Steve Coppell envisages making four changes to his starting XI when the Royals travel to Southampton on Sunday 29th December.
Midfield trio Brynjar Gunnarsson, Marek Matejovsky and Jimmy Kebe all look very likely to start, with perhaps Andre Bikey or Shane Long also coming in.
Steve said, "I'll definitely freshen it up. There'll be roughly four changes I would think - at least. We'll check on fitness on Saturday for this second game in three days."
Southampton have already beaten us once this season and Coppell is well aware of how dangerous they can be.
"They were far better than us on the day. They played very very well. They have a style of play which is, for the most time, very attractive, but at the same time vulnerable, looking at their results in recent weeks.
"So it's an equation as yet we haven't solved but we're looking forward to trying to get a result there.
"We'll play exactly the same as we always do - and we'll see what happens."
Reading will be backed by more than 3,000 travelling supporters, having completely sold our allocation of tickets.
Southampton will be without our on-loan defender Alex Pearce, who is not eligible to play under the terms of his loan, and therefore by default he has come to the end of a loan spell with Jan Poortvliet's men.
