“I don’t much care [about] the style of play… you either win or you lose.”
Those were the words of Rob Couhig last month when he spoke to Ben and Ross on the TTE podcast. He said something similar more recently too, to BBC Berkshire:
“My charge to [Leam Richardson] is not ‘go play great, open football and have a good time and I don’t care if you lose’. It is, ‘if you don’t win, your tenure for us is not going to be for long’.”
I think from these quotes we can pretty safely infer that Couhig doesn’t
care how we get there, how many goals we score and final-third entries we have, or what our xG may or may not be come this time next season. As long as we get promoted, that’s all that matters.
There are plenty of things in the interview he did with TTE that I disagree wholeheartedly with, but I want to pick up on this particular point as it’s something that has always irked me and I feel strongly about.
The need for identity
Simply put, every team needs an identity to be successful – and the ‘it’s a results-based business’ narrative, while of course is true, is overused and has become too sanitised. Yes, a manager is judged by their results come May, but routines, habits, structures, ideas that are constantly drilled into a team – i.e. an identity – create those results.
And this is something I just don’t think Couhig agrees with. There is a seeming disregard for how we play, as long as we win. That’s just not how football works.
I’m not a data geek by any stretch of the imagination; I rarely go off stats to forge my opinions. But your performances, in the long run, will dictate your results. You may get away with it, as Richardson did for a stretch last season, for a certain amount of time.
No team in footballing history has succeeded without an identity, a way of playing, routines and habits that over time create success. It just doesn’t happen.
Now, the beauty of football is that those identities can be so varied that you don’t have to have a certain way of playing. But you do have to have a way of playing.
And although there are plenty of different methods to train your team how to play, and plenty of ways to succeed, the general rule of thumb is that if you have more shots on goal, you score more goals. And if you score more goals, you win more games. And if you win the most games, you’re probably going to get promoted.
So yes, to a degree, I agree with Couhig: it doesn’t matter how you get into the final third. But you have to do that more than most teams, and you have to score more than them. Lincoln City won the league last season with the lowest average possession, yes, but they scored 89 goals – nearly two a game. They also had the third-most touches in the opposition box.
They have a clear identity, which isn’t necessarily ‘great, open football’, but it’s entertaining (clearly) and successful (clearly).
I’m not saying we should be like Lincoln, I’m just saying we need an identity – one that produces chances and goals. And that’s exactly what we do not have at the moment.
Entertainment is key
Another thing Couhig picked out was to say there are fans who can go to games and not care if we lose as long as they have fun. Of course there will be people in that bracket – not everybody cares about football as much as others, and that’s OK.
He used that statement as the other side of the coin to his ‘you either win or you lose’ quote, and I don’t think that’s entirely fair. Fans don’t either fall into one or the other of those two categories.
Fans want to be entertained. And although you could take a one-off 5-4 loss on the chin and say that was good fun, supporters aren’t entertained when we lose.
So, we all agree on the fact that winning is the most important thing. I just don’t agree the performance is irrelevant in the equation; the two things are not mutually exclusive.
Ultimately, I suspect I’m not alone in this opinion, and I think Couhig is struggling – or refusing – to acknowledge and grasp that fact.
We’ve had lots of communication about One Royal, a huge push from the club to turn us towards that scheme and increase ticket sales. But the fans need a reason to commit to that, and as needed as a new pitch, new PA system and bright blue seats are, what’s going to get fans to put their hands in their pockets is a clear direction towards success on the pitch.
Acknowledgement of this from Couhig and co would do the world of good. We don’t want a publicly issued presentation on how exactly we’re going to play, we just want to have proof that we’re working towards an identity.
Perhaps that proof will come with the profile of incomings, pre-season results and any future planned interviews when the players and staff are back from their holidays.
But, unfortunately for the Reading FC balance sheet, all we currently have to go off is the last few weeks of the seasons: the regular lack of shots on target, the sideways passes and the tepid performances. That needs to be addressed for fans to fork out on a One Royal subscription.
It’s fair to say Richardson will be in charge in August. He should’ve or would’ve been sacked by now if the opposite were to be the cas.
Truth be told, I haven’t thought about Reading much since the end of the season, so when I think things like my feelings towards Richardson have eased a bit recently, perhaps I’ve just forgotten about it altogether.
