QPR 0:0 Reading
Liam Miller put in an excellent performance in the midfield, showing plenty of deft touches and control backed up with the type of one touch passing quality that you’d expect to see from a Premiership player. I asked myself why he wasn’t still at that level and what made the likes of Sunderland and clubs before mainly use him in their reserves?
In the second-half, I think I found my answer. For all the quality he has, Miller lacks a little bit of pace but if he had it, he surely would be playing for a Premiership team if that’s the type of performance he produces consistently. I loved the way he kept it simple as well as how he won many 50-50 skirmishes and came away with possession and then retaining possession with smart one-touch passes. He seems like a really intelligent player and you can’t have enough of those in your team in my mind.
Heidar Helguson also played the lone striker role really well. It’s not an easy position to get right, but he linked the play ever so well and got on the ball plenty despite being surrounded by Michael Duberry for most of the afternoon as well as other Reading defenders. Kaspars Gorkss was also excellent at the back and I thought Mikele Leigertwood had a very good game too. In fact, there were no weak performances today which is a big plus and shows we’re moving in the right direction against a team who have a great chance of automatic promotion in Reading.
The overall performance was very good and I felt we were the better team on the day. We controlled the tempo fairly well and tried to go forward positively. The only unusual issue was the way Wayne Routledge sometimes chose to control the ball. He kept on flicking it awkwardly over his head and then chased his own ball, which sort of looked a lot more difficult than had he just got it under control and used his pace and trickery against his man. He also got one or two high balls again, which is a problem and the players must realise that smashing balls at small wingers who are also tightly marked is more likely going to mean we lose possession.
Lee Cook also didn’t have his most creative afternoon, but he was up against the energetic Liam Rosenior who, although didn’t do anything eye catching to stop Cook, his physical assets always means that it can make it tricky for the other person if they’re not at their sharpest but it was still a good dual.
I was also a little bit concerned with the amount of free-kicks we conceded in central positions or just inside our half. You don’t want to give a team like Reading many opportunities to pump the ball into the box as that’s where fine margins can determine how many points you take away from a game. Having said that, we dealt with Reading’s threats quite well and there weren’t many instances that left me worrying whether we’d switch off at the back. It was the first time I remember this season that we looked fully focused and without fear of having to soak up a little pressure. Lee Camp still had to make a terrific save in the first-half mind and that was such a good stop it was worth a mention!
I came to the match in a positive mood, given our record against the high flying teams in the division and I left thinking that it was still a good point gained and that even with all the injury problems we have, if we can find consistency and grind out those results and perform like this regularly, we may not be too far away come the tail end of the season at all.
