The fans I spoke to at the match / afterwards have been pretty consistent in their views of where we are at.
As far as the game is concerned:-
** Despite missing a few key players (for me RR and Leigh) we should have had enough to beat that poor Reading team.
** Whilst tidy enough McEachran slowed the game too muchh, and Thorniley looks a little off the pace.
** Murphy had theiir full back on toast in the 2nd half. We didn't get the ball too him enough. He was unlucky with that shot late on and you can't blame him for us not winnng last night, there was no one to finish off the chances he created.
** Our best back 4 at present is Stevens - Moore - Brown - Bennett.
** Cam Bran was outstanding, but RR is more suted to that role behind the striker. We mssed RR's cute passes to open things up
As far as more generally:-
** The injuries are killing us - put RR and Leigh in that side last night and we win. Edwards and Browne would also make a huge difference but we can't include them in our thinking, I'm really concerned about how many times they will be available for the remaining part of the season.
** We need a window to continue the rebuild, there should be players we can move on permanently / loan and that needs to happen as we need to increase the quality of our squad depth. That's entirely natural, we've only had one window to sort an almighty mess out.
** We'd be feeling more positive if the dropped points had happened more gradually over the season. The long unbeaten run has helped raise our expectations massively.
** It's far too early to criticise Des. If you want an arm waving / sweary manager then you are never going to like him. I liked the thinking behind his change of formation yesterday, he got it right re the off-side / meaningless sideways passing post match.
Despite trying to look on the positive / put a relaistic spin on things I can't remember leaving a ground so gutted as I felt last night. Reading were terrible, although Sam Smith would have been a good signing for us (never going to happen now). The upcoming games look OK on paper, we really haave got to grind out results until January; I hope the recruitment team have got some early January window signing lined up because we do need to freshen it up.
I thought our fans were decent last night, anyone expecting atmosphere of the 80s / 90s is going to be permanently disapointed from now on as football has changed. We need to continue to back the team because despite a wobble we are still in this. We've put a great run together already ths season, with a couple of new faces and a couple returning from injury there is no reason why we can't do the same again.
