BTGF Swansea

[Millsy]

(NOT THERE IN PERSON watched from abroad)

An aunt sally of an effort. Just to keep up the practice for HNA.

Lumley - 6 Some good saves and generally solid but I thought he should have done much better with their third. Such a slow shot from 25yards out, I really can't understand how he missed it.
Mbengue - 5 - shaky start. Grew into the game, great ball as it turned out for our first. Certaily promising but not my choice of RB yet.
Yiadom - 6 alright I guess, as much as a tiny RB can be alright as a CB
Holmes - 6 Can't give higher to a CB who ships 3 goals. Only 2 teams have let in more goals than we have this season.
TMac - 6 see Holmes.
Hoilett - 6. At left wingback? When we have Raman and NGW on the bench. WTF
Hendrick - 5 just didn't notice him do anything except for a couple of sideways passes slowing the game down. Some say that's the sign of a good player. I don't know.
Loum - 5 WHatever the point of Loum is, it's certainly not to let the opposition slice through you at will and let in 3 goals
Ince - 7, because he's an Ince. Worked v hard as usual. Can't ask for more. Great goal too.
Meite - 9 brilliant goal, formidable assist out of nothing.
Fornah - 6 did some good stuff, but largely forgettable otherwise
subs
Joao- 6 tried?
Carroll - 5 I didn't notice anything fruitful
Ejaria - 6 added an extra dimension and looked useful down the left, but some typical Ejaria moments too.
Raman - unfair to rate him as a CB (if that's what happened I can't even remember - did he go LWB?) but he was largely forgettable except for a ridiculous bit of losing the ball on the left when we were attacking.

Paul Ince - 5. RB at CB, kid at RB, winger at LB. Genius move to start Meite, but inexplicable move to take him off. Sitting incredibly deep after the lead, 11 behind the ball. WTF. Has he forgotten how to get the players to fight? Who did you want to be marking the man roaming completely free in the box to score their first?

[tidus_mi2]

Not Abrefa, Mbengue

[Millsy]

Not Abrefa, Mbengue

Flipping hell of course. FFS Millsy, written in a rush!

[Sutekh]

A step up from the “no show” badness that surfaced v WBA but still disappointing in that the club built a 2 goal lead and then contrived to try and defend that lead for an hour against a side that play keep ball for fun. Even then Reading should by all accounts have had a penalty in injury time but as ever we get a ref that doesn’t give penalties!

Not overly concerned with things at the moment given expectation and the aim of the club really being to reach 50 points as quickly as possible. Shame form isn’t more evenly spread so as to avoid losing streaks but given the over arching issues of FFP and utterly unbelievable (yet again) injury problems I’m not surprised the club are having difficulty getting consistent 100% displays from the defensive unit every 4 days or whatever the average is for games this month.

Got Bristol, Burnley, Luton, Preston, Watford and Hull to come before a month to rest and recover for nearly everyone, if Reading can get at least 6 points from that run then that should I think put them on track for a 60 point (or thereabouts) season.

Think getting Hutchison and maybe Sarr fit and keeping them so may well prove to be a key part of this seasons’s fortunes (so long as enough other defenders are also fit of course).

[Hound]

Bored of talking about this dreadful match. It’s all on the matchwatch thread anyway

[Millsy]

Bored of talking about this dreadful match. It’s all on the matchwatch thread anyway

Then go away.

[SouthDownsRoyal]

Bored of talking about this dreadful match. It’s all on the matchwatch thread anyway

Then go away.

Lol

[paultheroyal]

Awful performance, terrible tactics, saw it coming, got what we deserved, dont do it again.

[bcubed]

Do we really need BFTG threads?! Now I have to look at two threads about each game
And as for BTGF threads, well we definitely don’t need them

[Millsy]

Do we really need BFTG threads?! Now I have to look at two threads about each game
And as for BTGF threads, well we definitely don’t need them

We keep going round in circles here. Perhaps mods, if they could be bothered, could legislate one way or another and then everyone can stick with the decision united.

The issue with just the matchthread, as several of us have been saying, is you often have to trawl through pages of prematch speculation, mid game comments, the tangents of the tangents of the comments of random posts... and before you know it you're wading in a mess of pre/mid/post/irrelevant/tangential/reply comments to pick out the bits you want, which for many is a summary of the game and ratings.

The few times I've not watched a full game it's been annoying for me trying to wade through to find a nice succinct summary, or any ratings at all. In fact once I had to specifically ask for ratings. Unheard of in the days of BFTG threads where you know you could just open it and see a bunch of ratings given by a bunch of people and very quickly know what you missed.

I don't know who invented it (Zip?) but I'm going to keep doing them to keep it going unless mods dictate otherwise. If people don't like it really noone is forcing them to read it.

(and any permutation of the letters BFTG is just a running injoke, like "confimred" "groundhog day" etc)

[bcubed]

Do we really need BFTG threads?! Now I have to look at two threads about each game
And as for BTGF threads, well we definitely don’t need them

We keep going round in circles here. Perhaps mods, if they could be bothered, could legislate one way or another and then everyone can stick with the decision united.

The issue with just the matchthread, as several of us have been saying, is you often have to trawl through pages of prematch speculation, mid game comments, the tangents of the tangents of the comments of random posts... and before you know it you're wading in a mess of pre/mid/post/irrelevant/tangential/reply comments to pick out the bits you want, which for many is a summary of the game and ratings.

The few times I've not watched a full game it's been annoying for me trying to wade through to find a nice succinct summary, or any ratings at all. In fact once I had to specifically ask for ratings. Unheard of in the days of BFTG threads where you know you could just open it and see a bunch of ratings given by a bunch of people and very quickly know what you missed.

I don't know who invented it (Zip?) but I'm going to keep doing them to keep it going unless mods dictate otherwise. If people don't like it really noone is forcing them to read it.

(and any permutation of the letters BFTG is just a running injoke, like "confimred" "groundhog day" etc)

You keep doing them mate
Was just stirring it

[Snowflake Royal]

Obviously late to the punch and memory is now drifting, but we were poor.

The good news is that Meite and Ince worked well together on the break.

The bad news is the entire team approach was to try to play as little football as possible and hope a fairly average Swansea side couldn’t score. Unfortunately when you give a team the freedom of 2/3 of the pitch for 3/4 of the game, they're going to work your keeper. Especially if you repeatedly lose players at corners.

Dreadful set up, dreadful performance, dreadful decision making.

Fair play to Swansea, they saw our tactical weaknesses and exploited them.

They used their forward line to pin half our team on the edge of our box by keeping two players wide to occupy our wingbacks and 1 striker in the middle who somehow occupied all 3 centrebacks. So often McIntyre and Yiadom Mbengue contributed nothing marking space to stay in shape.

We were crying out to go to a flat back four and push more forward to engage them in their half and we never did it.

Lumley - 7 no chance on goals, couple of very good saves
Hoilett - 6 took some big knocks and could only ever defend
Mbengue - 5 out of his depth, pinned back and beaten too easily
Yiadom - 6 took some big wacks, stayed way too deep considering he mostly had no one to mark.
Holmes - 7 worries me with his hugging at corners but did pretty well considering
McIntyre - 6 left watching a lot
Loum - 5 totally overwhelmed and also always close to an error
Fornah - 6 errors and overrun
Hendrick - 6 probably our best midfielder, but will never dominate games and overrun
Ince - 7 couple of excellent breaks, but saw so little of the ball
Meite - 7 couple of good breaks but saw so little of the ball

Joao - 7 we improved when he came on and we came close and created more with him there, but not to be
Ejaria - 6 standard performance. Some nice work. Lost the ball stupidly at least once, didn’t really make any real chances
Carroll - 5 didn't have an impact but didn’t get much service.

PInce - 3 poor poor effort. Assume he has Covid and still struggling with brain fog, because some of the issues were pretty oxf*rd obvious and we certainly didn't play well. What can you expect from a manager who is presumably ill enough to hallcinate a good performance.

[Millsy]

Obviously late to the punch and memory is now drifting, but we were poor.

The good news is that Meite and Ince worked well together on the break.

The bad news is the entire team approach was to try to play as little football as possible and hope a fairly average Swansea side couldn’t score. Unfortunately when you give a team the freedom of 2/3 of the pitch for 3/4 of the game, they're going to work your keeper. Especially if you repeatedly lose players at corners.

Dreadful set up, dreadful performance, dreadful decision making.

Fair play to Swansea, they saw our tactical weaknesses and exploited them.

They used their forward line to pin half our team on the edge of our box by keeping two players wide to occupy our wingbacks and 1 striker in the middle who somehow occupied all 3 centrebacks. So often McIntyre and Yiadom Mbengue contributed nothing marking space to stay in shape.

We were crying out to go to a flat back four and push more forward to engage them in their half and we never did it.

Lumley - 7 no chance on goals, couple of very good saves
Hoilett - 6 took some big knocks and could only ever defend
Mbengue - 5 out of his depth, pinned back and beaten too easily
Yiadom - 6 took some big wacks, stayed way too deep considering he mostly had no one to mark.
Holmes - 7 worries me with his hugging at corners but did pretty well considering
McIntyre - 6 left watching a lot
Loum - 5 totally overwhelmed and also always close to an error
Fornah - 6 errors and overrun
Hendrick - 6 probably our best midfielder, but will never dominate games and overrun
Ince - 7 couple of excellent breaks, but saw so little of the ball
Meite - 7 couple of good breaks but saw so little of the ball

Joao - 7 we improved when he came on and we came close and created more with him there, but not to be
Ejaria - 6 standard performance. Some nice work. Lost the ball stupidly at least once, didn’t really make any real chances
Carroll - 5 didn't have an impact but didn’t get much service.

PInce - 3 poor poor effort. Assume he has Covid and still struggling with brain fog, because some of the issues were pretty oxf*rd obvious and we certainly didn't play well. What can you expect from a manager who is presumably ill enough to hallcinate a good performance.

Thanks Ian, interesting writeup, good points.

Yeah I wonder if Paul Ince presumably not even being around in full capacity on the training ground has had an effect. Don't know.

[Millsy]

A step up from the “no show” badness that surfaced v WBA but still disappointing in that the club built a 2 goal lead and then contrived to try and defend that lead for an hour against a side that play keep ball for fun. Even then Reading should by all accounts have had a penalty in injury time but as ever we get a ref that doesn’t give penalties!

Not overly concerned with things at the moment given expectation and the aim of the club really being to reach 50 points as quickly as possible. Shame form isn’t more evenly spread so as to avoid losing streaks but given the over arching issues of FFP and utterly unbelievable (yet again) injury problems I’m not surprised the club are having difficulty getting consistent 100% displays from the defensive unit every 4 days or whatever the average is for games this month.

Got Bristol, Burnley, Luton, Preston, Watford and Hull to come before a month to rest and recover for nearly everyone, if Reading can get at least 6 points from that run then that should I think put them on track for a 60 point (or thereabouts) season.

Think getting Hutchison and maybe Sarr fit and keeping them so may well prove to be a key part of this seasons’s fortunes (so long as enough other defenders are also fit of course).

Amen!