Royals dugout for one last time, while captains Graeme Murty and Jobi Mcanuff will do battle on the pitch at the Select Car Leasing Stadium.
Both managers etched themselves into Reading FC history with respective promotion winning teams to the top flight of English football.
Coppell became the first Royals boss in history to lead his team to the top division when his team took the Championship by storm in the 2005/06, finishing with a remarkable 106 points, a record that still stands today, to win a place in the Premier League.
The Royals made a seamless transition to life in the Premier League in their debut season in the 2006/07 campaign and achieved an astonishing eighth placed finish.
The second season proved a lot more tricky as Coppell’s side were relegated back to the Championship on the final day of the 2007/08 season.
Meanwhile, McDermott led the Royals back to the Premier League for their second stint in the top flight.
Having narrowly missed out on promotion, losing the play-off final to another former
Royals manager, Brendan Rodgers, and his Swansea City side in an enthralling 4-2 battle at Wembley, McDermott’s men dusted themselves off and came back stronger the next season.
His team finished with 89 points on the way to the Championship title as they soared past West Ham United and Southampton in the final months of the season with two particularly memorable victories away against both of those clubs.
Reading survived just one season back in the Premier League and were relegated having finished in 19th position, finishing the season with Nigel Adkins in charge after McDermott was dismissed in March 2013.