Ian Royal papereyes Rev Algenon Stickleback H to repeat, maybe we didn't lose the game because the players weren't trying, i.e. a bad performance doesn't mean the players weren't trying.
But a performance showing a complete lack of commitment or effort might do? Certainly the reverse of your comment would be true.
Or when Reading play shite against a team that we could have and should have beaten, we must all pretend that the footballing gods had just decided it weren't to be our day?
I was at the Fulham game and I don't think you could accuse many of our players of not trying. Being clueless and hopelessly out of form and confidence is a different matter. I don't think they were playing at top gear, but I don't see that it necessarily means they weren't trying. It is a bit of a case of semantics though.
I don't think it's semantics. It's people who just make the knee-jerk reaction of assuming that a poor performance means the players weren't trying. Probably the kind of people who boo players who are having a bad game, thinking it'll motivate them.
Don't get me wrong, I thought the Fulham game was completely crap and I certainly wasn't giving them a standing ovation at the final whistle, but it had been pretty much all Reading until they scored and the goal just killed our morale and gave them a massive boost. We ended the season as a team without belief, with our tactics completely failing to produce any reward. I'd say if anything we tried considerably harder in the second half of the season than the first. It's just that with so many players off form and devoid of confidence, we weren't working hard in ways that were beneficial to the team, e.g. Kitson and Doyle repeatedly moving out to the wings to put in the crosses that the wingers weren't delivering, defenders surging forward out of position to make tackles the midfielders aren't making because
they are out of position.
Or maybe the players hadn't realised Reading might go down, so they didn't try.