Here it is then: the curtain-opener. The start of the season proper, our bread and butter: league football. The excitement was in the air as the warm weather and promise of shiny new things at the SCL gave the fanbase reason to arrive in their masses to watch the spectacle of a visiting, promotion-tipped Luton Town.
There were some changes to the stadium that I could see and notice. The sound system definitely seemed louder, the pitch’s advertising boards were now upgraded to the electronic screen
versions and the bins inside the concourse had been replaced with newer ones, which provided options for general waste and recycling. And of course, safe-standing was present in the South Stand.
From where I was sitting, it seemed the West Stand possibly had some new seats, but I couldn’t be sure. Certainly over in the East Stand, we had the same seats from last year where I was sat. However, the WiFi and phone signal were still terrible, the toilets the same (although clean) and the only difference in the food and drink selections were the slight price increases.
This effectively boils down to an appropriate metaphor for the game itself: it promised a lot of change, but ultimately, underwhelmed where it mattered.
The starting line-up was pretty much as we expected, seeing the 4-2-3-1 shape from pre-season in use. However, the only pleasant surprise was seeing Jack Marriott start. Also in the line-up were home debuts for Udoka Godwin-Malife (or ’Dokes’, because I’m not writing that again), Kyreece Lisbie and Josh Stokes.
Reading (4-2-3-1): Pereira; Godwin-Malife, O’Connor, Ward, Dorsett; Wing, Rinomhota; Lisbie, Stokes, Kyerewaa; Marriott
Subs: Stevens, Ahmed, Fraser, Savage, Williams, Lane, Brown
First half
Reading flew out of the traps and largely maintained that same level of tempo throughout the first half. The Royals looked to get the ball and move it forward quickly, playing attacking, vertical football on the ground. It was exciting to watch us move the ball through the middle of park with energy and intent, with Lisbie looking like a real threat early on.
Then something not unusual happened in the sixth half, albeit in unusual circumstances: Reading conceded a goal.
This in itself is not weird, but while it was happening, Lewis Wing was quite literally busy being wrestled to the ground and then pinned there, on the Luton side of the halfway line. This strange event seemed to draw the attention of not just the majority of the crowd in the stadium, but seemingly a lot of the Reading players too, waiting for the lineman or referee to cotton on and flag it.
However, the officials didn’t and Luton continued as if this was a practiced training drill and ripped through the static, inattentive Reading midfield and defensive line, before the Hatters attacker (Jake Richard) received the ball wide right on the edge of the penalty area, cut in with his left and curled a shot away into the left corner of the Reading goal.
While the Reading defence should have done much better to close down the threat, Joel Pereira also should have done much better to stop the shot. 0-1 Luton.
Sigh. We all knew this story from last season. Six minutes in and down a goal: there was only going to be one outcome. Except… this wasn’t last season. This was this season. And this season (at least in the first half), Reading’s heads didn’t go down. This season, in the first half, when you poke the bear, you get a Jack attack.
Almost immediately, Marriott scored an equaliser in the equaliser minute. A long ball from Benn Ward was harried well by Lisbie, forcing a loose back pass, which Marriott pounced on before sliding home for 1-1.
Powered by a revenge-seeking Marriott, Reading played some of the best football I have seen them play in any half of football under Leam Richardson. Indeed, I’d say it was the best football we have actually played under this manager.
The game did calm down after the first 10 minutes, but Reading looked much more dominant and, truthfully, Luton were passengers and really struggled to get out of their half.
However, this being League One football, we swiftly got reminded of the quality of refereeing decisions (again), this time when Daniel Kyerewaa went on one of his many marauding runs forward in the 18th minute and was barged over but penalised by the referee for a ‘dive’ and the free-kick went to Luton. Crazy.
Reading’s final play before a stoppage was a good Stokes corner, from which a Reading player (possibly Paudie O’Connor?) won the header and Marriott nearly had a tap-in opportunity in the six-yard box, but the Luton defender got there first.
I say ‘stoppage’ correctly, yep. Why? Hydration breaks, folks. Why? I don’t know. And, unsurprisingly, it was booed when the ref called for it by those in the stadium who weren’t busy scratching their heads confusedly.
I made a note at this point that Reading looked really suspect on their left, with Jeriel Dorsett under-performing, and it would surely be a matter of time before Luton figured this out and focussed their attacks down this direction.
Not all the strange refereeing decisions went against Reading, however. In the 31st minute, Wing tried to control an awkward, bouncing ball in Reading’s half and accidentally handballed it, but the ref didn’t notice. Luton were able to win possession back and mount an attack from.
In the phase of play afterwards, the Hatters midfielder gave away the ball in Reading’s half, around the semi-circle, and weirdly didn’t track back to win it.
Marriott smelled an opportunity and pounced to win the ball and run forward with it. Luton’s defence parted like the Red Sea and Marriott just found himself dribbling further and further forward, until he was eventually entering Town’s box, where he hit a first-time, left-footed effort into the bottom left corner. 2-1 Reading and the game turned on its head.
Reading built on this pressure and, in the 35th minute, Kyerewaa had the beating of his man on the left after dribbling down the line, entering the 18-yard box. Feinting to cut inside and instead going wide, he crossed into the area with his left foot, beating the entire Luton back line with the low ball across goal.
Unfortunately, it completely caught out Lisbie too, who had an open goal in front of him, and he wasn’t able to get any contact on the ball. But it was a fantastic move.
In the 39th minute, Ward applied good pressure to a Luton attacker on the edge of the Reading area and was able to win possession and prevent an attack.
Andy Rinomhota was able to pick up the loose ball and immediately sought out Lisbie running down the right with quick footwork and a good long pass.
Lisbie’s pace completely outstripped the Luton left-back, giving him all the time in the world to get a low cross in from the right to find Marriott, ever capable of timing his runs to perfection, who took a touch with the ball and set himself with his left to score another effort. 3-1 to Reading and Marriott with his hat-trick. We do seem to like scoring hat-tricks against Luton.
Reading spent the rest of the half and the five extra minutes added on creating fluid moves to get the ball wide and quickly run at the Luton backline, and the Hatters defence didn’t seem to have any answers for this. Reading very much finished the half in the ascendancy, leaving fans looking forward to the second half. When was the last time we’ve been able to say that?
Half time: 3-1
No changes were made for the second half and you have to honestly wonder what on earth Richardson said to the players. All Reading had to do was be solid and compact, knowing Luton would attack as they needed to bring the game to us to bridge the two-goal deficit.
Instead, we were awful defensively. Truly, awfully passive and vaporous. This started in the 49th minute when Marriott thought he was fouled on the halfway line, but the ref let the play continue with Luton on the ball, so Marriott ran back and committed the same foul he had received, to see a free-kick awarded on Reading’s right. Frustrating, but also, you need Marriott to have kept a cooler head there.
Luton swung in a free-kick deep to Reading’s left, which we didn’t deal with, and it found Kasey Palmer on the edge of the box. While Reading’s defence decided to sit off him, he half-volleyed an effort into the ground, which the Royals defence let bounce over them and Pereira failed to deal with. 3-2, and nobody covered themselves in glory here.
Smelling blood, Luton kept coming at us and soon found another breakthrough. As mentioned earlier, Dorsett was the clear weakness at the back and Luton figured this out, attacking down our left again.
The rest of the Reading players just seemed to fall asleep, leaving the door open for Luton to have the freedom of the SCL and run down the Reading left and put a cross into the Reading box where TWO Hatters players were waiting with ZERO Reading defenders present. They weren’t going to look inside this wooden horse, and Palmer scored his second. 3-3.
The game slowed down after this but it’s rather damning that we managed to concede two goals in around four or five minutes and both so soon after half-time.
Richardson made the first of the Reading changes in the 65th minute, bringing off Marriott (presumably pre-planned given he is coming back from injury) for Jacob Brown (making his home debut against his former side) and Stokes replaced by Randell Williams.
That made no sense, since Stokes was playing well and Williams is not a number 10. Marriott received a rousing applause when coming off though, which was very well deserved.
This was followed by another hydration break in the 68th minute, which got another hearty – albeit slightly less enthusiastic – round of booing from the crowd.
Reading just got worse and worse after this. All the positive transitional play, runs, energy and purpose seemed to evaporate before our eyes and we saw the team revert to last season’s type: you know the one. Sideways passes on the edge of the area with no purpose, eventually ending up at the feet of O’Connor or Pereira to punt it long. While the long passes were accurate, they didn’t lead to anything.
This also led to a theme developing with Pereira – his distribution was poor, but not for the reason you would expect. He was so, so slow in getting the ball out.
Williams and Dokes were particularly encumbered by this slowness to play the ball out, as all the space they made for themselves would either be wasted or eventually closed down.
The most embarrassing moment of the half arrived in the 74th minute, when just around the semi-circle in Reading’s half, both Rinomhota and Wing went to claim the ball to play it forward. Under no pressure, with no Luton attackers nearby, they just utterly failed to communicate and ended up kicking each other – the ball bounced off them and went out for a Luton throw. Again: embarrassing.
In the 78th minute, Richardson threw the last roll of his attacking dice and brought off Lisbie for Charlie Savage, seeing Williams move out to the right wing and Savage play as a 10 (correct choice but rectifying his earlier mistake) and Paddy Lane coming on for Kyerewaa (words fail me).
For around five minutes, the changes did help us to look livelier, but then Luton remembered we are a team managed by Leam Richardson, and therefore any intent at our goal would likely produce positive results.
However, this Luton momentum was cruelly cut short in the 86th minute when two Hatters defenders sickeningly crashed heads on the edge of their area, by pure accident. This led to a stoppage in play and both players going down – one in particular for a long period of time (possibly unconscious). Fortunately, one was able to continue and the other was able to get up and be substituted.
Nine minutes of extra time were added on, and just after this, Williams was almost visibly screaming at Pereira from the right after both being too slow to launch a quick counter and failing to find him with no Luton player within 20 metres of him.
This was then followed up by Richardson looking to the bench and seeing Liam Fraser as the saviour, subbing him on in the 94th minute for Rinomhota for reasons that presumably only Richardson will be able to explain.
Throughout all this time, Luton just looked the likelier to score, because Reading both had no fluidity in their attacking movements and were so vulnerable defensively. And this eventually came to pass in the 96th minute, when the Royals allowed Luton to keep the ball without pressure and keep attacking without pressure, first hitting the bar and then having a few other attempts at goal before finally putting Reading out of their misery and scoring a deserved winner. 3-4 Luton.
There’s nothing worth saying after this about the remainder of the game, really. For all we did in the first half, we undone the work and then some in the second half.
Full time: 3-4
Questions really have to be asked about Richardson’s ability to motivate the players: we looked far worse after the half-time break and even worse still after the hydration break in the second half. What is he saying to these players to make them forget how to play football?
Pereira was poor today, too. By my count, he should have stopped two of the Luton efforts that led to goals, and his passive passing/playing out from the back really hindered and frustrated. Brown, unfortunately, offered nothing and Rinomhota had his moments, but rarely looked like the player we need to see alongside a very passive Wing.
However, Dorsett is officially A Problem. He was awful today. He was suspect in defending the ball on the ground, though he did win the majority of his headers, and he was unable to play the ball forward well.
At one point near the end of the game, under no pressure, he just booted the ball clean out of play. And yet he was allowed to finish the match? Why couldn’t Richardson see corrective action was needed, particularly given Luton were proving adept at exploiting the weakness on that side of the pitch?
It’s hard to know what to make of this one – many predicted Luton to be promotion-challengers this season, so getting three goals against them and nearly nicking a draw is something, I guess. But given we finished the first half 3-1 up and dominant, the collapse was inexcusable despite the level of the opposition.
Richardson continues to baffle with his in-game decisions and management of players, we continue to rely on Marriott to win us points and we look lost without him on the pitch. We clearly do need depth in attacking positions, but we also can’t overlook that the defence needs A LOT of serious coaching as they were a disaster as a group.
This could be a long season ahead.
