Welcome one and all to the next instalment of the Pizza Car Energy Drink Paint Tin Trophy, sponsored by a tombola or something. Tonight offered Reading fans the opportunity to see West Ham United’s under-21s
test their wits against, largely, our academy players and fringe first-teamers.
Not the most popular trophy by all accounts among the Reading fans, it’s still useful because it’s largely our most likely route to adding to our trophy collection. It’s also a nice chance to get minutes into the legs of the aforementioned fringe players and blood in some of the also aforementioned academy prospects trying to state their case for a push into the first-team picture.
Tonight’s line-up demonstrated that we are quite light on centre-backs, with the current injury list. Michael Stickland, also captaining the side, was partnered with Jacob Borgnis – nominally a defensive midfielder.
Reading continued with the 4-2-3-1 system, seeing Tivonge Rushesha and Shay Spencer paired together as the double pivot, and Ben Elliott pushed into a slightly unfamiliar number 10 role. It’s weird to think that there was a clamour for him to be playing there around a year ago, but this midfield set-up actually seemed to favour the formerly used 4-3-3. Thankfully that’s been put on the scrap heap.
Long Kelvin was our most experienced outfielder, starting in his customary left-winger role, and Mark O’Mahony led the line with Jeremiah Okine-Peters flanking him on the right. The rest of the side was made up of Jack Stevens taking up his customary cup ‘keeper role, with Kelvin Abrefa starting at right-back and John Ryan coming in at left-back.
Reading (4-2-3-1): Stevens; Abrefa, Borgnis, Stickland, Ryan; Rushesha, Spencer; Okine-Peters, Elliott, Ehibhatiomhan; O’Mahony
Subs: Rowley, Duah, Beacroft, Sackey, Bowdery, Tuma, Patton
West Ham, it’s worth noting, also had Tomas Soucek playing the full 90 minutes. This would, and did, provide a good learning curve for our formulative midfield. In a reduced-capacity stadium, it gave us the chance to hear the players and coaching staff communicating and learn a thing or two.
First half
The Hammers started the brighter of the two teams and looked sharp playing triangles with their passes and being resistant to (attempted) Reading midfield press. While progressing the ball well with their passing structure, they were able to put pressure on the inexperienced Reading defence.
Borgnis in particular really struggled with this pressure and, frankly, it’s completely understandable. One example was when he miscontrolled receiving a pass on the right of the pitch and actually allowed the ball to run out of play.
However, the linesman didn’t see it and, despite the protests, the play continued. This was his first start at first-team level, and playing out of position can’t have helped. He was often found wanting with his passing and sometimes lost the ball when trying to play the ball out of defence.
Eventually he found comfort in playing the ball back to Stevens which, while safe, ended up allowing West Ham to plug the gaps in their shape and not provide Reading’s ‘keeper any passing options.
We weirdly had a reticence to play the ball to the left of the field, despite having Ryan (more on him later) and our most experienced outfielder (Ehibhatiomhan) out there.
It wasn’t long before West Ham found a way to break the deadlock, around six minutes into the game. The Hammer found the space between our midfield, who didn’t seem to track the runners/West Ham players around the edge of the box, and our defence, who seemed too static to zonally mark the moving West Ham players filtering into the box. A shot led to a decent block from Stevens, but West Ham pounced on the rebound to make it 0-1.
Noel Hunt’s immediate reaction to this was to call Stickland over and have a chat with him, though about what I’m not sure, as I wasn’t able to hear. However, it was notable that this did seem to wake us up a bit and we began to grow into the game. By around the 15th minute, and for the duration of the half from this point onwards, we were the more dominant team.
Rushesha was notable in midfield for his movement – he would often drop deeper to demand the ball from Abrefa, Borgnis or Stickland or look to push up and pull to the right when Elliott, Okine-Peters and/or Abrefa were attacking.
He was the one consistent voice on the pitch for Reading too, always talking to those around him, mostly to demand the ball but also to give shouts of “time” or “space”. It was an impressive feature of his game. Notably, during a mid-half break, Rushesha was encouraging Borgnis when he was apologising to those around him for the lapses, to tell him to keep his head up and keep on going.
Reading still looked largely laboured in possession of the ball, often either choosing to play short passes around the back line and then to punt it long to O’Mahony up top or Okine-Peters/Ehibhatiomhan to chase. However, this often led to nothing. O’Mahony was particularly culpable, given he seemed unable to make anything stick and often seemed to lack the confidence to attack chances or make the runs/movements to take a chance to win the turnover or possession.
It was frustrating to watch as, when we were able to get the ball to the likes of Spencer or Ryan, they were able to move the ball more progressively up the pitch. However, given how slow we were to move the ball, we were crying out for players to switch the play to stretch West Ham’s shape and use our speed and movement to break down their back line and bypass their midfield.
As the confidence grew, we started to get further up the pitch, despite our issues with making the most of the ball and an unpleasant theme developed for the night: O’Mahony. He simply kept misfiring, or going missing when dangerous balls were whipped into the box.
We ended the first half 0-1 down, and while we had the chances to have gone in level and were the dominant side, we only really had ourselves to blame for being behind. Elliott was missing for large chunks of the game, Borgnis (aside from a beautiful sliding challenge to stop a West Ham breakaway at the end of the first half) was struggling badly, O’Mahony looked like he wanted to go home, and we weren’t getting enough of the ball to players like Ryan, Okine-Peters or Ehibhatiomhan, who looked like they could make a difference.
Half-time: 0-1
No changes were made for the second half, which made sense. While O’Mahony was frustrating, you felt Hunt wanted to keep him out there to give him the minutes and protect his confidence, as subbing him off would really hurt him. Honestly, there were moments in the game when attacking movements would break down and he would be all alone, with his head down.
The second half started with a bang – almost literally. Okine-Peters was taken out in the penalty area by a West Ham defender, who received his marching orders, and Ehibhatiomhan stepped up the take the penalty. A strange decision, as you would have thought a penalty opportunity for O’Mahony would do him the world of good. After taking an age to take the penalty, Ehibhatiomhan promptly saw it saved. At this point, it really felt like it wouldn’t be our night, despite playing against 10 men.
Ehibhatiomhan seemed eager to make up for this, and almost immediately in the next phase of play he was seen galloping down the left of the pitch, taking on and beating two West Ham players in a tight space, cutting inside and winning a corner. This is what we would like to see more of, please, Kelvin.
The corner led to the ball coming to Spencer, who received it slightly behind him and was encouraged by the crowd to shoot. Shoot he did, but it was a tame effort that sailed high and wide.
The passing in the early 10 minutes of the second half was notable for being poor from Reading. Too often we seemed to be playing the ball slightly behind the receiving player. While it’s a difference of centimetres, it means they were catching the ball off balance and slower to move the ball onto the next player, which stunted our play to progress the ball up the pitch and try to get a way back into the game.
There was a handball claim from the crowd in the 57th minute, when Ehibhatiomhan went one-on-one to challenge a West Ham defender in the box. Though, challenge isn’t the word. I think it would have been a soft penalty if given, and really, the bigger issue was that Ehibhatiomhan barely challenged the defender at all, and was too slow to try and win the ball back. If he had been more aggressive, he would have won the ball and been given a chance to shoot.
Basil Tuma came on in the 60th minute (Hunt had been heard telling him in the 52nd minute this would happen) for Spencer. I was surprised as O’Mahony was really the player that needed to come off, but you have to agree that Hunt’s man-management there was good, in recognising that O’Mahony needed more minutes and to build confidence.
Tuma went to the left, Long Kelvin slotted into the number 10 role and Elliott dropped back into the double pivot with Rushesha.
Shortly after this, Ehibhatiomhan did brilliantly to (finally) win a header, but O’Mahony was nowhere to be seen to attack the follow-up. This eventually led to Tuma being taken out by a nasty-looking challenge – thankfully, he was OK to resume – and Ryan stepping up to take the free-kick from the left.
Whipping in a delightful ball, which led to a scramble in the box, of all people Borgnis stepped up to poke the ball home from close range and complete the redemption arc for his night. 1-1.
Ryan really got more involved with the game in the second half and was a real threat in the attack. He was whipping in ball after ball, all of them dangerous, and you would sympathise with him that O’Mahony, as well as the others, were not making the most of the quality of the crosses. Hunt was often encouraging him to push up, attack the back post or go wide, recognising the threat.
A triple substitution in the 79th minute saw Tyler Sackey come on for Rushesha in midfield and two first-team debuts made. Ehibhatiomhan came off for summer academy signing Sean Patton (slightly out of position, as he is nominally a striker) and Phillip Duah replaced Borgnis at centre-back – by this stage he was much improved, though likely helped by the fact that West Ham were down a man.
However, not content to go quietly into the night, West Ham often showed for the next 10 minutes that they posed a threat and let off a couple of shots that went close and led to set plays.
However, in the 87th minute, Ryan finally did what he had been threatening to do all night and let off a right-footed cross (for a change, and he has a great right peg too) which led to another foul in the area and another penalty shout.
This time, O’Mahony stepped up and smashed it home to claim his first Reading goal, with all his teammates coming to celebrate the moment. 2-1 Reading.
For some mad reason, 13 minutes of extra time were given. This got the loudest reaction of all the game from the fans as, despite a couple of stoppages, we couldn’t see where the time came from and were all cold and wanted to call it a night. However, I’ll tell you who didn’t want to call it a night: Reading.
Out of nowhere, during an attacking phase, O’Mahony picked out a pass that I don’t think anyone in the stadium saw when he drifted out to the left and played a ball to split the West Ham defence wide open, letting in Okine-Peters to score and make it 3-1 Reading. Not long after that, Elliott even hit the post with a cracker of a shot from outside of the box, on the right of the pitch.
Play went on for nearly 15 minutes of added time, but finally, the game finished with Reading taking a win.
Full-time: 3-1
Highlights of the night were Hunt’s substitutions – he got them right again, especially with regard to keeping O’Mahony on to build his confidence; a couple more academy debuts to add to the wall; a O’Mahony goal and assist; a bright cameo from Patton; and Ryan really laying down a marker for his first-team credentials.
There are still worries about our overall style of play – we didn’t make this game anywhere near as comfortable for ourselves as we could or should have done – but we will take the win and see how the first-choice XI perform come the weekend, and if O’Mahony’s confidence in how he finished this game will kickstart his season.
