So…that happened then. And for those who might have had the blissful ignorance of living under a rock during the weekend, Reading were looking to follow up their first league away win of the season (5-1 against MK Dons) with another away win, this time against bottom-of-the-division Wigan Athletic.
The Latics, however, didn’t get the memo, and now here we are, a riled fanbase picking the bones of frustration out of the carcass of the result.
However, I want to use this as an opportunity to zoom out a little bit and focus on the bigger picture of the League One season for us so far: 10 games played bringing four wins, three draws and three losses with 22 goals scored and 12 conceded.
This currently leaves us just outside the playoff places in eighth place. Tuesday’s games have left us three points off Sheffield Wednesday in sixth. Not terrible, but it feels as though the potential is there to be staking a claim to be higher in the table.
I don’t claim to speak for all Reading fans, but I think the frustration regarding this team is that, while we can see the individual quality of the players within the squad and the type of performance that can be produced, particularly at home, we seem to be a shadow of our capabilities away from home.
Most pertinent of all, we seem to only have one way of playing. And no matter what, we all know Randell Williams and Jacob Brown will get subbed on at some point, regardless of the game state.
In a league where very few teams are demonstrating the consistency to put a run of positive results together, we don’t need a drastic overhaul to correct things. Just a few tweaks should be enough to keep us in contention.
The thing is, the approach right now seems to be very copy-and-paste from one game to the next. Same players picked (unless there are injury concerns or personnel away on international duty), same formation, same playing instructions, same substitutions made at the same time of the game.
I would certainly hope the Reading coaching team aren’t reliant on this writer to provide some fresh impetus for things that could/should be done to make the kind of tweaks we need to see, but here are my thoughts on what we could look to do differently, compared to what we’ve seen so far this season.
Swap the wingers over
This is a simple one for me, but one I’m quite passionate about. We’re using our wingers very traditionally: left-footed player on the left and right-footed player on the right.
This makes sense for teams that play two up top, so the wingers can put crosses into the danger areas where there will be at least two attackers waiting to receive them.
However, in our system with one up top, the striker can sometimes be isolated. To give them extra support, having a winger cut inside can help achieve this. When Paddy Lane and Kyreece Lisbie cut inside though, they are doing so with their ‘weaker’ (read: not their dominant) foot.
And it seems the wingers are tasked more often with making low crosses into space or to feet, whereas the higher crosses are typically coming from the full-backs (Haydon Roberts and Udoka Godwin-Malife). This also leans into the strengths of the wingers playing inverted, because left-footed Roberts and right-footed Godwin-Malife can deliver balls over the top from deep.
This all comes down to the shape your body makes when you shoot with your dominant foot, and on the left side of the pitch, using your right opens your body up to more of the goal. Likewise, on the right side of the pitch with your left.
In the league, Lisbie has taken 14 shots – with three goals to show for it – and Lane has taken 13 shots – with one goal to show for it. Surely, surely getting them to swap sides would not only make us a little more unpredictable in our play, but also give both of them a better chance of scoring on a more regular basis?
Start Lisbie through the middle
Obviously in scenarios where Jack Marriott isn’t available. Otherwise, yeah, keep Lisbie on the wing.
However, without Marriott in the team, Lisbie is arguably our most dangerous attacker owing to his pace, directness and willingness to take people on.
In the last couple of games we’ve seen Lisbie drift more and more centrally. So why not start him there? A quick through ball – which this team is more than capable of providing from all areas of the pitch – can break the lines and split the opposition’s defensive line, and Lisbie’s speed can also occupy more than one defender, so this can be effective against teams who play with two or three central defenders.
You would need to displace, in this current system, Jamie Reid. Maybe he could play out wide, but personally, I think this would open up a nice opportunity for the likes of Emmanuel Osho to get more of a taste of first-team football.
Another quick, exciting and direct winger, he would also be something more of an unknown entity – helping to make us a bit more unpredictable – by getting more minutes on the field.
Having both Reid and Brown on the bench also opens us up to a world of possibilities around changing shape mid-game, too.
Play a midfield three
Look, I’m going to slightly shuffle around the elephant in the room here and demand Lewis Wing gets dropped. However, for me, yeah, I think he needs a bit of a break from the side.
In order to facilitate that, I think we could look at changing the shape of the midfield. Right now, we play with Wing and Andy Rinomhota in the pivot and Josh Stokes is taking up the number 10 role with George Earthy sidelined.
However, this set-up pushes Rinomhota over to the left side of the pitch, which is not his natural side to play on. If Rinomhota could drop deeper, and have Stokes to his right and Savage to his left in slightly more advanced ‘eight’ roles, then that is a immediately a more balanced and energetic midfield.
In recent games, Stokes has tended to drift over to the right to link up play and provide crosses, and likewise has proven able to get involved with the defensive side of things – counter-pressing, interceptions and tracking back to prevent counter-attacks.
Savage is consistently excellent at knitting the full-back and winger play together on the left on the field. Rinomhota’s engine would also allow him to get forward from deep as well, and cover ground.
It would just be really interesting to see the team revert to this kind of high-energy set-up for the majority of the game, with Wing, Liam Fraser, Tyler Sackey and David Hicks/Luke Howard as other central options until Earthy returns to pick up the number 10 mantle.
Use Brown and Williams differently
We’re already very predictable in terms of how we play and the personnel that will start. But the most painfully predictable thing is that we always, always know that Brown and Williams will come off the bench, no matter what the game state. Literally. We were 4-1 up at MK Dons when they came on one week, and 1-0 down against Wigan the next week.
And how we use them is always the same – Williams will go to the left to push back Lane and rest Roberts. Brown will replace whoever is the starting striker. There doesn’t seem to be any consideration of game state or the opposition when making these changes, and it’s often hard to see what the expectation of their introductions will be.
Can Williams not drop into left-back? Could he not go on as a left-footed right winger? At the very least, Leam Richardson has moved away from starting him as a central number 10 and we should be grateful for that. Could a complete shape change to a back three in a 3-4-2-1 set up see Williams pick up a left-wing-back role?
Does Brown need to always come on a striker? Could he not play behind the striker? Or even come on for Lisbie, and move Lisbie into that central role? Brown certainly has a good profile for a winger with his high work rate, pace and pressing.
And why, why, why do we need to wait so long for substitutions to be made in games where we’re behind? The earliest Richardson has made a change this season in such situations has been in the 59th minute (the draw against Bradford City) to manage the minutes of recently returning Rinomhota from an international break (Fraser coming on) and a returning-from-injury Roberts (with Williams coming on).
In other games, it has been the 64th, 65th and 77th minutes. Why wait so long? And why are the substitutions all like-for-like?
Be braver in attack away from home
Basically: we seem to be happy to soak up pressure in the first half and then try to nick and a goal and defend the lead.
We’ve taken an average of 16.8 shots per game at home versus 14.8 per game away from home, 12.4 chances per game at home and 10.2 per game away from home. And these figures for the ‘away from home’ are likely somewhat inflated by the MK Dons win.
We know we can attack, we know we can make chances and we know we’re quick. Why not just let the handbrake down and play to our strengths when on the road?