Rotherham United 2-1 Reading: Tactical Analysis

Despite having a first-half lead, the Royals never really got going performance-wise at Rotherham.

Another away day, another loss. In our last three away games, we’ve conceded 10 goals and scored three. And by the way, two of those three were from set-pieces.

After the match, as the players slowly wandered towards the away end, either applauding or gazing absent-mindedly towards the 700 or so Reading fans present, the atmosphere seemed far more solemn than usual. Strangely emotional, almost.

Despite breaking our winning drought on the road in November last year, the performances and results now seem as laboured, fruitless and inevitable as they ever did on the prior year-long run.

Let’s have a look at what went wrong at the New York Stadium.

To put it simply, in notable parts of the game, I don’t think we knew what we were doing. Yes, Ruben Selles, I’m afraid you got it wrong.

As I’ve waffled on about in previous pieces, we usually like to push Michael Craig from right-back to midfield when in possession. On Saturday, we chose to remain with the back four in build-up.

I fully understand why Selles did it. Rotherham United are a strong team, despite their stuttering start to the season, and keeping an extra player back leaves an extra layer of protection should the ball turn over.

However, for a possession-based team like us, the players will be programmed to play that way, so it almost felt like we were a man down, even when we had 11.

This is an early example of a goal-kick where, as happened often, David Button rolled the ball to Tyler Bindon, he dribbled out a few yards before finding a pass, but the man who received it was backed into a difficult corner.

Here it was Craig, playing in an unnatural position for him, who’s forced to try to find a pass towards Sam Smith.

It’s intercepted and Rotherham can counter, ending in a blocked shot from the edge of the box.

An experienced but relatively youthful Millers midfield went man-for-man on our three in the middle, which afforded them very little space. It didn’t help that Harvey Knibbs and Ben Elliott often occupied the positions of 10s more than 8s, drifting into the forward line not deep midfield more than I’d like to have seen.

All of this essentially meant Lewis Wing was on his own there. He is the coiled spring in our Rolex, making the whole team tick, and should be dictating the game, as he did in midweek against Burton Albion.

But this time he wasn’t enabled to. Pass accuracy rarely tells the whole story in terms of how good a player is at passing, but we know Wing’s very good at it anyway just from the eye test. His season average is over 80% - Saturday’s total was just 65%.

This signifies a lack of passing options for him, forcing more speculative balls that obviously didn’t really work.

As the game went on, Button would often wave over Craig from the right-back spot to the midfield position because of our limited options. But that requires a shift in the whole team’s structure, most notably the two wingers coming a little deeper to support the back three.

And when it happened further up the pitch, like this free-kick being taken by Amadou Mbengue, we were way too slow to react and get into an in-possession shape where we could make a good long string of passes.

Rotherham didn’t press particularly well, neither did Reading continually play awful passes, but it’s rather the unbelievable lack of movement all over the pitch, followed by the blaming and looking around elsewhere that really frustrated me on Saturday.

In that particular scenario, we go back to Button straight from the free-kick. I get playing out, but if you’re going to do it then do it correctly, and preferably do it towards the opponent’s goal.

Reading average the third-highest percentage of passes that are backwards out of all League One teams, with the only two teams above them - Crawley and Birmingham City - averaging the two highest possessions in the league, both above 62%. The Royals, meanwhile, are at 50%.

For me the work rate wasn’t there from either winger too, when they were both still on. In fact, once both Kelvin Ehibhatiomhan and Chem Campbell were off the pitch from the 72nd minute, I think that was the best we played all game, despite having 10 men.

We found a bit of a bottleneck down the right-hand side too. Below is a diagram of every successful tackle and interception that Rotherham made over the 90 minutes. (The home side are attacking from left to right.)

The plethora of turnovers down our right is shocking. Throughout the match, we were lacklustre and slow in possession, not just when we went 1-0 up, but before that too.

At the end of the day, it’s far from a crisis to lose away at a team just relegated from the Championship, but the manner in which it happened is very disappointing. I felt we didn’t play for the win, we relied on a moment of magic from a Wing free-kick, and for the majority of the game we tried to weather an increasingly penetrating storm that hit back with two deserved goals early in the second half.

Cheltenham Town in the EFL Trophy is tomorrow’s challenge, followed by an international break that comes at a good time for us, which can hopefully give us an opportunity to get some players off the physio’s table and back onto the pitch.