BFTG - Cardiff

[BarryWhiteRFC]

Went to them all. inc Simod cup. only one I missed was Walsall. bloody hard being a Reading fan, but many fans of teams lower down the ladder would give their right arm to play at Wembley has many times as we have..another win there would be nice though.

Flew over from US for 2 days for Walsall final in Cardiff...landed at Heathrow at 9am on day of game. Met up with 3 buddies and went on train to game. Was so mad we lost we got trashed in town afterwards...and we got so wrecked we missed the last train back...one of us made it on, 3 didn't, by a few feet as it pulled away. So, mad at that, we went back in to town and got trashed a whole lot more. Eventually we crawled in to a Cardiff taxi at about 3 in the morning...the only driver that would take us.... we had to arrange the fare and show him the cash beforehand...and took that cab all the way back to my parent's house in Maidenhead...my Mum was waiting for me at bottom of stairs as I kicked/smashed the milk bottles on the way in...and the one-way trip with tip in the cab was about 400 quid

Lol epic. I thought about flying back from LA for last years final but I am a negative twat and I thought we'd lose, with good reason. Out of all my sports teams I've only ever seen one win it all in a one off game or a playoff campaign and that was the England rugby final in 2003. I've seen every reading play-off failure, every England knockout exit of the euros and world cup, the LA dodgers consistent playoff failure which reminds me of Reading the way they find ways to lose, the England 20/20 cricket final, the Rugby league final a few weeks ago. Doesn't matter what sport if I support that team we just blow it. Just one win for England in 2003 where I had that feeling of magic in a win or lose moment, that's probably all im going to get.

Support the Pats then. You'll probably get to see them win it all (again) this year.

[FiNeRaIn]

Switching teams is not an option. If you follow the NFL then the Pats don't actually look very good this season. You can never rule them out but I can see their defense being too vulnerable for teams like the Steelers, Rams and i'd back the Vikings to generally stomp them at the moment.

[BR2]

I have to say that I thought last night was a great game of football and I really enjoyed it. Best match I have seen for ages.

After the 3-0 bore fest against Barnsley last night was a breath of fresh air. If we had held on and won 2-1 then everyone would be saying it was a great performance but RFC fans (and all modern fans) seem result obsessed. If we win we played fantastically but if we lose or draw from a winning position we were awful.

I thought last night was a massive improvement from the Barnsley game because whereas Barnsley were absolutely atrocious and we should have won by far more, Cardiff are second for a reason. They are big, strong, fit and came at us for much of the game.

On the whole I thought we handled it well. If there is fault then it was in not getting a third goal - as we had a number of chances and then we would definitely have won the game.

Good to see you back to your enthusiastic self of old.
One thing-what price did you get for a top half finish?
At the start of the season I would guess that the odds would have been something like 1/3 for a team finishing last season in the play-offs or maybe nearer evens if it were a few weeks ago when we were around 18th in the table so I can't see you making your fortune with Paddy Power

But instead it was what they call 2-0 football. Cardiff had nothing to lose and so threw everything at us. More often than not I would have expected us to get a breakaway goal with the pace of Barrow/Aluko or JDB and win 3-1 but it was not our night in the end. But I would have been very happy with a point at the start of the game and thought that for 75 minutes or so that it was the best I had seen Reading play in quite a while.

I came away thinking that play offs are now well within our grasp - especially looking at the fixture list we have now until the start of February. If we can play as well in the next 9 or so games as we did last night I expect us to be just outside the play offs by early February. And then who knows - yet another Wembley disaster no doubt.

I am quite surprised by the negative tone on here in truth.

At least I now have some hope of winning my large bet that we end up top half! Paddy Power must be quaking in their boots.

.

Good to see you back to your enthusiastic self of old.
One thing-what price did you get for a top half finish?
At the start of the season I would guess that the odds would have been something like 1/3 for a team finishing last season in the play-offs or maybe nearer evens if it were a few weeks ago when we were around 18th in the table.-either way I don't think Paddy Power will be over concerned unless you put thousands on.

I thought rather bizarrely considering that we were third last season Reading were 7/5 to finish top half at the start of the season and so I lumped £300 on at 7/5. As you say i doubt in truth that PP will be overly worried.

Well done-really good value bet and I would have made us long odds-on.

[Pepe the Horseman]

We're 9/4 now, which is still a decent price imo.

[muirinho]

We're 9/4 now, which is still a decent price imo.

500 to 1 to win outright, surely that's worth a few quid

[LWJ]

I got 4/5 on July 31st for top half and 11/8 on August 29th for top half.

When did you manage to get 7/5 pre-season?

[Jagermesiter1871]

I’m a Stam fan, but his second half tactics cost us that win. The players looks confused, disorganised and out of position. At times they were screaming at each other and didn’t know who they were marking, and we completely lost the wide threat when it looked like we moved barrow more centrally up top and moved Aluko into midfield and changed to the dreaded 3–5-2. I don’t think Cardiff looked great, but we didn’t enough to finish them off. Livid.

Not for the first time this season. Almost carbon copy of Fulham. WHY DO WE SIT BACK ON A LEAD. IT NEVER WORKS!!

What?

I think it's grossly inaccurate and utter horse sheet to say we sat back on the lead.

We had 2-3 chances in second half. The only reason the chances dried up slightly was because Cardiff got a lot better and we got slightly worse.

Even then we were still pushing up the pitch

DIsagree. Those chances were after Cardiff had got their first and once it was 2-2.