There’s not a huge amount I can say in this intro that hasn’t already been said on the Reading FC hashtag over the last day or so. It seems Monday afternoon was a bit of a breaking point for most.
I need to be careful here, as I could very easily find my way down an eternal rabbit hole of frustration, anger, sadness and, most of all, deflation. Simply put, again, Monday’s performance was nowhere near good enough.
Here’s what the ardent Loyal Royals had to say about the key topics post-game…
Leam Richardson
Not that
I imagine he does, but Leam, if you do read these pieces, I’d just scroll ahead if I were you.
For what it’s worth, I quite liked his post-match interview. There was an anger we haven’t seen before. We’ve still got a bit of work to do to get to the accountability stage, but at least he started to show a bit of fight.
However, a bit of post-match emotion doesn’t even get remotely close to making up for the performance we had to watch. I gave him and the players a bit of slack after Huddersfield Town, but the lack of creativity, bravery and general oomph shown on Monday were frankly unacceptable.
It’s getting harder and harder to make a case for Leam Richardson being the long-term answer for us, and some fans have already made up their mind…
More late pain
To be honest, personally I’m not that fussed about conceding late again on Monday. Realistically we needed to win the game; yes, a draw would’ve been better than a loss, but in the grand scheme of things we had to try and get all three points.
However, the fact we’d got ourselves back in the game and shot ourselves in the foot again in injury time has not been lost on the fans, and deserves to be highlighted…
Season over?
Richardson was adamant after the game that there are still 12 points to play for, and of course we all know how quickly things can change in football.
But Monday felt like the final nail in the coffin for our very much half-hearted playoff push. That’s a tough thing to admit when we were the front runners in the 94th minute on Friday, but we’ve been well and truly punished for our mistakes.
Maybe it was the heat of the moment post-game, but there is a certain air of doom and gloom among the fans in regards to our playoff hopes…
Conclusion
Genuinely, the reaction I’ve summarised above doesn’t even touch the surface of the thoughts and ponderings I’ve just scrolled through. I’m still trying to sum up my own thoughts in my head about this current situation, but I can’t really seem to make any coherence of it.
Firstly, I think it says something about the quality of this league that we’ve played the way we have for so long and are still two points off the top six.
And secondly, if we’ve managed to get to where we are playing as negatively as we have, imagine where we’d be if the players were given a bit of creative license and freedom to entertain?
I know it’s not as simple as that, but all I’m thinking is that this second half of the season has been a huge missed opportunity. If Richardson does start next season as our manager, he won’t be starting it with a huge amount of credit in the bank from the fans.
