CBC Or Not CBC: That Is The Question
Should Reading stick or twist with Coniah Boyce-Clarke? Alex makes the case for the former...
It wasn’t one of our better days on Saturday. In theory, here we are - a team in good form playing a side rooted at the bottom of the table and we were playing at home. Our fortress. What proceeded to happen over the next 90 or so minutes was just one of the most…vacuous (?) performances that we have seen in the Ruben Selles era. It was almost like we just sort of expected to win and this complacency meant we never really got going.
As we know, one of the main talking points from the game was the goal. The nature of which can be filed under “a bit of a clanger”. At the time, seeing it happen, I just thought to myself that it was unfortunate and it was just going to be one of those days. But hey – it’s relatively early on in the game, plenty of time left to turn it around.
We didn’t, and the reaction from some of the fanbase has been quite ferocious, to say the least. Coniah Boyce-Clarke, making his first start in the league this season, didn’t have the best game, but a lot of fans have been really critical of him and are strongly advocating that this should be his last match of the season. Harry’s excellent “Fans’ Verdict” article captures a lot of this feedback, and I’ve also heard similarly strong views in other forums.
And I am absolutely puzzled by this. For example, there are many criticising Selles for playing him at all and advocating that David Button should have started.
Let’s start here, shall we? Firstly, Button is just coming back from injury and very possibly might not have been fully fit, only being able to provide cover on the bench. Secondly, Button is in the last year of his contract with us and it seems very unlikely that we will see him extend that stay. We have better options to be starting games, especially with one eye on the future of the team.
Lastly – it seems these fans have a short-term memory, because I recall on numerous occasions the fanbase bemoaning Button being our starting goalkeeper for the majority of last season and rightly so.
I am sure he is a lovely guy and a good presence round the first team for the spirit and morale, but the data speaks for itself and his xGC (expected goals conceded) of something like -5 last season put him comfortably among the worst-performing goalkeepers over the course of the 2023/24 season in League One. And now he is the answer to our problems? It seems unlikely.
I have seen comments and heard things along the lines of “Boyce-Clarke will never be good enough to be a first-choice ‘keeper for us” or something to this effect. I am interested to know how people know this, since he has been given vanishingly few opportunities to play actual first-team football with us. I can count all those occasions probably on one hand, and even fewer in games that actually matter (nominally not a cup competition or end of season match).
In short, he’s just not had many opportunities to play regular first-team football, and that’s not his fault. He’s either not been trusted because he’s young (Paul Ince), not been on the radar (Veljko Paunovic) or just had others in front of him (Selles).
Similarly, it’s not his fault that he’s not been given the chance to go out on loan. It seems the club have been intent on keeping him around because Lord knows we have had plenty of opportunities every season to farm out players like Jokull Andresson on loan.
In a game against the bottom-of-the-table side, coming into a team that’s performing well - and playing at home where we are most comfortable - it was a low risk bringing him in. Honestly – if you don’t pick Boyce-Clarke for that game, then when are you going to pick him?
You’re not, and you’re effectively ruling him out of ever playing for us if you’re picking a 35-year-old out-of-favour goalkeeper who is largely expected to be leaving in the near future. With the greatest of respect to Button, injury or not, it would have been an absolute nonsense to have picked him to play over Boyce-Clarke.
We have to accept that the coaching staff might actually know what they are doing here. After all, they see him every day - we don’t - and they have demonstrably earned our trust over the last season with the standard of coaching and improved performances they have helped the squad deliver, more often than not.
As for the game itself – yes, I accept Boyce-Clarke didn’t play well. However, find me one player that did actually perform anywhere near their ceiling that game. Because no one did. Ben Elliott was probably our best player that game, and he was nowhere near his effervescent self.
It must have been really challenging coming into a team that was a shadow of its usual self. In fact, Boyce-Clarke has probably done a few of them a favour by distracting fans from some very poor performances from more established or senior first-teamers.
As a quick aside on this topic, I don’t think the criticism Charlie Savage has had from the game has been particularly fair – he can’t help it if the passages of play are not coming down his side of the pitch – but Sam Smith was absolutely invisible for the entirety of that game. Can anyone remember him doing anything at all? This is a worrying period of form for Smith, but it’s not something anyone is discussing - because Boyce-Clarke has drawn the focus away.
In terms of the goal itself – it’s a clanger, no doubt about it. It is one that will haunt him for a while and would haunt any goalkeeper. But here’s the thing – goalkeepers make those mistakes. All of them do. It’s just an unfortunate part of the job and even more unfortunate that the spotlight is very bright on goalkeepers because the focus is almost always going to be on their mistakes, not what they do well.
Indeed, people are forgetting that he made a particularly good save a minute or two before the goal was conceded, or there are others who are now displaying revisionism that the save wasn’t particularly good and it was a bit of showmanship that made it look to be better than what it was. Really?
I think as well that Selles was absolutely correct to defend Boyce-Clarke here because he was absolutely correct that the goal could have been prevented by the opposition player not being given the chance to get the shot away in the first place. This happened because of an overall poor team performance, not solely because of one individual’s error.
Another aspect was lacking from Boyce-Clarke’s game was his distribution. It was quite often rather poor. And I feel like this was the theme of his day – anything involving his feet needed improvement. You can even argue that his stance with his feet when the ball approached him, prior to conceding the goal, wasn’t particularly good and getting his positioning right with his feet would have given him a far more solid base to get his body behind the ball and prevent it squirming away from him, as it did.
Although his is a name that has been around the Reading scene for some time, it’s easy to forget that he is only 21 years old. He’s young and, like a lot of our other players who are also young, he is going to make mistakes. It happens. What he needs is to be given the time to gain more confidence through playing more regularly and to get used to being a starter for us, and to get the doubters to begin trusting him again.
Will he come good in the long run? Who knows. No one can predict the future. But the best thing we can do, and what we should be doing, is supporting him and making sure that he knows the fan base is behind him and want him to do well.
Don’t judge him based on one game, or indeed one moment in one game. If Joel Pereira is out for the next few games, let’s see what Boyce-Clarke can do over an extended period of time between the sticks.
This would be his first time having an extended run in the side as a starting goalkeeper and I truly believe that, given the time and support, he can come good. We just need to have a little patience while he works with Tony Warner to improve his footwork and build that confidence. Let’s give him some time before casting judgement.
Paraphrasing a famous William Shakespeare quote, “CBC or not CBC?”, I believe there is only one answer. It has to be CBC, so let’s give him our support that can help him flourish in this unexpected opportunity.