MATCHWATCH : Leyton Orient (a)

[Snowflake Royal]

You see him play many times did you? What with living in Liverpool and all that…

We have these things called computers and TVs now Brogue.

23/24 the sky red button deal wasn’t in place so we officially only had 3 games on to that season

Reading v Derby in January
Oxford v Reading in February
Blackpool v Reading in April

All of which Ballard missed because he was injured.

These were the games he was here for.

Bolton – 16/09/2023 → Saturday
Blackpool – 23/09/2023 → Saturday
Burton Albion – 30/09/2023 → Saturday
Northampton – 03/10/2023 → Tuesday
Leyton Orient – 07/10/2023 → Saturday
Charlton – 21/10/2023 → Saturday
Fleetwood – 24/10/2023 → Tuesday
Portsmouth – 28/10/2023 → Saturday
Bristol Rovers – 07/11/2023 → Tuesday
Shrewsbury – 11/11/2023 → Saturday
Wycombe – 25/11/2023 → Saturday

All the Saturday games were not on the TV. Maybe the Tuesday night games were on the red button.

The Northampton game he can on as a sub for 29 mins.

The fleetwood game he started and played 72 minutes

The Bristol rovers game he was an unused sub.

I stand by my comment.

The 3 people who post the most on here. You, West Yorkshire royal and hound. Of which only hound goes to the games.

There are too many of you arm chair fans chatting bollox on here and it needs calling out.

FDTW has never seen the boy play. how he thinks he can chime in on a conversation between two fans who actually go to games and comment on his abilities is beyond me.

there's more ways than sky red button or attending to watch a game. I've seen 95% of our games since crowds were banned during Covid.

[biff]

"Al Habsis in ISIS" or words to the equivalent made me feel a bit sick. Coupled with what I was hearing at Salmon and Ball, and our fans have properly regressed to neandthals. Absolute divs

[Sutekh]

Sometimes you just have to give credit where credits due! Orient did their homework and were by far the better of the two teams. They pressed high which caused chaos with pereira and the back four, they hurried us all around the pitch and they played simple good football!! finally, they had a striker in hot form!!!
As for Reading, we were poor all over the pitch and for some reason kept persisting in playing it out from the back against their high press. Their LB (Archibald) i think had Yids on toast and put in some great out swinging crosses of which one led to Ballards headed second goal.
Our whole midfield were non existent, not sure if this was down to them having a bad day at the office or Orient not letting them get any control. Finally Mr DK, just another example as to why this guy is in Div1!! with his regulation shot which was at least 90 degrees off target
Oh i forgot, why does Pereira keep passing to Dorsett with a player on his heels!! Dorsett is so uncomfortable in tight situations and he really showed he's not a LB.
People have been stating Richardson's best spells as manager was playing a 5-3-2 formation. When Williams is back i really think this could be a good shout! Having three CBs will allow our FBs to be more attacking so i would get rid of Yids and Dorsett which would allow us Garcia on the left and one of Abrefa/Rinhomota or Ahmed on the right. We could even play 5-2-3 both work with the current squad.

This is totally the fault of the management, they must have known how Orient would likely set up from previous games this and last season yet obviously failed to prepare and adapt. I suspect part of the issue is that an effective press basically forces you into hoofball and without being Wimbledon circa 1986 it’s not particularly effective and Reading don’t have much option available to be able to switch style anyway, though the obvious thing to try would have been to spend the 2 weeks off working with WiFi, and then Keane when he arrived, to try and develop an amount of understanding as targets to win and hold aerial balls up under pressure.

At the end of the day - it’s just another bad day at the usual London office, move on. Learn something from it and then make sure Barnsley are left in ruins next Saturday.

Oh, and we need a pacey centre back asap please.