On this day......

[bcubed]

This. Or lost 2-1 at Fulham instead of 3-1. The annoying thing was that in both games Fulham scored their last goal in sodding injury time

From memory they hit the woodwork 3 times! What made that performance worse was Fulham had the worst away record in the premiership. Yet they played us off the park that day.

They'd not won away in the previous 33 matches.

Hence the chant - We're winning away, how shit must you be, etc

May be the first time I'd heard it.

[Snowflake Royal]

I think that's the first I've heard of the Cahill thing, sorry Stranded

Yeah been pretty widely discussed. Was definitely an error.

We definitely spent big for us, though not that much for even the bottom of that league. So it's not that we didn’t invest, like you said. But that our transfer decisions were very poor.

Pursuing Brown (?) who had no intention of coming. Was it Lescott too or he the season before? Then resorting to Fae, who was poor and his attitude stank... Duberry on the decline, Rosenior for Seol, sticking and not twisting on Cahill, Matejovski wasn't up to the pace of the league, Kebe wasn't nearly ready for it ... etc etc.

I may be verging on blasphemy, but it could be argued SSC made a number of errors that final season.

Not least, Wally Downes begged him to play five in midfield against Fulham to shut down the middle, but he was so stuck to 4-4-2 that he wouldn't change. As above, that was the crucial game.

Also, not going all-out attack away at Derby. They were there for the taking, and although we won 4-0, three more goals would have kept us up. But we didn't make any significant adjustments or really go for broke when we needed it.

He definitely made errors. I don’t really agree on Derby.

We took the lead early and looked safe most of the game, Fulham only scored late on, by which time we were 3-0 up with less than 15 minutes to go. No real chance to score 4 goals in that time. And going flat out for 7 from the first minute would have been reckless

[rfc8]

18/5/1966
Reading 4 Exeter 1

[rfc8]

18/5/1913
Italy 0 Reading 2

5th match of Italy tour, W 4 L 1

[rfc8]

19/5/2013
West Ham 4 Reading 2

Last PL match, at least for now

[rfc8]

20/5/1966
Reading 4 Shrewsbury 1

[John Smith]

I may be verging on blasphemy, but it could be argued SSC made a number of errors that final season.

Not least, Wally Downes begged him to play five in midfield against Fulham to shut down the middle, but he was so stuck to 4-4-2 that he wouldn't change. As above, that was the crucial game.

Also, not going all-out attack away at Derby. They were there for the taking, and although we won 4-0, three more goals would have kept us up. But we didn't make any significant adjustments or really go for broke when we needed it.

He definitely made errors. I don’t really agree on Derby.

We took the lead early and looked safe most of the game, Fulham only scored late on, by which time we were 3-0 up with less than 15 minutes to go. No real chance to score 4 goals in that time. And going flat out for 7 from the first minute would have been reckless

I thought his persistence with the woeful Sonko that season also cost us. Seemed to give away a penalty in every game.

I felt we did all we could at Derby from memory.

[Stranded]

I may be verging on blasphemy, but it could be argued SSC made a number of errors that final season.

Not least, Wally Downes begged him to play five in midfield against Fulham to shut down the middle, but he was so stuck to 4-4-2 that he wouldn't change. As above, that was the crucial game.

Also, not going all-out attack away at Derby. They were there for the taking, and although we won 4-0, three more goals would have kept us up. But we didn't make any significant adjustments or really go for broke when we needed it.

He definitely made errors. I don’t really agree on Derby.

We took the lead early and looked safe most of the game, Fulham only scored late on, by which time we were 3-0 up with less than 15 minutes to go. No real chance to score 4 goals in that time. And going flat out for 7 from the first minute would have been reckless

I thought his persistence with the woeful Sonko that season also cost us. Seemed to give away a penalty in every game.

I felt we did all we could at Derby from memory.

If memory serves, we could have had another couple quite comfortably but you'd have to be harsh to lay any blame at only scoring 4 in an away game.

As mentioned when discussing that season before, we went on a really good run of 10pts from 5 games that looked to be more than enough but the performances just dropped off a cliff after that which put is in a position that we really should not have been.

[Brogue]

We lost the playoff final today in 2017

[Mid Sussex Royal]

We lost the playoff final today in 2017

1995 too, which felt much worse given how the game went.

My order in terms of disappointment factor:

Bolton
Walsall - just beats Hudds due to us cruising in ET until a freak OG.
Huddersfield
Swansea

[Snowflake Royal]

We lost the playoff final today in 2017

1995 too, which felt much worse given how the game went.

My order in terms of disappointment factor:

Bolton
Walsall - just beats Hudds due to us cruising in ET until a freak OG.
Huddersfield
Swansea

Walsall
Bolton
Huddersfield
Swansea for me

[From Despair To Where?]

That Huddersfield game is one of the worst I've ever been to. I remember Wembley did this interactive thing where you could find yourself in the crowd. I searched for myself and I looked absolutely bored shitless.

I didn't feel that despondent after Bolton, I guess our levels of expectation were hugely different then. As I said on another post, I was preoccupied with getting back to Manchester to sit my last final at 10am the next morning.

[Snowflake Royal]

That Huddersfield game is one of the worst I've ever been to. I remember Wembley did this interactive thing where you could find yourself in the crowd. I searched for myself and I looked absolutely bored shitless.

I didn't feel that despondent after Bolton, I guess our levels of expectation were hugely different then. As I said on another post, I was preoccupied with getting back to Manchester to sit my last final at 10am the next morning.

Bolton was my first game and I had no context, I just assumed we'd go up next season. It was only over the next few months I realised what a big miss it was.

Swansea I expected us to lose, thought we had more chance against Hudders, but that we'd be dreadful if we did go up.

[tmesis]

The Bolton game was, without doubt, the worst I've felt after a Reading game. It felt like we were robbed of promotion that year. Bolton should have been down to 10 for an hour, and their player who should have been sent off set up their equaliser.

Walsall and Huddersfield were really annoying, but being 0-3 to Swansea was bad. Just that feeling of 'not again!"

I think Huddersfield would have been worse had the game not been so stupefyingly terrible. It's harder to go through the gears of emotion after two hours of utter tedium.

[Royal Ginger]

The sliding doors moment when Karacan hit the post adds some mustard to Swansea for me vs Huddersfield when both teams should have lost as the game was so bad.

[Stranded]

The sliding doors moment when Karacan hit the post adds some mustard to Swansea for me vs Huddersfield when both teams should have lost as the game was so bad.

Yep, if the Swansea player hadn't got a stud to it, it goes in - suddenly its 3-3 from nowhere and we would have gone on to win that. The ball hitting the post, seemed to shake Swansea awake a little as our momentum ebbed away.

Actually, to be fair, it was the amazing block to stop Hunts tap in that was the real difference.

[WestYorksRoyal]

Huddersfield was embarrassing. We rarely get a chance to showcase ourselves in the limelight, and when we did we went on to produce one of the worst matches of all time. Any neutral watching would not have wanted either team to stink out the PL.

And then we lost too. Of course we did. So yeah, definitely up there.

Walsall the lowest though. The game was there for us to win, we blew it and watched a tiny corner of the stadium celebrating as we traipsed out.

Thankfully play off season is over now so we can forget these matches for another year.

[Mid Sussex Royal]

Yes - final game was yesterday with Oldham back in the league.

The way that game went had a remarkable similarity to our play off game V Walsall....1-0 to us at halftime (as it was for Southend) Oldham equalised start of second half (as did Don Goodman).

Southend re-took the lead at the start of extra time (as Butler did for us) then Oldham got 2 quick fire goals near the start of the second period of extra time to win 3-2....

[rfc8]

5/3/2011
Reading 5 Middlesbrough 2