Nottingham Forest vs Reading. Sky Bet Championship.
The City GroundAttendance21,846.
Tuesday 20 February 2018 22:59, UK
Lee Tomlin scored Nottingham Forest's first home league goal since December 9 to salvage a point in a 1-1 draw with Reading.
Omar Richards' first career goal looked likely to earn Reading a vital three points late in the first half, but on-loan Tomlin broke his duck for the Reds five minutes from time to end a run of five straight home league defeats.
Reading caught Forest napping after two minutes when Leandro Bacuna dinked a lovely ball over the Reds' backline for Chris Gunter to run on to, but from his inviting cross, Martin could only blaze a shot wildly over the bar from just outside the six-yard box.
Five minutes later, Ben Brereton thought he had headed Forest into the lead, when he rose to nod home Kieran Dowell's inswinging cross at the back post, only for the assistant referee to rule he had strayed offside.
Forest keeper Costel Pantilimon had to be alert to keep out Modou Barrow's cross-shot, with Danny Fox then doing well to block former Red Gunter's follow-up effort.
Tomlin drilled a low effort inches wide of Vito Mannone's right-hand post, before then teeing up Brereton, whose strike was parried by Mannone, with the ball eventually reaching Joe Lolley, who scooped a shot into the Reading stopper's hands.
Ten minutes before half-time, Reading seized the initiative by securing a precious advantage. A well-worked move down their right saw Liam Kelly feed Gunter, who brought a superb low save out of Pantilimon, but the ball then fell to Richards who emphatically smashed his shot through a crowd of players to hand the visitors a 1-0 lead.
On the stroke of half-time, Tomlin won a free-kick on the edge of the Royals box and it was the on-loan Cardiff man who took the set-piece, forcing Mannone to dive to his left to palm the ball away.
Dowell showed some great skill to wriggle away from two Reading defenders in the visitors' box early in the second half, but he could not get enough power on his eventual shot and Mannone saved easily.
Tendayi Darikwa was unlucky not to haul Forest level after 55 minutes, when he first cracked Lolley's pass against the crossbar and seconds later saw another effort blocked by the despairing dive of Richards.
Forest were laying siege to the visitors' goal, with Tobias Figueiredo the next to go close, heading Tomlin's corner narrowly wide.
It was not all one-way traffic, though, as Liam Moore nodded Kelly's free-kick wide, before Bacuna raced clear only to shoot tamely straight at Pantilimon.
Forest, though, finally rediscovered their goalscoring touch five minutes from time with Tomlin, the architect of much of their best moves of the night, drilling home from 15 yards to secure a welcome point for Aitor Karanka's men.
Aitor Karanka: "The second half was amazing - the players needed to put in a performance like that as the last few games at home have been a nightmare. The first half, though, was a different matter. I couldn't understand why they played like that after such a good second half.
"I told the players at half-time that we needed to change. In the past I said we didn't have the characters in the squad we needed, but we now have different players and I knew we were going to have a reaction. We needed to have the ball and be aggressive against a good team like Reading - we didn't do that in the first half, but the second half was really good."
Jaap Stam: "It wasn't ever going to be easy to get the win, but I thought we played very well in the first half. We created opportunities to score more goals than just the one, and we should have done. It is disappointing then to end the game with just one point.
"They pressed us up the pitch a bit more in the second half. In doing that we stopped playing, and stopped doing the things we did well in the first and our movement wasn't as quick, which put us under pressure. They created more opportunities and in the end we gave them too much space, they scored and the game ends 1-1. Unfortunately, we just couldn't hang on."
