Reading Between The Lines

Safe to say Reading looked lacklustre in attack away at Lincoln on opening day. In some ways that wasn’t a huge surprise. It’s been clear over the last few weeks that the attack is clearly where reinforcements are needed. While personnel improvements can, and I am sure, will make a big difference there were some real issues getting the ball to our attackers which needs solved on the training ground.

So, with that buzzing around in my head as I turned on Stockport vs Bolton on TV on Sunday I wondered what would they do that we didn’t. Here were two teams that had ambitions for promotion, that played relatively similar setups to us, so how would they attack. Here’s what I took away from it

How they got the ball to the wide players was key

Personnel obviously makes a big difference out wide and it would be naïve to ignore that in Mothersille & Diamond for Stockport and Mendes-Gomez & Cozier-Duberry for Bolton you’ve got 4 players that would very likely play ahead of Kelvin E & Camara. How the two teams got them into the game was what stood out to me however.

The game plan for both teams was to get their wide players on the ball as often as possible (same can be said for us) but prioritised going wide only when the wingers were deep into the opposition half. That doesn’t necessarily just mean lots of intricate build up play working into the final 3rd before going wide. There were plenty of long balls too, but always with the aim of getting the winger (or overlapping FB) on the ball deep. That means that wingers were pretty much only getting on the ball in areas they could hurt the opposition and the ask was clear – go attack the defence and make something happen. Reading often find themselves with the ball at the feet of the wingers in the middle 3rd. In that case, players can either try to retain the ball and keep it circulating or drive with it. With a big distance to goal and lots of defenders in the way most of the time that just leads to turn overs or best case we win throw ins to progress up the pitch. Finding a way to get our attackers on the ball in areas they can be dangerous is something that needs work and was also an issue last year.

Both teams also got far more joy out their FBs by committing them higher, earlier. Reading’s fullbacks felt a bit caught in between attacking and defending yesterday. We played plenty of direct balls forward but without the FB up in support didn’t get much joy picking the second balls. We didn’t get them involved much in deep build up either so they were often bypassed and didn’t add much to our attacks.

A focal point up top makes a difference

Bolton and Stockport got a lot more out of their STs than we got out of O’Mahony on Saturday. Wooten and Burstow are taller, stronger and not up against Sonny Bradley so dealt much better with longer high balls up to them but they also got much better service into them. They both had balls fired into their feet as they quickly dropped off into to link play. Those are balls we absolutely could have supplied to O’Mahony but didn’t. O’Mahony was another that looked a little unsure of what he was supposed to be doing or at the very least was just not on the same wavelength as some of his teamates yet, not a huge surprise if so. Sometimes he was spinning in behind when we looked for him short, others he would pin his man or come short with Wing left frustrated with the lack of runners. Nothing really came off for him and with him yesterday.

Wing need to be our conductor can be a self-fulfilling prophecy

In Oliver Norwood you’ve got one of very few players in League 1 that I would confidently say is a better deep lying playmaker than Lewis Wing. Watching him versus Bolton you could easily spot so many of the same hallmarks that we see from our captain. He will often drop between CBs or into RB/LB spots to form a back 3 in build up, he will play triangle passes with his CBs to get around opposition press and he will always have an eye on a long pass to quickly switch into attack. All the same things Wing does for us. The biggest difference for me, is that none of that stopped Stockport’s players (especially their CBs) from making their own decisions and playing plenty of balls forward themselves. In fact Norwood often just got involved to buy the CBs more space to play their passes. A lot of Wing’s movement, positional play and combination play seems to be geared around getting him on the ball with a bit of space. How much if that is driven by Hunt or Wing is hard to say. Whereas with Norwood, everything he did seemed simply focused on ‘how do we progress the ball forward’ and the difference was stark. So much more variety in how Stockport got the ball forward and much harder to defend against. If Wing is plan A and everything else is plan B then we’re already predictable.

Now, this is not meant as a takedown of Wing or even me making the case to play him further forward. He absolutely can unlock defences from deep and I would obviously rather he play a ball forward from deep than an CB. I just think, maybe even more so this year as captain, he has some responsibility to empower the players around him to problem solve themselves. I got tired at times last year watching CBs, FBs and even other midfielders seemingly scanning around to see where was Wing to pass to rather than look play forward themselves. How do we get the ball into dangerous areas rather than how do we get the ball to Wing to get the ball into dangerous areas has to be the focus and ultimately that responsibility falls to Hunt to correct.

JC