BFTG Wolves

[leon]

Decent match. Wolves looked average. We had enough of the play to win but couldn't create a clear chance and put it away. Could easily have lost. Good clean sheet given their scoring record. Decent point. The important thing is not losing. It'll do.

Al-Habsi - 9 MOTM Some very good saves, didn't put a foot wrong. Won us the point.
Gunter - 7 good game, same old weaknesses I won't repeat. Some balls into really dangerous areas. Shame there was no one there for them. And that he could/should have seen that and played different balls.
Obita - 7 stronger defensively than normal, I thought. Decent going forward.
McShane - 8 rock, played well, glad he's back
Cooper - 6 A bit ropey at times with loose passes/clearances, but nothing major
Norwood - 6 got caught several times, passing dipped a bit. I hope he's not going to completely lose form like last year. Key player.
Williams - 6 drifted in and out. Some blind alleies, some inadvisable shots.
McCleary - 7 caused some problems but not at full speed
HRK - 6 not as good as recently, decent but out muscled too much, some insdvisable shots
Vydra - 6 hard work as usual, too many attempts to be clever or overplay it
Kermorgant - 6 not quite there, looks decent though

John - 6 touch of the drenthe's, looks exciting delivers not a lot
Rakels - 6 not very involved, ok

Basically, too many poor choices cost us. Shooting from distance with no hope when we should be passing. Passing to the wrong flank in attacks and over-cooking it in the middle when they should be shooting.

Brian 8 good shape, good team, good tactics.
Ref 5 fussy bastard.

Just when I think I understand Ian Royal he throws this out.

HRK put a shift in and put some decent balls in plus I think he's more defensive and provides more cover than previous encumbants.
Mccleary was poor, I'm hoping he gets on it for the rest of the season.

The cannibal looked lively when he came on.

[prfoster]

anybody thinks HRK worth an eight needs eyes testing , should be playing in div 1/2 , we have gone from playing a decent brand of football with bright inventive players , reaching 2nd place and looking good for play offs , now resemble a slow disorganised unstructured team , following an old idealess coach who should be at arsenal watching youth players.look at stlye of football under clark without HRK and tell me honestly where we are now

[marlowuk]

marlowuk,
Are you a spin doctor for the club or are you just easily pleased.
Occasionally 0-0s can be entertaining but I think you will be hard pressed to find too many others who thought this one was .

Hi VM - No - I don't think I am easily pleased and I have certainly (in the 53 years I have been supporting Reading) suffered many many boring, lacklustre displays which have bored the pants off me!! And, certainly, the game today (actually, at the time of writing, that should read 'yesterday') was extremely frustrating from a Reading perspective. But it had several goalmouth skirmishes; many bad misses and last ditch clearances and a thundering shot that hit the bar in the dying seconds of the game. Someone suggested that Wolves came to the Mad Stad and parked the bus. I disagree. They came to win and it was a very open game. Towards the end they concentrated on defence but still looked as likely as we did to get a last minute decider. I certainly don't put that down as being boring!

[Sutekh]

You know expectations are low when a player gets a small round of applause for moving a black plastic bag from the pitch

Out of all the players and officials on the pitch yesterday I thought the bag was head and shoulders above everyone. Some excellent movement and a few nice touches. We could do worse than give it a contract and play it every week.

[RoyalBlue]

Brian 8 good shape, good team, good tactics.
.

McDermott 8 for that pile of boring clueless shyte? 2 shots on goal, neither of which made the Wolves keeper work. good? Good tactics? He admits that he knew how Wolves would play and it turned out that he and his players were clueless as to how to deal with it. And how much did he change in the game when plan A clearly wasn't working?

If that performance is worthy of an 8 then we better prepare for League 1 football and a slide down the leagues.

And don't anyone dare try to pull the 'hasn't had long', 'aren't his players' excuse. He's had a reasonable time now, particularly returning to a club he knows (touted as an advantage at the time of his appointment) , no manager walks in with his own team of players (McDermott has more than most since a number in the squad he knows from last time around) and plenty do better in the early days than McDermott has done.

And yes, out came the 'we move on' - the sooner he does the better.

Reading hero, Mr Nice Guy but not the right manager for us now.

[Ian Royal]

Wolves mainly threatened through our player errors. Thats not the managers fault. The team looked balanced and the game was even.

We had oportunities but fluffed them or overplayed them away. Again down to individuals on the pitch. We didnt lose.

We finally have what looks like a decent first XI if we can keep it.

I'm disappointed we didn't win, but utterly baffled by the autonegativity on here, just as I was baffled and irritated by the idiots booing a decent point and banging their seats like petulant toddlers told they can't have an icecream.

If individuals who we know can play better do, HRK, Norwood, Cooper, McCleary, Vydra... then that XI will win games.

I left the gtound frustrated, but positive. I really don't see what McDermott has done wrong. He inherited a poorly managed side with no confidence or balance in freefall. He's not waved the magic wand we'd hoped, but he's not even had 10 league games yet and we're doing at least a tiny bit better than under Clarke.

We're poor away, though no one has comprehensively beaten us and we've got more fight. We've only lost once at home under him though.

[Blakey's Chin]

Norwood was woeful. He has quality but is completely out of form, and even when he's in form, he can't beat a player or stay composed under pressure. Williams just runs with the ball without any sense of what he's doing and occasionally gets lucky. I rate McCleary but he looked off yesterday, probably not 100% fit. I like Gunter but his shanked left foot cross/shot in the last 5 minutes summed him up. I wouldn't lose any sleep if we let him go at the end of the season. If we had another decent right back I'd be playing them. Obita looked very good, still room to improve, but his defensive game has come on so much. Still think HRK comes in for some harsh stick, he wasn't amazing yesterday but I thought he looked good as he has done all season. Evans and Quinn need to come in at CM's. Piazon needs more game time as he can produce some decent football. Fernandez is unlucky to not be getting more time

[3points]

I just don't think it's a coincidence that we've been generally poor since Norwood and Williams were brought in and form the heart of our midfield. They just don't seem to be a pairing in the way of Sidwell/Harper and Legs/Karacan. Williams really does need to learn how to pass a ball quickly especially on the counter attack. If he did he'd be a very good player.

[loyalroyaldaz]

Brian will ruin Norwood as he did Guthrie.
No room in one of his teams for cultured and inventive football. Hoof it forward and if we get on the end of great if we dont then hopefully we get the second ball of we dont look out cos Gunts or Obita will get roasted on the break.
Thats a game plan.
We move on.

[3points]

Brian will ruin Norwood as he did Guthrie.
No room in one of his teams for cultured and inventive football. Hoof it forward and if we get on the end of great if we dont then hopefully we get the second ball of we dont look out cos Gunts or Obita will get roasted on the break.
Thats a game plan.
We move on.

Problem is we are playing everything through Norwood and it isn't working. Look at Leicester, they move the ball forward quickly yet are doing ok. Against a team like Wolves with 5 in midfield, then bypassing the midfield a bit more often isn't a bad option. Yesterday might have been a Piazon rather than Kermogant day if we are going to play through the midfield as he drifts between the lines a bit more and would have been less easily dealt with by a couple of big tough centre backs.

[RoyalBlue]

Those claiming we are doing better than under Clarke will very soon have to start changing their tune.

As for all this rubbish that 'it's not the manager's fault' then just what is he being paid for. I would love to be paid a manager's salary but be immune from criticism when my staff perform badly.

McDermott proved last time around that he couldn't work with quality players (who may or may not have a bit of attitude about them) and he is showing it again.

[blueroyals]

HOOF HOOF HOOF!

Right up to the 9 stone 5'5" bloke

Good job Brian

[tmesis]

You know expectations are low when a player gets a small round of applause for moving a black plastic bag from the pitch

Out of all the players and officials on the pitch yesterday I thought the bag was head and shoulders above everyone. Some excellent movement and a few nice touches. We could do worse than give it a contract and play it every week.

You say that, but for me the black bag was a big disappointment.

It offered no threat at all going towards the Wolves goal, and seemed reluctant to stray from the middle of the park. In fact, apart from one brief flurry in one attack, where it seemed to just get in the way more than anything else, it just seemed to drift around aimlessly, with the game passing it by.

I think the fact that it had to be taken off so soon after joining the field speaks volumes.

Yeah, sure it was its debut, and it might need time to adjust to our system, but honestly, I don't know what game some fans are watching some days.

[Armadillo Roadkill]

It's getting to the point where it would take so long to discuss everything that was bad about yesterday's match that it would take an hour just to list them.

Rubbish football by rubbish players against a rubbish opposition and a manager who comes on the radio afterwards and declares that he doesn't know why and will keep trying things out until he accidentally hits on some kind of formula.

My week was bad enough. I was really looking forward to a bit of entertainment. What a fool I was...

[3points]

HOOF HOOF HOOF!

Right up to the 9 stone 5'5" bloke

Good job Brian

Didn't we have a 6'1" centre forward to aim at yesterday? Plus HRK?

[paultheroyal]

HOOF HOOF HOOF!

Right up to the 9 stone 5'5" bloke

Good job Brian

Sammy Igoe playing!

[sandman]

We have not played "hoofball" since the manager came in but then we didn't play it when he was here before either.

What we lack is the tempo and forward thinking that we had in his previous spell and we are still in the sideways slow passing we have had under the two previous managers. We couldn't play passing football yesterday and neither could Wolves, because of the conditions.

Once again we have those who hounded the manager out the last time making up the same crap they made up before about "style of play". You wanted him out before because you wanted the sort of football churned out by supposed "flair managers" like Adkins and it failed! Really wish you could explain what you've enjoyed so much over the last three seasons of tippy tappy crab ball.

[AthleticoSpizz]

anybody thinks HRK worth an eight needs eyes testing , should be playing in div 1/2 , we have gone from playing a decent brand of football with bright inventive players , reaching 2nd place and looking good for play offs , now resemble a slow disorganised unstructured team , following an old idealess coach who should be at arsenal watching youth players.look at stlye of football under clark without HRK and tell me honestly where we are now

^generic rant^

but what has that actually got to do with HRK yesterday?

[sandman]

It's getting to the point where it would take so long to discuss everything that was bad about yesterday's match that it would take an hour just to list them.

Rubbish football by rubbish players against a rubbish opposition and a manager who comes on the radio afterwards and declares that he doesn't know why and will keep trying things out until he accidentally hits on some kind of formula.

My week was bad enough. I was really looking forward to a bit of entertainment. What a fool I was...

But according to you and others he's a hoofball manager.

Do you think he says to Garath McCleary "tell you what Garath, we'll have a mix up at the back and when we have a chance of clearing it make sure you put it right back across the penalty area instead of upfield where it should go"?

The team was set up correctly yesterday in difficult conditions.

[sandman]

Brian will ruin Norwood as he did Guthrie.
No room in one of his teams for cultured and inventive football. Hoof it forward and if we get on the end of great if we dont then hopefully we get the second ball of we dont look out cos Gunts or Obita will get roasted on the break.
Thats a game plan.
We move on.

Guthrie ruined Guthrie and he's not exactly pulling up trees at his new club. He's had one decent season at this level and the rest of his career he's been a PL reserve. The way you go on about him anyone would think he was the English answer to Pirlo and Alonso.

Why people like you side with a snotty nosed little shit like Danny Guthrie over someone who loves and cares about your club is a great mystery.