Last season Reading were one of a dozen opposing sides to win in the Championship at Cardiff City Stadium. Like a lot of teams that got the three points at our ground, the score was 1-0, but this was definitely the most weird of those games.
City dominated from the first whistle and the goal attempts figure was something like twenty eight to two in our favour – ex City man Junior Hoilett got the goal and, from memory, Reading’s other goal attempt almost hit the corner flag.
Reading’s 22/23 visit to Cardiff wasn’t as one sided as last season’s, but it was similar in that City were the better team as their start showed a lot of confidence gained from the midweek win at Birmingham. Again, the game produced just the one goal and I wondered as the minutes ticked away towards the ninety whether a Reading side that had not lost here since 2015 could conjure up a goal to escape with another unlikely win.
A week or so ago, it wouldn’t have been a surprise if they had done, but the last few days have seen the tide finally begin to turn somewhat – our two goals on Tuesday came after the eighty fourth minute and here it was us who came up with the win just as the game went into added time. We couldn’t add a second this time, but we seem destined to only win games 1-0 at home this season and, for the second time, it was Romaine Sawyers who proved the match winner with a goal similar to the one which beat Norwich on the opening day of the season.
Dean Smith the then Norwich manager had Sawyers in the Brentford team he had charge of before he went to Villa and he was insistent that the City man’s Sawyers’ daisy trimmer from twenty five yards that day was actually a pass. However, there could be no doubt what the midfielder’s intentions were this time as he showed great technique to drill his low shot through a sea of Reading bodies for the ball to nestle in the corner with keeper Joe Lumley motionless.
If one player above all others has benefited from Sabri Lamouchi’s arrival, it’s Romaine Sawyers who has played every minute of the five games our new manager has taken charge of.
Tonight, Lamouchi picked what I thought was a team to play a standard 4-4-2 – out from the team at Birmingham went Mahlon Romeo, and Andy Rinomhota as Jaden Philogene and Callum Robinson came in. My assumption was that Perry Ng would switch to a right back role and Callum O’Dowda would be at left back, but, instead, it was the same back three from Tuesday with Philogene and O’Dowda operating as wing backs and Robinson playing a number ten type role.
Lamouchi had picked a very attacking side, but, in doing so, he had placed a huge onus on Sawyers and Ryan Wintle in midfield
I’ve given my opinion on Sawyers’ form for us before Lamouchi’s arrival a few times on here, so I’ll keep it brief and just say he was the summer signing that most excited me, but it looked for all of the world like his legs had gone and he faded further and further out of the first team picture, particularly under Mark Hudson.
Sawyers turned thirty one in November, something which adds credence to my feeling he was struggling physically (I was certainly not alone among City fans in thinking that), but he’s lasted the pace in the last five games with no obvious problems despite the last three of them have come in the last six days.
Perhaps the deeper role Sawyers is being used in is helping to save his legs to some extent, but, tonight, against opponents who played a 3-5-2 with three central midfielders, he and Wintle could easily have been overrun by superior numbers.
Instead, Sawyers and Wintle (who had been out of form through the first five weeks or so of 2023) were, in my opinion, our two best players and won their midfield battle against their three opponents.
Sawyers and Wintle enabled City to dominate statistically to the tune of sixty three/thirty seven possession, nineteen to five with goal attempts and five to nil in on target efforts. City were as dominant as they’d been in a home league game since their draw with Blackpool in December in a game which should have been put to bed in the first half only for the visitors to escape with a 1-1 draw.
Reading weren’t as bad as Blackpool, but they do possess the second worst away record in the Championship and so, while our dreadful home form over the past three seasons and the fact that we’d gone nine without a home win (ten if you count the Leeds game in the FA Cup), if any home game deserved to be described as one we should be winning, this was probably it.
City with O’Dowda prominent down the left kept Reading pinned back for the first twenty minutes or so when Sory Kaba could have had a hat trick. The on loan striker should have done better than head a fine Philogene cross wide on the far post and when Cedric Kipre played a superb cross field ball to O’Dowda, Kaba got a better contact on the cross with his header, but could only direct it straight at Lumley. Then, when Wintle’s free kick got a slight touch off Robinson, Kaba was completely unmarked on the far post, but the ball came to him very quickly and he couldn’t control his header.
Kion Etete forced a save out Lumley as well as crossing to an unmarked Robinson who seemed set for a simple opportunity, only for a deflection off a defender to knock the ball just behind him.
There was also almost a repeat of Ng’s goal on Tuesday, but this time his free kick rippled the wrong side of the net as it hit the side netting and fooled plenty of people, myself included, into thinking it was a goal.
Reading had little to offer as an attacking force at this time and their manager Paul Ince was critical of his team afterwards, even if the main point of his post match interview was to slag off referee Darren Bond for showing Mark McGuinness a yellow, not red, card for his first half foul on Amadeus Mbengoe. It was hard to argue with Ince on that one, it looked a definite red to me on first viewing and it gets worse with each replay I’ve seen of the incident.
Perhaps it was a sense of injustice that was behind Reading’s strong start to the second half as they enjoyed their best period of the game. However, the visitors were one dimensional in their attacking as they constantly looked for Andy Carroll’s head and we were able to survive a series of long throw ins, free kicks and corners without too many alarms.
In fact, the only time the visitors looked like they were going to score was when the under employed Ryan Allsop, usually so assured with the ball at his feet, got a slight touch with his left foot as he went to clear with his right and so had an air shot which left sub Yakou Meite contemplating a simple tap in. However, Allsop saved his blushes with a desperate sliding tackle on the Reading man and City heaved a huge sigh of relief.
City struggled to reach the levels of the first quarter of the game after half time, but enjoyed rotten luck when Robinson and Wintle combined on the edge of the Reading penalty area and the former saw his shot from twenty yards smack off the cross bar, then, three minutes later, sub Sheyi Ojo cut in from the left and his shot from fifteen yards was deflected onto the bar for a second time.
Another sub, Connor Wickham forced Lumley into a save with a clever turn and shot, but, as play became scrappier, Reading were looking good for a point until Wintle played a free kick from a central position about thirty five yards out to Philogene whose cross was diverted towards the edge of the penalty area where a Reading player thought he had cleared the danger, only for Sawyers to apply the coup de grace with his excellent winner
The possible down side of the night came in the form of injuries. O’Dowda’s influence faded after a kick he took just before half time and he was eventually replaced by Ojo, Robinson looked to pull a hamstring as h chased a ball forward, but carried on after treatment only to give up the ghost in the dying minutes and come off and Philogene required treatment at the same time as Robinson’s apparent hamstring issue occurring.
Our former manager Neil Warnock has been in the news recently as he took over at Huddersfield for the rest of the season at the age of seventy four and I’m reminded of his mantra that that he would target fifteen clean sheets a season as the foundation on which a promotion challenge can be built. Well, two more clean sheets in the past four days have taken us on to eleven in thirty three league games, so, if we keep on keeping a clean sheet every three games over our remaining thirteen Championship fixtures, we’ll hit Warnock’s target.
I must admit, I find it hard to gauge this season’s team. Through the first half of the season up to that Blackpool match I mentioned earlier, I was always confident they wouldn’t go down, but, after we threw away three easy points that day, I changed my mind and decided I could no longer avoid the elephant in the room that was our chronic lack of goals.
January and the first half of February were played out with me almost, but not quite, in the going down camp, but I don’t know what to think now. The usual lack of finishing ability was there tonight in a match we should have won more comfortably, but you cannot just focus on the lack of goals to the exclusion of the fact that our defensive record is top six class.
Barring a defensive collapse over our final thirteen games, I’d say that my earlier feeling that we’d need to average getting on for two goals a game from February onwards to dodge the drop could be overly pessimistic – with our defensive figures being so good, maybe all we need is to average something like a goal a game from now on? In saying that, even this requires a big improvement on a current scoring rate of twenty five from thirty three matches.
Also, there are still a few signed copies of my latest book “Tony Evans Walks on Water” available from the Trust Office (near Gate 5) on matchdays at the reduced price of £9 for Trust members.