15/11/08 - Reading Match Thread

[SRBlade]

I'm quietly confident....shhhh

I am REALLY confident!

shhhhhhh

 

[Linz]

No one wants to talk about it today.

 

[The One]

Reading weren't special but in the first half we were rubbish.

Really think Stokes deserves to be dropped and he hasn't got a chance of getting back into the Sunderland side.

Was going to put Naughton as MOTM but gave it Halford instead. He did more attacking in the second half than what anyone else did in the whole game.

 

[keenzy]

think hendo did well when he came one. should have come on alot earlier TBH.

Stokes was poor. All the team was for the first half.

Howard shouldn't have started, disrupted our midfield with speed and spring there already.

Why does howard always get a handball in every game?

 

[Oughti-blade]

Didn't manage to get down today due to family commitments, but none the less im pretty gutted. I was expecting a pretty decent performance all round but after hearing what was happening via various media sources we came across as devoid of ideas outplayed and outclassed .Please tell me this isn't true i thought id seen the back of those performances this season!

 

[The One]

Didn't manage to get down today due to family commitments, but none the less im pretty gutted. I was expecting a pretty decent performance all round but after hearing what was happening via various media sources we came across as devoid of ideas outplayed and outclassed .Please tell me this isn't true i thought id seen the back of those performances this season!

I wouldn't say outplayed and outclassed. In the second half I thought we were the better team...just.

But they scored the goals, they deserved to win the game.

 

[Greasy Chip Butty]

think hendo did well when he came one. should have come on alot earlier TBH.

Stokes was poor. All the team was for the first half.

Howard shouldn't have started, disrupted our midfield with speed and spring there already.

Why does howard always get a handball in every game?

Agree with all that keenzy.
Hendo and Halford should start next week.

Stokes was shocking, forgot he was playing in the first half (and apparently an obvious in the first half)

The formation didn't work for us with Howard (and Spring at times) playing behind the strikers, they got at us down the wings and exploited our lack of width and thats how the first goal came about. He also handles it way too much, i was sat at the other end of the pitch and could spot it from there!!

A few funny offside decisions seemed to be given though.

 

[shorehamview]

What was really frustrating was seeing the defence win the ball - especially Naughton turning Hunt inside out in the second half - then playing to a midfielder who immediately played a crap pass and gave it back to Reading.
Some of the distribution from our midfield was terrible. Should we go back to a 4-4-2? Halford looked good in the second half, but Stokes seems like he's been spoken to by Gandalf. "You shall not pass!"

 

[Bladesman]

Aye Stokes made Monty look good at passing.

That is some achievement.

Sundeland are welcome to take him back.

 

[Foxy]

Aye Stokes made Monty look good at passing.

That is some achievement.

Any particular reason we often have to shoe horn in a slagging of Monty? he got no where near the pitch and your taking the piss.

 

[bricktop]

We wass
shit todauy.

 

[TonyAgana]

I reckon Blackwell got a touch of the old Warnocks about him, yesterday. He played it very cautious and tried to create a battle in midfield, rather than get it out wide. With Webber injured I'd have thought it was a simple swap with Sharp coming in but no. Pack the midfield instead. He got it right at half time but by then it's too late.

Coupled with that, how many bloody unforced errors were there today? Wasted free-kicks, misplaced passes, wrong decisions. Very often these were from our most senior professionals. There's usually no excuse for these - they do happen - but today, it was one after another from a handful of players. Why?

Reading are a good side and they played very well yesterday, but the table doesn't lie - we could've leapfrogged them yesterday so we know they've not always outplayed their opposition. I'm willing to bet my rabbit that the teams who have beaten Reading this season have gone out and attacked them (like we did in the 2nd half) - not tried to "contain" them (like we did in the 1st half). For that reason, for me at least, it goes down as poor tactics.

 

[beightonblade]

Was Blackie the 'cheap as chips' option ? .........................
What a load of shite the Blades were............are these supposed to be the good times ?

 

[Linz]

The thing is... were we so much better in the second half yesterday or were Reading letting us come at them, happy to sit on a two goal cushion? They certainly had few chances in the second half to our many... was our second half performance more an indicator of them letting us play than us actually changing the game?

 

[S64 Blade]

The first half yesterday was terrible. Second was a lot better, but as has been the case recently, we find it difficult to score.

I thought Quinn was dreadful the first half. I can't remember him keeping possession at all. Also, im not either a fan of the 4-3-3 formation or Stokes. Firstly, it doesn't really look like a 4-3-3 formation when we're going forward, no one seems to be in space looking to receive the ball, and its generally just 1 person in their box. Regarding Stokes, he doesn't seem to do much at all. Sharp looked a lot better of the two when he came on!

 

[RFC]

You had no midfield yesterday so that's why we won. At times when we got the ball down we knocked it about nicely but Coppell seems to be learning that sometimes just doing the job by winning 1 or 2 nil is all you have to do. Still suffering from hangover but it was well worth it - look forward to the rematch.

 

[Linz]

Some pictures...

 

[Linz]

More pictures...

 

[Linz]

Even more pictures...

 

[TonyAgana]

The thing is... were we so much better in the second half ... was our second half performance more an indicator of them letting us play than us actually changing the game?

Yes, we were much better. I get your point - we'd handed them the initiative first half with containment tactics - but it's the individual errors which were abundant before half time, evaporated with the introduction of players able to hold the ball.

 

[keenzy]

Was Blackie the 'cheap as chips' option ? .........................

That because we lost our first home game of the season and an unbeaten run?

 

[beightonblade]

That because we lost our first home game of the season and an unbeaten run?

aye reight ..................

 

[happyhippy]

You had no midfield yesterday so that's why we won. At times when we got the ball down we knocked it about nicely but Coppell seems to be learning that sometimes just doing the job by winning 1 or 2 nil is all you have to do. Still suffering from hangover but it was well worth it - look forward to the rematch.

Absolutely. We were being completely overrun in midfield. You totally deserved the win.

 

[happyhippy]

I reckon Blackwell got a touch of the old Warnocks about him, yesterday. He played it very cautious and tried to create a battle in midfield, rather than get it out wide. With Webber injured I'd have thought it was a simple swap with Sharp coming in but no. Pack the midfield instead. He got it right at half time but by then it's too late.

We were having this sort of conversation at half time yesterday. It doesn't help matters when you're 1-0 down so early (thanks to some pretty awful defending too), but it was pretty obvious to us that 4-3-3 wasn't working at all, as we were being destroyed in midfield. I can understand that Blackie would want to keep a winning formula going, and then have a think about stuff at half time, but why didn't we limit the damage and go back to 4-4-2 before the second goal?

I know hindsight is always 20/20, but ......

The thing is... were we so much better in the second half yesterday or were Reading letting us come at them, happy to sit on a two goal cushion? They certainly had few chances in the second half to our many... was our second half performance more an indicator of them letting us play than us actually changing the game?

Possibly, and we did think this too, but we'd gone to 4-4-2 until the third change, when we went back to 4-3-3, and we became ineffectual again.

The first half yesterday was terrible. Second was a lot better, but as has been the case recently, we find it difficult to score.

I thought Quinn was dreadful the first half. I can't remember him keeping possession at all. Also, im not either a fan of the 4-3-3 formation or Stokes. Firstly, it doesn't really look like a 4-3-3 formation when we're going forward, no one seems to be in space looking to receive the ball, and its generally just 1 person in their box. Regarding Stokes, he doesn't seem to do much at all. Sharp looked a lot better of the two when he came on!

Didn't think Squinny was too bad actually, but the real problem was highlighted by the fact that our back four were continually being pulled out of position. How many times was Killa backfilling for Sunny Jim, when Sunny had to try and get forward? We were being left wide open. That allied to the fact that there was little movement or passing options, made life much easier for Reading.

I'm not saying we'd have won had we employed different tactics, and the formation has worked well for a while, but Reading were a different proposition, and maybe it was one of those rare times when changes were needed in a winning side.