Reading 1-2 Sheffield Wednesday: The Alternative View

Last season it took till April 7 to get a home win on a Saturday afternoon. So far this season, after three home games in the league we’ve had three defeats. They say that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results, in which case there are probably 14,000 Reading fans that have gone insane from turning up to the Mad Stad expecting a home win.

The contrast between the Reading and Sheffield Wednesday fans is black and white. While the Royals are all doom and gloom, the Owls are talking about their best start since they last got promotion to the Premier League.

The defeat by the Owls however really was a throw-back to the dark days of last season where we had so much possession but did little with it. Interestingly though the Owls fans were largely expecting this game to finish in a 2-2 draw.

The joy(!) is that I get to trawl the opposition social feeds to get a handle on their views - so much fun when you have been handed a lesson in controlled football.

Social

Team selection is king

Hmmmm really?

Amazing what a win can do

Slight overreaction...

Get back to playing FIFA

Nooooooooo It had to happen!

Oldie but knew it would happen!

Media

There wasn’t a huge amount around for this game - what there is though makes for hard reading. Sky Sports have their usual coverage of the game, their report is fairly balanced and ‘misery’ is a good way of wrapping up our start to the season. Down at the BBC and they focus on our two points out of 18 return, and that Clement has two wins in 15, gotta love a stat.

Interestingly over at the Sheffield Star, your man Paul Davies isn’t overly impressed with the Owls’ performance, saying that they made hard work of it, and also that they have a lot more difficult games coming up.

Jonathan Low at Football.London tries to keep things positive, mentioning that Andy Yiadom had another good game, however the truth is there to be seen by everyone.

As always, The Tilehurst End has full coverage and is the place to go for Reading fans.

Editor’s note: it sure is.

Summary

There is something very wrong at this club. We have had a succession of managers that are struggling to get the best out of this club. Since Brian Mcdermott left in 2013 after his first stint in charge, only one manager has got us to a 40% win-rate (just) and that was Jaap Stam.

To improve a club you have two options; firstly promote from within and secondly good player recruitment. Both are currently lacking at Reading FC. The team that started Saturday did not feature one player who has come through the ranks at this club.

Our reluctance to give our youth its chance is worrying – what’s the point of having an academy if you’re not going to use it? Similarly, we have had a number of windows with what we thought were good signings and did get the crowd excited, however, largely our recruitment has been poor and not developed the team.

Our best ever side is still the 2006 Championship-winning group, and I challenge you to name a player we have recruited/developed since then that would displace not only 2006’s starting 11 or the bench.

The Sum Of The Parts (if you haven’t read it go get a copy) gave a good insight into the mentality and bonds that created a winning team. I strongly suggest that the club get some copies and dish them out, as it’s fairly obvious that the current board, management and players haven’t actually got a clue how to turn this around.

Whilst no one wants to get relegated, would it though be the disaster we all expect? There are examples of this littered throughout history of teams that went down then came back stronger than ever with a better mentality and went on to get promotion. If nothing else it would allow us to reboot the team and give the fans a taste of winning again.

What’s the alternative? Every Saturday watching a team get beat with no hope of stringing more than two wins together? Is that really what we all want?