Newcastle V Reading Match Thread

[Bristol Royalz]

thought we were ok in the 1st half- weathered the storm then pressed them for a good period
smith should probably have gone off, the second foul was worse than th e1st, and about two minutes after it, and long was pulled up when getting himself clean through on goal, no push, just used his body as the newcastle player flew by.
thought long looked good first half,as did cisse and pearce, and davies in the middle but when we conceded we lost our shape, and any leadership, and second half it looked like men against boys , coincidentally.
karacan and tabb chasing shadows, ran themselves to their knees, and pearce and cisse dropped right off the radar.
the two wide players were totally awful-at least i noticed kebe for trying stuff that didnt come off, but church was invisible, and without them long was left isolated-totally unfair to single him out IMO-kanu and nhunt looked dangerous when they got on from what i saw-worst player on the pitch my arse.
rosenior wasnt that bad, bertrand looked good, couple of good saves from fed.
pretty poor show though, regardless of the opposition-and they aint no man.U,thats for sure.

one striker, 1 winger, and a proper DCM still required IMO
and for christs sake lets replace some of the experience weve lost, or we could be in for some mullerings

Spot on as far as I am concerned...

[Sharpy]

hmmmm

[Royal Rother]

Let's face it, contrary to expectations after their spineless performances at the end of last season, Newcastle were excellent. And we held our own against them until the goal then inexperience showed.

Playing with 10 men for much of the game didn't help.

Kebe really is a spineless weed.

[The Royal We]

thought we were ok in the 1st half- weathered the storm then pressed them for a good period
smith should probably have gone off, the second foul was worse than th e1st, and about two minutes after it, and long was pulled up when getting himself clean through on goal, no push, just used his body as the newcastle player flew by.
thought long looked good first half,as did cisse and pearce, and davies in the middle but when we conceded we lost our shape, and any leadership, and second half it looked like men against boys , coincidentally.
karacan and tabb chasing shadows, ran themselves to their knees, and pearce and cisse dropped right off the radar.
the two wide players were totally awful-at least i noticed kebe for trying stuff that didnt come off, but church was invisible, and without them long was left isolated-totally unfair to single him out IMO-kanu and nhunt looked dangerous when they got on from what i saw-worst player on the pitch my arse.
rosenior wasnt that bad, bertrand looked good, couple of good saves from fed.
pretty poor show though, regardless of the opposition-and they aint no man.U,thats for sure.

one striker, 1 winger, and a proper DCM still required IMO
and for christs sake lets replace some of the experience weve lost, or we could be in for some mullerings

This!

I don't post on here often, but I read every day. I almost always agree with everything you say!

I'm not a fan of Long, but I felt for him today. He had no support. What did Church do?! And Hunt did as much as could be expected when he came on. He had our best effort.

It's only one game, but lets hope it acts as a wake up call that we need to strengthen.

[FiNeRaIn]

Kebe really is a spineless weed.

God good, I agree with you. He actually did well to keep a few difficult balls in today, but I hate him, crap player.

[Arch]

Let's face it, contrary to expectations after their spineless performances at the end of last season, Newcastle were excellent. And we held our own against them until the goal then inexperience showed.

Playing with 10 men for much of the game didn't help.

Kebe really is a spineless weed.

No. He did one thing really well. Took the ball full in the face from Ryan Taylor without flinching and stopped a break. Other than that, though, he was utterly clueless.

[Alan Partridge]

That was awful and all a bit obvious really. 'Good time to play them' nope, all of their players are better than ours.

floyd has been on the blower and is en route to get hammered in Newcastle, he aint happy so no doubt you'll hear his views in the next day or so!

Karacan and Rosenior the only two to come out of that with much credit. We have absolutely no cutting edge, no attacking quality and no forwards. The same problems as the end of last season, it's dressed in a different way but if your best centre forward is Shane Long you are in for a hard season.

I said elsewhere it will be interesting to see a) how the kids do up there and b) how they react to what was an obvious defeat. Swansea away, similarly struggling early doors, big test for Rodgers and his young team. He'll surely make some changes but the bigger issue is he HAS GOT TO SIGN A STRIKER. He's had 2 months to replace Doyle, still waiting. I have seen nothing from Church to suggest he can play a starting role, similarly Robson Kanu and also Kebe who i thought was dire today. The easiest game Steve HArper has ever had, Compo could have kept a clean sheet against reading today.

2 matches, no menaingful efforts nevermind a goal. I applaud Rodgers philosophy of first the emphasis on youth and second the new patient passing style but there has to be some end product, so far there has been absolutely NONE.

I feel a bit sorry for the 1000+ fans that paid all that money and went all that way to watch that, must have been hard.

[Chaney]

Let's face it, contrary to expectations after their spineless performances at the end of last season, Newcastle were excellent. And we held our own against them until the goal then inexperience showed.

Playing with 10 men for much of the game didn't help.

Kebe really is a spineless weed.

No. He did one thing really well. Took the ball full in the face from Ryan Taylor without flinching and stopped a break. Other than that, though, he was utterly clueless.

and he was the only bad player out there..here we fooking go again.

[John Madejski's Wallet]

thought we were ok in the 1st half- weathered the storm then pressed them for a good period
smith should probably have gone off, the second foul was worse than th e1st, and about two minutes after it, and long was pulled up when getting himself clean through on goal, no push, just used his body as the newcastle player flew by.
thought long looked good first half,as did cisse and pearce, and davies in the middle but when we conceded we lost our shape, and any leadership, and second half it looked like men against boys , coincidentally.
karacan and tabb chasing shadows, ran themselves to their knees, and pearce and cisse dropped right off the radar.
the two wide players were totally awful-at least i noticed kebe for trying stuff that didnt come off, but church was invisible, and without them long was left isolated-totally unfair to single him out IMO-kanu and nhunt looked dangerous when they got on from what i saw-worst player on the pitch my arse.
rosenior wasnt that bad, bertrand looked good, couple of good saves from fed.
pretty poor show though, regardless of the opposition-and they aint no man.U,thats for sure.

one striker, 1 winger, and a proper DCM still required IMO
and for christs sake lets replace some of the experience weve lost, or we could be in for some mullerings

^^^ What he said

[Royal Rother]

Let's face it, contrary to expectations after their spineless performances at the end of last season, Newcastle were excellent. And we held our own against them until the goal then inexperience showed.

Playing with 10 men for much of the game didn't help.

Kebe really is a spineless weed.

No. He did one thing really well. Took the ball full in the face from Ryan Taylor without flinching and stopped a break. Other than that, though, he was utterly clueless.

My 10yo son commented after that "he doesn't feel anything". I told him there was a good reason for that.

He worked it out.

[The Real Sandhurst Royal]

Royal Rother wrote:
Kebe really is a spineless weed.

God good, I agree with you. He actually did well to keep a few difficult balls in today, but I hate him, crap player.

Kebe needs to play wide in a 4-4-2 system as his style of play does not fit into a 4-3-3 as he never gets the chance to run with the ball on the wing and then leave it behind him or fall over.

If we continue with 4-3-3 Kebe has no future at RFC.

[Royal Rother]

Karacan and Rosenior the only two to come out of that with much credit.

I though Bertrand was our MOTM, with Rosenior next best.

[Arch]

Let's face it, contrary to expectations after their spineless performances at the end of last season, Newcastle were excellent. And we held our own against them until the goal then inexperience showed.

Playing with 10 men for much of the game didn't help.

Kebe really is a spineless weed.

No. He did one thing really well. Took the ball full in the face from Ryan Taylor without flinching and stopped a break. Other than that, though, he was utterly clueless.

and he was the only bad player out there..here we fooking go again.

No. I've been a Kebe supporter (or a hoper, at least) and there were a couple of players who were worse than Kebe today. But he was really poor; I don't see how you can gloss over that.

[Royal Rother]

Although outclassed for large parts of the game everyone else battled away and tried their hardest; even though it was often shadows they were chasing, they bloody well chased hard.

Quite simply Kebe just pranced around, mainly on the spot, waiting for the ball to come to him, and didn't bother to chase or close down. That ain't on.

[Deathy]

That ain't on.

[Rev Algenon Stickleback H]

We were actually OK until we went a goal down. If you don't look like scoring, going behind is pretty much a killer. Drains away the confidence.

Either we sort it, or we are in for a very long season.

Mind you, Royalee has said we'll be champions, so it's probably just a couple of freak results.

[The whole year inn]

what is concerning is that Reading have not looked like scoring in 180 minutes of league football

we desperately need a striker

[I was there at Elm Park]

Hindsight is a wonderful thing and we can now see that playing Newcastle at this time of the year was actually a bad thing. Right now they have a siege mentality, are still doing "it" for Sir Bobby and most importantly have some serious talent. That line-up should be challenging for the top half of the Premier League. Their situation and this match remind me a lot of when we lost 3-0 to Derby on the first day of the season in 2002. After four games that season we had lost 3 and conceded 8 goals, after 9 games our record was 3 wins, 1 draw, 5 defeats, 9 goals for, 11 against, but we ended up making the play-offs. Burnley didn't win a game in the first month of the season last year so people please don't start panicking. Anyone who expected us to storm the division was deluded.

In the first half we played some good stuff but the second half showed our inexperience, Newcastle's quality and that Chris Houghton is a decent coach as Newcastle made an obvious effort in the second half to close us down higher up thus isolating our front three and giving the defence and midfield less time on the ball. The second goal was an awful individual error by Pearce and he must learn from it. There's no way getting round it we didn't play well but it's not a disaster. As for Rodgers the only complaint I would have is that he didn't change the formation when Church was injured. I look forward to seeing our response on Tuesday and am confident we'll improve. Tbh it will be nice to have a better second half of the season for once.

[Victor Meldrew]

what is concerning is that Reading have not looked like scoring in 180 minutes of league football

we desperately need a striker

I agree that we need a striker who has a physical presence and can hold the ball up otherwise playing just one up front cannot work.
Such a striker won't solve all of our problems but can become the fulcrum of our attacking play bringing others into play-Long just doesn't have the ability to do this.
Today we just ran about a lot without a decent shape to the side and surely a Marek or Harper is needed to shape how we play?
I see Koumas got a game today under Martinez-what a shame we didn't go for him when we went for Marek.

BTW can people now ease off a bit on the hype about all of our youngsters which frankly has got silly over the past couple of weeks culminating in some posters suggesting that we have future England internationals in our squad and it's just a matter of time before they make it.
Yes maybe one or two will eventually turn out to be decent players possibly in time up to Premiership level but players like Barton and Gutierrez showed today as very run-of-the-mill Premiership standard players that ours really have a very long way to go to even reach their levels.

[soggy biscuit]

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