Don't think I can bear to watch this one as it could define both club's season. A win would be huge for us in maintaining the gap with games starting to run out, but a win for Reading would be massive for their PO chances too. A defeat for us would deal a psychological blow, signal the end of our good run with tough games to come, and give a real boost to the chasing pack. Defeat would be devastating for Reading who would then struggle to make the POs.
Hopefully the players will have one approach to this. We are better than Reading and, as long as everyone does their job, we will beat them. If they start thinking "a draw is ok" or "it'll be ok if we lose" then they will struggle to get a win imo. Football is as much a mental game as a physical game. If we get out of the winning mentality then things can go bad very quickly.
As I said the other day, I hope that on the trip back from Middlesbrough the players had another chat, they know it's theirs to lose as they enter the last critical hurdles. A win tomorrow night will mean that mathematically we can't finish lower than 6th but it will mean that it will be all but impossible for anyone else apart from Swansea and Brentford to catch us, and even then a win would put us 13 & 12 points ahead respectively. Win tomorrow and I can see us winning at Luton too, that should have us almost there.
That’s why for me, the Boro game was so disappointing. At 1-0 up getting another goal would’ve guaranteed us 3 points. We may not have such an easy opportunity for 3 points again this season. Instead we decided 1 goal was enough and in the process lost 2 points. We may need to find those 2 points somewhere else down the line now, and we may not find it as easy.
Apologies to Lord Tennyson, the pozzos, the "cogs" *shudders*, in fact apologies to everyone. Half a league, Half a league, Half a league downwards, All in the valley of tinpot, Rode the 11 cowards. “Forward the team with fades! Whimper to a draw!” They said. Into the valley of tinpot Rode the 11 cowards. “Forward the team with fades!” Is there someone else who can barely play? Not though who Xisco knew The Pozzos had blundered. Best not to ever reply Theirs not to reason why Theirs but to hide and cry. Into the valley of tinpot Rode the 11 cowards.
They didn't decide one was enough, we were nullified somewhat. Reading are in a higher position and will probably play a bit more looking for a win which may play into our hands better.
Yes, I agree. Whether it was their tactics or our performance, we failed to kill off the game and paid the price. Hopefully the players are angry about that rather than feeling satisfied with the draw. We need to keep wanting to win every game and not allow any feelings of "job done" to get into our thinking.
I disagree, because in the second half we had a spell where we upped the tempo and Pedro had two great chances to kill the game off. After that 10 minute spell we visibly slowed back down again and seemed to settle for what we had. If Boro nullified us, how did we have that 10 minute spell and create those two excellent chances? Or was it more that we just decided to play at a slower tempo again which naturally helped Boro contain us.
Reading at the Vic Without Deeney we click Hughsie making us tick Our attack electric with Sarr super quick JP's movement so slick King Ken's box of tricks Means that 3 points we'll nick To make Brentford sick And fok those Welsh hicks Isaac floppy with chicks Troy's ass Luton can lick
Agree with most of this but Reading can only get to 84 points even if they beat us so I don’t think they are a factor, or if they are, we’ll likely finish lower than 3rd! Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Yeah I agree I don’t think Reading could/would catch us, I just mean giving them 3 points basically puts everyone from third down at threat of not even making the playoffs. Of course for those that can catch us, that should be more than motivation itself, but I don’t see how also needing to win to catch us and also secure a play off place can be a good thing for us, but equally I appreciate having 2 motivations instead of one probably doesn’t make a difference in reality.
I get your point there but I wonder whether there was a plan to slow the game down and conserve energy a bit. A lot of the players had been away, we'd had a tough game 3 days earlier and maybe the energy levels were not quite. Extra effort in cases like that can then produce injuries and not worth the risk. Given what Boro had produced it's possible that we felt we could see out the game without going hell for leather. I'm guessing here but they all wear these things that give out readings that may help this decision. I would hope though that the Reading game we can have a really good go at them considering we then have eight days before the next game. It's been a tough season with a lot of games squeezed in to a shorter time period and maybe energy levels were lower than usual I also think we miss Cleverley's energy in a game like that where the opposition are prepared to sit back. Hope he's back for this
Fair point, after tomorrow we have an 8 day break before the Luton match, so plenty of time to recover.
Haha. Agreed. Although fair play to all who have contributed as much time and effort has gone into these masterpieces of the poetic written word this pile of alphabet soup...
Would people now be so apparently despondent if the Easter weekend had seen the following results: Watford WW Brentford DW Swansea DD The net result on our position relative to those 2 teams would be identical, but would us winning both games have made people happier? Even if it meant Brentford had managed to actually win a game to give them more confidence, and Swansea had at least stopped their losing run? I accept that Norwich have now pulled 2 further points away from us, but the chances of catching them have been almost nil since they went on their winning streak alongside us.
Munoz should be telling the players treat this game and all the following games until we are mathematically promoted as one off cup finals. That is the mindset they should be going out with.
Not "cup finals" please, bearing in mind the outcome of our most recent cup final. Critically important one-off promotion battles will do.....
My composition time? It's 4 and a half minutes of my life I'll never get back. It's a nice distraction from the actual game
It may be the one silver lining should the worse happen tomorrow. It’ll potentially mess up the chasing pack as much as it messes us up. A Reading win really does start to threaten Swansea’s and Brentford’s playoff places if they do not turn their form around. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Haven't really looked forward to any games this season, mainly because we haven't been in the ground, but I'm looking forward to this one. Watford 3-1 Reading Chalobah, Sema, Sarr