Five Things From Reading’s Limp Home Defeat To Leyton Orient

The Royals fell to their first home loss of the season, beaten 1-0 by Leyton Orient.

Limp

Well, wasn’t that all kinds of awful? From my viewpoint in Row Z I could hear all sorts of adjectives being flung about during and after the game. Flat, limp, timid, slow and other more colourful variants.

This game was like losing a nice biscuit in a mug of tea. You looked forward to it so much but ultimately ended in irretrievable abject failure. The long and short of it was that Leyton Orient did a job on us and we had no answer or answers. And that was the most disappointing takeaway: we had nothing.

We seemed to have nothing in the tank, no brainwaves to join the dots, and if some players went on a wee mini-break to have some sand between their toes, they were still on that very same beach.

Whatever the reasons, it didn’t take much to win this game as the Royals handed over the points to the Londoners without laying much of a glove on them.

Favours

Much has and will be said about the inclusion and performance of Coniah Boyce-Clarke. After seeing him a few times at under-21 level, he seems to be a confidence player that does never seem to have much confidence regardless of the situation.

No doubt he would have been extra edgy coming in to replace the fan favourite Joel Pereira, but he did himself no favours by letting one slip through his hands for what was ultimately the only and winning goal.

Otherwise, it was a performance that was chock full of distribution faux pas and general moments when fans covered their eyes for fear of another incoming error. The sensible suggestion would be that he’s young, he’s 21, he’s got a lot to learn.

The other more scathing suggestion would be to learn it somewhere else first. He’s never gone out on loan to a club that’s higher than National League South level and maybe he needs that exposure at a League Two or National League club.

He certainly doesn’t appear to be ready for this level currently. Could we have our third goalkeeper in three games for our next fixture? It wouldn’t entirely be much of a surprise, if so.

Sloppy

But the main problems were not entirely related to the goalkeeping selection. Across the board, nobody had a particularly good game, except possibly Ben Elliott who had some bright moments. The rest all sank to a depressingly tepid level that could not be brought to the boil.

Almost every aspect was sloppy and disjointed. We chased and passed to shadows all game long. Aimless punts up field regardless of what was the intended target. We often just didn’t think about what we were trying to achieve. Short passing to players that were marked or both marked and next to the touchline. Where are you supposed to go with passes like that?

We lacked ideas, variation, tempo, width… well, just everything really. It was one of those games that inexplicably happens after an international break. All momentum and confidence seemed to been lost in those empty two weeks.

Stinker

Naturally, it highlighted the squad depth or lack of it. Changes needed to be made, quite possibly earlier than they were, to inject something into the game. It was probably too much of an ask for Harvey Knibbs to return from injury and hit the ground running. Kelvin Abrefa was brought on to be a breath of fresh air and showed one or two moments of energy. Jayden Wareham may or may not have touched the ball once; it was difficult to remember.

That lack of depth works against us in different ways. Certain players are comfortable in the fact that there’s nobody else knocking on the door for their position. This is fine when you’re on your game and flying, your position is never in doubt nor should it be. But when some could be having a stinker or having an ineffective afternoon then there lies the problem.

The substitution of Kelvin Ehibhatiomhan for Wareham on the left wing was a case in point. The former was having a loose, ineffective and rather selfish afternoon. His replacement isn’t a like-for-like replacement in any way. That’s not Wareham’s fault obviously, but it just made the existing situation all the more difficult by not being able to stretch the game at all.

But this is our lot. This is just one of the results of the lack of duty of care and disgraceful mismanagement of the club from top to bottom. It’s something we have had to live with and will continue to do so.

Adjust

Overall, chalk it down to a bad day at the office. There will be plenty to learn and analyse from the result. No doubt the goalkeeping situation will be up for discussion, given that Pereira will likely be unavailable until after the next international break in October.

Some will have to look within themselves and think about their performance. Some either didn’t turn up mentally and physically looked like they were elsewhere. It’s not something to panic about; it’s still September, but it’s the kind of performance that we’ve seen many times before.

Whether we can it shake this out of our system and learn to adjust when games are not going our way is up for debate. Maybe it’s impossible when our squad options are so thin regardless.

A clutch of cliches can be thrown at this result, and rightly so. Ultimately, we got handed a lesson by Orient. We just need to find a way of learning from it.