Opposition fans back from the game - 24/25 page 225 onwards

[Nameless]

Cabral has about a 33% pass success for long balls.

But what does that mean ? Is Rafael better or worse than the rest of the division ?
A long kick from the keeper is pretty much always going to be 50/50, which is why it’s less favoured. Playing with a loan striker I would expect the par to drop even further given he’ll be competing with 2 Centre backstop to win the ball.
We quite often hit the ball long to Meite out wide which ups the risk factor even further, yiu have zero margin for error.
How many ‘failed’ passes are due to the receiver rather than Rafael ?

But I’d agree I would want my keeper to be the best shot stopper / defensive unit every time and a pin point passer is somewhere on the nice to have list

[Snowflake Royal]

Cabral has about a 33% pass success for long balls.

But what does that mean ? Is Rafael better or worse than the rest of the division ?
A long kick from the keeper is pretty much always going to be 50/50, which is why it’s less favoured. Playing with a loan striker I would expect the par to drop even further given he’ll be competing with 2 Centre backstop to win the ball.
We quite often hit the ball long to Meite out wide which ups the risk factor even further, yiu have zero margin for error.
How many ‘failed’ passes are due to the receiver rather than Rafael ?

But I’d agree I would want my keeper to be the best shot stopper / defensive unit every time and a pin point passer is somewhere on the nice to have list

The data is not in a helpful format for this in whoscored. And it's more about decision making than execution or outcome, so even if it was easily available it wouldn't help that much.

My personal is I wince in concern on at least a couple of his passes a game, which is more than many of our keepers.

But then I do the same for plenty of the defence passes.

[Nameless]

Cabral has about a 33% pass success for long balls.

But what does that mean ? Is Rafael better or worse than the rest of the division ?
A long kick from the keeper is pretty much always going to be 50/50, which is why it’s less favoured. Playing with a loan striker I would expect the par to drop even further given he’ll be competing with 2 Centre backstop to win the ball.
We quite often hit the ball long to Meite out wide which ups the risk factor even further, yiu have zero margin for error.
How many ‘failed’ passes are due to the receiver rather than Rafael ?

But I’d agree I would want my keeper to be the best shot stopper / defensive unit every time and a pin point passer is somewhere on the nice to have list

The data is not in a helpful format for this in whoscored. And it's more about decision making than execution or outcome, so even if it was easily available it wouldn't help that much.

My personal is I wince in concern on at least a couple of his passes a game, which is more than many of our keepers.

But then I do the same for plenty of the defence passes.

It’s been a pretty consistent criticism of our keepers that their distribution is poor, and what keepers are asked to do today is much more difficult than it was only a few years ago.
I think generallynwe play out quite well from the back, certainly way better than we did under Stam !

[linkenholtroyal]

Cabral has about a 33% pass success for long balls.

But what does that mean ? Is Rafael better or worse than the rest of the division ?
A long kick from the keeper is pretty much always going to be 50/50, which is why it’s less favoured. Playing with a loan striker I would expect the par to drop even further given he’ll be competing with 2 Centre backstop to win the ball.
We quite often hit the ball long to Meite out wide which ups the risk factor even further, yiu have zero margin for error.
How many ‘failed’ passes are due to the receiver rather than Rafael ?

But I’d agree I would want my keeper to be the best shot stopper / defensive unit every time and a pin point passer is somewhere on the nice to have list

The data is not in a helpful format for this in whoscored. And it's more about decision making than execution or outcome, so even if it was easily available it wouldn't help that much.

My personal is I wince in concern on at least a couple of his passes a game, which is more than many of our keepers.

But then I do the same for plenty of the defence passes.

I would rather have a good shotstopper who is a poor distributor than a good distributor who has no awareness in the box and cant pull off good saves.

From what I have seen of Rafael he is a great shotstopper with great awareness off the ball and puts himself in the right places. 90% of the goals he ships are usually left with me going 'well he had no chance there'. His distribution I would describe as ok it is really hard as it is not always down to the keepers distribution as to pass success it is also about players making space to receive the ball into. I would call him a reassuring keeper and one that you dont go into every game expecting a mistake that will cost us.

There is not many keepers I would rather have in the championship and at the end of the day that is the level we are play it. I could easily name 12-15 first choice keepers at other teams that I would put Rafael in front of.

[Hound]

Rafa's definitely one of the better keepers in the division. Which i think is what makes some of his errors this season particularly disappointing. We play out pretty well from the back - we were overdoing it a bit earlier in the year, but the balance looks good now.

Main issue for me with Rafael is that definite weakness on long shots.

[Snowflake Royal]

Absolutely rather than a good shotstopper who is weaker on distribution than a great distributor with cabbage hands.

I think you've got to think about what the distribution criticism is and who it's from. Jaakkola got a lot of distribution criticism. His kicking was fine, he just wasn't good at playing out. That's a management problem IMO. Either don't play someone who isnt good at what you want, or play them and do something different.

Cabral on the other hand, his long kicking isn't great and his short passing can be hairy too. But he's brilliant on point blank saves.

[Nameless]

Absolutely rather than a good shotstopper who is weaker on distribution than a great distributor with cabbage hands.

I think you've got to think about what the distribution criticism is and who it's from. Jaakkola got a lot of distribution criticism. His kicking was fine, he just wasn't good at playing out. That's a management problem IMO. Either don't play someone who isnt good at what you want, or play them and do something different.

Cabral on the other hand, his long kicking isn't great and his short passing can be hairy too. But he's brilliant on point blank saves.

I doubt there is a keeper whodoesn’t have the odd hairy moment with the ball at his feet. It’s not their core skill, they are always doing it under pressure, they are often used as the escape route by defenders being closed down and their errors get magnified.
Again I’d question whether Rafael makes more errors than some of our defenders - Rino, Morrison, Holmes, Richards, Ejaria, Esteves, Yiadom haveall put us in trouble with errors and they are supposed to be the superstars !
I also think he deserves credit for more than being good at point blank saves. If he had a problem with long range stuff then other teams would have been right on it and they would be shooting at every opportunity - not seen it. He made a couple of errors a while back but like Joao has missed a couple of straightforward chances recent.y that doesn’t make him suddenly rubbish in the penalty area

[Snowflake Royal]

Absolutely rather than a good shotstopper who is weaker on distribution than a great distributor with cabbage hands.

I think you've got to think about what the distribution criticism is and who it's from. Jaakkola got a lot of distribution criticism. His kicking was fine, he just wasn't good at playing out. That's a management problem IMO. Either don't play someone who isnt good at what you want, or play them and do something different.

Cabral on the other hand, his long kicking isn't great and his short passing can be hairy too. But he's brilliant on point blank saves.

I doubt there is a keeper whodoesn’t have the odd hairy moment with the ball at his feet. It’s not their core skill, they are always doing it under pressure, they are often used as the escape route by defenders being closed down and their errors get magnified.
Again I’d question whether Rafael makes more errors than some of our defenders - Rino, Morrison, Holmes, Richards, Ejaria, Esteves, Yiadom haveall put us in trouble with errors and they are supposed to be the superstars !
I also think he deserves credit for more than being good at point blank saves. If he had a problem with long range stuff then other teams would have been right on it and they would be shooting at every opportunity - not seen it. He made a couple of errors a while back but like Joao has missed a couple of straightforward chances recent.y that doesn’t make him suddenly rubbish in the penalty area

Given I literally just said Cabral is brilliant at point blank saves, that's a weird comment. Do you need to me to list every single goalkeeping attribute when talking about him and rate them for him just to be able to talk about one or two of them or something.

So is including Ejaria in a list of defenders, Rino I can just about see. Suggesting Holmes, Esteves, Rino, Morrison or Yiadom are our superstars is also weird. I mean only a couple of posts ago I was saying the defence were just as bad at making poor decisions on when to play out and when to play safe. And given Joao has faced a fair bit of criticism for misses recently it's also weird to hold him up as to why Cabral shouldn't be criticised for having a weakness or bad patch.

All in all it's a pretty bonkers post.

[Nameless]

Absolutely rather than a good shotstopper who is weaker on distribution than a great distributor with cabbage hands.

I think you've got to think about what the distribution criticism is and who it's from. Jaakkola got a lot of distribution criticism. His kicking was fine, he just wasn't good at playing out. That's a management problem IMO. Either don't play someone who isnt good at what you want, or play them and do something different.

Cabral on the other hand, his long kicking isn't great and his short passing can be hairy too. But he's brilliant on point blank saves.

I doubt there is a keeper whodoesn’t have the odd hairy moment with the ball at his feet. It’s not their core skill, they are always doing it under pressure, they are often used as the escape route by defenders being closed down and their errors get magnified.
Again I’d question whether Rafael makes more errors than some of our defenders - Rino, Morrison, Holmes, Richards, Ejaria, Esteves, Yiadom haveall put us in trouble with errors and they are supposed to be the superstars !
I also think he deserves credit for more than being good at point blank saves. If he had a problem with long range stuff then other teams would have been right on it and they would be shooting at every opportunity - not seen it. He made a couple of errors a while back but like Joao has missed a couple of straightforward chances recent.y that doesn’t make him suddenly rubbish in the penalty area

Given I literally just said Cabral is brilliant at point blank saves, that's a weird comment. Do you need to me to list every single goalkeeping attribute when talking about him and rate them for him just to be able to talk about one or two of them or something.

So is including Ejaria in a list of defenders, Rino I can just about see. Suggesting Holmes, Esteves, Rino, Morrison or Yiadom are our superstars is also weird. I mean only a couple of posts ago I was saying the defence were just as bad at making poor decisions on when to play out and when to play safe. And given Joao has faced a fair bit of criticism for misses recently it's also weird to hold him up as to why Cabral shouldn't be criticised for having a weakness or bad patch.

All in all it's a pretty bonkers post.

Is your ONLY mode pure attack ?
Why do you need to be so obnoxious !
You’ve made daft comments because you’ve not read my musings, you’ve misrepresented things and for what gain ?
This isn’t a competition, you don’t have to constantly try and ‘win’. Sometimes people are just throwing thoughts at a page but you seem to just want to turn it into a display of oneupmanship.

[NewCorkSeth]

Absolutely rather than a good shotstopper who is weaker on distribution than a great distributor with cabbage hands.

I think you've got to think about what the distribution criticism is and who it's from. Jaakkola got a lot of distribution criticism. His kicking was fine, he just wasn't good at playing out. That's a management problem IMO. Either don't play someone who isnt good at what you want, or play them and do something different.

Cabral on the other hand, his long kicking isn't great and his short passing can be hairy too. But he's brilliant on point blank saves.

Jaakkola wasn't as bad as his meme status became when it came to distribution but there was a couple of games where he made it very clear he couldn't weight a diagonal kick correctly at all. Banging kicks into stands left and right. His shot stopping was exceptional though. Pulled off some real Al-Habsi saves.

Don't want to bang on about it but was Emi the most well rounded keeper we had in recent years? Did everything to a high standard.

Rafael is certainly amongst the best keepers in the division. All the stats prove that. His unfortunate time with long shots this season has tainted a lot of people opinions of him however.

[Snowflake Royal]

If a keeper is aiming for a winger, you can't take issue with a few balls going out of play. Hahnemann used to get stick for it too. But no long kicking is completely accurate and the odd throw in is far better than losing the ball in the centre of the pitch. And when the ball is accurate it's easier to win and less crowded so you can do something with it.

Never saw anything wrong with Jaakkola's kicking that wasn't caused by him being uncomfortable at being asked to play out.

Martinez was great. Not sure if he was Shaka / Hahnemann great, but he's the closest we've had to them if not IMO.

[Snowball]

Used to love Federici's upfield smacks

[Sutekh]

Opposition management after the game

https://www.readingchronicle.co.uk/spor ... ing-staff/

[From Despair To Where?]

Sounds like a few insults exchanged in a foreign language but Ismael claiming they were the innocent victims.

It depends what was said really but if it was something really offensive, I can't help but feel he'd be making a bigger deal of it. Given the rest of what he said, I reckon someone called them a bunch of cheating cloggers.

[Pepe the Horseman]

I'd back Veljko in a fight against most managers in the division, but Ismael looks like a proper psycho.

[From Despair To Where?]

There's definitely a touch of the Arnies about him.

Assuming nothing sinister was said, and there's no suggestion there was, I quite like Pauno's response which is basically "That shit happens all the time, if you can't take it, don't give it out."

[leon]

I'd back Veljko in a fight against most managers in the division, but Ismael looks like a proper psycho.

Ismael might win the fight but Veljko being Serbian would come back and burn Ismaels town to the ground and kill everyone.

[bcubed]

There's definitely a touch of the Arnies about him.

Assuming nothing sinister was said, and there's no suggestion there was, I quite like Pauno's response which is basically "That shit happens all the time, if you can't take it, don't give it out."

Yep kept his dignity with reply as he usually does

[Mr Optimist]

Trying to create a siege mentality is fine with all the small club bollocks, but following a match with Reading it just sounds so transparent and a bit desperate.

[Tails]

Trying to create a siege mentality is fine with all the small club bollocks, but following a match with Reading it just sounds so transparent and a bit desperate.

I did enjoy the insinuation that we are a big club.....arguably we’re middling in this league. Save that shit for Forest, Sheffield, Norwich etc etc.