Academy coach Nas Bashir had the chance to help Stuart Pearce and his England's under 21s when they went into battle with Poland late last month.

Bashir linked up with Pearce and his coaching setup for the encounter at Wolves' Molineux ground, and stayed with the squad during their pre-match preparations.

The trip was a real feather in Nas' cap, and he told our official matchday programme, "It was a very good couple of days and a great experience for me.

"The opportunity to spend time with Stuart Pearce, along with his coaching staff Steve Wigley and Martin Thomas, and to work with the best young players in the country, was very rewarding and will be of great benefit to my future development as a coach.

"It was great to see how Stuart prepared the players for the match, and I also had the opportunity to sit with the coaching staff and talk about coaching methods and styles of play.

"Stuart involved me fully in all the team meetings, staff meetings and match preparation, and it was very interesting to see how he expressed himself to the players, both in individual pep-talks and in group training sessions. All the match preparation has to be crammed into two days because of the short amount of time international squads spend together, but everything was first class.

"It was an exciting chance to work with some of the country's top young players, and also gave me an opportunity to compare their development with our own young players, and in my mind the experience has confirmed my beliefs that we are doing things in the right way at Reading."

Meanwhile, a number of our Academy players have received international call-ups:

Oliver Kelly - Ireland u16s vs Germany
Radoslav Vasilev - Bulgaria u19s friendlies and UEFA Elite Phase
Viktor Illugason and Gylfi Sigurdsson - Iceland u19s UEFA Championship Elite Round