Why Not Play The Kids Now?
Alex argues that now would be a good time for Reading to dish out more opportunities to young players.
The Easter schedule was probably the biggest weekend of football for Reading this calendar season, coming up against playoff-battling Huddersfield Town and a Lincoln City side romping its way to the title. Tough games, but ones where our playoff credentials could be tested. Picking up four points would have been the confidence-booster to show we can compete at this level of the table.
Well… one point gained, two goals conceded in the 96th minute, zero open-play goals scored (both being Lewis Wing set-pieces), three shots on target, less than 20% of our crosses being accurate and many more poor metrics all round have left us in eighth place, two games and two points behind Stevenage in sixth. Both of these games were difficult watches for Reading fans, made even more difficult by the fact that the reaction we wanted to see wasn’t there. We didn’t bring the game to our opposition; we often looked happy to sit in and wait for something to happen.
The most difficult part being that this was entirely predictable. The playoff bid is not officially over, at least on a technical level. It would take a lot of very strange things to happen, but they could.
I don’t think they will, but who knows? My belief is that the playoff bid is over now. Which then poses the question: what now?
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