Nigel Adkins 4 months ago - "You've got a shit squad Brian"
Reading away in meeting which has had every two bob sporting
hack in the country trying to come up with an angle to try and stir up some bad
feeling. For example we’ve had “Davis
says it was right to sack Adkins” only he didn’t say that at all and we’ve had
“I won’t thank Nigel says Poch” which he did actually say but of course it
looks much worse in a headline as the rest of the sentence (“because there are
many other people at the club to thank as well”) is left out. Nothing to see here really… Reading have to
win and whilst our need is not as great as theirs, three points would be very
nice being as we are only 4 points above Villa who are currently occupying the
last relegation place.
I’ve been amused at reading the views of some Saints fans
who are looking up the league instead of down at this point. Fulham played QPR on Monday and some actually
wanted a QPR win as Fulham are just above us in the league. Madness… I don’t give a shit about Fulham and
we want the three relegation places taken up as soon as possible and anyway,
regardless of league positions, when can you ever seriously want a side managed
by that twitchy bollocks to win a game?
So, back to now and this weekends’ matches could see us
anywhere between one point and seven points clear of the relegation zone and I
know what I’d rather. On the face of it
we’re a better side than Reading, higher up the league and in form. However, since Mauricio has been in charge we
have not yet won an away game, nor beaten a side that is basically not a passing
side. There is a box to be ticked
here. Of course there is the Adkins
factor – he knows our players and will know how we are going to play. We will conversely, know all about how he
will want Reading to play and Saints hero though he is, we want him to be
spinning out clichés in the post match press conference about all pulling in
the right direction and responding to the setbacks and controlling
controllables and all that shit.
Our team saw one change with Gaston Ramirez returning to the
side in place of Punch who was joined on the bench by Adam Lallana who had
obviously recovered from his latest injury.
Nigel changed a few for Reading with le Fondre starting instead of
Pogrebnyak and ex-Saint Danny Guthrie was in midfield. I am watching the ESPN coverage which is
hosted by Andy Townshend who is backed up by Brian McDermott – until recently
the manager of Reading. I am thinking
that this coverage is going to be just a little biased.
It is no surprise to me that Reading fly into the opening exchanges
and we manage to get penned into the 25 yards in front of Artur’s goal. When this happens, safety first should take
over and we should be clearing the ball as far away from our goal as possible
but instead we stick to principles and try and play out, usually meaning that
we lose it straight away. Our own
tactics being turned on us sees us not dealing with it terribly well.
Our first player to stick his head above the parapet is
Gaston Ramirez who hits a couple of Row Zedders flying into the crowd and then
sends Steve Davis scampering away with a lovely backheel but his cross is cut
out by Morrison. We do seem to be a bit
rattled in defence though and a ball up to Guthrie sees the ex-Saint facing the
touchline and not causing the slightest danger until Big Jos decides it’s a
good idea to steam through the back of him.
Free kick… well there’s a shock.
Guthrie’s cross into the box is missed by everyone except Corky who
slams a clearance against Sir Rickie before playing an air shot and the ball finds
it’s way to fox-in-the-box le Fondre who is more dead-fox-in-a-box as he lashes
an easy chance over the bar from 6 yards.
There’s another scare a minute later as the ridiculously
named Hal Robson-Kanu cuts inside Big Jos who dangles a leg out but quite
clearly gets the ball. Over goes the
Reading winger with much arm waving and mouth open and tongue flapping in the
wind but nothing is given. “PENALTY!”
goes the incredibly biased co-commentator on ESPN before watching a few replays
and even though the evidence is in front of his eyes, he’s still saying it was
a foul. Arsehole.
We are undoubtedly making it tough for ourselves though as
another attempt to play out of defence goes wrong with Davis perfectly
dissecting Shaw and Hooiveld and playing in Hal Silly-Name whose cross is met
with a decent downward header from Mariappa but King Artur plunges to his right
to keep it out by the post.
We get our first decent spell of possession around the 30
minute mark and Reading are not closing us down any more. In that instant I have decided that we are
going to win this as Reading are clearly not going to be able to have the same
intensity for 95 minutes. The tide has
turned and five minutes later it’s confirmed as J-Rod picks up a ball through
from Davis, plays a ball to Sir Rickie who flips it over the last defender and
J-Rod is brave whereas Federici is shit scared and he bundles the ball into the
net. It didn’t even occur to me that it
may have been a foul but the Reading love-in is declaring that it was and Nigel
Adkins is up having a go at the 4th official. Piss off everyone – perfectly good goal. If the keeper hadn’t shat his pants he’d have
gathered it and no worries.
Reading have taken falling behind really well and now seem
determined to hand the match to us. Sir
Rickie wins the ball high up the pitch and feeds Gaston who brilliantly slides
J-Rod through as the Reading defence all stand still. The shot crashes off the bar and away but the
chances keep coming. This time J-Rod
robs Mariappa who is dozing before sprinting around Morrison which takes a
while as he’s a bit of a unit. He tries
to slide it past Federici who pulls off a decent stop but the ball falls
straight to Gaston who more-or-less has an empty goal to aim at and he
more-or-less completely fucks it up and bobbles it wide to join Guly at Stoke
and Lallana at Norwich in the Saints miss-of-the-season competition.
So, half time arrives and 1-0 up. You gotta be happy with that but we really
should be further in front. Adkins has
some work to do at half time and surely has to get some more help on so le
Fondre is not the only Reading player in our half. What he does though is bring on Leigertwood
for Akpan. In Saints speak, this is the
equivalent of taking off Jermain Wright and bringing on Paul Wotton. I don’t want to be arrogant but a League 1
trundler coming on does not fill me with fear.
Saints start the second half like they want to finish things
off quickly and a lovely volleyed pass from Sir Rickie puts Davis through but
his attempted chip (if you can call it that) wouldn’t have lobbed a small child
and Federici catches it at knee height.
There’s another near miss as Sir Rickie puts J-Rod away down the
left. He has a race to the ball with the
Reading right back Gunter who seems to just allow J-Rod to get to the ball,
then he allows him to turn and wait a bit before whipping in a low cross which
just evades the lunging Sir Rickie at the back post. I have no idea what the point of the Reading having
a right back was at this juncture.
Reading aren’t putting us any pressure at all but we have
reached the hour mark which means that Gaston becomes a liability and starts
giving the ball away needlessly. The
flicks start going wrong and then even the five yard passes start missing and
then he tries too hard and it ends the same way as it always does and he gets
hooked, to be replaced with Adam Lallana.
He had a decent first half again but there is clearly a fitness issue
which is going to take the summer to address.
An optimistic Reading shot from miles out deflects for a
corner which McAnuff puts into the mixer where Artur comes, drops it and faced
with a 50-50 race with le Fondre throws himself at the ball and gets a right
kick in the head in exactly the same way that Federici would have done if he
wasn’t such a big fucking blouse. Up the
other end we go, a following a spell of superb passing, Yoshida feeds into
Lallana who flicks it to J-Rod, who chips first time over the defence to where
Lallana has run, tracked by absolutely no one.
One touch, near post, bang, 2-0, game over, staying up, going down, fire
drill at the Madejski….
The Reading ‘faithful’ are leaving the end that was
distinctly not sold out anyway and I can’t understand why as Chelsea aren’t
playing until tomorrow. They miss one of
those bizarre Nigel substitutions that they’ll have to get used to as their
best player in Guthrie is removed and they bring on Noel Hunt who is the less
ugly, less scruffy brother of Stephen who like Kevin Doyle, left Reading to
improve his career and ended up…. nowhere.
It then become the Holy Goalie Show as he nearly carries a le Fondre
header into his net but manages to throw it out before he did so. Cue more bollocks from ESPN as King Artur
then gathers a cross one handed before flicking it over a Reading attacker
before doing the same again with another one.
It’s like the fucking Harlem Globetrotters in our penalty area but it’s
quality.
The game fizzels out with us playing keepball and taking the
piss. The camera pans to the crowd a
fixes on a miserable looking bloke in a wig and then I realise that it’s John
Madejski. I wonder if he rubber stamped
McDermott’s sacking or if it’s totally the Zingarevich show now? Meanwhile, Guly comes on for the excellent
Davis and gets involved as Sir Rickie puts Clyne away down the right and he
gets to the line before pulling it back to Guly who posted his second entry in
the Miss of the Season competition by sidefooting over an empty goal from the
edge of the box. It’s bollocks but it doesn’t matter.
An interesting insight in Mauricio’s mindset came in the 92nd
minute. The game was won, J-Rod was
knackered, JWP was ready to come on and Reading had a free kick. As it was obviously going to be tossed into
our box like every other dead ball Reading had had. J-Rod, being the better
header of the ball was told to get back into the penalty area and defend. The game was over before JWP managed to get
on so I’m sure we’ll have a whip round for his appearance bonus.
Well that was easy wasn’t it? I didn’t really feel that we got out of
second gear but we didn’t have to really as the reality is that Reading are a piss
poor side. They over performed in the
Championship last year and won the league through the inspired buy of Jason
Roberts (who I don’t think has scored a Premier League goal this season) and an
incredible run of wins at the end of the season. Fair enough but there is no way they can have
expected to do well in the Premier League with virtually the same squad. They made one expensive buy in Pogrebnyak
(Russian) who bearing in mind Zingarevich (Russian) had just taken control of
the club, looks like a vanity buy based on half a decent season for Fulham last
year. Brian McDermott had no chance and
now Nigel Adkins has no chance either. I’m
not saying they should have done a QPR and spent millions but you do at least
have to have a bit of a go at it. From
what I saw today they haven’t got a single player who is worth a place in a
Premier League starting XI. Nigel must
have been thinking at half time – I’m one nil down and they’re threatening to
swamp us, I know, I’ll bring on a midfielder.
Right, who have I got? I’ve got
Leigertwood who can’t run and is League 1 standard and no one else. Shit – he’ll have to do – together as one,
everyone on the bus etc.
Meanwhile on ESPN, they’re asking January Manager of the
Month Brian McDermott what he would have done differently if he was still
manager. A bit of a harsh, kick him while he’s down question I thought
and Brian flatly refused to answer it, which was decent of him but if I may be
so bold to answer for him, he’d have done nothing that would have made a
difference as with the players they have, there is nothing that could make a
difference. If you’ve got Championship players on the pitch and League 1
players on the bench then you have no chance. Nigel will do the business for
them in the Championship though and I’m sure he’ll get about 6 players and
they’ll have a decent go at it.
Post-match, Adam le Fondre was quoted in the press that he
thought J-Rod should have been sent off for the challenge for the goal.
It’s nice to report that even amongst Reading fans, that’s been derided as
rubbish. I’d like to point out that J-Rod didn’t actually touch their
keeper whereas later in the game, le Fondre kicked King Artur in the head. Neither was a foul so lets all be men and get
on with it. His quote did its job though
and took attention away from the fact that he missed an absolute solid gold
sitter when it was 0-0. I expect to see both Gaston and Guly coming up
with a stupid quote to take the heat off of their poor finishing.
Enough of Reading though, the J-Rod renaissance continues at
a pace and that’s 3 goals in 3 games for him and he’s looked a superb player
again today. Also contributing massively
today was a bit of an unsung hero in Steven Davis. After the opening 20 minutes when Reading
were on top, Mauricio called over Davis and had a chat and from that moment on,
Davis dominated the game and was superb.
Today was yet another example of why we need to sign up Artur
Boruc. Off the top of my head, I can’t
think of too many better keepers in the league and we will not get a better one
anywhere in the summer – we need to get him tied down and now. There will be bigger clubs than us with their
eye on him – look at the clowns Arsenal have as keepers for example. The one moan about today is that we fannied
about it defence a bit too much. Jos
seemed to have a shaky match but he knows that Jose Fonte is in the wings
should his form drop off.
So, we’re up to 37 points and 11th place. In Sunday’s games, a defeat for Sunderland at
Chelsea and Wigan drawing with QPR with a last minute goal, means we’re 6 points
above the relegation zone and a home win next week against West Ham should seal
the deal for this year. Lets prove we
can play against aeroplane bothering tactics and get to the magical 40 point
barrier. Wigan are my new pet hate after
their spawny point against us, spawny win against Newcastle and spawny point
today against 10 men but you can’t begrudge them it when you look at the video
of a clearly upset Harry Redknapp talking about their last minute
equalizer. Pure comedy gold.
Triffic!
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