A week of optimism ended with a frustrating 3-0 reverse to recently promoted Wrexham.
Ouch. After a week of being on the highest of highs, beating Wigan Athletic and the intoxication of the Rob Couhig takeover reaching its endgame (or so it would have seemed at the time), Reading came back down to earth with a floor-denting thud away in North Wales.
While we didn’t play well by our recent standards, the scoreline flattered the hosts, yet in a way we kind of got what we deserved. It’s a strange game to sum up. We started well enough with Kelvin Ehibhatiomhan and league debutant Adrian Akande doing well on both flanks with their directness. It looked like it was a matter of time before we scored… and then we didn’t, and by the end it looked like we could still be playing now and still not have hit the target. Odd.
Then the old Reading defence, one that we’ve seen a million times before, decided to show up and concede the dumbest pair of goals. Here we go again. For the first, it’s our long-time favourite, the floated cross into the box that’s gone completely unchallenged from every quarter and it’s headed into the onion bag.
Such a simple, bog-standard, weak goal to concede. The kind we used to concede under Paul Ince on a very regular basis or in the early days under Ruben Selles where David “The Vampire” Button steadfastly refused to venture into the path of the incoming cross. Not to say that Joel Pereira was necessarily at fault here but there were multiple points of failure.
The same can be said of the second goal which looked like a well-worked goal for Wrexham, but it flattered them, in honesty. We defended without authority, dallied, messed about and didn’t get rid of the ball in time. Just another type of goal that we used to concede a lot of in years gone by.
The third was a fine strike, you can’t take that away from Andy Cannon, but still, we allowed him too much room and we were duly punished. And that was that. Of course, the referee did his very best to ignore some mixed martial arts in the box to deny Tyler Bindon a penalty and Tivonge Rushesha a goal that looked pretty much that it crossed the line, but it’s splitting hairs really. We weren’t at the racecourse on this day.
The wider issues, which we were all well aware of before even the season had begun, were exacerbated by the loss of Femi Azeez to Millwall earlier in the week. Squad depth is painfully thin.
Losing Azeez was always on the cards after being heavily linked with previous Championship moves as early as last January, but still, it’s one that is tough one to swallow nonetheless. Being replaced in the short term by a raw Akande is not a swap we’d have foreseen or one where it would be expected that he would hit the ground running. That would be very unfair on Akande.
Elsewhere, the side has remained largely unchanged since the start of the season and already it’s beginning to take its toll. Some such as Ehibhatiomhan, Ben Elliott and Charlie Savage played an extra half in the Papa Bristol Pizza Cup on Tuesday to comply with competition rules; it’s football that they could well do without, even in late August.
We desperately need to rotate some players out before we lose them to, potentially, longer-term injuries. Sam Smith is a prime example. He puts in a ton of work each game and there’s no replacement for him, not directly as a like-for-like swap. Ehibhatiomhan could play there, but his game is vastly different from Smith’s. Even then, who would play on the left if Ehibhatiomhan moved inside? There’s no obvious answer.
We’re already playing a centre midfielder in Michael Craig at right-back (and a fine job he’s doing of that), and arguably a centre-back in Jeriel Dorsett at left-back. With only 16-year-old Andre Garcia to cover the latter, it’s already threadbare there too.
These are the bare facts, but I’m sure Selles and his fellow coaches will be doing everything they can to extract what they can from the players. If there’s one thing we know about Selles, it’s that he’ll see this as a challenge and we’ll rise to reach it.
It doesn’t mask the fact that on this day we didn’t have anything to show for our efforts. We still played some attractive football at times, but we ran out of space in the final third as Wrexham’s low block denied us any room. Wrexham were three goals to the good by then, they had put themselves in the position where all they needed to do was defend, which is fair enough.
So, we roll on into yet another week when we are crying out for this darn takeover to conclude. We thought the end was in sight as Couhig and Todd Trosclair were not shy in alluding to. Maybe they’ve had their excitable fingers collectively burned but they’ve been conspicuous by their absence since last weekend. Of course, we know this isn’t their fault necessarily. Our current abhorrent nefarious chump of an owner is still meddling in the background.
We can but hope the deal can finally be concluded in good time before the transfer window shuts. New recruits are needed rapidly. We’ve had too many false dawns, too many letdowns, too many hopes shattered.
Up next: another very difficult tie against high-flying Charlton Athletic at the SCL. That’s our last fixture for two weeks as the away fixture against Stockport County has been postponed due to international commitments. If we can get through the Charlton match (with a win) and unscathed, we have the opportunity to rest, integrate a new player and maybe more, if Couhig finally gets his way.
Despite this painful defeat (and it ruined my birthday, the rotters), we still have plenty to look forward to. We just need that one small matter resolved. Finally. Please.
