The Kraken

Djourkaeff jnr on for Reading, interesting.

Super move between A-A and AA there, keeper got a bit lucky. A-A is a little livewire.

Caleta Car has twice now whacked it straight out of play when trying to make a pass.

Poor from Edozie there, too late to get a shot off.

Looking forward to seeing what Manning is about.

He did that a lot against Goztepe, basically the Zinchenko role, step into midfield when in posession and up the pitch.

Excellent save, terrible defending (Tino I think?)

Lovely goal that.

Looks like young lad and Tella have switched sides. Edit, no they haven’t, was just temporary,

Yeah agree with this, if anything we’re missing a proper 6 (or number 4 in old money) on this showing, don’t think that’s really Smallbone’s game. Will be good to see how Charles gets on, although Martin may not make subs for a while yet, as against Goztepe.

Think Reading must have a defender called Guinness Walker.

He needs to sort his hair out, I keep thinking he’s Djenepo.

Wonder why Reading don’t have numbers in their shirts. Cost saving maybe?? Seems weird to not at least have a traditional 1-11 if squad numbers aren’t allocated yet.

Terrible goal to give away.

According to Adam Blackmore, Bednarek was our most consistent player after the January window. I mean I suppose it’s true, he was consistently mediocre.

Interesting lineup really. If Tino is definitely off you’d maybe think Martin would be trying out what he thinks will be his first team, and therefore start off with Bree or KWP there. As it stands, we’ve started with quite a few players who I thought would likely be out of the club by the start of the season. Also thought Manning might get a good run out being as he hasn’t featured yet.

Reading look very brittle.

Nice, got it on my IPTV. Missed the goal though! Kit looks good.

Been quite a frustrating watch, some reasonable passages of play but England just seem to shit the bed when they get in sight of the goal and make some horrendous decisions.

Lots of happy little trees.

Yeah not great. The logo is even worse than on the other two shirts as well.

Diallo will be hoping his club have air con in the stadium, can’t be too much fun playing football in 40+ degree heat.

Let’s be honest, it’s a pretty rubbish ‘nickname’. I was hoping for better.

City will likely have provided advice on him so have done the scouting, I can’t see any way there was any sort other involvement though. Saints obviously didn’t go out of their way to keep him or make him feel he was well in the first team plans, and he got an offer to move back to Catalunya.

Agreed. There were definitely quite a few on here suggesting that Romeu’s legs had gone. I didn’t see it that way, just that he had played game after game in a 2 man midfield and needed a break, someone else to come in and provide another option. I can only imagine he knew that Ralph didn’t really have him at the front of his first team plans and once the Girona offer came in it was sadly inevitable that he’d go.