I spent most of the second half trying to think of an exciting and catchy title for this report before my father turned to me, panting, a few minutes before the end and said: “Today is one of those days.”
It summed up this afternoon pretty well in my opinion, so here’s my attempt at “Break Stuff (Reading FC Remix).”
It was one of those days when nothing was going right for us, the finishing touches were missing and we were punished for every mistake in defence.
As pathetic as a 0-3 defeat looks on paper and the players still gave the fans enough ammunition to take deserved criticism during the game, I do not believe that it The bad.
Offensively, we were just missing one or two goals in the first half. Even though we didn’t have a single shot on goal during the game, that doesn’t mean that we weren’t dangerous in attack.
We created some really good chances in the first 45 minutes where we just needed the instinct to finish the move. Time and time again we found ourselves in goal scoring or chance creation areas only to have too many touches – the apparent refusal or lack of confidence to pull the trigger and go for it was the biggest frustration for me.
Defensively, both of Wrexham’s goals in the first half came from the right-hand side. The first was far too easy for Ollie Palmer to climb over Amadou Mbengue and head the ball home, while the second was a really good move by the hosts.
If we had gone into the break with a 2-0 lead instead of being behind, we would have deserved it. But if you don’t take your chances and then miss chances like we did, then you deserve to be punished.
It was already a pretty difficult task at halftime, but after just a few minutes the game was finally decided.
Wrexham’s Cannon slotted home a confident shot into the bottom corner to win the game. The midfielder found a loose ball after Kelvin Ehibhatiomhan appeared to have been fouled (more on the referee in a moment) but he finished it off really well. I have to say all three Wrexham midfielders were really good today.
From then on, it was really difficult to get back into the game and as we all know, we don’t have the firepower, options or depth on the bench to turn the game around.
The closest we came to a consolation goal was when Tivonge Rushesha hit the bar from close range and it was a moment that summed up our performance perfectly.
Now to the referee. I have to mention him because although I haven’t checked, I’m sure there will be a lot of criticism of the Loyal Royals officials.
I’ve just put my tinfoil hat on, but I don’t think he got as many things wrong as my 1,300 or so fellow Reading fans. Aside from Tyler Bindon being mistaken for an All Black after a throw from Mbengue and going down with a rugby tackle on the ground, I don’t think the other penalty appeals were as strong.
The proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back for the fans was the aforementioned Ehibhatiomhan collision before Wrexham’s third goal. What I can say is that Lewis Wing chose to take out his obvious anger on his teammate rather than the man in the middle.
That’s not to say the referee was good – we all know refereeing in this league is poor. And although the home crowd seemed to enjoy it this afternoon, if you’re a Red Dragons fan reading this, believe me when I say you’ll be making more than your fair share of terrible decisions this season. What goes around comes around and so on.
But the referee is not the reason we lost today. There are many reasons. Lack of ruthlessness in the final third, too many mistakes in defence and a lack of squad depth that was brutally exposed when we had to find our way back to a game like today – all key factors.
But we will play even worse than we did today and win games this season – I have no doubt about that. It wasn’t a terrible performance, and we were flattered by the 3-0 scoreline. Missing our chances and Wrexham missing theirs is pretty much the end of the story.
With a week to go before the end of the transfer window, we need to seriously strengthen if we want to get to the top of the table. The fundamentals and potential are there, we just need to be able to recruit players to exploit it.
