Elegant Chaos

The phrase "snatched defeat from the jaws of victory" springs to mind.

I don't remember much about this one (I've been moving house, so I got a bit distracted and didn't write it up whilst it was fresh!), but I do remember that we really should have won it - they weren't at all good and we just drifted off to sleep somehow in the second half.

It's weird, but sometimes you can feel a goal coming, and it seemed obvious to me and Neil that we needed a change quickly because Preston were going to score. Instead of that Ollie waited and waited, as he often seems to do, and by the time he finally got round to it we'd gone from 1-0 up to 2-1 down. After the game he did admit that maybe he waited too long.

The only positive was seeing Bircham, Bignot and Rowlands come on - although with only 15 minutes remaining they didn't have much time to make an impact.

Mysteriously, Santos stayed on even after this triple substitution, and ended up playing as a striker if my memory serves. What's all that about then? We've got Gallen, Furlong and Cureton on the pitch, but we end up taking Cureton off for Bircham and putting Santos up front. Huh? Surely better to swap Santos for Bircham and then juggle some combination of Cureton/Gallen/Rowlands/Ainsworth in the centre-mid/right wing/right sided striker roles. Very odd.

"This is Dyer" said the commentator at some point during the second half. He wasn't wrong - it was dire.

Obviously I'm just a stupid computer programmer, but I don't really understand what Sven was up to. We seemed to be trying a weird formation, that I really couldn't make head or tail of. Funnily enough, the players didn't seem to be making much sense of it either. Was it a 4-3-3? More like a 4-6, with the 6 being a random assortment of players milling around in the last two thirds of the pitch. Rooney on the wing? You're 'avin a laugh.

It was nice to see Wright - Phillips given a try, but again the formation didn't really do him any favours, and I didn't really see the point of giving Downing and Johnson just 30 minutes at the end, or playing Johnson out of position.

Oh dear. To call our performance poor would be an insult to poor teams everywhere.

According to the BBC, Ian Holloway said:
"I think we lacked quality in the final third. Even with all the injuries and suspensions we had, I still expected those out there to show more quality and purpose."

I do sometimes wonder which game Ollie is watching. Maybe there's another one going on each Saturday round the back of Loftus Road that I don't know about? Or did I go to Reading by accident (like Sir Les did presumably)?

Yes, we lacked some quality in the final third, but we lacked a damn site more elsewhere. Admittedly we had about seven first team players missing, and a totally makeshift defence, but even so.

Once again it's the midfield that worries me most. Basically, there's a big hole where it should be. Marcus Bean isn't so much hopeless, as just ineffectual. He doesn't seem to read the game at all, and is really anonymous, which is a bit of a flaw in a central midfielder if you ask me.

Martin Rowlands played alongside him today (which I was hoping might happen), but unfortunately it didn't do him (or us) much good. He looked good for about the first ten minutes, then seemed to get bored, and reverted to the sort of listless drifting around the pitch which seems to be his forte currently.

Ainsworth was all energy again on the right, but didn't have much joy. Cook showed flashes of skill interspersed with long periods of lightweight hopelessness.

McCleod wasn't too clever sometimes at left back, but at least he got forward, didn't shy away from the challenges, and looked like he cared.

My ratings:
Day: 5 no blunders, but doesn't look commanding
Branco: 3 right back? I think not
Shittu: 6 did ok, but didn't look happy
Edgehill: 4 doesn't look half the player I thought he was going to be
McCleod: 6 considering he's a striker, did ok at leftback
Ainsworth: 7 full marks for effort
Bean: 3 oh? did he play? must have missed him
Rowlands: 4 lacked composure
Cook: 5 still not the complete article by a long stretch
Gallen: 6 the ref gave him no help, but he soldiered away
Cureton: 6 likewise really, a bit anonymous, but no real support

Subs:
Padula: 5 wasn't on long, did nothing wrong, why didn't he start?
Thorpe: 5 nice to see him back, shame he didn't get more time