Adkins - Pros and Cons

[Martin41]

Can we just stop calling everyone a c*nt?!

Agreed........however where Lacoste is concerned it might be suited, a lot of his posts are rubbish, wants players injured etc......... So yes it's a fit for him........just my opinion of course.

[SCIAG]

I think we can all appreciate that we haven't got great Centerbacks as Pearce is our only fit experienced one and even he has his faults. Adkins didn't have many options in Central defence from his first day but what we did have last season and season prior, in Morrison and Pearce was a partnership (all be it a very slow tank like one) but nevertheless better than what we have today. The fact is that Adkins has not replaced Morrison and plays the the kids with little or no experience in a position in my opinion requires experience is his own doing.

Michael Hector has played 150 senior matches. He isn't particularly inexperienced - that's over three times as many appearances as Pearce had made when he broke into the first team. It's also - get this - more than Sean Morrison has played (142). OK, Hector hasn't played in the PL and Morrison hasn't done the non-league circuit, but on the face of it Adkins has sold a centre back and replaced him with a more experienced one from the youth system!

It would be fair to say that Jake Cooper is inexperienced, but, whilst I haven't been fortunate enough to see him play 90 minutes for the first team yet, I've not seen much criticism of him when he has played.

[RoyalBlue]

I think we can all appreciate that we haven't got great Centerbacks as Pearce is our only fit experienced one and even he has his faults. Adkins didn't have many options in Central defence from his first day but what we did have last season and season prior, in Morrison and Pearce was a partnership (all be it a very slow tank like one) but nevertheless better than what we have today. The fact is that Adkins has not replaced Morrison and plays the the kids with little or no experience in a position in my opinion requires experience is his own doing.

Michael Hector has played 150 senior matches. He isn't particularly inexperienced - that's over three times as many appearances as Pearce had made when he broke into the first team. It's also - get this - more than Sean Morrison has played (142). OK, Hector hasn't played in the PL and Morrison hasn't done the non-league circuit, but on the face of it Adkins has sold a centre back and replaced him with a more experienced one from the youth system!

Hector gained much of his experience in Scotland and everyone knows how weak the majority of the teams up there are.

I also very much doubt that Adkins 'sold' Morrison, any more than McDermott 'sold' Sig. The man doing the selling was Hammond acting on the direction of the owner(s).

[SCIAG]

Hector gained much of his experience in Scotland and everyone knows how weak the majority of the teams up there are.

I also very much doubt that Adkins 'sold' Morrison, any more than McDermott 'sold' Sig. The man doing the selling was Hammond acting on the direction of the owner(s).

The second point is a fair one, but ultimately semantics. In context, I was defending "Adkins's" decision to let Morrison leave without recruiting an experienced player.

Hector only made 22 appearances for Aberdeen. I would contend that most people on this forum don't have the first clue about the standard of the SPL relative to the Championship, but I would contend that it is significantly stronger than League 2 and mostly stronger than League 1. Very strange to criticise the standard of the SPL, rather than the standards of the Hellenic, Southern and Isthmian Leagues, the League of Ireland or Leagues 1 and 2.

If you want to limit it to FL+cups appearances, Morrison had 69 appearances when he became a Reading regular, Pearce had 51, Hector currently has 86 (71 if you discount appearances for Reading). Seems silly to pretend that Celtic and Motherwell are weaker opposition than Plymouth Argyle and Accrington Stanley though.

[The Quiet Man]

Pros for me at the moment is that he knows what he wants to do and he has a plan for getting there. There are glimpses of what we can do and when we get it right we look a very good team and we have integrated the youth team players from a good bunch of Academy players into the first team set up.

Cons for me too much possession for the sake of possession results in players getting too comfortable passing on responsibility sideways when they should be looking to get forwards. Our possession football can be ineffective because we don't hurt teams when we have the ball, by and large they can sit back and watch us play in front of them. Also possession for the sake of it can be as boring to watch as relentlessly humping the ball into the channels. Concerned that too many teams have sussed out our tactics and can stop us getting results as the current squad are not good enough to impose our way of playing on the opposition.

I am on a see saw as to whether things will work out long term. Not convinced that McCleary and Williams will bring that huge a transformation to our game as others are based on what they have done so far for us. I feel that if we continue down the current style of play we need a couple of technically competent players, possibly Spanish, to enable the rest of the the team to play at the desired level and if we were to go down that route it would raise a question as to whether we should get a european coach from Spain or Germany to complete that transition.

[paddy20]

Anyone who has been a manager and still thinks Kanu is going to suddenly become a great player
Anyone that makes positives out of negatives
Anyone, when asked for their take on a game just replays what happened
Anyone that keeps chopping around a team for no reason
Anyone who no longer has any excuses ( ownership issues, injuries, getting used to a style of play)
Anyone who names the captain as a player who is out with a long term injury and the vice captain as the quietest man at the club
Anyone that creates no fuss when the best players are sold
Anyone that puts out a team where neither fans or the opposition knows what type of performance to expect
Anyone LIKE THIS WILL STRUGGLE TO BE A GOOD READING MANAGER

[HoneyRoastHoax]

Feck me. Someone's being playing too much FIFA.

Adkins has had no money, most of these aren't his players, we are still within striking distance of the top 6, and we still have a load of injuries.

All managers make mistakes & we are clearly in transition.

Sacking the manager because we matched Wolves, were unlucky against Leeds & made some errors against Brentford. I despair of some of our fans. Feck off back to your Xbox.

This, Very much this.

[Royal Biscuitman]

A good manager gets the best out of the players he has and accepts that players will have an off game and that form plays a part. However they are not afraid to sign a better player to replace one of the current players if it will improve the team and are always on the lookout for better players, they also know it's often best to let one go if their heart isn't in it.

A good chairman should manage the manager the same way, whilst acknowledging the resources at the managers disposal.

[Schards#2]

I never cease to be amazed at the idiocy of so many reading fans and the way their opinions on the performance are completely dictated by the result.

Outclassed but scrape a win - great performance

Play well and lose - ADKINS OUT

The behaviour of some of our fans beggars belief, some near me on Saturday's only contribution was abusing Adkins before and after the game, singing 'shit f***ing russian' at Pog and singing some song about it being a miracle if Blackman scores. Oh, and booing at half and full time. Seriously, go and find something you enjoy doing if you hate watching Reading that much.

The performance overall wasn't bad and if we had not made stupid defensive error and had a goal that should have been disallowed against us, we would have got something out of it and everyone would have been saying how well we played.

With the completion of the takeover, the club has, literally, just come out of the longest period of uncertainty and disruption in its history, the very last thing we want is further fresh upheaval in changing the manager.

Get a grip FFS

[Extended-Phenotype]

+ mother f/cking 1

The performances are starting to come and like last time, some individual errors at the back cost us points. You can't expect a back 4 who have yet to play together regularly, consisting of an inexperienced youth player, an inconsistent youngster and a midfielder to be perfect. Mistakes will happen until time brings experience or investment. IMO, Pearce and Hector aren't good enough and there is very little Adkins can do about that but hope for a cash injection. As it stands, he hasn't much choice but to play them and cross his fingers.

Other than the errors our game was fairly decent overall.

[Pepe the Horseman]

Another +1. Although I did smirk when the Pog started clapping the fans who were singing 'shit fcuking Russian'. I ended up next to some people who were singing something about fingering the Queen for the whole of the second half.

[melonhead]

i sit next to two people who every time pog goes down under a challenge are screaming for him to be severely injured and not be able to play again all season.

[No Fixed Abode]

I never cease to be amazed at the idiocy of so many reading fans and the way their opinions on the performance are completely dictated by the result.

Outclassed but scrape a win - great performance

Play well and lose - ADKINS OUT

The behaviour of some of our fans beggars belief, some near me on Saturday's only contribution was abusing Adkins before and after the game, singing 'shit f***ing russian' at Pog and singing some song about it being a miracle if Blackman scores. Oh, and booing at half and full time. Seriously, go and find something you enjoy doing if you hate watching Reading that much.

The performance overall wasn't bad and if we had not made stupid defensive error and had a goal that should have been disallowed against us, we would have got something out of it and everyone would have been saying how well we played.

With the completion of the takeover, the club has, literally, just come out of the longest period of uncertainty and disruption in its history, the very last thing we want is further fresh upheaval in changing the manager.

Get a grip FFS

LOL @ IF.

[sandman]

Said it before and will continue saying it, Sometimes a manager goes to a club and it just doesn't work, no matter how accomplished they are or may have been before and we are seeing that with Adkins. How many times are we going to see the phrase "if it hadn't been for a defensive mistake"? It's not who signed the players because, as stated before, those like Gunter and Guthrie are favourites of Adkins and fit his "style". It's not about Owners, he has had one transfer window without spending money but still, quality wise, had some of the better players in the division. It's not even about injuries, he brought in his own man to deal player conditioning and the problems got worse, the sight of long term knee injury victim Danny Williams running himself into exhaustion on a treadmill at Solent University in the Summer was ridiculous.

Adkins is just not a Reading manager. His personality is wrong, his tactics are wrong and his ability to find solutions to problems that have consistently been happening ever since he arrived shows a lack of ability to learn from his mistakes.

It's great that the RTG's want it to work so much, it really is, we all want RFC to succeed! However, it just won't work for him here, no matter how good a manager he may have been before he came here.

[Extended-Phenotype]

How many times are we going to see the phrase "if it hadn't been for a defensive mistake"?

I'm guessing the figure would most likely correlate with the number of times a defensive mistake occurred.

[melonhead]

no manager is going to take a team with no midfield and a load of yoof prospects filling in all over the pitch, especially at the back to challenge for automatic straight away.
in my opinion, hes done pretty well to get us to where we are.
bit of moneyon loans or in jan could see us challange for the play offs, and i cant see any reason not to be happy with that

[No Fixed Abode]

+ mother f/cking 1

The performances are starting to come

Yep

1-0 loss at Sheff Wed
2-0 loss at Derby
3-3 with Wolves
3-1 loss at Brentford

Those performances are starting to come.

[Extended-Phenotype]

+ mother f/cking 1

The performances are starting to come

Yep

1-0 loss at Sheff Wed
2-0 loss at Derby
3-3 with Wolves
3-1 loss at Brentford

Those performances are starting to come.

You are getting performances and results confused m8. Maybe you are still drunk after all those mincy girl drinks you knocked back on your one Saturday night out a year.

[No Fixed Abode]

That old chestnut EP "Getting performances and results confused". Performances bring results more often than not.

And bless you for being so rattLOLed you've tried a personal insult. It's only football m8.

[Extended-Phenotype]

That old chestnut EP "Getting performances and results confused". Performances bring results more often than not.

Results aren't always indicative of performances, though. You can play well and not get the points. It's not really complicated to understand, fella: we hadn't played well for ages but recently we have improved, are passing the ball well, playing some good football, creating chances and scoring goals. What you generally see is that, as performances improve so do results. It doesn't always happen instantly - sometimes the results pick up by grinding out ugly wins and draws and performances come with confidence. Sometimes the football improves, confidence grows in pockets around the field but a few things still need to be ironed out. Either way, when one of results/performances improve, the other tends to follow given a bit of time.

And chillax mate, it was only a tease - hardly an insult. Try not to be too sensitive about banter in the future, you'll have a better time if you ease up a bit.