Richardson out

[Hound]

But that's my point.

Would playing him further forward lead to more chance creativity or just more long range shots?

As opposed to 30 yard hollywood passes to one of the smallest forwards in the league you mean?
Lewis clearly has vision when he gets his foot on the ball, but he`s just too deep to make it count.

He's not hitting 30 yard balls to him though is he? He's hitting 40 yard balls into the space for him to run onto.

He can play exactly where he's played for his whole Reading career and still be effective. For whatever reason he's stopped doing it since Selles left.

They’re 30 yard balls when the defender easily intercepts it and heads it away

It’s a fair point in the CAMs - we don’t seem to know what to do with them. They end up playing up top with Marriott half the time and they’re equally as terrible in the air. Why aren’t they coming short and picking up shorter passes more?

[Extended-Phenotype]

We are currently in that awkward stage where it feels too soon to call it. I get the impatience, and I get the desire to take last season into consideration when assessing LR, but I think many of us were happy to give him a clean slate.

Sadly the slate looks a bit shit after two games, but I don’t think we look like a team beyond hope. There are some good things to cling to and maybe by November we will just be looking back at this as a shaky start from a new lineup.

On the other hand, with last season a difficult memory to shake, one can’t help but wonder if we have been here before, the same issues manifesting, and the same capitulation a realistic expectation. Of course we may reach November and feel that giving LR a chance was the wrong thing to do. I personally would disagree with that - the reasons we failed last season are all reasonable factors to test; no preseason, new team, thin squad, bad injuries etc etc. and changing managers is every bit a roll of the dice as sticking.

But we really need some good results and positive performances soon, as the argument for keeping LR gets wobblier by the minute.

[WestYorksRoyal]

A "clean state" doesn't really exist. He used up a lot of goodwill and patience with the abysmal ending to last season. A pre season and transfer window offer a good reset, but if we continue to see the same themes of late goals conceded and no gameplan beyond Wing Hollywood passes, these are exactly the same issues that contributed to the final 10 games.

If anything it's even worse given he's had a full pre season, summer signings and has a fit Marriott again. I'm not saying 2 games is enough to condemn him, but if we have something like 4 points after 6 games it definitely would be in my view.

The Wing situation is a particularly big one in my view. Last year we were short on attacking options so I could see why we were defaulting to it. Now we have an impressive looking right hand side and two good no. 10 options, so there’s basically no excuse not to use them. Stokes didn't look good against Wimbledon, but how often did he get the ball in positions suited to his strengths?

[Royal Rother]

I think you can forget about Stokes' strengths, whatever they were, when he arrived.

A few weeks is all it takes.

[Extended-Phenotype]

A "clean state" doesn't really exist. He used up a lot of goodwill and patience with the abysmal ending to last season. A pre season and transfer window offer a good reset, but if we continue to see the same themes of late goals conceded and no gameplan beyond Wing Hollywood passes, these are exactly the same issues that contributed to the final 10 games.

If anything it's even worse given he's had a full pre season, summer signings and has a fit Marriott again. I'm not saying 2 games is enough to condemn him, but if we have something like 4 points after 6 games it definitely would be in my view.

The Wing situation is a particularly big one in my view. Last year we were short on attacking options so I could see why we were defaulting to it. Now we have an impressive looking right hand side and two good no. 10 options, so there’s basically no excuse not to use them. Stokes didn't look good against Wimbledon, but how often did he get the ball in positions suited to his strengths?

Clean slate was fine by me. Didn’t feel like last season was the fairest way to judge his potential. I’ll be less forgiving this season, though.

Ultimately I think any manager should be given time, unless time isn’t something we have to give.