Brian Howard's landlord has been giving him a bit of stick since coming to Reading.

The midfielder is currently renting James Harper’s old house after joining from Sheffield United on deadline day, and in turn Harper moved on loan in the other direction to Bramall Lane.

And as well as getting text’s from the Royals live-wire about keeping up with the rent and household bills, the 26-year-old has also been getting plenty of banter from Harper over the last few days.

Howard joked: “I’m renting Harps’ house and I was chatting to him yesterday and we were having a bit of banter. I was saying ‘what have you done to Sheffield United since you have been there?’”

Despite only being at the club for a few months, Howard has managed to fully settle into the new surroundings and found his place in Brendan Rodgers’ team.

“The gaffer’s pointed out that if you do well then you’ll stay in the team,” explained the former Southampton player.

“Up until now no-one has really justified staying in the team during the run because nobody pulled up any trees. But it’s now up to the guys with the shirts to lose them.

“We’ve done the hardest thing by winning away from home, it’s just getting results at home now and I feel that if we turn that into a fortress there’s no reason we can’t march up the league.

“We can talk about it as much as we want, but there’s only one thing we can do to stop it and that’s going out on the pitch on Saturday and winning the game.”

Reading have the perfect chance to rectify their home record and put two league wins together on the bounce for the first time this season against Ipswich Town tomorrow (3pm kick-off).

Roy Keane’s Tractor Boys are sitting at the bottom of the table and Howard added that they will still pose a threat.

He said: “There have been similar to us.

“They are a big club with a new manager and there has been a lot of changing of players. But they will come good and we need to make sure that we impose ourselves on them and are the top team.

“If you can get back-to-back wins then that will propel us up the league a bit and get us back in touch with the chasing pack.

“After the bad start the idea now is to get within touching distance of the top half of the table at Christmas and I am sure with the squad we have maybe now we can mount a challenge.”

Site navigation

• Home
• News
• Business
• Sport
• Entertainment
• Lifestyle
• Jobs
• Property
• Motoring

• A A A A
• RSS Feed