Team Focus: Reading

(Courtesy of Crystian Cruz - Flickr)

Moving up the table I’m looking at Reading this week, the team that won the championship last year, but who are struggling to find form this year and without a win in their first 10 games McDermott’s side are already looking over their shoulders.

The Manager:

Brian McDermott has been at Reading for just over 12 years now, occupying all sorts of positions, and as such knows the club inside out. He has been manager for little under 3 years since current Liverpool manager left the club and has overseen a steady increase in the club’s stature. It may seem that with his only previous management experience at non-league level McDermott might be a bit out of his depth in the top flight but navigating the minefield that is the Championship takes a smart man and the fact that the best odds you can get on McDermott being the first manager to be sacked are 16/1 shows us that, despite their poor start, it is unlikely that McDermott will be the first out the door.

Will he be the first manager to be sacked? Almost certainly not, he has the confidence of the board and seemingly the fans too, despite not having got off to a good start there seems to be very little disquiet from a fan base who appear to be patient enough to trust their manager. There are quite a few others in the Premier League who have much more reason to fear for their job than McDermott.

Does he deserve to be sacked? As of yet, no. However the Royals don’t have a win yet, and it’s not like they haven’t had the opportunity.  Losing a lead against bottom of the table strugglers QPR will have been a massive disappointment, and doing the same against Swansea and Newcastle similarly so. We sometimes see a knee-jerk reaction from a chairman backfire when his side are struggling but there have been success stories too, so despite being quite early in the season McDermott is no fool and will not be under the misconception that his job is completely safe.

The Team:

Key Players: Unlike fellow strugglers QPR and Southampton, Reading did not have the means to splash out tens of millions of pounds over the summer and therefore had to make their signings more frugal than ‘marquee’.  Nicky Shorey and Pavel Pogrebnyak were both astute signings on free transfers but you do feel that Reading miss that creative spark that other teams in and around the relegation zone have.

Jobi MacAnuff will certainly be a big player for Reading all season through, with 5 assists already in the league he has been providing decent service and if he repeats his tally of 5 goals and 11 assists of last season his contribution will be invaluable.

Always an important player for a relegation battling club is the goalkeeper. You can look back at Ben Foster’s performances for Birmingham and West Brom and Chris Kirkland at Wigan for two clear examples of this. Adam Federici was dropped after the first 3 league games of the season for poor form so in came Alex McCarthy. Having only made 12 league appearances for Reading before this season the 22-year-old is anything but experienced, however it is not unlike Brian McDermott to give youth a chance and will be hoping that his gamble pays off.

Danny Guthrie in my opinion is being underused, with only 5 starts so far this season, and most of them out of position, Reading have a ready-made Premier League centre midfielder, something that they seem to lack. McDermott should give more opportunities to a player who, while at Bolton and then Newcastle, proved that he was up to standard.

Players who need to do better: The goals have been coming from all around the team this season, which could be looked upon as a bonus, but this will be worrying for new signing Pavel Pogrebnyak who has only managed 2 of his clubs 12 league goals so far. The Russian managed 6 goals in 12 games for Fulham last season while on loan, which is no doubt one of the reasons he was brought to the Madejski Stadium, however he will need to seriously improve on his tally so far if he is to maintain the same strike rate he managed last season.

Verdict

It’s not looking good for Reading. They seem to lack the quality that you need to stay in the Premier League and while not having as much money as other clubs in similar positions is a valid reason for struggling it cannot be used as a bargaining chip come the last day of the season. Without some seriously good signings in January or a dramatic improvement in the form of current players I can see this being a long and difficult season for the Royals. 19th