Blackpool 3-0 Reading: Tactical Analysis
A tough night on the road for the Royals, who lost at Blackpool (yet again) due to a trio of second-half goals.
The Bloomfield Road curse continues for Reading as we lost our fourth straight game on the seaside in an uncharacteristically poor performance. Our 300-man strong away end of hardy souls weren’t rewarded for their efforts, with a stagnant showing from the players making a 3-0 win look routine for Steve Bruce’s side, as they crept ever closer towards the playoffs while we fell away.
However, among that small crowd of Reading fans was none other than title-winning manager Robbie Savage, who I managed to grab a few words with in the concourse pre-game. To my amazement, he recognised me and the writing I do on here doing the match analysis, about which I was honoured, but it also made my mind race through all the recent content I’d put out trying to remember if I’d recently over-criticised his son’s performances. Thankfully, after expressing this, he was gracious in agreement with me that it was a “game of opinions”.
So, if you’re seeing this Robbie, thank you very much for your readership and support! Anyway, I suppose it’s time to have a look back on a disappointing evening on the Fylde Coast.
Firstly, I want to look at Noel Hunt’s substitutions. In the 63rd minute he made four changes in one go: something that, had Paul Ince seen, he would probably still be recovering from this time next week. The subs weren’t made too late as such, maybe more just very unfortunately timed.
This is how we looked after those four changes:
Reading (4-3-3): Pereira; Abrefa, Stickland, Holzman, Garcia; Carroll, Wing, Savage; Camara, Wareham, Knibbs
The positional changes had a much bigger impact on the game than the actual personnel alterations did. Harvey Knibbs moving to the left is something we haven’t seen for a while, and our best play in the second half came in combinations between him, Andre Garcia and Charlie Savage.
Below is the positional graphic from the 63rd minute onwards.
It seemed those three had the license to rotate positions as they saw fit as this shows. It helped having a left-footed left-back on to stretch Blackpool a little more, as with Kelvin Ehibhatiomhan and Kelvin Abrefa on that flank previously, it felt like we were only ever going to cut inside when going forward.
Garcia in particular I thought was really good when he came on. Loads of overlapping runs into forward areas and some decent deliveries into the box, that frustratingly we had no one to get on the end of.
Like here, where Knibbs can find Garcia over the top with a clever pass to unlock Blackpool’s defence.
Although nothing came of their efforts in terms of a goal, it was good to see a little bit of identity returning. Based off Tuesday night, ahead of Wycombe Wanderers on Saturday I would start Garcia, and maybe even Tom Carroll too. They both looked bright after coming on, and even though we’ve just come out of the international break, Reading didn’t look energetic, so it’s time for a bit of change.
The first half was lacklustre from both sides. Nothing really happened and the game was limited to a single shot on target for each team. Blackpool are a side that, when playing at home, tend to grow into it in the second half. In matches at Bloomfield Road this season, they’ve scored 11 first-half goals but 19 after the break.
Watching just the first half too, the Seasiders built momentum. In the opening 23 minutes of the game, Reading had 65% possession of the ball, while in the remaining period up until the break, that flipped completely to 57% in favour of Blackpool.
For me, this points towards something needing to change at half-time. It didn’t have to be a change in personnel - maybe just a tactical tweak would do - but we needed something to kick us on and create more chances.
Sonny Carey scored two goals soon after the break in the 53rd and 56th minutes. The defence didn’t exactly cover themselves in glory for either, with the first coming from admittedly a few fortunate deflections, but also what looked like a reluctance to track back in time from Tivonge Rushesha, which dragged the rest of the back line over, compromising the position of the centre-backs massively, as seen here.
Stand-in left-centre-back Andy Yiadom is left to deal with Carey, who’s on the ball in the picture as the furthest-forward Blackpool player. Yiadom had to jockey between sticking with Carey and Ashley Fletcher, who assisted the goal, leaving him not really committed to either, allowing the left-winger to slot into the bottom corner relatively unchallenged.
The whole run of play begins with a long ball over from deep, and a few touches later the chance presents itself, meaning it’s not exactly a lightning-quick counter, so I’m a little disappointed Rushesha didn’t get back to help out.
And then from the restart we failed to respond, immediately putting ourselves under pressure, which is the last thing we need to give a defence who’ve played with each other a handful of times, and with the exception of Yiadom are largely inexperienced in senior football.
An example of that is seen below, where we’re almost pushing too hard from the kick-off after the goal, and Yiadom plays Abrefa a pass that isn’t really on instead of resetting from Joel Pereira again.
That’s my one big doubt about this Reading team still. I think we can play our own way brilliantly, particularly at home, and churn out playoff-worthy results. But when the game asks something differently of us, when we need to be the ones to respond rather than dictate, we don’t seem to know what to do and how to gain control back.
The start of our creativity begins from the centre-backs I think, and at full strength, that’s Amadou Mbengue and Tyler Bindon. We miss their passing and dribbling-out qualities so much, meaning we struggle to bait out the opponents and unlock players further forward.
Without them, we will always be up against it. Hopefully we see the return of Bindon for this weekend.
We’re still just one point from the playoffs, so the dream is absolutely not over. A disappointing result does not mean we stop the fight.