The Weekly Bobbins: Paddy Lane, Harvey Knibbs, Familiar Reading Loss
In this week’s column, Bobbins has two big transfers (one in, one out) to go over, before diving deep into the Royals’ 2-0 reverse at Sincil Bank.
The first week of the new season is upon us after what has seemed like a really short turnaround from the end of last season, which is great and awful at the same time. Football is back, it’s just a shame that we’re not very good at it, right now at least.
The good news was that we signed a player! And a bloody good one, too. Paddy Lane has joined us from Portsmouth for the ubiquitous undisclosed fee. The bad news was that we also sold a player. And a bloody good one, too. Harvey Knibbs has left us for Charlton Athletic for a similarly mysterious fee, but widely accepted to be circa £1.8m.
Of course, we know a lot more about what we’re going to lose in Knibbs versus what we’re going to gain with Lane, and we know we’re losing one hell of a player, character and gentleman. The loss of Knibbs has been felt greatly in pre-season, where his link-up play between midfield and attack was absent: something that proved glaringly obvious in our league opener, which we’ll get to in a bit.
Knibbs’ goals, assists and penalties are currently irreplaceable. Not only that, but he formed a huge part of the press which was a huge characteristic of our play, certainly in Ruben Selles’ tenure as manager.
That said, it was always likely Knibbs would move on this summer. His tweet at the end of last season was in past tense. It’s a small thing, but the writing was on the screen; he had already decided that he needed to go. The upside is that we now have funds to be able to strengthen the squad, which, as we saw against Lincoln City, are sorely needed.
As for the game itself, well, what has been said that hasn’t already been said about performances like this on previous occasions? This kind of showing and result has happened countless times before.
Loads of possession, concede a weird or defensively dodgy goal, struggle to get a foothold in the game and come away with nothing? Yep, we’ve played this tune a lot.
The rinse-and-repeat was a deeply unsatisfying watch as we looked like juniors playing seniors. We created very little of note and nothing really clear-cut, barring Mamadi Camara’s chalked-off equaliser.
It smacked of first day at school, when some of the new kids in the uniform struggled to make a mark. Our other better-known operatives equally toiled, spluttering into life occasionally.
It was scruffy, shapeless, aimless and pointless. Attacks were barely structured, link-up play between midfield and the forwards non-existent. The high line in defence was higher than a skyscraper and didn’t serve any useful purpose. In short, there’s a lot to work on.
Up top, Mark O’Mahony was cruelly isolated. He had no help from out wide or in support from midfield. Kelvin Ehibhatiomhan was glued to his marker or vice versa; rarely was there any attempt to create space either for himself or someone, anyone, to move into. He may as well have swapped Instagram handles and his online banking PIN with Tendayi Darikwa, by the end of the game. They were that tight.
Juxtaposed to that, there were gaping holes everywhere else. Our play was too long and players were just too far apart. Collectively we weren’t compact or precise enough. Too many times, passes were played without any real reason why. Lewis Wing pinged long balls out to Kelvin or Mamadi Camara endlessly without any results. Why? They were never, ever going to beat their man in the air.
There just didn’t seem to be much logic in it all. We kept doing the same things both with or without the ball and none of them had any end result, not positively anyway. The only player that seemed to make anything happen was Ben Elliott, and when he was substituted on the hour for fitness reasons, our game was done.
Of course, it’s game one. We have to bear that in mind. We still have players to bring in to better the squad, which we know the management desperately need. A lot of the new players will need time to bed in, which we expect also.
But we do need to urgently improve to show some kind of identity, some signs of progress, something better than this.
Currently, we are far too easy to play against. As shown against Portsmouth and Lincoln, we look naïve and clumsy. Everything needs to tighten up and look structured. At the moment, we look we’ve barely met, which in some cases is true, but Lincoln looked so much more composed and played as a cohesive unit. We just looked like distinct thirds who didn’t trust each other to do the right thing.
So, on we go to our home opener against one of the pre-season favourites, Huddersfield Town. They only won 3-0 in their first fixture. That should be, um, fun.