By Mike
November 7 2005

Town drop to 11th having lost 2-0 at the Madejski stadium earlier today, Live on Sky sports.

Archive Report: Reading

 

Town drop to 11th having lost 2-0 at the Madejski stadium earlier today, Live on Sky sports.

 

The Madejski Stadium saw a great afternoon for football on a pitch which still looked good in spite of being used for rugby as well as the "beautiful game". Joe Royle had an embarrassment of riches with a full squad to choose from (less Westlake), and the experience of a good 2nd half display from the team he sent on against Crewe for the last 45 a fortnight ago.

 

What he got was a display of complete incompetence with only Price Naylor and Horlock putting in a decent performance. The good news of the day was that we only lost 2-0. Reading are good but not that good. Town made an average team look great today.

 

Unfortunately Joe chose Parkin not Naylor to put up front with Forster and just negated any advantage the return of "Fozzie". may have given us. Sadly Sam Parkin once more showed that his step up to Championship football is a bridge too far for him. He looks lost and for a striker appears to be lacking pace. However Proudlock did show real promise when he came on for a tactically substituted De Voss at the start of the second half.

 

We have to accept that Royle did make a tactical substitution, because of all the poor performances today, De Voss's was down there with the worst. He is just too slow for this level of football and it was his lack of pace that nearly got him sent off in three minutes for a last ditch foul on the Reading forward Doyle. It was probably the over dramatic fall by Doyle that prevented him seeing red.

 

Wilnis looks out of position at left back. His most recent performances as a central defender show that he should replace De Voss in the middle. In today's opening formation of 4-4-2 which looked more like3-5-2 McEveley and Wilnis contrived to leave an enormous gap down the left hand side for Reading to penetrate at will. It didn't help matters that that the pair of them seemed to want to give the ball away at every chance. In fact the only thing that Wilnis held on to all day was Reading shirts. The proof was he eventually got booked for it in the second half.

 

Reading went ahead on 17 minutes when Naylor put into his own net trying to defend a Doyle cross. The fact that Doyle was offside when Makin passed the ball to him escaped the eye of the linesman. Yes even the Linesmen had a day to forget!

 

On 30 minutes Forster had the ball in the Reading net but he was quite rightly penalized for hand ball.

 

Changes at half time saw Proudlock on for De Voss, going up front; McEveley returning to left back and Wilnis moving into the middle giving us a 4-3-3 formation which was breached in 90 seconds when McEveley gave the ball away again and Doyle headed in the cross for 2-0.

 

The rest of the match was pretty even and both teams threatened though Reading remained the stronger. Price made some good saves but then so did the woodwork. Proudlock looked dangerous and brought a stunning last man clearance from Sonko towards the end and yes Sam Parkin managed to attack a cross put into the box -only to head it over the bar.

 

Most fans accept that this has to be a period of patience and rebuilding but this was too much. We have too many paceless players who want to use Park and Ride to get around the field. and if we were tired and run off the pitch today how will the players recover in time to play again on Tuesday!

 

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