Stoke City 4-0 Reading: Player Ratings

Joe Lumley: 5

I actually don’t think there’s anything Lumley can do about any of the four goals. He was seriously, seriously let down by those in front of him this afternoon. However, if you ship four goals, it’s hard to get more than a five.

Andy Yiadom: 4

A really poor day at the office for Yids. Gave the ball away far too cheaply for Stoke’s opener and handed Josh Tymon the freedom of Staffordshire to whip the ball in for their third. And, ultimately, he was part of a shambolic defensive performance.

Tom Holmes: 4

Even though it was Yiadom who gave the ball away for their first goal, Holmes was by no means guilt-free either. And although deflected goals are always unlucky, it was a pretty half-hearted attempted from Holmes to block Campbell’s shot for the hosts’ second, too.

Centre backs usually only get dragged if they’re injured or having a shocker, and Holmes didn’t look injured to me.

Tom McIntyre: 4

It was just a woeful defensive performance. Despite a decent block to keep it at 1-0 in the first half, McIntyre misplaced a fair few passes and looked pretty shaky all afternoon.

And having watched the third goal back, it was really, really weak defending at the back post from McIntyre.

Junior Hoilett: 5

No one was good today, some were just less bad than others - and Hoilett is one of them. Hoilett is always in the team more for his attacking prowess than defensive, and he didn’t offer anything going forward today. But, then again, neither did any of his team mates - or his manager.

Jeff Hendrick: 4

After an impressive performance last time out, today was more of what we’ve become accustomed to from Hendrick unfortunately. He was just anonymous. Apart from a couple of hopeful long balls to Meite, I genuinely couldn’t tell you another touch he had.

Mamadou Loum: 4

Loum’s been good since returning from the World Cup, but today he wasn’t. As the sitting midfielder in front of the back four you have to a) protect the defenders and b) keep the ball - he did neither of those things today.

There was one really impressive 10 second period in the first half where he gave the ball away three times.

Tyrese Fornah: 5

Very similar to Hoilett in all honesty, he was just less bad than his team mates. I do feel he takes far too many touches on the ball sometimes, but when there’s absolutely no movement ahead of you or around you, it’s hard to pass the ball quickly I guess.

Baba Rahman: 5

It’s fair to say he’s hardly set the world alight since returning on loan this season. On paper he’s the more defensively sound option out of himself and NGW, but he’s not really showing that on the pitch. And when he does get in promising attacking positions, his delivery is more often than not extremely poor.

Tom Ince: 4

Thought it was probably one of his worst performances in a Reading shirt. A lot of misplaced passes, sloppy touches and poor decisions. To be fair, I wouldn’t want the unenviable task of trying to be the creative force in this Reading team, but I’d still expect Ince to give it a better go than he did today.

Yakou Meite: 4

It was a horrendous defensive display, but also a really poor attacking one. Stoke are nothing to be afraid of in this division and players like Meite can cause them problems, but he was just anonymous all afternoon.

Again, I go back to how Ince set the team up and I don’t think any of our strikers would’ve been able to impact the game. But it’s still a really disappointing performance from Yaks.

Subs

Shane Long, Lucas Joao, Scott Dann and Femi Azeez: 5

All four came on the same time in a desperate roll of the dice from Ince. All four failed to have any real impact on the game. Azeez huffed and puffed a bit more than the others, but none of them were able to change our fortunes.

Nesta Guinness-Walker: 5

NGW came on a little later than the other four. He showed a tad more than what was on the pitch before him, but not a lot more. The damage was already more than done when he came on though.

Average: 4.56/10

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