Did Sir Steve Get It Wrong Tonight?

[cmonurz]

Andre Bikey - what the hell is going on with him? Awful in the 1st half - trotting across the area waiting for Heinze to shoot for the 1st, and letting Saha have the ball for the 2nd.

But his performance in the 2nd half shows sceptical Reading fans what Coppell sees in him, and why by no means should he be 'moved on'. Potential to become a brilliant central defender, and I noticed in both games against United that he is tending to pass the ball out of defence rather than welly it - certianly a marked difference in those terms to when Sonko plays.

Edit after Stranded's post - add that tackle on Park, and excellent defending to keep Rooney out when he got passed him.

[Stranded]

I agree with Stranded when it comes to Bikey, the last hour he was immense, and fair play to him, didn't think he had it in him.

You mean when Man U didn't really bother attacking as they (correctly) thought they had the game won?

So you are discounting the excellent tracking back of Rooney when through and taking the ball off him excellently and the excellent sliding tackle on Park Ji Sung which won possession, a possession we retained until Man Utd kicked off after Lita's goal?

[Barry the bird boggler]

Bikey is a young(!) Sonko. Looks raw and can veer from the quite alarming to the pretty amazing over the course of a game.

Think we'll take him on permanently in the summer but there is still a lot of work to do but if that pays off then Spiderman he shall become!

[All sorts]

you also seem to be forgetting the Cruyff turn the Bikey peformed to make the boy wonder look a complete t*t

[Banjax]

i loved the way he just bumped Rooney & Saha reet out the way

no fancy skills or bamboozling just get the f uck out of the way and gimme the ball! go on Andre

proud of the team tho, im in for a day of stick in my office but i don't give a monkeys, take out the 1st 10 mins we had them on the ropes

[Platypuss]

I agree with Stranded when it comes to Bikey, the last hour he was immense, and fair play to him, didn't think he had it in him.

You mean when Man U didn't really bother attacking as they (correctly) thought they had the game won?

So you are discounting the excellent tracking back of Rooney when through and taking the ball off him excellently and the excellent sliding tackle on Park Ji Sung which won possession, a possession we retained until Man Utd kicked off after Lita's goal?

Well yes, actually - long speculative punts up to strikers and sporadic isolated forays by wingers are exactly what I would call not really bothering to attack.

[Vision]

To answer the original question, with hindsight yes he did get it wrong and admitted it himself.

However it doesn't really matter what formation or personnel you put out, if you defend like we did at the start than you're gonna get tonked!. It was the same defensive formation and personnel that were lauded at Old Trafford but the difference this time was that A) they didn't do the basics and B) Fergie had prepard for us to play that way and had come up with a way of exploiting it.

As for Bikey, he has some tremendous qualities as he demonstrated in the 2nd half and is certainly worth perservering with. However he really needs to improve his mental toughness as his concentration levels are not good enough at the moment.

Thought Gunnarsson was excellent when he moved into central midfield and Sidwell's game picked up at that stage as well although on a couple of occasions his (Sidwell) decision making was frustrating as he chose to shoot(tamely) when he could have rolled in others in better positions.

Also generally agree that the changes could have come earlier although Doyle will certainly benefit for the 70 mins he played. Little made a huge difference when he came on as did Lita but it does need to be remembered that they had fresh legs uagainst tiring ones and it was the period when we went shit or bust so you'd expect that to a certain degree.

No-ones really mentioned him yet so i will. i thought Kitson was outstanding even in the first 20 mins when we were dire he was strong and trying to be creative and the longer the game went on the more i felt his flicks and lay offs would lead to something more. He was MOTM for me closely followed by Shorey who also stood out.

I'm proud of the guts , spirit, and ability that we showed to bounce back but can't shake off the nagging feeling that this was a great opportunity squandered.

[Hoop Blah]

The FA cup against Manchester United is not the time to be playing strange new formations.

We've played the same 5-4-1 formation (I think Doyle started down the right not upfront) on a number of occasions this season and it's worked quite well. Being so slow out of the blocks, and being totally disorganised is what cost us.

And I've not yet seen any conclusive evidence that Soulkshire was onside ...

Unfortunately he was a good yard onside, I checked when I got in and from one angle you can't even see Gunnarsson in the picture as the ball is played.

I don't think Coppell got the formation wrong, the personell yes, and I'd liked to have seen us start 4-4-2 but I can see the logic in 5-4-1 it was just let down by awful defending. Potentially the formation contributed to that with the unfamiliar midfield allowing too much room on the right for the first and lazy/disorganised defending bringing about the second and third.

On the different views on Oster performance I think he looked pretty good whilst we were playing well in the second half but was as much to blame as anyone when we were bad. His type of player is always going to give the ball away because their nature is to try the more difficult and creative options but I wish he'd stop try to play some of the wasteful lobs into the box and taking a extra touches at times when simple, easier and more creative passes are on. Overall I think he did pretty well, not great but not shit.

On Bikey's performance I thought he was pretty immense when the game was in the balance towards the end but that was because he was playing instinctively and making saving tackles, something that he's quite good at. He was awful to start with though and his slack marking and lack of awareness cost us early on. They are probably more important attributes for a consistent defender so my opinion hasn't really changed, the jury's out.

Bikey made Rooney look ordinary - Rooney had one of his most anonymous performances of the season - now that is a compliment to us

He was only on for a short time and was hardly given the ball because we had them camped on the edge of their box, I don't think his lack of impact had much to do with our solid defending!

Great peformance from Gunnarsson again and Little just showed what could've been if we took the game a little more seriously.

[Dirk Gently]

I think it was just in the heads of the personnel that it went wrong, nopt the personnel themselves or the formation.

Whoever does the talking in the huddle didn't say the right things, because we were still trying to sort ourselves out and adjust to the pitch etc when we found ourselves a goal down. AF and the defence were still trying to get over that when we were suddenly 2 and then 3 goals down.

Effectibely, Man Utd came at us right from the start in exactly the same way that we did to teams last season, and for whatever reason we just weren't quite ready for it.

I also think that if AF had saved the Henize shot (first goal) he would have saved the second goal too - he was so clearly still beating himself up from after the first one.

[Great Knolly]

Coppell has reached another level. As he said in an interview: he out thought himself last night.
We should have started 442. I imagine his non-442 formation was decided upon before he'd seen the Man U line up.

Oster was great with the ball at his feet last night. I think people got frustrated because he was doing very good things and then sometimes giving the ball away too easily. There was a lot of sloppy play from both sides after that bizarre 1st 6 minutes. After last night I would consider Oster another genuine option for centre midfield.

Lita's finish was sublime again, but his 1st touch when not trying to score is still poor. Perhaps he should just goal hang until improves his 1st touch.

Gunnarsson, Shorey, De La Cruz, were all excellent once Reading were 3-0 down.

[holsgrove breaks a leg]

Formation wise Coppell i think got it wrong. Playing 5-3-2 really exposed Reading- with 5-4-1 at least you the the insurance of an extra midfield player to cope with counter attacks. This, coupled with the fact that 2out of our 'back three' at the beginning (Gunnarson,Bikey) were absolutely shocking was always going to be a recipe for disaster against a team of that quality. Of course Gunnarson played a key part in the 1-1 draw at the back, but i just cant help thinking if he was finally found out last night with the pace and movement of such a side. Sticking him back to mid and he looked much more in control. Bikey continues to astound me,another horror show at the start but ended up playing very well- he really needs to find consistency!!. Im not adverse at playing say 5-4-1 against particular sides, though im not so sure Gunnarson should be part of a back 5, especially as we will no doubt use 5-4-1 against strong teams. Kitsons goal was a crucial one yesterday- i think Man U could have run riot and we now go into the Arsenal game with belief rather than the possibility of being over awed by the defeat.

[PieEater]

For me it wasn't just the 5-3-2 formation which caused us problems at the start

It wasn't for me either. It was the 5-4-1. I've decided that I was in a stadium with 19800 blind Reading fans.

That's how I saw it too, Kitson looked as if he was on his own. Maybe it was more 3-1-4-1-1, either way it looked strange.

[weybridgewanderer]

Thought we started 5-4-1 with Doyle out wide on the right, sidwell and oster in the middle

With no Ronaldo the back 5 didn;t know who the spare man was to pick up and we were all at sea.

When we went 4-4-2 we started palying football. Should have done it when we were 2 down rather than 3 down. Bryn was really slow coming out which played Ole onside for their 3rd

[Scarface]

Even though I disagree with the squad rotation policy I'm not too unhappy about it, however I was very disappointed that he used an FA Cup 5th round replay at home to United as a vehicle to get Doyle back to match fitness.

I thought this was the wrong decision and added to the negative formation, I think Coppell was right to admit he made mistakes.

We're all human.

[Archies Left Foot]

i loved the way he just bumped Rooney & Saha reet out the way

no fancy skills or bamboozling just get the f uck out of the way and gimme the ball! go on Andre

Just about sums it up for me...

[If you still hate Futcher]

I agree with Stranded when it comes to Bikey, the last hour he was immense, and fair play to him, didn't think he had it in him.

You mean when Man U didn't really bother attacking as they (correctly) thought they had the game won?

So you are discounting the excellent tracking back of Rooney when through and taking the ball off him excellently and the excellent sliding tackle on Park Ji Sung which won possession, a possession we retained until Man Utd kicked off after Lita's goal?

Well yes, actually - long speculative punts up to strikers and sporadic isolated forays by wingers are exactly what I would call not really bothering to attack.

You could argue that's how they got their 2nd and 3rd goals - the difference being that after about 10 minutes we started defending instead of just watching

[Lower West]

Thought we started 5-4-1 with Doyle out wide on the right, sidwell and oster in the middle

With no Ronaldo the back 5 didn;t know who the spare man was to pick up and we were all at sea.

Spot on. Hence why Coppell said he out thought himself !!!!

Bikey could be the ideal replacement for Sidwell if he leaves. The more I see him play the more I can see the potential for him in a midfield anchor role.

[Bacon Double Cheese]

Wasn't Shorey man marking Park and Bikey the same on Saha to start with?

I'm sure I saw Shorey following Park to our right midfield position at one stage so I guess the tactic was for one of the midfielders to drop back to cover.

I may have got this utterly wrong though

Bryn played the best I have ever seen him play, my MOTM.