Nottingham Forest 3-1 Reading FC: The Alternative View

After last week’s turgid game against Bolton, the Royals travelled up the M1 to Nottingham. With mutterings of discontent over both the team's form and the fallout over FulhamGate, it now transpires that there are African dictators with higher approval ratings than Clarke at the moment.

There are many who will take the view that he has lost the dressing room and indeed with two lifeless performances on the spin, that has to be looked at. Either way when you look at the last seven results then there is a strong case for something being very, very wrong and a once comfortable league position is now looking like mid-table obscurity.

Nottingham Forest have issues of their own and with many predicting that Dougie Freedman would get the boot should he have lost on Saturday, predictably Reading conjured up a demonstration on how not to win a football match. Once Forest went to 10 men, in reality theirs was a formation of 9-0-0 and everyone may as well have gone home and saved 25 minutes of their lives.

Looking at the reaction on the Twittersphere from both Reading FC and Nottingham Forest fans, in reality neither is a happy camp, with a number of Forest fans secretly hoping that we would beat them so Dougie would get the boot. I cannot imagine that the Reading fans will be hoping the same this week - given that our opponents are one Mr Neil Warnock and his team the Fake Hoops.

Either way, looking at the feedback from Saturday, Clarke will have an awful lot of work to do if he is ever to win back the Reading FC fan base. Anyway, back to a miserable Saturday, and see what the #NFFC fans thought and also the media outlets.

Social.

Answers on a postcard….

How badly did Dougie need that win? And O'Grady scored! When was the last time we scored 3? #nffc

— Glenn Beckett (@GlennBeckett1) November 28, 2015

This speaks volumes......

Great result for #nffc. Thought Reading would be a tough game. They looked poor.

— Eddie Johnson (@E001E) November 28, 2015

Ahem Mr Clarke might be worth thinking about.......

So playing 442 with 2 strikers upfront creates a headache for the opposition defence. Who knew? #TacticalGenius #nffc

— Toby Murry (@WombleToby) November 28, 2015

Lets not try and state the obvious hey guys....

At last, 3 goals in a game! Score goals = win games #nffc

— Mark Oakden (@Markoakden) November 28, 2015

oh ok then.......

Reading got more problems than they think losing 3-1 to a ten man forest team #nffc #readingfc

— Josh Morris (@JoshMorris_91) November 28, 2015

Theres probably Reading Fans out there who would like to do similar things to Mr Mills I dare say....

Matt Mills is simply launching the ball into the stand @ every opportunity #nffc

— Chilwell Red (@mikeyboy19682) November 28, 2015

Sit back, deep breath and just let this sink in for two minutes......

This is the first time #nffc have scored two goals in a game since early September at QPR. Think it's only the third time this season.

— Paul Taylor (@nottmtails) November 28, 2015

Nottingham Forest have scored twice in the first half of a Championship game for the first time since April. Scenes. #nffc

— Mike (@nowthenyoungman) November 28, 2015

Media

Quite unsurprisingly the coverage that Reading FC are getting at the moment from the news outlets could be considered as "meagre". A less kind person would say that we are bordering on "un-newsworthiness" (if such a word exists!)

Anyway, making the best of a limited resource this week, and I will start as ever with SkySports and for those of the brave dispensation you can watch the "highlights" or "torture" as we like to call it here. Looking at their report on the game and say it was a much-needed win by Forest who have Dougie Freedman under all sorts of pressure.

Switching to the BBC then they are as factual as ever, highlighting the point that this is Forest's 2nd Win in 11 games!

Looking at the national newspapers then the only one who has even a mention of us online is the Sun, who call us toothless. Once again there are other adjectives you could use to describe the performance.

As always with two Americans playing in one game then it will draw the attention of the MLS and export zone of the website, saying that Eric Lichaj got the better of Danny Williams although they tend to point to Williams having a good game stats wise.

Apart from that then the reports are pretty poor this week, with HITC Sport doing a headline piece on Nelson Oliveira and ESPN FC saying that Forest eased the pressure on Freedman, however if you wish to prove that stats don't tell the whole picture of the game then check out the stats from this game via ESPN FC.

Looking at the local news outlets then Charles at GetReading is obviously disappointed with this result and his pointed questions to Clarke after the game regarding his tactics are worth a read here. However, will this have any impact on team selection? Probably not with Clarke looking like one of the more stubborn managers we have had.

Switching to his compatriots over in Nottingham then understandably they are bubbling with happiness and the match write up is here, and also on the site there is a fair bit of reaction and interviews.

Well that's it, another miserable performance from the Royals and we move on as they say. QPR aka The Fake Hoops are here on Thursday live on Sky, and I will be back with reaction from that game and given that it's on Sky, we should for a change have fairly good coverage.

C'mon Urzzzzzzz