by el_presidente »
20 Oct 2009 23:06
Back from the game for real (I live in West London)
Good start with Rodgers reverting to a basic 4-4-2, with plenty of experience throughout. Fullbacks O'Dea and Tabb didn't inspire confidence but no-one put much of a foot wrong in the first 30 minutes - I thought we might see out the game 0-0 because we weren't doing much up front.
Then it all starts to go a bit crazy. Watson takes a quick free kick for Rangers on the edge of the box, oops too quick the ref hedn't blown. Bizarrely the ref decides to book Watson for this (I cannot recall this offence ever resulting in a booking before). I think the ref realises too late he's already booked Watson - but too late he has to go. SO Rangers are down to 10 men, Ref then lets them retake the kick and Buzsacky sticks it, bollocks.
As we've seen many times before this season Reading's composure goes to pieces once we concede and we ship another one with Federici and Mills leaving it to each other at the back post.
Half time comes and, playing against 10 men Rodgers does the positive thing and switches to 3-5-2, bringing on Howard and Gylfi as attacking midfielders. Great stuff however directly from kick off Ingi commits a foul, the ref has been itching to even things up ever since the Watson red card and wastes no opportunity in despatching Ingi.
THis is a complete disaster for Reading as our formation is now shot to pieces with 2 subs used and only 2 defenders on the pitch. Gunnarson drops back to centre half but the wide open spaces and lack of fullbacks mean Rangers can sit back and play on the break, scoring 2 more and could have been more. A late Howard effort doesn't come close to papering over the cracks.
So all in all a bizarre set of circumstances, hard to place much blame on Rodgers in my opinion for this particular result.