Know Your Foe (Middlesbrough)

By: Prederick | February 28th, 2008

There’s a interesting piece in The Guardian that I’d direct you all towards, taking on what is wrong at the Madjeski. A lot, obviously, and and as I stated previously, Coppell is pretty much justified in thinking that the only way he can stop the rot is to change all 11 players on the pitch. No points in 2008 is not the way you stay up. It’s not for lack of trying, but Reading just haven’t been good. One wonders if Steve Sidwell regrets his move to Chelsea, given how often he’s featured this year, rather than getting more game-in-game-out time with the Royals (I doubt it, but let me hope).

So, Saturday, Reading will visit Middlesbrough. If you asked me in October or November what I thought, I’d tell you that three points is well within our capabilities for such a match, even away. Now, given that Boro have gotten some of the most glaring kinks figured out, not so much. Boro certainly aren’t Chelsea or ManU, mind, they did need a unfortunate error from Paddy Kenny to get through to the next round of the FA Cup, but against our defense right now, the thought of Tuncay, Downing, and even Mido honestly scares me. Who knows, maybe even Boro’s big-money Brazilian (Alfonso Alves) will actually see the field for more than 15 minutes.

The load is, for us, entirely on the shoulders of our strikers. They must start finding form if Reading are to stay up. Someone who is paid to regularly score, needs to start scoring again. Regularly. Outside of Kitson though, I wonder who’s going to take the load on? To be perfectly honest, I just don’t have that much faith in Kevin Doyle anymore, and Leroy Lita certainly has the pace and the desire, but he hasn’t featured since the 2nd of this month, and hasn’t scored in the league thus far this season.

It’s times like this that one wishes life were like a video game. You could jump in, and force them to play the right pass, to get tight in defense, to run their socks off for 90 minutes. Unfortunately, all we can do is hope. The match is totally out of touch for people like me, as both FSC and Setanta Broadband aren’t putting it on (somewhat understandably, Boro-Reading isn’t exactly a byword for dashing, entertaining football).

Against Everton, and for periods, against Aston Villa, we showed the heart we need. Both teams were just better than us. The players seem to understand that this is an absolutely massive game. A point is not just needed here, it’s the minimum we can take. We don’t, and relegation goes from “serious problem” to “imminent”.

One point. Fingers crossed.