That 2nd half was truly dire, we had no attacking ambition whatsoever, Isgrove vanished. Reading were much more physical and deserved to win on effort alone. Can't understand why a couple of subs weren't used late on to try and change things, it was a wasted opportunity and a let down for the young players.
Enjoyed a night out at the game with my old man who is a Reading fan. Two totally different halves on display, the first where Reading struggled to play a system and encouraged Saints to come hunting and exploit mistakes. Other than that, Saints looked capable of creating in the middle third but often fizzled out into nothing. Second half, Saints looked way off the pace and a much more physical approach from Reading had us in the back foot for the entire half. Ref was pedantic and snuffed out our attacking intent from a couple of free kicks and seemed slightly lenient on the Reading physicality, where our lads were booked for tackles born out of frustration. Harry kept it 1-1 late on with very good save low down to left-solid performance. First 2 penalties were terrible and from there we were screwed. Reading weren't anything special but worryingly didn't have to do anything special to beat us easily. They have a few half decent players with potential and physicality. Most worryingly, we looked like a team of physically inferior attacking/creative players that didn't look like scoring many. Where have we seen that before...!!
Sadly that and his penalty was virtually all that he did, he obviously has talent in his feet, but seems to lack something in the attitude department, in the second half he went missing, when he did get the ball on the right wing he tried the same trick every time and the full back had sussed it out first time he tried it. He hasn't had a lot of match time so may just have been a bit rusty, but too easily hassled off the ball, I am sure he is capable of doing better.
.Wrong one! Parks. Valery. Vokins. Little. Cook. Jones. Willard. O'Connor. Afolabi. Slattery. Johnson Subs Cull GK Wood Rowthorn MDlalose, SEAGER Apologies for keyboard errors
Harry Lewis, Jack Stephens, Sam McQueen, Harrison Reed, Lloyd Isgrove and Josh Sims. Barnes, Flannigan, Hesketh and Olomola are also missing, but I think they're injured.