croydon,surely it's better to take a while to settle than to go out full steam ahead and run out of puff in the later stages. To start the way we have at a slowish pace means we can build up slowly. The way other results have gone suggests that there won't be a runaway leader. I expect the gooooooons to be brought down to earth with a thump after their 6 goals and Chelsea only drew. City drew and have conceded a few already so I'm a touch hopeful. A 2 goal win against Hoops will do me.
Just back from the game (Reading away is a home game for me, and wanted to mention our travelling support today. The fans, quite correctly, were criticised for booing the team off the park at oour last home game, but today was different class. Non-stop singing from the first minute to the last and plenty of pro-AVB chants throughout. Also, I don't know if tehy showed this on TV, but about 10 minutes before kick off, there was a quite amazing show of respect to the Hillsbrough 96 by all fans in the stadium singng and clapping to You'll Never Walk Alone. Full credit to our fans today. First class support.
Only managed to see the second half and apart from the scoreline I have to say I was not too impressed with performance. I thought we looked a little lightweight in midfield and overall should have punished Reading more, they looked very ordinary to me. However it's early days and Ade and Parker will add a lot to this team I think, a bit more steel and a bit more guile. Great to see the first win though and I am optimistic that this squad will produce some fine performances as the season moves on.
Yeah, it was great to hear. I must admit I've always been sympathetic of fans' right to boo but the reaction at Norwich was ridiculous but I suspect those that booed will be feeling a little sheepish in the next two games. Plenty of backing for AVB, as you say, but we need to get our Poet Laureates writing some chants for the new players.
Reading were as poor a side as I have seen at this level for quite a while and 3-0 would have flattered them. 3-1 most certainly does. We were embarrassingly wasteful in front of goal and so many of our good chances, were not even on target. Defoe will get the headlines because he scored 2, but the reality is, he missed 4 damn ggod opportunitis and he'll possibly never have a better chance of getting a hat trick than he did today. I would have been content enough with 3-0, but the sloppiness in conceding at the end, has also taken some gloss off the win to be honest. However, having said all that, it's so good we have finally got this first win and hopefully we can nowkick on and beat Lazio, QPR and Carlisle over the next 10 days and then approach the OT trip in form and with confidence.
Vimhawk I do worry sometimes tbh, maybe I'm a curse Seriously if I had a Jenas or Bentley-related name I think people might relax a little more! Regarding Defoe, he has been much maligned on here for not being able to play on his own up front, and AVB has taken plenty of stick for persisting in this. I've done this as much as anyone. But what we have in him is a player who is not only capable of creating a goal out of nothing from just about anywhere in or around the box but also a very reliable finisher of chances. He's also got bags of pace, which never hurts. I think that Ade and players of his ilk may be better suited to be 'traditional' no.9s, but if the likes of Sig, Dembele, Dempsey or Bale can keep the ball mostly on the ground and play the balls that suit Defoe and make the most of his attributes, then he could work in that position. Ade suits Harry's style of play - he's got the physique and the attributes to play the 'all action', non-stop football we saw at the Lane last season. Defoe offers something different when up front on his own, and I get the feeling that AVB feels that Defoe will profit better from the more considered, tactical buildup that he seems to favour. Defoe has the speed of body and mind to turn or pass a defender just outside the box and lash one into the corner, and while Ade has the footballing intelligence to do so for me he doesn't have the same instinct, at least not on the same level of Defoe. I don't doubt we'll see Ade start soon for us, maybe even on Thursday, and I think the players will play differently with him up front than with Defoe. But this is a given as they are very different players, and we'll see how that changes the team dynamic when it comes to it. That performance has (perhaps obviously!) filled me with optimism. We've seen that the AVB way can work for us, and while I think we all know that the road will not be entirely smooth for us (it is, after all, a Spurs team) I think we're going to be ok. Lets build momentum and move onto new challenges. COYS
Record attendance today, apparently. 24,160 were there, which is 1 short of their capacity. Who didn't turn up? Come on, own up.
Some good stuff in the 1st half, as dominant a display as you'll see, agreed poor oppostion, and should have been 3-0 at HT, but going in ahead is still a good thing. 2nd half it was difficult to see Reading being that bad again, so it was a bit more normal from that respect. A telling stat when they showed it was the chances 19 to 2 in our favour at 80ish mins, but as Quinn pointed out not one on target for the home side, which we have to still take some credit for...albeit ruined shortly after with the sloppy consolation of their's. On the whole, job done, the journo's will have to change their headlines, and on another day it could have been a Wigan 9 niller! I'm now off to read back on this thread to see what erupted when the teamsheet was announced...some u-turns on that will be funny to read too! I didn't expect Ade to start (hence pred. choice!) JD's on one of his hot streaks, as much as the little **** doesn't suit the role, he's hitting the onion bag, you can't drop him.
Nope, nothing to do with it, he's just an ugly git, one of those faces that has the potential to be a top gurner!
I think AVB's theory is that when he plays his own 4-3-3 formation (i.e. today) Defoe isn't up front on his own, he's in a front three, and so he continues to play him. Having watched today's game, I tend to agree.
Also went to the game today, good day out in reading and a cracking result. Our support was again excellent, as it is for most away games. Plenty of support for AVB throughout and stefan's song was sung with gusto. Good performance In general, admittedly reading were poor but you can only play/beat what's on the pitch against you. Verts had an excellent game, dembele and sandro linked up very well on the middle. Sigi was disappointing today, as was bale. Lennon had plenty of the ball but did very little with it as usual, we all know how good he can be but he rarely shows it. COYS
Agree about Sigi and Bale being disappointing. As you saw and heard, Sigi got a very impressive welcome back from the Reading fans and I thought that would inspire him, but it didn't really. I know he was involved in one of the goals, but overall he didn't really perform to his pre-season form. Verts was indeed excellent, by far and away his best performance for us so far.
You'd better get used to never seeing us start a match like that, needs must during a game maybe, but the new regime is 433 quite clearly, or variants of, all using one striker. Ade has only played 90 mins in his last two acon matches...hardly PL standard and JD has a good number under his belt and is quite simply matchfit and scoring, why on earth would anyone start Ade v QPR? Definitely in I hope for the Lazio game, and if he outdoes JD with a hat-trick then we may have a debate on, till then it has to stay as it is imo.
If we were playing a more physical team (i.e. Stoke) I would suggest starting Ade up front for that one - he can battle with the defenders much better than Defoe can. He might get tired by 60-70 minutes, but hopefully so will their defenders. Oh, wait, now I have to put 10p in the tactics swear jar...
It was weird, I thought we started 433 too but after only about 15 minutes Sigurdsson seemed to be far further up, whilst Lennon and Bale tracked back more. I guess there's not that much difference anyway. What interested me in the first half was seeing just how attacking our fullbacks were. When we had the ball at the back, depending on which side we had it one of our centre backs would move out to the side whilst Dembele or Sandro dropped into the middle to collect the ball and both fullbacks were almost wingers they were so far up the pitch. Didn't see any of that in the second half though.
If I was going to single out a disappointing player it'd be Walker he was defensively very poor and he's starting to become a liability in the air. Bale and Sig had good games I felt. Bale might not have been centre of attention but when he was involved in attacks I felt he created good chances and kept the ball well when nothing was on.
I don't think this is an absolute, there are already several claims being made in Reading of having a ticket but not being able to attend! I'm not disappointed that we lost 3-1 to a class outfit like Spurs, but the boys on our site are disappointed at the manner in which we lost. The gulf between you and us was scary by all accounts, as comments have showed that have flowed in, and you only have to look at the match stats to see that, and you're getting lavish praise on "RR" tonight. Cheers and all the best for the upcoming games ... maybe a Champions League place now beckons?
