Bobbins analyses a game which Reading led, but, due to a lack of robustness in the second half, ended up as another away defeat.
There are a few situations around the club which have the label of “when will it ever end?” and our chronic form away from home is one of them. Even when we goal a goal ahead there is no confidence that it’ll stay that way, even if that goal is another specialist finish from Lewis Wing.
There is a soft underbelly that’s so frustrating when we play away from the SCL. At home we’re a different beast entirely, but on the road there’s a mental frailty that is recurring point of failure.
Matters changed after we lost Kelvin Abrefa and youngster Andre Garcia was brought on to replace him. At 16 years old, we can’t expect too much, obviously, but everything will be a learning experience for him, none more so than playing a Steve Evans side on their home turf.
In truth, Garcia could have been sent off for his role in the second-half melee which eventually led to Kelvin Ehibhatiomhan being sent off instead. Both players had been previously booked and the Rotherham United players did their best to point their finger at Ehibhatiomhan to get him sent off, and it duly worked. Ruben Selles was disappointed to say the least in both of their actions that led to the red card, but in truth, the game was lost before that incident.
That incident is the microcosm of how we perform away from home; our game management is sadly very much lacking.
At 1-0 to the good, going in at half-time ahead, that’s when the managers truly shine. They see what they have done well and what needed to change. Steve Evans, as much as he is a figure of fun, knows the score. He would have known full well what his team had done badly and what they needed to do to better to hurt us.
United reacted a lot better in the second half and, within a quarter of an hour of the restart, were ahead. What happened to us? Simply put, we didn’t know how to manage the game properly. We lacked intensity at the right times, weren’t smart with the ball and didn’t appear to be putting everything on the line to stop crosses or actually come for them, if you’re the goalkeeper.
Ironically, it was only when we went down to 10 men that we actually played with that aforementioned intensity. It’s not a question of desire: I’m sure they all want to win, but there’s a passivity, a lack of collective responsibility to keep a clean sheet that rankles.
It’s really hard to pin down why that is the case. It’s rare that we’ve been ahead in away games, and they should be playing like they have to protect that lead at all costs. Of course, there are many underlying factors that fashion why this occurs. The squad is young and vibrant, but this has the flipside of being a tad naïve and lacking in the experience to manage games like this.
A word that Selles uses often when describing the squad is “robust”. His squad has definitely shown they can be robust given all the circumstances that surround the club - that cannot be in any doubt whatsoever - but he will be very frustrated that, when he wants them to be robust away from the home comforts of the SCL, we are often rolled over so easily. There will be questions regarding changing tactics to suit accordingly, but we are not exactly blessed with options to do so.
We have some very talented midfielders but none of them are destroyers or ones who will put a foot in and leave it there, but in a fair fashion, if you know what I mean!
We can turn to the dark arts when we’re winning at home to see a game out, but on the road, we seem to forget the physical and management side. It’s all too easy for the opposition to target our weaknesses (dealing with inbound crosses, mainly) and we seem to have learned very little to counter this.
Maybe it’s just too much to ask for, considering all the negative factors that surround the club. It’s often in this column that we praise the positives which come despite our restrictions, so maybe this is just the other side of the same coin; we can’t have it both ways.
Aside from the next fixture in the erstwhile Pizza Cup, we have a stupendous gap until the 19th of the month before our next league game, against promoted strugglers Crawley Town.
This gives us ample time to rest, recover, regroup and return fit and firing. The ongoing questions regarding the ‘if and when the club will ever be sold’ take centre stage once again until then.
It is days like this that frustrate and infuriate the fanbase. We still have to be mindful of the conditions that the management and players are under, but patience can wear a little thin when the same weaknesses keep on being exploited.
Sometimes it feels just like Saturday’s result at Rotherham. Pointless.
