Heaton MOM last night Annis.
my rankings/comments.
Heaton 8 MOM, solid handling and great positioning and stops, dealt with poor back-passes well.
Naylor 6 -struggled against Readings pace and movement, but stuck at it and joine din attacks, some poor backpasses
Hudson 7 - typical Hudson, lots of good blocks and tackles, easily won most ariel balls, but seemed to back off too much on occasions
Blake 6 - Poor 1st half, gave the ball away with 5 of his first 6 passe sit seemed. Settled a bit later and worked hard, putting in some important tackles.
Matthews 6 - Too tight to hudson for the 1st goal, also seemed happy to allow Hudson to come accross to his position and take his headers. Looked nervy early on. 2nd half though much better, looks so composed on the ball and a lot of good movement came down his side -much of it sparked by good footwork from the youngster. He's a winger in my eyes.
Whittingham 6- struggled to get into things out wide, but later got into the game worked hard and linked things well when he came into the middle.
Mcphail 5 -disappointing, over-run in 1st half and seemed to be off the pace. Not his best game
Oli - 5 the odd good touch, but again looked ponderous and slow of thought.
Burke 6 - Another who was completely out of it in the 1st half, threatened more in the 2nd and really should have scored at least the 2nd of his 2 good chances.
Bothroyd 7- best outfield player, usual mix from him, great skill, good linking in between fally-over and being too greedy. nice goal
Chopra 6 -sparks of what he can do, but not enough. Maybe sufferred from a lack of quality in to him.
Subs:
Koumas showed some real class lovely touches and control and put Reading on the back-foot. Getting back to his best slowly. I want to see more of hi though.
Drinkie - worked hard and better touch than Sunday. Not on long.
By the way I was impressed with Reading, they passed and moved really well with loads of pace. Personally I thought they were better than Swansea, just we werent quite a bad as we were on Sunday.
Our support was over 3300 (not including hospitality, home end etc..) and pretty loud despite the fact we were 1-0 down most of the game.
'We scored like Lampard did, We scored like lampard did' - OK that was only me, but made my mates laugh.