BFTG- Millwall (a)

[andrew1957]

Watched highlights on SS and thought both sendings off were ridiculously harsh. Looks like the luck is just not with us this season. Added to this our best chance of survival was to stick with Clement and so frankly the club hierarchy have most likely doomed us to League 1.

[alfie9]

Referee has utterly phucked us today with the terrible red card decision. Thought the majority of the squad showed more fight and character than I've seen at hardly any point this year. We're a decimated side playing a man down, still stayed in the game, it's not good enough but it gives me hope that we will turn this around.

Jaak: 5/10 Not good with his feet, but neither was Al-Habsi

Richards: 4/10 Good going forward but not a survival left-back, LB must be addressed in January

Blackett: n/a Ref's had a mare, and to all you people calling him an idiot for making a legal challenge to recover the ball, you can't have it both ways, we finally see a player fight for the shirt and now he's suspended

Moore: 5/10 Started bad but grew into it

Yids: 6/10 Quality performance playing out of position

Rino: 6/10 Another solid performance

Bacuna: 2/10 Overrated

Swift: 7/10 MOTM. Worked his socks off and under the right management is going to be a leading championship midfielder. Really tired of seeing fans slagging him off when he's one of our only consistent players this season

Barrow: 2/10, done with him to be honest, been poor all season

Meite: 4/10 no service, first touch still poor, I never ever doubt that he wants to be here and at the moment that makes him invaluable

Loader: 1/10 not ready. Probably a good time for a loan spell.

Baldock: 1/10 until we have better, more consistent service from the midfield he is utterly useless

GMac: 5/10 satisfactory, worked hard start to finish

Osho: 6/10 this kid can pass, Gomes's arrival might be the perfect timing for him

Gomes: 7/10. 58% possession with 10 men and while we only had 2 shots on target we did go forward with purpose. One thing I was impressed with was him not pulling a striker for Osho after the red card. It signaled a winning mentality rather than damage limitation, as we saved all 3 for the final push. Jury's still out until we play a full match with 11 men.

[RG7Fan]

Watched highlights on SS and thought both sendings off were ridiculously harsh. Looks like the luck is just not with us this season. Added to this our best chance of survival was to stick with Clement and so frankly the club hierarchy have most likely doomed us to League 1.

Both look very harsh red cards to me.

[Platypuss]

Watched highlights on SS and thought both sendings off were ridiculously harsh. Looks like the luck is just not with us this season. Added to this our best chance of survival was to stick with Clement and so frankly the club hierarchy have most likely doomed us to League 1.

Get out. Bacuna's was snide as hell - no way he didn't know full well he was standing on their player's thigh.

[CountryRoyal]

Watched highlights on SS and thought both sendings off were ridiculously harsh. Looks like the luck is just not with us this season. Added to this our best chance of survival was to stick with Clement and so frankly the club hierarchy have most likely doomed us to League 1.

Get out. Bacuna's was snide as hell - no way he didn't know full well he was standing on their player's thigh.

Yeah. He didn't "stamp" on him per se, but he was already on him, and when he lifted his other foot transferred all his weight to the standing leg and thus pushing the studs down on their leg. Was a pcunt move but don't know why we're surprised. Bacuna is a colossal pcunt.

[Crowbar6753]

Clearly we are having issues on the wings, Barrow has gone off the boil, McCleary is past his best, Aluko clearly cannot cut it as a winger and Simms blows hot and cold, so maybe a change of formation is needed? Boro used wing backs against us and to be fair the were dangerous throughout.
Richards/Obita are clearly better at attacking than defending and would both make great wing backs, and the same goes for Gunter and Yiadom.
This would allow us to play three center backs, and what we have learnt from the last few weeks is that we have plenty of option in this area, Moore, Osho and either O'Shea or Ilori wouldn't be to shabby i guess. And this would leave us with a core midfield three of Rinomota, Swift and either Ezatolahi or Bacuna, again, not to shabby.
This would allow us with two up top, which is a must as we never look like scoring with just a lone striker, so i guess either Meite/Bod as the big center forward with either Loader or Baldock playing off the shoulder. And i would like to see either Swift or Kelly as the link up between Midfield and attack.
5-3-2 isn't the most popular of formations but it would play to our strengths, i think lol

[Zip]

Clearly we are having issues on the wings, Barrow has gone off the boil, McCleary is past his best, Aluko clearly cannot cut it as a winger and Simms blows hot and cold, so maybe a change of formation is needed? Boro used wing backs against us and to be fair the were dangerous throughout.
Richards/Obita are clearly better at attacking than defending and would both make great wing backs, and the same goes for Gunter and Yiadom.
This would allow us to play three center backs, and what we have learnt from the last few weeks is that we have plenty of option in this area, Moore, Osho and either O'Shea or Ilori wouldn't be to shabby i guess. And this would leave us with a core midfield three of Rinomota, Swift and either Ezatolahi or Bacuna, again, not to shabby.
This would allow us with two up top, which is a must as we never look like scoring with just a lone striker, so i guess either Meite/Bod as the big center forward with either Loader or Baldock playing off the shoulder. And i would like to see either Swift or Kelly as the link up between Midfield and attack.
5-3-2 isn't the most popular of formations but it would play to our strengths, i think lol

Good post and agreed.

[sandman]

We're really having people on here get on the back of an 18 year old lad whose role in the game changed after about 10 minutes?

[URZZZZ]

Referee has utterly phucked us today with the terrible red card decision. Thought the majority of the squad showed more fight and character than I've seen at hardly any point this year. We're a decimated side playing a man down, still stayed in the game, it's not good enough but it gives me hope that we will turn this around.

Jaak: 5/10 Not good with his feet, but neither was Al-Habsi

Richards: 4/10 Good going forward but not a survival left-back, LB must be addressed in January

Blackett: n/a Ref's had a mare, and to all you people calling him an idiot for making a legal challenge to recover the ball, you can't have it both ways, we finally see a player fight for the shirt and now he's suspended

Moore: 5/10 Started bad but grew into it

Yids: 6/10 Quality performance playing out of position

Rino: 6/10 Another solid performance

Bacuna: 2/10 Overrated

Swift: 7/10 MOTM. Worked his socks off and under the right management is going to be a leading championship midfielder. Really tired of seeing fans slagging him off when he's one of our only consistent players this season

Barrow: 2/10, done with him to be honest, been poor all season

Meite: 4/10 no service, first touch still poor, I never ever doubt that he wants to be here and at the moment that makes him invaluable

Loader: 1/10 not ready. Probably a good time for a loan spell.

Baldock: 1/10 until we have better, more consistent service from the midfield he is utterly useless

GMac: 5/10 satisfactory, worked hard start to finish

Osho: 6/10 this kid can pass, Gomes's arrival might be the perfect timing for him

Gomes: 7/10. 58% possession with 10 men and while we only had 2 shots on target we did go forward with purpose. One thing I was impressed with was him not pulling a striker for Osho after the red card. It signaled a winning mentality rather than damage limitation, as we saved all 3 for the final push. Jury's still out until we play a full match with 11 men.

I'm so glad people are starting to see Barrow for what he is, I called it out ages ago, 3 goals in the whole of 2018 is an absolute disgrace for a so called "winger", needs to go and sharpish. 1/10's are a bit ludicrous though, you can't expect two 5 foot strikers to do anything with 10 men the whole game against a side like Millwall

[Lower West]

We were shocking in the opening few minutes. Set-up wrongly from the kick off. As a result coupled with Blacketts moment of madness. The game was lost before it had even really started. Fortunately Millwall's inability to play football meant they couldn't take advantage of the extra man in the second half.

Two league one sides out on the pitch today. Time is ticking away.

Roll on Saturday. As this should have been a wake up call for the new manager. Little point in playing a style ( ala Stam) for which some of the players are totally unsuited.

[Jagermesiter1871]

Everyone keeps saying McCleary is past his best, which he probably is, but from what I've seen of him this season and considering he's just come back from a lengthy injury, I think he still looks classy and certainly useful at this level. Definitely think he's still our best winger.

Considering Barrow is generally considered a bit of a oxf*rd, and now he's not performing at all, he needs to go.

[Lower West]

Gomes: 7/10. 58% possession with 10 men and while we only had 2 shots on target we did go forward with purpose. One thing I was impressed with was him not pulling a striker for Osho after the red card. It signaled a winning mentality rather than damage limitation, as we saved all 3 for the final push. Jury's still out until we play a full match with 11 men.

Possession in your own half will never win games. Millwall were happy to sit deep and cling on to their lead. Given our total lack of cutting edge was the right call.

[Denver Royal]

We're really having people on here get on the back of an 18 year old lad whose role in the game changed after about 10 minutes?

If that’s their opinion, yes. Fine by me, and others, apparently. As well as potential, it’s about the here and now. Overall, some may actually rate him more highly as a player than you do, but doesn’t mean they can’t critique his game today. In the situation we’re in, are you expecting everyone to give him 10/10 because of his age? Or maybe he’s off limits and he shouldn’t be evaluated at all? He may have done well, but is it enough, and what we need at this time?

[Royal Monkey]

I keep hearing we played well and kept the ball ! That’s no good when you only have a couple of shots on target and can’t score. We’re back to playing boring stamball, ridiculous manager appointment doesn’t have any knowledge of the champ and our players aren’t good enough to play possession based football. He admitted he left Bod out of the 18 when he had no injury and starts an 18 year old kid up top on his own who looks out of his depth and hasn’t scored yet !!! we’re going down !!!

[tidus_mi2]

I keep hearing we played well and kept the ball ! That’s no good when you only have a couple of shots on target and can’t score. We’re back to playing boring stamball, ridiculous manager appointment doesn’t have any knowledge of the champ and our players aren’t good enough to play possession based football. He admitted he left Bod out of the 18 when he had no injury and starts an 18 year old kid up top on his own who looks out of his depth and hasn’t scored yet !!! we’re going down !!!

We were down to 10 men for most of the game, down to 9 for about the same time we were at 11. We were never going to be creating chance after chance, to dismiss a style of play after such a scenario is frankly, well completely expected of a lot of Reading fans.

[URZZZZZZZZ]

Added to this our best chance of survival was to stick with Clement

Incredible foresight Mystic Meg

[Snowball]

I keep hearing we played well and kept the ball ! That’s no good when you only have a couple of shots on target and can’t score. We’re back to playing boring stamball, ridiculous manager appointment doesn’t have any knowledge of the champ and our players aren’t good enough to play possession based football. He admitted he left Bod out of the 18 when he had no injury and starts an 18 year old kid up top on his own who looks out of his depth and hasn’t scored yet !!! we’re going down !!!

We were down to 10 men for most of the game, down to 9 for about the same time we were at 11. We were never going to be creating chance after chance, to dismiss a style of play after such a scenario is frankly, well completely expected of a lot of Reading fans.

well said

[Delboy]

Just had a report from my millwall friend he said it was like the game at mad stad when millwall were better team and lost . We were better team yesterday, he said our 10 better than their 11 ! Did not deserve to lose game of two free kicks

[Muskrat]

Just had a report from my millwall friend he said it was like the game at mad stad when millwall were better team and lost . We were better team yesterday, he said our 10 better than their 11 ! Did not deserve to lose game of two free kicks

Cushtie!

[Sutekh]

Just had a report from my millwall friend he said it was like the game at mad stad when millwall were better team and lost . We were better team yesterday, he said our 10 better than their 11 ! Did not deserve to lose game of two free kicks

Saw SKY Sports 2 mins "highlights" package this AM. No sight of Swift's free kick assault on their bar.