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Reading 2 Aston Villa 4:THERE WAS no need for Martin O’Neill to reveal the content of his half-time team-talk. The first 12 minutes of the second half provided all you needed to know about the speech the Aston Villa manager delivered in the visitors’ dressing room. Villa struck three times during that period to remind Reading, who had raced into a deserved two-goal lead, they were up against a Premier League club.

Reading belatedly roused themselves and came close to grabbing an equaliser when Ashley Young headed Ivar Ingimarsson’s header off the line but the damage had been done during the breathless spell after the restart. John Carew was Reading’s chief tormenter, the Norwegian grabbing a hat-trick with a header, adroit flick and emphatic penalty-kick, as well as playing a part in Villa’s first goal, which Ashley Young dispatched two minutes after half-time.