I'm officially bored of...people talking about our pitch

[BR2]

Well done to the boys last night.
If we end up at Wembley for a play-off final we surely have the advantage of playing on a poor pitch all season,at least that is what we keep on hearing.
Is it that bad?
Do people remember Birmingham's pitch of 4 years ago and what about Plymouth's the other week?
What worries me is that with people like Coppell,Murty and whoever else we hear going on and on about our pitch will the players have now developed a complex especially with the big game coming up v Birmingham as well as a potential 2nd leg play-off game?

Good footballers can play on any surface-look at where Brazilians learn to play-so are these people building up a massive excuse for some dreadful home performances this year?
Furthermore are they building up an excuse for next Sunday?
Football people love any excuse going for underperformance-remember Fergie and the grey shirts when they were thrashed at Southampton-so could our hierarchy lay off mentioning the pitch ahead of next weekend and wouldn't it be a good idea to use it every day ahead of the game in preparation?

We will go up if we are good enough-it won't be the pitch's fault.

[Avon Royal]

A good pitch allows better players to demonstrate the gap between their skills and those of their opponents.

A bad pitch acts as a "leveller" and closes that gap.

The pitch is a factor - anyone can see that.

[The Real Sandhurst Royal]

Let's stop blaming the pitch at the MAD STAD.

The style of play set out by the manager in February and March has been our downfall. We played with no creative midfield nor width against Preston, Bristol City, Notts Forest, Charlton and Barnsley.

Our last two away performances at Derby and Norwich have put that right.

Bring on the Brum.

[Deathy]

No coincidence we played some god passing football last night. You might be bored of hearing about our pitch, but it is crap and it does effect our game. We just have to hope it really effects Birmingham's too.

[MartinRdg]

Let's stop blaming the pitch at the MAD STAD.

The style of play set out by the manager in February and March has been our downfall. We played with no creative midfield nor width against Preston, Bristol City, Notts Forest, Charlton and Barnsley.

Our last two away performances at Derby and Norwich have put that right.

Bring on the Brum.

Of course, the Derby and Norwich pitches were very good.........

[Sun Tzu]

10 years ago our pitch would have been considered perfection.

Funny how some pretty good footballing sides have managed to play fairly well on it, we've not exactly been beaten by big ugly sides playing route one football....

[Snowball]

Murty on the radio a week or so ago was very specific.

He said that bobbles etc meant one touch becoming two and that players
were pinging it long to avoid making a mistake getting caught in possession in our half

If you listened to the interviews after Derby, Kits said the players got together
and decided between themselves to play it more on the floor, play more football
BECAUSE THE PITCH WAS SO GOOD.

A similar thing was said before the Norwich game. Better pitch, better play, suited Reading's players.

On TV Murts said the pitch would benefit Reading.

In the pre-match Coppel joked about hoping Norwich didn't sabotage the pitch to stop our better play

The Mad Stad pitch should be improving already with the extra sun and rain and less rugby

[Murts-is-Lej]

The pitch makes a small amount of difference to why we're worse at home and why we were better at the start of the season when the pitch was still in good nick. However, even more important I believe is that the players are now nervous playing in front of our own fans. When you start getting booed for drawing 0-0 and being in the play-offs (Barnsley match) then it doesn't feel like home. The away support is much more loyal - they really came across on the Sky coverage last night for example, even before we scored.

With any luck the groundsmen will get a good go at the pitch over the summer and the whole thing will hold together better for next season. Then again if we're in the Prem maybe we need to keep it as a leveller?!

[Sun Tzu]

If we are in the Prem we play fewer games on it, which should make a big difference.

[Hoop Blah]

Murty on the radio a week or so ago was very specific.

He said that bobbles etc meant one touch becoming two and that players
were pinging it long to avoid making a mistake getting caught in possession in our half

If you listened to the interviews after Derby, Kits said the players got together
and decided between themselves to play it more on the floor, play more football
BECAUSE THE PITCH WAS SO GOOD.

A similar thing was said before the Norwich game. Better pitch, better play, suited Reading's players.

On TV Murts said the pitch would benefit Reading.

In the pre-match Coppel joked about hoping Norwich didn't sabotage the pitch to stop our better play

The Mad Stad pitch should be improving already with the extra sun and rain and less rugby

The pitch doesn't help us, but they really are over playing the effect it has.

That Murty explains it further doesn't make it right Snowball, it just means the excuse has some decent reasoning behind it. Our players haven't played well enough on it and thats the real issue.

[Thaumagurist*]

Boring BR2 pops up again. Why have you started yet another thread about the pitch when there is a perfectly good 10 page thread about it?

[RoyalBlue]

Murty on the radio a week or so ago was very specific.

He said that bobbles etc meant one touch becoming two and that players
were pinging it long to avoid making a mistake getting caught in possession in our half

If you listened to the interviews after Derby, Kits said the players got together
and decided between themselves to play it more on the floor, play more football
BECAUSE THE PITCH WAS SO GOOD.

A similar thing was said before the Norwich game. Better pitch, better play, suited Reading's players.

On TV Murts said the pitch would benefit Reading.

In the pre-match Coppel joked about hoping Norwich didn't sabotage the pitch to stop our better play

The Mad Stad pitch should be improving already with the extra sun and rain and less rugby

Added to that, Nigel Worthington said that during his time at Norwich, he felt that the almost perfect pitch at Carrow Road often worked against Norwich as it enabled the more skilful teams to play their best football.

It is absolute nonsense to suggest that the condition of a pitch affects all teams equally. Playing styles, skills etc. all differ and the condition of the pitch can work in favour of some and against others. If that was not true, why do clubs alter widths/lengths of pitches (within the limits of the laws of the game), have grass cut short or long, water them at half-time,etc.

[Dirk Gently]

Murty on the radio a week or so ago was very specific.

He said that bobbles etc meant one touch becoming two and that players
were pinging it long to avoid making a mistake getting caught in possession in our half

If you listened to the interviews after Derby, Kits said the players got together
and decided between themselves to play it more on the floor, play more football
BECAUSE THE PITCH WAS SO GOOD.

A similar thing was said before the Norwich game. Better pitch, better play, suited Reading's players.

On TV Murts said the pitch would benefit Reading.

In the pre-match Coppel joked about hoping Norwich didn't sabotage the pitch to stop our better play

The Mad Stad pitch should be improving already with the extra sun and rain and less rugby

The pitch doesn't help us, but they really are over playing the effect it has.

That Murty explains it further doesn't make it right Snowball, it just means the excuse has some decent reasoning behind it. Our players haven't played well enough on it and thats the real issue.

Agreed, but the real problem comes when our players start beliveing that our pitch is a problem.

Whether it is or not is irrelevant in that case, because just thinking it is a problem makes it one. Confidence is all!

[Sun Tzu]

Some of the best teams around have had the worst pitches - Old Trafford and Stamford Bridge in recentyears, Baseball Ground further back.

Agree that it is to quite alarge extent in the mind. Convince yourself thepitch is a problem and it wil be.

Of course one way to get rid of the psychological problem is to improve the pitch, but if it wasn't actually the pitch that was the problem then you'll just end up playing poorly ona good pitch rather than on a bad one !

Still not heard why the 05-06 pitch allowed us and Irish to play on it - and us in record style, whilst the 08-09 doesn't.

[The Quiet Man]

The problem may be with the Desso system as it seems OK for average use in good weather conditions, what seems to mess it up is very wet weather and lots of rugby in a short space of time. To my eyes this season the pitch after xmas has been poor and it has probably close to the pitch we had when Keegan was Fulham manager and was very critical of it (99-00?). What seems to happen is that the grass disappears and gets replaced with matted mud that sort of stipples rather than cut up and you can definitely see that the ball bobbles along the top. I've seen horrendous bobbles for us and the opposition, in the north west corner in particular, and I suspect that playing regularly on it subconsciously you start to take second touches rather than play first time. Equally it is not the whole reason we have been poor but if morale dips and a bit of confidence goes then it becomes one more factor that tends to get blamed and to be fair it is not as crap as Birmingham's pitch which is the poorest we have played on this season (didn't seem to effect us though ).

[Barry the bird boggler]

Murty on the radio a week or so ago was very specific.

He said that bobbles etc meant one touch becoming two and that players
were pinging it long to avoid making a mistake getting caught in possession in our half

If you listened to the interviews after Derby, Kits said the players got together
and decided between themselves to play it more on the floor, play more football
BECAUSE THE PITCH WAS SO GOOD.

A similar thing was said before the Norwich game. Better pitch, better play, suited Reading's players.

On TV Murts said the pitch would benefit Reading.

In the pre-match Coppel joked about hoping Norwich didn't sabotage the pitch to stop our better play

The Mad Stad pitch should be improving already with the extra sun and rain and less rugby

Thank god they're ripping up Wembley's pitch and relaying it in time for the FA Trophy Final in a couple of weeks then!

[Hoop Blah]

Murty on the radio a week or so ago was very specific.

He said that bobbles etc meant one touch becoming two and that players
were pinging it long to avoid making a mistake getting caught in possession in our half

If you listened to the interviews after Derby, Kits said the players got together
and decided between themselves to play it more on the floor, play more football
BECAUSE THE PITCH WAS SO GOOD.

A similar thing was said before the Norwich game. Better pitch, better play, suited Reading's players.

On TV Murts said the pitch would benefit Reading.

In the pre-match Coppel joked about hoping Norwich didn't sabotage the pitch to stop our better play

The Mad Stad pitch should be improving already with the extra sun and rain and less rugby

The pitch doesn't help us, but they really are over playing the effect it has.

That Murty explains it further doesn't make it right Snowball, it just means the excuse has some decent reasoning behind it. Our players haven't played well enough on it and thats the real issue.

Agreed, but the real problem comes when our players start beliveing that our pitch is a problem.

Whether it is or not is irrelevant in that case, because just thinking it is a problem makes it one. Confidence is all!

True enough.

[Sarah Star]

Would it help if they practiced on a pitch in the same condition? I know of one in Reading they could get to quite easily.

[BR2]

Would it help if they practiced on a pitch in the same condition? I know of one in Reading they could get to quite easily.

As I said earlier why not practice on the actual pitch?
We have a maximum of 2 more games this season on it (hopefully just the one) so it can only be an advantage surely?

[BR2]

Boring BR2 pops up again. Why have you started yet another thread about the pitch when there is a perfectly good 10 page thread about it?

Other people seem quite happy to discuss the topic but then they are probably normal Reading fans with the emphasis on "normal".
Have you never thought of adding your many words of wisdom to some other website,say for sub-normals?
You are an objectionable creature (probably posted to you as a similar comment by people on here more times even than the sum total of your inane postings) and I and presumably the majority of others really do not understand why you post at all as there is never anything but insults and aggression towards other Reading fans,Arsenal and any other football club bans.
You really do have a problem and ought to see somebody about it.