The Wild Lower West: A Painful Night For Reading

That was a painful watch!

After the euphoria of winning an away game so convincingly at Blackpool, we then proceed to dish up one of the worst home performances that I can remember for a long time. A bad performance because we lost, a bad performance because I can’t name one player who took any credit from it, and a bad performance because quite honestly Peterborough United were nearly as bad, but at least they had the excuse of being the away side.

So, let’s start with the positives: Jack Marriott returning and the final whistle. The end.

The list of negatives goes on and on and is befitting of a game that was a complete shambles from start to finish. Conceding after two minutes certainly didn’t help, and I have lost count of the number of times I have seen people describe the goal as ‘unlucky from a Reading point of view’. The way the goal went in was unlucky, but the inability to stop the cross in the first place had nothing to do with bad luck.

Individual inept performances

Paudie O’Connor had a night to forget and proceeded to pass every ball to a Peterborough player or into touch, and everyone seems to have forgotten the free header he put wide from six yards in the first half from a Charlie Savage free-kick. While O’Connor wouldn’t normally be the first one I would criticise, he has set such high standards in his performances this season that this rare poor display stood out more than anyone else’s. 

Kelvin Abrefa also had one of those nights to forget and spent most of the game looking at the number on the back of Kyrell Lisbie’s shirt.

Abrefa has played more than enough games now to know when to get tight to a player and when to just hold his position. I lost count of the number of times Abrefa got it totally wrong and ended either conceding a foul or chasing players back towards his own goal.

Lewis Wing and Savage occupied the same pocket of space for most of the night; it’s just a shame that the pocket of space in question happened to be 10 yards in front of our own centre-backs.

Wing is becoming a real frustration for me, as here we have one of the best ball-players in the division, operating in a position that is totally ineffective and of no danger to the opposition.

Everyone knows what a threat Wing can be in and around the opposition’s box, so it baffles me that, in 90 minutes of football, I could count on one hand the number of times he played any football beyond the halfway line.

Kamari Doyle was guilty (not for the first time this season) of holding onto the ball for far too long, and for such a talented player he seems to have such little awareness of who or what is around him, and his ridiculous dive in the first half to try to win a penalty just about summed up his performance.

Not that he would have been awarded a penalty anyway if there were contact, as referee Craig Hicks was the latest in a long line of officials who won a ‘be a referee for a day’ competition, and decided to pick Reading to use his prize. The fact that I am not devoting a whole article to Mr Hicks’ performance is driven firstly by how bad our own showing was, but secondly by the fact that I have subconsciously accepted that all EFL officials are incompetent and not up to the job.

Kelvin Ehibhatiomhan looked as if he had adopted the role of a tree in the school Christmas play and spent much of the evening rooted to the spot. In fairness though, he did manage to move slightly to grab the equaliser that looked as if it would bring us back into the game, albeit from a Peterborough mistake.

But apart from that, he was also guilty of missing a free header from six yards out (he really is woeful in the air for a big man) and his only other contribution of note was a first-half shot from an angle that even Cristiano Ronaldo would have struggled to score from.

A collective disaster

I could go on and on about individual inept performances, but this was a collective disaster and makes you wonder what Leam Richardson and the coaching staff have done with the last 10 days on the training ground.

While the Blackpool win was a huge step in the right direction, this performance takes us right back to looking certainties to finish in the bottom four. I don’t say that tongue-in-cheek either: this performance was so worrying because the players looked completely devoid of ideas when in possession, and unable to rectify the situation when not in possession.

To give that last remark some context, you would expect us to come out for the second half all guns blazing and looking to get on the front foot straight away.

Instead, it was Peterborough who came out looking the most likely to score again, while we did our best to help them by giving away a series of free-kicks straight after the restart. In the first five minutes of the second half, we conceded seven free-kicks, and five of those came from giving the ball to Peterborough and then trying (unsuccessfully) to win it back.

The most annoying thing about the performance was the fact that Peterborough were not much better than us and were equally as guilty of giving possession back to us on numerous occasions. The difference was that they capitalised on our woeful performance, whereas we kept returning the favour by giving the ball back to them.

Apart from the excellent Lisbie, I saw nothing within the Peterborough side that should have been threatening us, yet we have lost the game 2-1 and it could have been so much worse.

This Saturday we travel to Bradford City and will certainly need vast improvement playing against one of the division’s strongest sides. Bradford do not concede many goals or lose many games at Valley Parade (or The University of Bradford Stadium) to use its current title. I am expecting not only a very tough game, but also a reaction from many of the players who failed to put in a shift on Tuesday evening.

Bradford 1-1 Reading

(Sarcevic, Marriott)  

21,506

Until next week.

Much love and c’mon URZZZ!

Dixey