Football

I wouldn’t call that header flukey. It was a great quality cross and Lawrence made the right run to get his head on it.

We were so slow moving the ball in the first half, but whatever Frank and Jody said at half time seemed to wake us up a bit.

We don’t really have the right quality on the ball to be playing it out from the back. Carson is better at shot stopping than playing that role and Keogh looked shaky every time he had the ball at his feet in the first half. Davies is a great defender at this level, but we are a championship club and it’s impossible to find a defender who can defend and play the passing game like we seem to be wanting to while we are in this division.

I thought Clement set his team up well against us. He watched one of our preseason matches where we’ve been passing the ball around quickly and obviously figured that pressuring the defenders was the way to go. It nearly worked for him.

If his time at Reading is anything like his previous jobs he’ll flatter to deceive for the first few months and then lose the confidence in the squad and panic when results start to turn. Darren Bent possibly said too much when he was talking about what happened at the end of PCs time at Derby.

Anyway, happy to get that first game out of the way and hope that performances pick up as the team gels together. Particularly happy to see some good displays from the younger members of the squad too. Max Lowe didn’t have a great game, but he is one to watch this season too.