Yeovil (H) BFTG

[Scarface]

"Adkins wants Reading response".

Oops, sorry, that was 2 weeks ago.

Somebody made a good point earlier...we don't have a dead ball threat to bail us out.

Harte used to be good. McCormack at Leeds scores goals for a laugh.

We just lump high, hopeful, lofted, back-spinning...well, you know the rest.

How any teams in the Championship have a serious dead ball threat? They are not easy to come by at this level. I do think it was a mistake releasing Harte and Shorey as both have this quality.

[genome]

I wouldn't say we were low on confidence. Just horrifically inconsistent. In the last 8 games we have had 4 great performances and 4 bad performances.

[chilipepper91]

However if Adkins keeps sending out virtually the same 11, how can we expect any different results.

Nobody was complaining when we named the same 11 and got (relatively) consistent results just two weeks ago

[Libertine]

The Tale of Two Cities...

When teams play an open, attacking, game against us we have enough quality to beat them, and often badly. When teams try to play tighter defensively against us and make us try to break them down to score and then take their chances as they come, we struggle mightily. I would expect opposition teams have taken notice of this and will opt for Plan B the rest of the way. And right now I have no confidence in us being able to break down teams whose plan it is to make us break them down. We haven't shown we can do that...

[Handsome Man]

Absolutely atrocious, for a side chasing promotion to fail to beat 8 man Yeovil at home is unacceptable.

Thought Gorkks did decent myself, yes he hoofed a fair bit but he was solid at the back, but what a shocker from McCarthy for the goal, atrocious, he's made a number of errors recently and it's very unlikely, and this rate that England call up is a long way off. Drenthe was a bright spark when he came on. McCleary had an absolute shocker, and Alfie was utterly useless. Thought Akpan, whilst still poor, was better today, but still not a touch on his January form.

Fair play to the ref, an excellent performance from him, all decisions were correct, bookings for timewasting, very good showing. Two more Yeovil players could have walked, but I get why he wanted to keep the game going so I won't moan about that.

This is the most horrific season I can remember, no excitement, even the wins (bar 4 or 5) have been shocking to watch. Let's just give up on promotion now, we're not good enough and even if we somehow got up it'd just lead to another horrible season. Time to accept another 3-5 years in this division after a mass clear out this summer (no way Drenthe, Pog, Guthrie etc. will stay) and start again.

My only fear is that they will stay. We can survive and come back stronger if the rubbish big wages players go, but nobody in their right minds would want to buy Pog, Guthrie or Drenthe and we will be stuck with them taking their millions and under-performing. Then some good players will have to be cashed in and we will be stuffed.

Top entertainment today, eventually, but the first half was awful, and you knew that we would struggle if we went behind, because there is such a massive streak of mental weakness throughout the club.

McCarthy 4 poor again today, but good distribution in the second half

Gunter 7 man of the match, but he is not a captain
Obita 6 ok
Gorkss 7 would have won it for us
Pearce 6 was never going to win it for us

Akpan 5 he is a good player who has had a good spell, bit not today
Williams 6 ok
McCleary 6 not threatening enough
HRK 5 anonymous

LeF 4 played ok, but the misses cost us dear
Pog 5 let's be honest, you shouldn't be paying £3 million a year for somebody who sometimes tries really hard

Drenthe 10 managed 40 minutes today - that's 20 longer than in his whole Reading career
Guthrie 7 nice passing again
Blackman 6 should start for the next five games

[Scarface]

However if Adkins keeps sending out virtually the same 11, how can we expect any different results.

Nobody was complaining when we named the same 11 and got (relatively) consistent results just two weeks ago

And i endorsed the decision, but the fans view that not having Guthrie playing was the key are now proved to be rubbish. After the last 3 home games we clearly need to change something and the QPR away win is now not looking as impressive as it seemed with their current form.

Having said that, it doesn't matter what team and formation you play, if the tempo isn't right, it makes no difference.

[1871 not 1998]

Robson Kanu should never start another Reading game again. He is absolute dogshit. I lost count how many times he gave the ball away today, and I wasn't counting long balls.

[Extended-Phenotype]

I'm an Adkins supporter (mainly because I'm a supporter of time, patience and generally just a cracking guy) but I basically agree with the premise that that, if we fail to make the play-offs then Adkins has failed and should go - though only if we have someone to replace him!

[MmmMonsterMunch]

I'm an Adkins supporter (mainly because I'm a supporter of time, patience and generally just a cracking guy) but I basically agree with the premise that that, if we fail to make the play-offs then Adkins has failed and should go - though only if we have someone to replace him!

That is the million dollar question! Who would we want? Not advocating sacking him even if we finish mid table though. He hasn't been able to mould the squad at all and I would like to see him do some wheeling and dealing before I make my mind up.
Besides we are not good enough to compete in the PL anyway so I dont see what difference sacking him would make. Any money earned would only go on black holes!

[Royal Ginger]

It'd be the cheaper option for me. I'd have Dolan. Don't know if he's any good, but he did alright briefly at Exeter, there seems to be some respect for him, and he should have some of the the Coppell/McDermott era attitude bread through him. No need for big flashy names.

[Libertine]

I can see Adkins, harshly, being let go at the end of the season. He had reservations about taking the job to begin with (down to having to work with a Director of Football instead of molding the squad as he saw fit). He had to be convinced to take the job. He will hook on somewhere else in due time and enjoy the same kind of success that he has enjoyed in the past. He was never going to be a good fit doing things The Reading Way. To be fair I predicted a mid table finish for this team at the start of the season, reason being that this season was the beginning of a rebuilding job. Obviously he has had trouble connecting with many of the fans due to the way he carries himself and having to follow a living legend as manager. But the results on the pitch have been roughly what I had expected since the beginning of the season. A lot of ups and downs, some great wins, and some bad losses. I still back him but I feel I am in the minority within the fan base...almost all of whom actually attend the games, as opposed to me, and therefore are able to express their opinion, in person, and more forcefully than me.

[Glory Boy]

Was reminded of this song walking past the Yeovil fans on the way out

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JblzusfYENM

[Sutekh]

The Tale of Two Cities...

When teams play an open, attacking, game against us we have enough quality to beat them, and often badly. When teams try to play tighter defensively against us and make us try to break them down to score and then take their chances as they come, we struggle mightily. I would expect opposition teams have taken notice of this and will opt for Plan B the rest of the way. And right now I have no confidence in us being able to break down teams whose plan it is to make us break them down. We haven't shown we can do that...

Exactly. That's why our away results are usually better games to watch and more profitable in terms of points.

If we had had the investment promised this season we probably wouldn't be in this hole we are now, struggling to play a more expansive passing game with a number of players more suited to a McDermott plan. Unfortunately we haven't had the investment needed and we are being shown up as a little one dimensional.

We will still be at this level next year but until we have our ownership sorted and been able to reshuffle our playing pack around a bit more to get that mixture of promising youth, quality signings and limited but necessary battlers we won't be quite at the races.

Oh and I personally hope Yeovil stay up this season.

[Jemba]

Williams was passenger when Guthrie came on, everything when through Guthrie and wrightly so, I enjoyed the Williams Akpan partnership but they haven't got enough quality on the ball. Guthrie and Drenthe start next game with a 5 man midfield to cover for Drenthe exuberance becuase we have to play with our best players in the team and those to are. Find a way to make it work Nigel thats your ox**** job. And with only 2 months left of tje season its unbelievable how he hasnt foind our best team

[winchester_royal]

A new low in this forgettable season. Our inability to break down 10/9/8 Yeovil men summed up by Drenthe's continued brain dead attempts to cross from deep, which is exactly the kind of 'tactic' a depleted team would wish to defend

Can't think of many of our players I would keep for next season, we should have a good clear out of some of the second rate chavs clogging up our wage bill (whose attitude is summed up by the self-serving Le Fondre on Twitter, bemoaning above all else that his 'goal' has been credited as an o.g). And I'd put the management team at the top of the 'released' list for certain, they are stealing a living at this club.

Who to take over as manager? Well given Madejski's utter f*ck up over selling the club it is abundantly clear that a clear out is needed, so lets see if these youngsters are as good as we always hear about.....give Dolan the job of keeping the club in the division next season (promoting from within has worked well before) until we find some loaded buffoon wanting to invest in a backwater football club which hemorrhages cash.

Hard to disagree with any of this. I've been a vocal Adkins fan, but as things (ownership etc) stand I'd be quite happy to see him quietly replaced with Dolan at the end of this season. Something's got to give, because the club is moving backwards right now.

[frimmers3]

I'm an Adkins supporter (mainly because I'm a supporter of time, patience and generally just a cracking guy) but I basically agree with the premise that that, if we fail to make the play-offs then Adkins has failed and should go - though only if we have someone to replace him!

That is the million dollar question! Who would we want? Not advocating sacking him even if we finish mid table though. He hasn't been able to mould the squad at all and I would like to see him do some wheeling and dealing before I make my mind up.
Besides we are not good enough to compete in the PL anyway so I dont see what difference sacking him would make. Any money earned would only go on black holes!

harry redknap would be the ideal man for you.

[Ian Royal]

Don't agree with sacking adkins. He's not doing what we all wanted but he's going to have started with one big plan and then had the rug pulled from under it with Anton's disappearance and the inability to do as much in the transfer window as he'd want. Factor in the chronic injury problems with 3 first team regulars out for half a season or more and only 2 strikers and to be honest hovering around the play offs isn't bad performance for a relegated team.

Give him a season where the goalposts and resources don't shift and see how he does.

Usual caveat that if he's leading us ijto the bottom half and a relegation fight he gets the boot.

Lets not forget that coppell's 04/05 side fell apart post xmas and looked clueless. Yet a couple of good signings and evertthing clicked to points record next year. Failure this season doesn't mean he will fail every season.

[Pandoras Box]

Let's forget play offs - if we made it to the Premiership we'd be a complete f*cking embarrassment (more than last year) High probability that we will not be relegated now, so let's start playing these academy players who are supposed to be so good - get them back off loan and give them the experience in this league where it doesn't matter what the result is anymore.
Let's build properly for the future.

[Pandoras Box]

And secondly.......... I think we are actually much worse than belies our position. We lose to every team having a 'good run' and draw against or beat every team having a 'bad run'. ie Derby/QPR away Therefore if we happened by chance to play every team while in the middle of a good run -we'd be probably bottom.

[scumbag]

A new low in this forgettable season. Our inability to break down 10/9/8 Yeovil men summed up by Drenthe's continued brain dead attempts to cross from deep, which is exactly the kind of 'tactic' a depleted team would wish to defend

Can't think of many of our players I would keep for next season, we should have a good clear out of some of the second rate chavs clogging up our wage bill (whose attitude is summed up by the self-serving Le Fondre on Twitter, bemoaning above all else that his 'goal' has been credited as an o.g). And I'd put the management team at the top of the 'released' list for certain, they are stealing a living at this club.

Who to take over as manager? Well given Madejski's utter f*ck up over selling the club it is abundantly clear that a clear out is needed, so lets see if these youngsters are as good as we always hear about.....give Dolan the job of keeping the club in the division next season (promoting from within has worked well before) until we find some loaded buffoon wanting to invest in a backwater football club which hemorrhages cash.

Hard to disagree with any of this. I've been a vocal Adkins fan, but as things (ownership etc) stand I'd be quite happy to see him quietly replaced with Dolan at the end of this season. Something's got to give, because the club is moving backwards right now.

+1 for Dolan.