Hunting for Goals

I do loathe the international break; its not my intention too but ultimately having most of your best players playing across Europe cannot do the club any good. And for Reading, well, a team in desperate form, an international break could be the worst thing that could have happened.

Having international players such as Noel Hunt, Marek Matejovsky, etc always adds to the prestige of the club but the sheer fact that the team is in such dire straits on the field at the moment they needed extra time to pull themselves from the utter mare they're currently having. They should be on the training pitch righting all of the wrongs that has been this season.

The defeat to Middlesbrough was a bad one; the game lacked any real imagination. Reading were poor. No, they were terrible. Boro should have run riot and a 2-0 defeat was, on reflection, a let-off. A rare cheer went up after 86 minutes when Hunt managed to get a shot on target.

Brendan Rodgers insists he's the man to drag us out of what he started and true to form, I believe him; he's no mug and he knows these players better than anyone does. He openly admitted that Reading were poor, not blaming the referee like a certain red-nosed old bloke in Manchester.
Hurdle

A home win is all that is needed. If that is achieved then the rest will follow with much ease, but it's getting over that first hurdle which has taken a lot longer than anticipated. We expected great football; I sincerely hope it will come soon.

A dip into the loan market would not go a miss with a striker that can actually find the back of the net the priority. Noel Hunt needs a partner; Simon Church is not prolific, Shane Long is absent for too much of the game and Grzegorz Rasiak is just useless. He's a panic buy if I have ever seen one.

Defensively Reading are sorted. Spoilt with good commanding centre halves, we can boast a solid backline: Ivar Ingimarsson, Darren O'Dea, Alex Pearce and Matt Mills are all top-notch. Ryan Bertrand is class and Shaun Cummings is slowly making more of an impact.

The midfield is fully of talent and some work needs to done to find out what is the best mock-up. For me, it has to be Jem Karacan plus two others. And with the international break who knows what injuries or mysterious illnesses could become apparent.

Nevertheless, an awkward trip to West Brom awaits and if they can beat Middlesbrough 5-0 away, we would be expecting a goal fest. I just hope Reading will be scoring at least one.