Reading FC continued their unbeaten festive period with a point at in-form Peterborough United on Monday.
Ourselves and Posh have had similar seasons in many ways: both starting well below par, both sacking managers at similar points and, therefore, hiring new ones around the same time too.
Monday night showed the two distinct tactical directions each club has gone down with those hires. Whether you’re a glass-half-full or glass-half-empty kind of person will dictate whether you think we were fortunate to get a point, or earned that draw through being well organised and defending superbly.
Here’s how the fans reacted to the key talking points of an eventful evening…
A good point…
It’s an age-old cliché, but a point away from home is never really a bad result. You can have bad performances, sure, and we’ll get on to that a bit later. But you can’t gripe too much about the result in my opinion – particularly against a team who keep the ball as well as the hosts did.
We didn’t end the year with a loss at least, whihch some of the fanbase took as the main takeaway…
…or a lucky result?
Every game splits opinion – regardless of performances or result – but few divide a fanbase like the kind of match we saw on Monday.
You either conclude it’s a good point and that’s that, or you think we got away with it big time. I can see both sides of the argument. I mean let’s say it how it is: there was only one team going to win that game in the second half.
So while some fans were happy with the result, there were more than a few who focused on the less-than-convincing performance…
Some big defending
What it seems most of us can agree on from Monday is that there were some big defensive moments and performances – particularly from Finley Burns, Joel Pereira and Jeriel Dorsett.
Burns had his best game in a Reading shirt, Pereira popped up with three massive saves and Dorsett prevented a Posh winner with a last-ditch block late on.
The fans were impressed with all three…
Conclusion
It’s a tricky one to summarise in all honesty, as most games are really. However, a couple of months ago we lose that game, I have no doubts about that.
There are clear signs of improvement from an organisational, off-the-ball perspective, but there is clearly a huge amount of work and development to be done in possession.
Our players are too good to be putting in performances like Monday from an attacking point of view. However, I imagine Leam Richardson’s priority was making us harder to beat, and he’s certainly doing that.
Two home games up next, and I imagine fans will be expecting two wins from those.
Onwards and upwards, and have a great New Year!
Category: General Sports
