Wrexham 3-0 Reading: Tactical Analysis
Tom unpacks a first league defeat of the season.
Well, I suppose if that’s FC Hollywood, then Phil Parkinson is Walt Disney, a successful, well liked and amiable character, and under his franchise is James McClean, who’s obviously Goofy the Dog, and as well referee Ross Joyce, who can only be Cruella de Vil. Although the man hasn’t yet been accused of kidnapping and skinning puppies, he can be found guilty of crimes against officiating for a display at least worthy of a quote tweet from Specsavers. I’ll let you decide which is worse.
But alas, like Prince Llywelyn in 1211, the Welsh stormed to victory over the English side, and it would be an injustice to say none of it was of our own doing. Still, the show goes on for Reading, so let’s analyse a difficult defeat at what is probably one of the top 10 bus stops in Chester.
Now, call me crazy, but personally I don’t see the point of pushing Lewis Wing back to left-centre-back in a back three, only to put Jeriel Dorsett in midfield, as seen below.
I suppose there are some positive outcomes possible, like Wing’s passing qualities finding attackers more consistently, but we lose so much. Can Dorsett take the ball on the half-turn, hold off an oncoming player, thread a perfectly placed through-ball into a winger or be more composed in possession than Wing?
I don’t think so.
Wrexham didn’t press particularly high - a strike force of Ollie Palmer and Jack Marriott failed to win the ball a single time in Reading’s half throughout the game, and the Royals found most joy through going short. Unlike, say, the Colchester United match, the home side looked very uninterested in winning the ball in the final third, as they let us have 68% possession on Saturday.
However, this afforded the Red Dragons many advantages across the rest of the pitch. As shown on the screenshot above, they often reverted to a 4-4-2 out of possession, a solid counter to Reading’s 3-3-4 shape, and with strong experienced EFL defenders, Wrexham found little issue in going man-for-man at the back.
At other times, Dorsett was pushed further left, and Kelvin Ehibhatiomhan was given the freedom to drop in, which he does in the picture here.
Ehibhatiomhan ends up not receiving it, but even if he were to have the ball in that position, realistically he either loses the ball or touches it straight back to the centre-back. In my opinion, what he’d be better doing is creating a two-on-one overload on the left wing, which would drag away a midfielder to allow for a direct pass into Charlie Savage in the middle, or even for Sam Smith to drop in and get the ball in the half space.
Also note the position that Tyler Bindon is in on the ball, placing it under the studs of his boot. This is usually used as a tactic to bait the opponent into pressing in order to make space elsewhere, but yet again Wrexham don’t buy it, with Palmer just coasting along the middle of the halfway line.
I’d have loved to see Bindon, or Amadou Mbengue for that matter, simply dribble up with the ball more. The pair of them managed that just once - that being by the New Zealander. As was becoming our trademark on Saturday, it ended with a lack of options, therefore a long ball, and subsequently a loss of possession.
Later on in the game, to try and give more options, Dorsett didn’t hug the touchline, but occupied a more traditional left-back position.
Upon losing the ball, he rushes into the middle to close down Andy Cannon, and a cute flick takes it beyond the Montserratian’s reach. He gets caught miles too far up in midfield, and when right-wing-back Ryan Barnett is released down the flank, there is no-one anywhere near him to close him down.
I’m all for experimenting with players in different positions in different phases of play. However, against a team with flying wing-backs, the narrow wingers we have along with inexperienced full-backs will lead to severe liabilities in defence.
We’re very lucky not to concede from McClean initially, who bursts up the pitch, wrong-siding Michael Craig, and on the follow-ups a disorganised Reading defence fail to clear the ball out of the six-yard box.
Our shape cost us on Saturday, in and out of possession. It’s clear that Ruben Selles thinks it’s worth it from the threat we gain on the ball, but this time I think we pushed it too far.
It’s like dipping a Hobnob into a cup of your favourite brand of tea. A quick plunge leaves you with a lovely, melty, moist bite of oaty goodness to sink your teeth into, but overcook it and get a bit too cocky with your dunking game, and it will crumble. Then you get some saturated biscuity remnants in the bottom of your cup that seem near impossible to clean out. And that’s what we did on Saturday.
Basic defensive mistakes while trying to be a bit too clever cost us goals.
Going forward, Reading found most success when finding passing triangles around the Wrexham players, which was done particularly well on our right-hand side. The combinations involving Adrian Akande, Ben Elliott and Craig were top-class.
The former was my man of the match. In his first senior league start there were multiple occurrences when he used pace to beat his man. The crossing and end product were lacking, but you could see the frustration in Akande after those moments, because we all know how good he can be.
In the end, losing to Wrexham away from home is far from the end of the world. Parkinson had a game-plan which was executed perfectly, and we didn’t look like we had the players or plan to beat the hosts.
Onto next Saturday, when we welcome Charlton Athletic, who’ve enjoyed a flawless league campaign, with wins and clean sheets in every game so far. I think calling it a tough test is an understatement...