Back from the Game, Northampton Town 24th August

[Kitson12]

Well, what a wretched performance that was.

The ref, where do I start? Misses a stonewall penalty after Howard had hit the post, the keeper then put the ball out, and the referee played on, and Town went up the other end, won a free-kick and scored. AND he played 4.40 seconds, and yes I know it's a minimum of 3 minutes, but nearly two minutes over the allotted time.

Man of the match, not sure, Taylor was good when he came on, feel sorry with him for the penalty miss.

Williams, useless, rubbish, oxf*rd I could go on, but I really don't want to.
Hamer, two mistakes, three goals. You wait for one keeper mistake and then like buses, three come along.

Thoroughly disappointed, despite it only being the Carling Cup.

Oh and well done Northampton.

[floyd__streete]

I wonder whether the miniscule crowd tonight reminded Madejski of those god-awful early years at the Madj where we could have opened just the one stand for most of the games and still had plenty of empty seats to spare. For that is where we are heading once again;, terrible games in front of terrible crowds against the likes of Northampton.

In 5 games, 10 hours of football, 4 of those hours against teams from the bottom division, not one striker currently on our books has managed a goal. If the future for RFC is Academy players of the standard of Pearce, Karacan, Robson-Kanu and Kelly spaffing the ball into the empty stands then that is a pretty dire effort from a club who nearly qualified for the UEFA Cup 3 years ago. Well run club.

[Fubar]

It was absolutely awful...

[southstand67]

What I want to know is where the Drummers were tonight? Fair weather supporters eh?

[SLAMMED]

I wonder whether the miniscule crowd tonight reminded Madejski of those god-awful early years at the Madj where we could have opened just the one stand for most of the games and still had plenty of empty seats to spare. For that is where we are heading once again;, terrible games in front of terrible crowds against the likes of Northampton.

In 5 games, 10 hours of football, 4 of those hours against teams from the bottom division, not one striker currently on our books has managed a goal. If the future for RFC is Academy players of the standard of Pearce, Karacan, Robson-Kanu and Kelly spaffing the ball into the empty stands then that is a pretty dire effort from a club who nearly qualified for the UEFA Cup 3 years ago. Well run club.

Excellent post floyd.

[Schards#2]

WTF is a debutant doing taking a penalty? Surely the senior players should be stepping up to the mark. Beyond that, have to agree with every word Floyd said. This club is going downhill fast due to prioritizing what's on the balance sheet over what's on the pitch.

[PremAddict]

I wonder whether the miniscule crowd tonight reminded Madejski of those god-awful early years at the Madj where we could have opened just the one stand for most of the games and still had plenty of empty seats to spare. For that is where we are heading once again;, terrible games in front of terrible crowds against the likes of Northampton.

In 5 games, 10 hours of football, 4 of those hours against teams from the bottom division, not one striker currently on our books has managed a goal. If the future for RFC is Academy players of the standard of Pearce, Karacan, Robson-Kanu and Kelly spaffing the ball into the empty stands then that is a pretty dire effort from a club who nearly qualified for the UEFA Cup 3 years ago. Well run club.

Didn't Long score tonight?

[royalsteve]

TAYLOR good when he came on....were you drunk or the refs brother......he was terrible...skinned almost every time

that was terrible...worst performance in last 5 years at least

only players who deserve any credit were noel hunt but id only give him 5/10

as for taylor and hamer wtf -10/10 each

hamer imo made an even bigger blunder for their 1st than feds against forest, 2nd was also partly his fault as was the 3rd

as for the ref.....he robbed us.....their 3rd goal was timed at 5mins 10 by the guy sitting in front of me with a stopwatch...this after he'd just missed a stonewall pen and the ball had gone out anyway!!!

we were robbed although in fairness we deserved nothing...cobblers outplayed us 2nd half it was almost embarrassing

best players on the pitch were the cobblers stiker, their left winger and their keeper

our best player was yeh no-one

[SLAMMED]

Madejski needs to do something fast. If last season wasn't a wake up call I don't know what is.

We are going down hill fast and unless Madejski does something about it we will continue to go down.

I'm usually pretty optimistic, but it's difficult to be positive when the club is in the position it is.

[Mike Hunt]

I see that Gylfi did not feature at all...

I wonder if it is so he does not become Cup tied?

[joe999]

Having been reading the "No cash" thread over the last few days, and having a reasonably impartial view on the whole thing (but still a definitive one) tonight was quite an interesting watch for me.

This was kind of like I'd been teleported 5 years into the future for a couple of hours. 4,000 people in the Madejski, being outplayed by Northampton, and generally wondering what's happened to your club.

I'm not going to retype what I typed in the other thread. But to sum up, it's disgusting that football is all about the money nowadays, and I fully respect trying to be an honest, well-run club... but if we don't match every other club in the football league and start spending at least a bit of money, then we can look forward to this kind of game every week.

P.S I don't know what McD or anyone at the club saw in this Williams guy, but he's shaping up to be another Shaun Cummings. Woeful.

[royalsteve]

I wonder whether the miniscule crowd tonight reminded Madejski of those god-awful early years at the Madj where we could have opened just the one stand for most of the games and still had plenty of empty seats to spare. For that is where we are heading once again;, terrible games in front of terrible crowds against the likes of Northampton.

In 5 games, 10 hours of football, 4 of those hours against teams from the bottom division, not one striker currently on our books has managed a goal. If the future for RFC is Academy players of the standard of Pearce, Karacan, Robson-Kanu and Kelly spaffing the ball into the empty stands then that is a pretty dire effort from a club who nearly qualified for the UEFA Cup 3 years ago. Well run club.

kanu played fairly weel in 1st half, dire 2nd, nonexistent in et

church did nothing

[AbovetheI]

We lost our pace when Antonio went off. Nobody seemed to want to run at defenders. Howard looked alone in the middle. Karacan is one of those runs-around-a-lot-and-tries-his-best kind of players, but hasn't really got any skill. Williams is just

[royalsteve]

I wonder whether the miniscule crowd tonight reminded Madejski of those god-awful early years at the Madj where we could have opened just the one stand for most of the games and still had plenty of empty seats to spare. For that is where we are heading once again;, terrible games in front of terrible crowds against the likes of Northampton.

In 5 games, 10 hours of football, 4 of those hours against teams from the bottom division, not one striker currently on our books has managed a goal. If the future for RFC is Academy players of the standard of Pearce, Karacan, Robson-Kanu and Kelly spaffing the ball into the empty stands then that is a pretty dire effort from a club who nearly qualified for the UEFA Cup 3 years ago. Well run club.

Didn't Long score tonight?

pens, but church had his saved...their keeper was also too cocky....deserved a kick in the gonads

[royalsteve]

We lost our pace when Antonio went off. Nobody seemed to want to run at defenders. Howard looked alone in the middle. Karacan is one of those runs-around-a-lot-and-tries-his-best kind of players, but hasn't really got any skill. Williams is just

karacan is the new james harper, andy hughes.....runs alot but not much end product

[handbags_harris]

I debated with myself on the way home whether to make this post in the heat of the moment or whether to wait until tomorrow. oxf*rd it here goes.

First comment: all those tw@s calling for 4-4-2 have just been shown up for what they are – clueless.

For the most part, what an absolute shambles, and I know that we’ve seen some shit over the past couple of years but that, honestly, wasn’t even close to any of the poor performances in that time. It was much, much worse, but for the first 20 minutes things were so comfortable it was as if Reading & District Sunday League Division 3 East team Hobnob were the opposition! The opening goal was a mere matter of time, lo-and-behold there it is after 15. Decent at best free-kick, and a big centre half completely and utterly unmarked 6 yards out. And then a moment it was apparent we never recovered from, not one attempt at catching but two, both fumbled, and he then has the gall to look and blame a defender for getting in his way!! Seriously, Hamer can look back at tonight and be utterly embarrassed because if that is our competition to Federici then please, Federici for me every day of the week. If that is Hamer’s standard of play, please just oxf*rd off.

The defence, well Williams was once again absolutely rinsed by a League 2 right winger. Julian Kelly looked distinctly “ok” at best. Pearce was Alex Pearce, slow, ponderous, read the game well at times and got into good blocking positions but missed too many headers. Matt Mills, two well taken goals but again missed too many headers against players he has 3 inches on. Distribution from the defence all night – just awful. Williams’ customary loft down the line all too easily cut out, Kelly offers nothing, Pearce is, again, Pearce and Mills similar. And I think we can all look at Jake Taylor after tonight and say that he is not a full back. I feel a bit for him because despite obviously looking a particularly promising player he was nowhere to be seen for the second equaliser and was rinsed for the third. Am I doing him a disservice? No, I don’t think so.

The midfield – It seemed a decent balanced set-up. Two attack-minded out and out wingers, a midfielder in Karacan who’s game is all about breaking up play who sits back and the all action playmaker in Brian Howard, but the performance as a unit actually shocked me. There was a complete lack of cohesion, a complete lack of any idea in attack, and positionally we were poor throughout. The defence, in fairness to them, had precious little cover which can partly attribute to their poor performance, however how many times did a Northampton forward just drop off the back four into the gaping cavern between them and midfield and pick a simple long ball out of the air, turn, and set up a dangerous move? Somebody has to make a decision there – midfielder drop back or defender move forward to challenge. Basics!! The wingers offered little defensive support to the full backs which, again, can sometimes make a defender look worse but on the left tonight that wasn’t the case. The positive for the night was Michail Antonio and I said at half time I was massively disappointed he’d gone off because he had Marcus Hall in his pocket all half. On the left though, Hal Ronson-Kanu didn’t look like unlocking any doors. His passing is all too often shabby, he no longer looks like beating a man and never gets a cross in. He is the new Michael Meaker. Jimmy Kebe came on and did very little. Again. In the middle, Karacan was positionally awful, Howard was marginally better but it seemed to me that Howard was continually attempting to cover for Karacan’s mishaps.

Up front I hope we can attribute Noel Hunt’s poor performance to a complete lack of “match practice”. What’s Church’s excuse? Shane Long was Shane Long when he came on, or in other words offered precious little goal threat.

Now I don’t know whether to look for positives in that performance (were there any), berate those around me for seemingly having a go for having a go’s sake at times (Floyd, you know who you are), or just leave it at that. I have so much to say, but I don’t know how to say it, so I’ll just leave it here and say that I think we learnt a lot about Reading FC tonight.

[royalsteve]

if we get 3 points on sat all will be forgotten....though i think getting one would be a miracle

[URZZ]

I wonder whether the miniscule crowd tonight reminded Madejski of those god-awful early years at the Madj where we could have opened just the one stand for most of the games and still had plenty of empty seats to spare. For that is where we are heading once again;, terrible games in front of terrible crowds against the likes of Northampton.

In 5 games, 10 hours of football, 4 of those hours against teams from the bottom division, not one striker currently on our books has managed a goal. If the future for RFC is Academy players of the standard of Pearce, Karacan, Robson-Kanu and Kelly spaffing the ball into the empty stands then that is a pretty dire effort from a club who nearly qualified for the UEFA Cup 3 years ago. Well run club.

Well said that man. I've said in other threads and I'll say it again, we are slowly falling...

When our final assets leave, we'll be left with the scraps and we'll have to build all over again. When everyone was saying 'an era ended' I don't think it has, it's still yet to end... We're still in a good league and still have half a quality team at least. When we're back to League One and in your words, when the likes of Kelly are hoofing the ball into an empty row Z again and again, that's when the real fans will be attending games.

[loyalroyal4life]

Only bright things from tonight were:

1. condition of the pitch
2. more noise than at a league game and with less than half the crowd.
3. Antonio

[SLAMMED]

Shane Long was Shane Long when he came on, or in other words offered precious little goal threat.

Did he play on the wing again?