The sunset barely crouched over the shoulder of the horizon, on our ambling approach to the Madejski for Monday night’s trip to Reading. Seated in the East Stand, the pitch looked luscious, the banter tickled both sets of fans just right and even the PA guy wasn’t without a certain affable levity.

This was Reading that Newcastle were taking on too, a side whose admirable attacking football this season would ensure a game peppered with goals and let the Premiership forget about the Boltons, the Chelseas and those other annoyingly successful percentage-players of the league who sacrificed the entertainment value that is inherent to the game, for results. With that said, the 15-year old Reading girl who claimed a half-time regional award for Reading has been more prolific than Newcastle this season – she did score 92 goals in 18 games, mind you. Nonetheless, Newcastle’s earlier 3-2 victory at SJP bode well for the game, especially with Owen back.

The pre-match warm-up seemed a particularly jolly affair, with the burly Stephen Carr’s spirits seemingly lifted by Roeder’s recent laudation of his performance against Chelsea. Everyone seemed fairly chirpy, with circles of players playing blind passes to one another rather impressively. Later in the evening however, young James Milner would be livid with Solano and the pair would continue their discussion up and down the touchline for quite some time, and though it was enamouring to see Taylor developing leadership skills, it was also quite crushing to see him having to repeatedly lecture the increasingly fatigued Carr, who, incidentally, had a decent pair of lungs requesting cover when the diffident and out-of-sorts Seol ran at him. On the subject, it is of my opinion that when you can’t beat De La Cruz for pace, you probably don’t belong at this level.

At this point, the clemency in the ground was all but gone, with one absolutely psychotic Royal a couple of seats behind me singing ‘Are you Sunderland in disguise…’ for a full five minutes. Solo. Every team has its share of idiot fans, and the same bloke also took to prefacing his numerable Bramble monikers with the word ‘black’. Yes. In this day, in this age. Kingsley the Lion lost his cool too, and was promptly dismissed at half-time. Oh boy.

It wasn’t all bad, and the Reading fans were good, even giving the returning Owen a generous round of applause. Personally, I couldn’t help but feel a twinge of sadness later though, when hardly anyone acknowledged old Shola’s return as Reading prepared to take a free-kick in a dangerous area. His return was heartening and though he seems infinitely bigger, even he could not tower over the ball to head one of our best chances anywhere but at the goalkeeper. That, incidentally, was a chance I nearly missed, and not because I was still genuinely disappointed at not winning free half-time pizza, but because I thought Owen was injured again. It was actually Emre’s posterior that was aloft in the air as he writhed in agony as it turned out.

The first half actually saw them look the most impressive, with Emre continuing get stick from the crowd on corners, and chants of “offside Owen” going up a couple of times from the home support. Owen’s pairing with Martins intimated at potential quite a few times in the first half, but this was over-powered by the eerie realisation that I found myself looking to a striker other than Martins to typify our attack in the shape of Owen. Roeder’s puzzling 4-3-1-2 formation also saw another striker cast, that being the ultimate passenger, the one and only Antoine Sibierski. He really didn’t do anything before he got injured. Zilch.

One of the highlights of the first-half was Martins contesting one of many high balls in midfield, and in this instance, he just did not come down. It seemed inconceivable that he could get so high, but he really did just keep rising. Where is he now, I wonder? Seriously though, forget Air Jordan, it’s the age of Air Martins.

Harper wasn’t quite as commanding in the air, with Carr riskily chesting a cross back to his hands. Harper seemed low on confidence generally, seemingly uncomfortable using his feet to control backpasses, with his kicking justifying this. He’s a good keeper, but he needs to pick himself up.

Nolberto had a tough time from the crowd after his jedi mind trick saw the referee give him a throw-in when he booted the ball into row Z completely unattended. It kind of fitted in with the pattern of the game being entertaining for all the wrong, non-footballing reasons though.

Looking at the slight and solitary figure of Roeder standing momentarily outside his dugout, he seemed a little lost. To his right, Coppell, donned in tracksuit and all, looked animated and enthused. Contrastingly, Roeder’s attempt to impose his presence on the pitch quite reminded me of Edvard Munch’s Scream, except almost impossibly tight-lipped, and with equally reticent folded arms. His sunken eyes appeared to be screaming though.

When a third substitution propagated by injury looked likely after Martins had fallen on his hand, my friend, a Reading supporter, remarked that, that was what the “useless” Sidwell had to look forward to when he moved north, a life of injuries and underachieving. Eep.