The Royals get punished for their worst performance of the season - and first failure to score at home since September 2023 - with a frustrating 1-0 defeat to Orient.
Chalk that down as one of those days for Reading. We’ve all seen them: the games when Reading simply don’t get going all afternoon, play sloppily, lack confidence and cohesion and are deservedly beaten, despite the match being eminently winnable. After a strong start to the season that made it feel like this side was immune from one of those days, we got one anyway.
For me there’s not really a great deal of in-depth analysis to be done on this game. The bottom line is that Reading were well short of their prior standard - pretty much across the park albeit to different extents - and didn’t make Leyton Orient work as hard as they should have done for their 1-0 victory.
A few weeks ago, Reading drew a blank for the first time since the Wigan Athletic game (1-0 defeat in January) when they ran into a brick wall at Wrexham. It wasn’t for lack of trying, but we couldn’t pick out the right key to unlock a particularly stubborn door. Today, we seemed to have lost all our keys in the first place.
Young, evolving teams will have days like this. Days when they just can’t build up momentum and the opposition knows how to frustrate both them and the home crowd. Indeed, the SCL support - while encouraging at times - was conspicuously irritated at how little went Reading’s way.
In the short term, while youngsters build up experience and more hardened players can’t be can’t until the takeover is sorted, days like this are inevitable. What isn’t inevitable though is the reaction. We’ve seen this team bounce back from poor displays before, after all.
Reading should face up to how poor they were across the board today and learn the right lessons: the importance of keeping their composure, confidence and patience, even they feel elusive. Equally though, one bad day at the office hasn’t suddenly made this a bad team. Put today right next weekend at Bolton Wanderers and this’ll be forgotten straight away.
I’ve deliberately avoided bringing up The Big Talking Point from today until now because I don’t think disproportionately pinning this defeat on Coniah Boyce-Clarke’s first-half howler would be particularly fair or good analysis.
Ruben Selles raised a fair amount of eyebrows before the game, naming Boyce-Clarke as his replacement for the injured Joel Pereira. Between Boyce-Clarke and David Button, most fans had preferred the idea of picking the latter, but Selles opted to trust this season’s number two.
For the record, that was my thinking too. Boyce-Clarke’s looked shaky before, but I’m convinced there’s a good goalkeeper in there: he needs first-team experience though, and starting him against rock-bottom Orient looked like a good time for it. Button on the other hand doesn’t have longer-term potential to improve (he’s 35) and was a poor shot-stopper last season (going by his xG stats).
Obviously that call to start Boyce-Clarke has aged like milk on a hot summer’s day, but I stand by the thinking I had before the game. I’m also sceptical about overly criticising a selection decision like that with hindsight - after a mistake no one was really expecting - especially when Button was also guilty of a big error against Leyton Orient last season.
On paper, Boyce-Clarke’s howler in the first half, letting a fairly long-range shot from Charlie Kelman go straight through him, was what decided the game. But, just as in the trip to Brisbane Road in early October 2023, enough went wrong in the rest of the game - everywhere else on the pitch - for Reading to deserve the defeat.
Reading (4-3-3): Boyce-Clarke; Craig, Mbengue, Bindon, Dorsett; Elliott, Wing, Savage; Campbell, Smith, Ehibhatiomhan
Subs: Button, Abrefa, Dean, Garcia, Knibbs, Akande, Wareham
Reading being off their usual standard seemed evident from the early stages. Whether it was a bit because of the international break stalling momentum from previous games, the Royals choosing to attack the Dolan Stand in the first half rather than the other way round, an annoying delay of a few minutes to the match while the referee sorted something out on the touchline, all of those or none of those, Reading didn’t quite have their mojo.
It wasn’t a bad start, but the Royals had come out of the traps quickly in previous games and didn’t do that today. Kelvin Ehibhatiomhan nodding a header harmlessly at the ‘keeper from a narrow angle and Lewis Wing forcing a good save from a free-kick were as good as it got in the opening 20 minutes - or indeed the opening 45.
Orient grew into the contest as the half progressed and, for much of the first half, were the ones on the front foot. After a couple of half chances, Boyce-Clarke did excellently to instinctively tip a shot wide - a save that drew applause from around the ground and seemed to have justified Selles’ choice in starting him... only for Boyce-Clarke to drop that clanger a few minutes later.
The Royals had more than quarter of an hour to find a response before the break but didn’t look close to doing so. Orient had the hosts where they wanted them at that point, and did an annoyingly good job of slowing the game down with time-wasting here and there: the kind of time-wasting that you love when your team does it, but makes you want to tear your hair out when it’s used against you.
Selles opted against any half-time changes and there was no immediate improvement from the Royals after the restart. If anything, it was more of the same.
However, Reading did start to turn the screw in an encouraging six-minute or so spell later on. Ehibhatiomhan cut inside from the left and had a shot blocked, debutant Chem Campbell was sent clean through shortly after but couldn’t beat the ‘keeper, and Michael Craig had a go from the edge of the box but struck the outside of the post.
Reading couldn’t build on any of those moments though. The introduction of Harvey Knibbs and Adrian Akande (for Charlie Savage and Campbell) didn’t help either, with the rest of the game drifting along tamely. Kelvin Abrefa, Jayden Wareham and Andre Garcia all got game time too, coming on for Craig, Ehibhatiomhan and Jeriel Dorsett respectively.
