I'm far from Mbengue's biggest fan, but he does add some pace at the back.

Hard to drop any of the 3 from tonight, but maybe Hoilett could use a rest and Mbengue could slot in with Yiadom wide.

Dann shouldn't step on the field except in an injury crisis or to defend a lead late on with 4 CBs.

This season ending has so many positives. Moore millstone gone. Rahman gone. Dann gone. Probably Ejaria gone. Can't wait.

Ha, depends who we bring in….

Do think we need to try to work out our forward line - did look better with Long but nothing looks very convincing at the moment

They all look individually useful options but not really gelling at all

I would also add that Joao was bloody awful.

I'm far from Mbengue's biggest fan, but he does add some pace at the back.

Hard to drop any of the 3 from tonight, but maybe Hoilett could use a rest and Mbengue could slot in with Yiadom wide.

Dann shouldn't step on the field except in an injury crisis or to defend a lead late on with 4 CBs.

This season ending has so many positives. Moore millstone gone. Rahman gone. Dann gone. Probably Ejaria gone. Can't wait.

Ha, depends who we bring in….
We'll get at least a few games.out of them before we've grown to hate them.

Can I just point out, never rated Rahman, didn't want him back. Totally right.

Yeah fair play to them, both done very well

Agree.

Good performance, as others have said, from the three Toms and Yiadom.

Decent from Hoilett and Rahman, as well as Long when he came on.

Rest of the team had a night to forget. Difficult circumstances of course. Casemiro is an incredible player - possibly the best midfield performance I can remember against us, and certainly the best that wasn’t Fabregas.

Shane Long brought more to the team on his own than Carroll and Joao did. Poor selection up front for today. Think I’d have been tempted to go with the Long / Meite combination as Meite would have offered Rahman a bit. Ore protection down the left than Joao will ever be able to (and I’m not getting at Joao there, but tracking back isn’t what he’s good at)

What is he good at?

What is he good at?

Scoring goals. His scoring record for us at this level is right up there with the best we have had but we don't have the midfielders to link up with him in the way Olise and Swift did

Proud of the lads today. That was a decent performance against a star studded United side. Tom Holmes is really improving and I liken him to watching Neil Webb and Adie Williams develop into crucial members of the team.

I really don’t understand the negativity as United are on fire atm and a 3-1 defeat exceeded my expectations.

No surprises.

After our 4-0 defeat with players possibly keeping themselves for this game I was hoping this would be the game where we'd see the real fight, but oh no. Worse than usual and all our usual frailties plain to see.

Concentrate on staying up.

'Well done' United.

Special well done to Mbengue to score against United away.

My thoughts...

3-1 is no disgrace against a strong Man Utd side who will finish top 4. It could and should have been a lot worse as they battered us throughout.

I don't think we played that well. Defended ok but midfield we were completely overrun. Man Utd looked like they had 3-4 more players on the pitch than us. We couldn't hold the ball up and some of the back passes weren't necessary.

That’s exactly it.
We ‘go for it’ get spanked for 8 or more against the second best form team in the top division in the country and it would’ve been ‘well, we should’ve played it tighter’

There’s 3 on the pitch though.

Ah indeed. The three Tom's and Andy Yiadom have a been fantastic. Our four best players tonight.
The four ‘oms

Exactly this. We were never going to win the match, but Long competitive up top, closed their defence down and physically won a few battles.

Playing him from the start would have helped alleviate pressure, enabling the team to progress up the pitch. Instead we played Joao & Carroll very deep and inevitably they were going to be ineffective.

Has he ever started Long & Joao together? I’d prefer Carroll off the bench.

Really looking forward to seeing the back of Rahman now. The guy just can’t give a toss whenever he’s on the pitch, and offers nothing. NGW at least provides intelligent forward play.

But we say this every season don’t we about players leaving. We’ll still have players who are no good

What is he good at?

Scoring goals. His scoring record for us at this level is right up there with the best we have had but we don't have the midfielders to link up with him in the way Olise and Swift did

Remind me again, when did he last score? and how many goals? how many assists? this season. He had the ability but is now past his peak just not interested.

Totally agree with you Jimmy, I thought United had the measure of us in the first five minutes and knew they were going to win in second gear so why bust a gut, they were always in control. We could, maybe should, have suffered a morale zapping pounding but thanks to some notably good individual performances, we came away without being embarrassed and retained some pride, which was all I was hoping for beforehand. As soon as we drew United away that was the end of any cup run.

Why do our two full-backs tuck in when we are already playing 3 at the back?.
It resulted in an easy cross field pass to a free Anthony that led to the first Casemiro goal and before that Yiadom was too far in for the disallowed Rashford effort.

On reflection,£1 million or so for one night's work and back to the important job of avoiding relegation and we won't have to listen any more to hours and hours of Ince's time at at Old Trafford.
I would have preferred to have seen highlights if possible of our 1-1 FA Cup game there and the fabulous game in the replay that ended 2-3 after the dire start.

In my lifetime the only time we have got close to United in a game was the 1-1 league game at home and that is with our best ever team in our best ever season in terms of league position, 2006-7. We haven’t got close to laying a glove on them since.

That is what supporting Reading is all about, on the rare occasion when we do give a member of the footballing elite a bloody nose it makes it that much sweeter, that is our footballing world!

For my tuppence-worth (and to probably repeat what’s already been written), expected far worse in regard to the scoreline.

Carroll should have been replaced prior to his sending-off
Joao put in a couple challenges in midfield, otherwise wasn’t there.
We defended rather well and for our lives, but wherever we cleared our lines to…there was a red shirt on the end of it to bring ot straight back at us.
We played better post substitutions and it was a simple but great goal. 3-2 would’ve been more fun, even if only to shut-up the fawning commentary.

24 shots, (of which the MotM was responsible for a most of ), only 6 on target helped out a bit.

We simply couldn’t compete

100% this.

In commentary Lee Dixon repeatedly questioned why we didn't leave Carroll up front to give us an outlet and two Utd defenders something to think about. He pointed out that having Carroll drop into midfield wasn't really helping us at all and it was a waste of what Carroll has to offer. If he could see that, why couldn't our manager and coaching staff.

In commentary Lee Dixon repeatedly questioned why we didn't leave Carroll up front to give us an outlet and two Utd defenders something to think about. He pointed out that having Carroll drop into midfield wasn't really helping us at all and it was a waste of what Carroll has to offer. If he could see that, why couldn't our manager and coaching staff.

The same thing happens in a lot of league games. Insufficient creativity leading to whoever is up front dropping deeper and deeper to try and get the ball. This issue should be very apparent to the management (esp. given they’ve said they want a couple more midfielders) but financial issues have prevented any worthwhile recruitment. Let’s hope it gets sorted in the summer and next season Reading can carry a decent threat no matter who the opposition is.

100% this.

We never would have. Shows how much we need to improve if we ever want to become an established Premier League side in the future.

In commentary Lee Dixon repeatedly questioned why we didn't leave Carroll up front to give us an outlet and two Utd defenders something to think about. He pointed out that having Carroll drop into midfield wasn't really helping us at all and it was a waste of what Carroll has to offer. If he could see that, why couldn't our manager and coaching staff.

Even my Utd friend was surprised we didn’t play Long or Meite, we obviously weren’t going get joy playing out from the back so at least if we hit balls down the channel and tried to get them running at and behind Slabhead and Lindleoff it might have seen better results.

In commentary Lee Dixon repeatedly questioned why we didn't leave Carroll up front to give us an outlet and two Utd defenders something to think about. He pointed out that having Carroll drop into midfield wasn't really helping us at all and it was a waste of what Carroll has to offer. If he could see that, why couldn't our manager and coaching staff.

I wonder if Lee Dixon has ever managed a side costing 50p and a packet of Walkers crisps play against a side costing billions? Whatever tactics we adopted there was only ever going to be one outcome. A battling 3-1 defeat when down to 10 men wasn’t too shoddy.

In commentary Lee Dixon repeatedly questioned why we didn't leave Carroll up front to give us an outlet and two Utd defenders something to think about. He pointed out that having Carroll drop into midfield wasn't really helping us at all and it was a waste of what Carroll has to offer. If he could see that, why couldn't our manager and coaching staff.

The same thing happens in a lot of league games. Insufficient creativity leading to whoever is up front dropping deeper and deeper to try and get the ball. This issue should be very apparent to the management (esp. given they’ve said they want a couple more midfielders) but financial issues have prevented any worthwhile recruitment. Let’s hope it gets sorted in the summer and next season Reading can carry a decent threat no matter who the opposition is.
Tbf, no point leaving Carroll high because the balls up are never accurate and he's never going to win a chase for them. Maybe he wins some headers that go straight to Utd, or chests it down and holds on, but then has no support v 2.PL CBs that he's not going to turn or get away from.

Carroll and Joao both require players up around them to bring into the game and that was never going to happen.

So for me the much more obvious thing is to throw on as much pace and work rate as possible. That means Long and Meite.

Ot even flood midfield more with Fornah and play Ince upfront to harry defenders and run the channels with Meite if Long isn't fit enough.

There is no play better and take the game to Utd without getting battered involving that starting XI. And other XIs aretenuous at best.