Swans may look pretty son, but they’re hell dangerous…

By: Ben | January 21st, 2009

Something which our boys found out all too well on the Saturday clash. Only one registered attempt on goal, a third sending off, and Steve Coppell’s usual post-loss talk; “well we should have done XXX, come to think of it”, were the ingredients for a pretty piss-poor match from the Royals’ perspective.

The recent league form had been looking on the positive side; high scoring wins over Watord and title chasing rivals Birmingham, and with 17 points achieved from a potential 21 in the last month our lads were continuing to flourish in the race to get back into the Prem. It wasn’t even as if we were expecting to have an easy game away at Swansea, who this season have proved themselves to be above expectations and are sitting mid-table. But despite this, could a game in favour of Reading really be such a tall order? Especially following on from the convincing win at Watford where Hunt, Doyle and most importantly Lita proved their worth to the team.
Apparently, yes.

It was easily obvious after watching the first half an hour that the lads were not looking at their best; Chris Armstrong had a struggle trying to keep with City’s winger Nathan Dyer (who had a quality game), and the passing was slack and unimaginative. City’s decision to play with 5 in midfield certainly paid off as they constantly had more men behind the ball, forcing Reading to look for more options, the majority of which were cut out before any goal-scoring opportunities arose. Passes both along the floor and through the air were failing to reach KevD and Hunt and the one ball that did get through after some clever play from Kebe flagged Noel Hunt offside. That was arguably the Royals’ only chance in the first half, and not surprisingly after a few well executed saves by stand-in keeper Adam Federici, he was finally beaten by Jason Scotland, moments before half-time. The striker who scored twice last week to beat Burnley opened up the scoring once again, with a swift turn and strike right into the bottom corner past Federici’s reaching fingers. But watching the replays you can see not only one, but two defensive blunders. First Harper lunged to intercept the pass but got the ball tangled in his feet, and looked like a little girl desperately trying to kick a spider of her leg, and then as the shot was struck, error-prone Michael Duberry turned his back. Upon closer inspections such as this, it makes our defensive tactics look like those of an Under-14s team. Throughout the game, Swansea’s passes cut through the backline like a hot knife through butter, and again and again the ‘keeper was there to keep us the difference between the two teams only 1, when it could easily have been 4 or 5.

And so the second half followed suit. Swansea dominated a good three quarters of the pitch, and again, they had several chances, one from a corner and another which forced a brilliant tackle from Stephen Hunt. Hunt then shone again at the other end of the pitch as he whipped in a cross for Doyle, but alas he nodded it right over the bar in a very untypical finish from the Irishman. Matejovsky came on for the aforementioned’s brother, and very soon broke for an opportunity on goal!… But of course, for the nature of the match, his shot was far too weak and was easily collected.

Then with under 10 minutes to go, Liam Rosenior collected his second yellow of the game and was duely sent off. The first booking was weak, but the second deserved. That’s a third player to have been sent off this season, all of which have been strange cases of wrong-eyed referees.

As Lita joined the workforce in an effort to grab one back, the hosts equalised in a scrappy, poorly defended period of play. Scotland should have had a second, but for a hesitation. He ran the ball too far and Federici’s intervention knocked the ball into Duberry, and it ended up ricocheting off Andrea Orlandi and into the net.

Oh yeah, and Steve Coppell always provides with his post-losses talks:

“I would take an amount of the blame myself. Maybe I should have been more conservative and passive and got a lot of men behind the ball.

“But we err on the side of attack, however we did not get any rhythm today.”

No, really Steve? Well it’s just a shame it’s 90 minutes too late, that. But hey! Hindsight’s a bitch, isn’t it.

So with two out of three poor results this year, Birmingham two points behind with a game in hand, and our next game at home to top-of-the-table Wolves, is anyone else finding themselves peeking from behind their hands?

Until next time!