A closer look at how the Royals made it four unbeaten with a creditable clean sheet at The Valley.
Reading emerged out of the festive period unbeaten, with three wins from four matches, and a renewed sense of belief in Noel Hunt and his team. Not a bad Christmas at all.
Especially while watching these past two games, against Cambridge United and Charlton Athletic away. Although we weren’t as easy on the eye as a Ruben Selles team, I believe that if we still had the Spaniard in charge, we would not have gained four points from those games.
Don’t forget that in two games against the same opposition away from home last year we lost 1-0 and 4-0. We also had 59% and 57% of the possession in those matches, yet failed to score or be defensively resolute. However, Hunt’s game plan on the road is so far playing out well. We’ve let the home side have the majority of the ball, been slightly fortunate sometimes yes, but hit them where it hurts when it counted most.
And realistically, with a squad of quality but still one ravaged by injury and lack of transfer activity, that’s what we’ll have to do to continue being successful in League One.
Let’s see what kept the clean sheet on Saturday afternoon.
Again Reading’s back line was a bit of a mismatch, with Abraham Kanu starting on the left, centre-backs of Tyler Bindon and Harlee Dean, and Amadou Mbengue at right-back. Two 19-year-olds, a 33-year-old who hasn’t played consistently for years, and an out-of-position right-back wouldn’t usually be the makeup of a competitive League One defence, but we made it work well against Charlton.
The first part of that involved Joel Pereira’s distribution. Of the 34 passes the ‘keeper made, just one was targeted towards our defensive third. Just to contrast with how Selles made him play, in our final game under him - at home to Cambridge - 20 of his 23 passes landed in our third. A very stark difference, but one that ensured no trouble trying to be too clever playing out from the back.
The vast majority of his kicks were aimed towards our right-hand side too, as shown by the pass map below.
I’m guessing this was because of the space on the left-hand side of the pitch when a whole team shifts into a smaller area to crowd around a long ball. On that left side we have Andre Garcia, Charlie Savage and Kanu: three very young, rapid and most importantly hard-working players who you’d bet your house on chasing down and getting to any loose balls first.
An example of the kind of shape we maintained on the goal-kicks is shown here. Against Charlton’s midfield-heavy 3-5-2, Sam Smith drops in to combat that, while the two wingers are very narrow, and up against the opposition’s back three.
Harvey Knibbs and Savage are also very close into the ball, while Lewis Wing drops much further back to deflect the ball forwards should Charlton win the header. A big advantage of Nathan Jones’ 3-5-2 is the width it gives too, so creating a bit of chaos with the players so close together all on one side limited that for the home side.
However, the insistence in going long did have its fair share of negative consequences. In the situation below, Dean is passed the ball from midfield, and immediately turns towards Pereira to play it backwards.
If we had our usual pairing of Mbengue and Bindon, and maybe in a slightly more ambitious system, after the pass you would see the centre-back immediately making a beeline out wide to get out of the Charlton presser’s radius for an option to play out to, as shown by the arrow here.
Instead, the team has been conditioned to basically go long under nearly all circumstances, thus meaning Dean doesn’t make that movement, and the ball goes straight back up the pitch.
This is fine of course: loads of League One teams do it, and it’s what many Reading fans have been calling for, particularly away from home. My only worry is that we fall into a mentality of not being as strong as other teams - as a consequence of this change in play style - which could lead to a bit of a fall-off in confidence and therefore results.
One thing we’ve maintained through the managerial changes though is the press - especially the element of, immediately after losing the ball in the final third, almost erratically pressing in the initial few seconds following the turnover.
Such as here, when a Wing pass goes astray, and the whole midfield’s reaction is not to half-heartedly jog back to halfway in an effort to stop the counter-attack from Charlton, but instead sprint towards the player on the ball, which is Greg Doherty in this case.
And we were successful in it a lot of the time too, as we were in this scenario, winning the ball back high when the opposition had limited passing options, and keeping the pressure on Charlton’s goal.
As is becoming the norm in every match now, I was very impressed with Savage’s work rate. He seemingly never stops sprinting until the final whistle, he plays virtually every minute of league football that Reading are involved in, and has improved loads on the ball too. Sometimes he over-presses, and by most players’ standards that would be the case, but his desire to always get back and put himself in the way rectifies any of that.
The team have a week on the training ground now until FA Cup action on Saturday when Burnley come to town. I’m not 100% sure on what to expect from the Clarets - despite being second in the league, Scott Parker doesn’t seem to have fully convinced their fanbase yet, but they’ll no doubt bring a strong team down to Berkshire, and it’ll be some test for what I’m guessing will be a heavily rotated Royals side.
Hunt’s first game in charge at Reading in 2023 was a heroic 0-0 draw at home against the same opposition though, so maybe we will see another similarly unlikely result.
