This article first appeared in the official matchday programme for the Chelsea game.

If you have listened to radio reports, tuned into TV pundits' patter, or read the back pages throughout the summer months, you will have come across a line of conjecture suggesting 'second season syndrome' is about to strike the Royals down.

Treated in the media as an epidemic that is expected to continue to thrive in top flight football, 'SSS' is about to infect Steve Coppell's side if you listen to the most pessimistic soothsayers.

The symptoms are reported to be catastrophic - top flight teams in their second season amongst the elite will experience discomfort and spectacularly fail to reproduce what they managed in their first season back in the top tier.

But is this disease as crippling as everyone makes out. And more importantly, is it treatable?

First things first! 21 teams of the 44 in total featured in this analysis, didn't even get the chance to fight against second season syndrome - almost half of the teams promoted to the Premiership haven't survived their first top flight campaign.

So by simply starting this season in the top flight, Reading have already done better than 48% of Premiership promoted teams.

But since the Premier League began there has been a consistent trend that has indeed seen teams that have survived in the top division for a second season, suffer in the second of those two campaigns.

Starting with Ipswich Town's dip of three places in 1993/4 right through to Wigan and West Ham's near-fatal fall from grace last season, the vast majority of the teams have not found an antidote.

Only Blackburn Rovers (twice), Derby County and Birmingham City have actually improved on their first Premier League season position with their second.

But although the figures suggest a drop is almost inevitable, of the 23 teams that have survived for a second top flight campaign, only four of them actually ended up getting relegated in their second season, a figure of 19%.

Compare this to the 21 out of 44 who suffered first season relegation - a far higher figure of 48%.

Overall 60 cumulative places have been dropped by teams playing their second Premier League season, but the average fall in position is just below three.

That suggests, if statistics are to be relied upon, Reading should finish 11th this year if they are to fight the SSS as teams have in the past.

But as Benjamin Disraeli once famously proclaimed, "there are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics!"

Steve Coppell's side love nothing more than to prove critics wrong and loyal Royals should, on the evidence of the past couple of seasons, have the utmost faith in their side bucking the trend and confounding the critics once more.