Back from the Blackpool game...

[Archie's penalty]

Hahnemann 6
Rosenior 6
Armstrong 6
Duberry 6
Ingimarsson 6
Henry 6
SHunt 6
Gunnarsson 6
Matejovsky 6
Doyle 6
NHunt 6


Subs:
Federici 6
Convey 6
Long 6

Birmingham 6
Joy of 6

Shunt 6 6 6?

[SLAMMED]

Tonight was an experiment for me - first time ever in West Stand. It was terribly polite. Quiet as a grave. Cold as a witches' tit. And started to empty just after the game started. Time to head back east where it's noisy, sweary and a whole lot more fun.

This whole paragraph, and especially the underlined sentence is one of the funniest truthful thing iv ever read on HNA

[londinium]

ok i left the game pretty down hearted. as has been said we should have had the quality to get a better margin of victory. BUT the same was said of manchester united against sunderland... my point being at least we got the three points - even the best of teams will play crap against a rubbish team, what matters is the result. but i hope we do better at the weekend. we need to play better if we want to continue to pick up points and stay on the tails of wolves an birmingham.

Brum seem to play crap most weeks and get the 3 points

[Dirk Gently]

Well whoever said 1-0 And a boring match on the the prediction thread.

SPOT ON!!

we were once again below par with are perfomance, and i thought both strikers were very quiet.

Marek had a poor game, but i will admit nice to see coppel make some changes with harper on the bench.

Dunno why cisse was though, all in all i thought Inga was MOTM as he not only scored a good goal but was also solid at the back.

Dunno what game you were watching. Marek was the best player on the pitch, which admittedly isn't saying much.

he's a great player, and extremely skillful - but sadly not a particularly effective one. With 5 in midfield against us he didn't have the space to do much, his tackling was as powderpuff as expected, and although he obviously has superb vision and played some great through balls, they came to nothing because they were far too visionary and far too good for his team mates to anticipate.

[AlexY25]

Not a great peformance, but 3 points in the bag.
Two 1-0 wins in a row. Winning when not playing good, good teams do that.

USA - 7 - Not much to do

Rosenior - 6 - Same really, average
Doobs - 5 - Did ok, one or two silly errors though.
Ivar - 7 - Good game, nice finish for the goal.
Armstrong - 8 - Thought he played really well today, my MOTM.

S.Hunt - 6 - Didnt play that well today, and missed a penalty.
Gunnarsson - 7 - Quite conifdent on the ball, rock in midfield.
Matejovsky - 7 - Good game, looked a bit rusty occasionally.
Henry - 7 - Good deliveries mostly. But not involved too much

Doyle - 6 - Rare poor game, one or two mistakes, but still gave 100%
N.Hunt - 5 - Played poorly i think tonight.

Subs : S.Long - 5 - Did nothing
Federici - 6 - Distribution from goal kicks was excellent when he came on.
Convey - 6 - Looked very quick, not much to do though.

[SHORT AND CURLY]

Terrible game.
Terrible ref and linesman (ruined the game for both sides)
Terrible atmosphere
Bloddy freezing
Apart from that it was great entertainment.


I`m off to bed goodnight!

[seahawk10]

Hahnemann 6
Rosenior 6
Armstrong 6
Duberry 6
Ingimarsson 6
Henry 6
SHunt 6
Gunnarsson 6
Matejovsky 6
Doyle 6
NHunt 6


Subs:
Federici 6
Convey 6
Long 6

Birmingham 6
Joy of 6

You sir are an over-sixed maniac.

[Big Foot]

Also, I didn't realise that Duberry learned how to kick a ball/pass from Ibrahima Sonko VERY poor distribution from him tonight

[Billy The Fish]

Rarely have I been so down after watching a win. Sitting in near silence in the East stand (whilst 20 gobby Northerners make more noise than some teams that fill the South stand) freezing my wotsits off for 45 minutes of the 2nd half watching a team that aspires to automatic promotion struggling to hold out against 10 men from a team 16 places below us in the league is not my idea of entertainment.

Anyway:
USA - 7 lots of catching practice in the first half, good distribution, hope he is OK
Rosie - 6, clearly missed his partner on the right Kebe, didn't gel with Henry at all
Stretch - 6. Solid defensively, didn't get forward as much as recently though
Ingi - 8. MOTM. Superb at the back in the air against a big side, plus a well taken goal
Doobs - 5. Poor. Beaten in the air too often tonight. BK to come straight back in.
Gunnar - 6. Good in the first half, sat too deep in the second.
Marek - 7. Great in the first half, some lovely touches, faded in the second. An enigma for me really, clearly the most skilful player we have but somehow always dissappoints. Bit embarrassing the way he went down as if pole-axed which clearly influenced the ref in sending off Hendrie.
S Hunt - 6. Got into some good attacking positions but no end product tonight.
J Henry - 5. No understanding with Rosie meant we didn't get the usual service into the strikers.
N Hunt - 5. Ran about a lot, but didn't get the service.
Doyler - 7. Worked hard, but again, no service.

Fed - 5. Looked shaky, but to be expected really coming off the bench unexpectedly on a cold night
Convey - 5. What has happened to the player of 3 years ago? Guess he never got over the injury
Long - 4. Never got into the game and deserves a bollocking for trying to wrestle the ball off Hunt for the pen

Ref - 8 and a comedy sending-off
Blackpool fans - 9 and a lol for when they thought they'd scored

[Alan Partridge]

3 words sum it up, Cold and Crap.

Really really poor game of football. Thought Blackpool organised themselves well and defended resolutely but we rarely caused them any problems. We missed Kebe's pace in trying to stretch the 10 men but I thought young Henry did ok for a first start. We looked like a different side to what we were a few weeks ago. We tried to play too much football in little triangles in silly areas where we couldn't possibly make anything productive. Lots of neat play with no end product, we were a typical Championship side tonight!

I thought our defense were comfortable, I can understand Doobs scoring a couple of low marks because some of his distribution tonight was poor but as a unit our defense was fairly solid, he was a part of that.

Midfield, I thought our central two were oooook but as stated I just felt we played too much football. What I like with Marek is that he gets it and his first thought is to look up and at least try and move it forwards. He knows the full backs are there as a contingency, that's what sets him apart from Harper. You have to accept with a player like that he will give the ball away more but when his passes do get through we create a chance and he helped set up Ivar's excellent goal tonight. He tired in the 2nd half and had Hahnemann not gone off then Coppell probably would have took him off.

Boris was ok as well, competitive, tidy in posession, he was fine in there. As also mentioned I thought Henry was slightly better than one or two reports but we missed that half a yard of pace that Kebe has. He could have stretched them a bit better I would have thought but even so Henry was good in possession and I thought he tried to link up as much as possible.

I don't want to say too much on S Hunt as it would be a reaction that tomorrow I might not make, all I'll say is he was absolutely awful.

Doyle was Reading's best player imo, he worked his balls off and has quality that none of our other players have. First touch is excellent, he seems to turn in one movement and then he's facing their goal, I thought he was good again tonight.

Noel had his worst game for Reading tonight, totally ineffective and didn't cuase them any problems whatsoever.

The big news tonight is Hahnemann, calf injury that looks like it could be a few weeks out. Firstly I think Federici deserves his chance in the team over these weeks but tonight again he doesn't convince me at all. I thought he took the one cross very well, he can kick well but his positioning is woeful. Last season I remember watching Torres run at goal and Federici stand so far to one side that it gave torres the entire goal to slot it by him which he did. He did EXACTLY the same thing tonight for their disallowed goal. He made the angle easier for the striker instead of tougher and on another day that could have counted.

Tonight was a truly dire performance from Reading. Again the standard of this league is shown up that Reading could still win relatively comfortably despite putting in one of their worst performances for a fair few years.

3 points is the one and only positive from tonight, he's got an interesting selection for Saturday.

[Toadie]

Marek - 7. Great in the first half, some lovely touches, faded in the second. An enigma for me really, clearly the most skilful player we have but somehow always dissappoints. Bit embarrassing the way he went down as if pole-axed which clearly influenced the ref in sending off Hendrie.

This, for me, seems to be a recurring trait in his game!

[Jackson Corner]

Tonight we found out what it must be like watching Brum every week. We seem to have a real problem against bottom half teams. But when all is said and done 9 points out of 9 for December can't be bad.

[rabidbee]

What disappointed me was that when they went down to one striker we didn't push Ivar up a bit, to allow Marek a freer role behind the front two, to capitalise on the extra man. At times, it looked more like they had the extra man - which, of course, is something I wrote about us after Saturday's match. I suspect there were some heavy legs after that match, so it was no suprise that he swapped both central midfielders. It wouldn't surprise me if he goies back to Harper and Cissé on saturday, although Boris and Marek probably deserve another chance to see if it could produce anything better.

Agree with AP's comments about doyle, but disagree about SHunt - he was our main attacking player tonight. James Henry just is not the answer - how many times did he just stand still waiting the the ball when the situation was screaming for him to run onto a pass behind the defence? He put in a few nice crosses, but he is too static and too slow to be a replacement for Kébé. Didn't see enough of Bobby to judge him; it'd be nice if he could start on Saturday, to see if he is a better solution.

[Dr Hfuhruhurr]

It wouldn't surprise me if he goies back to Harper and Cissé on saturday, although Boris and Marek probably deserve another chance to see if it could produce anything better.

Boris was actually rather good last night and seems to have hit a bit of ripe form this winter - Ill be surprised if he's dropped. It may well be that Marek plays as well, there were other areas that concerns most.

Namely our right hand side and Duberry. Both Duberry and Rosenior were below par. It was an uncharacteristically sloppy game from Duberry, and Rosenior was doing his little boy lost act again. Personally I think he needs an experienced figure in front of him, and I have a sneaky feeling Doyle may play there on Saturday. Which would leave us starting Long instead of Henry.

PS. Not sure about Hunt being 'Awful'. He and Doyle are a class apart in our team. He did start dicking around in the second half, though.

[gazzer, loyal royal]

i thought we played the ball round well at the start, some nice 1 and 2 touch football without threatening to do anything. no one really appealed for the pen in the first half and I coudn't even see the colour of the card let alone the tackle.

The game never really got going, one because no one could keep hold of the ball, and 2 cos the ref constantly had the whistle to his mouth and giving hand gestures why the foul was given.

Thought Marek had a good game, and gives us an option none of the other midfielders can. However neither Bryn or Marek broke into the box to support the strikers. Give marek a run of games and he'll be superb in this league. I think they may start with him on the right of midfield on Sat against Norwich.

Will be good to see A Fed get a couple of games under his belt. He came back wih a glowing report from Southend, and bar one mistake against Man Utd in the cup, looks a more than capable keeper.

[The Real Sandhurst Royal]

A poor performance, but we got the three points... We need to start utilsing Armstrong more on the left with overlapping runs...when he gets to the bye line he puts in telling crosses that the strikers and midffielder do not gamble on.

[readingbedding]

Instantly forgettable, but some of us have seen whole season's that have been forgettable.

A win is a win is a win is a win is a win.

[Kareem Abdul-Jabar]

I've been reading with some interest for a while now the desire on these boards to drop Harper in place of Marek, Bryn or Jem and the general criticism of Harpers style of play. What amazes me about these comments is the complete lack of understanding and appreciation of the qualities he brings to the team. Reading players have commented on the fact that Harper is the cog that keeps the RFC team moving and I thought the disjointed, sloppy football last night illustrated that our style of play just does not work without him pulling the strings in the middle of the park.

Firstly, Duberry, Ingimarsson & Rosenior, for all their defensive qualities, cannot pick a pass or play their way out from the back. Without Harper collecting the ball from the centre backs and distributing it quickly (admittedly sideways), all too often the ball is hoofed forward, missing out the midfield.

Secondly, Bryn only seems to pass the ball in the direction he is facing, therefore if he gets it from the left, it's only going back to the left. An important part of Reading's attacking threat is the ability to switch play and change direction - again something Harper brings to the team.

Thirdly, Marek should of been in his element last night - a poor team down to ten men, space everywhere, yet all too often his passes went astray, possession was lost and momentum stopped. I have high hopes for Marek and realise that he needs time to get up to speed after a long time without competitive football, however, constantly giving the ball away in search of the Hollywood pass is not good enough. One killer pass a game does not justify a starting role.

Despite the above, I know Harper has his many faults, but I believe he brings something that was lacking yesterday. Unfortunately, playing him and Matejovsky together doesn't look a viable option. Maybe something to look into would be a three man centre midfield with them both and Cisse.

[PieEater]

I have to disagree with a lot of these posts, I thought we did pretty well in the first half. Up until the sending off we were dominant and playing well through midfield. The sending off forced Blackpool into a new shape and that seemed to upset us, but even so for the first half we were unlucky not to be 2 or 3 goals ahead.

The second half was dire though, and we were hanging on at the end in a game we should have already have been comfortably clear.

Not impressed with the performances from Henry or the Hunts, but Marek and Boris did OK. In the first half it at least looked like we had a midfield that was mostly absent at Barnsley.

[readingbedding]

It wasn't a good game of football, it happens, no problem.
It was just a cold, midweek game in December and we won 1-0.