I was as despondant as anyone during the match, but I don't feel as bad about it in retrospect. The first half was awful, agreed; in the second we showed more fight and character. A team who were just going through the motions wouldn't have twice pulled back from two goals down. At least one of the Reading goals - the third - happened because the defence was out of shape because we were chasing the game. Reither was missing because he was pushing up and we were caught on the counterattack.
Some views which might not be popular:
Rodallega, who I've never been a fan of, had the best game I've seen him play. He could have scored four, but with the possible exception of the scuffed attempt at an overhead kick late on, none of the misses were his fault. He was possibly our best player on the day.
Ruiz got some awful stick from fans around me, and did a lot that was poor. He was also resposible for almost all of our most dangerous moments, even if you take the two goals out of the equation. I'd rather have someone who is a mixture of very good and very wasteful than someone who plays like Emanuelson did today - at no point did he do anything in possession that created an opportunity.
Mark Schwarzer, good as he's been recently, was nothing special today. I wouldn't blame him for any of the goals, but a couple of years ago he would have pulled out a stunning save on at least one or two of them. As with most great keepers when they get too old, he's still capable of playing every bit as well as he once did, but he's no longer capable of doing it consistently. I hope the rumours are true and Jol intends to replace him this summer.
We were in the Johnny Haynes stand, almost level with the penalty box, and I thought the ref got all three penalty shouts right. The one I was least sure of was Berbatov going down. I've watched the replay several times, and I think if you watch how the ball leaves the collission, the Reading defender has cleared it, which suggests he got the ball first and then Berba has gone over him. If roles were reversed and that was given against us, I'd feel very hard done by. Same goes for the handball appeal.
The fans around us were vitriolic in their foul-mouthed (and, as it turns out, mistaken) abuse at the linesman after the Reading penalty, which was the only thing that really spoiled the day for my youngest, making his first visit to the Cottage. If the tall, bald bloke who ran down the aisle to offer the linesman his glasses is reading this, thanks for that. We pay our money and we're entitled to criticise, but sometimes we go too far. I thought he did.
It was the kind of game that either side could have won 4-2. Their keeper was very good, making several of the kind of saves that Schwarzer at his best is capable of. That was probably the biggest single reason why we lost instead of winning.
I've never felt that 40pts was definitely enough, but I still think it will keep us up if we lose the last two games. We look at our run in, but others in the not-yet-safe club have just as difficult a fixture list. Norwich have two points less and face West Brom and Man City; Newcastle (2pts less) have got QPR - okay, that's not daunting - and Arsenal; Sunderland (3pts less have got Southampton and Spurs. Given that some of the teams below or around us a playing each other, meaning someone will drop points, even if we lose both our remaining matches, I don't see everyone getting the results necessary to put us in the bottom three. That doesn't mean that scraping out of trouble at the last is when we should have achieved or that I'm happy with our league position, but we're on the fringes of the sh*t, rather than deep in it!
On a happier note, we got there early enough for the boys to see some of the Fulham players arrive, and they got autographs from Riise, Kacaniklic, Ruiz, Emmanuelson, Duff and Hangeland on their programmes. Then, after the warm up, Sacha Reither threw my youngest his charity t-shirt. In everything other than (much of) the football, it was a brilliant day for them. As we left the ground, I asked my youngest if he wanted to go again, slightly fearful that the swearing and the disappointing game would have put him off. His face lit up and without a moment's thought he enthusiastically said, 'Yeah!' Another member of the black and white army duly signed up.
