I thought he did well. Few good touches, but didnt win many headers?? Which was unusual. But I did feel we were a little more effective when he came on.
Probably true, but we ebbed and flowed at different phases during the match. I don't get on Platt's back... when he is not playing well, he stands out as a bad player because he has so little in his locker when flick ons don't come off. I thought he did fairly well today (someone else on here described him as immense, which I thought was a touch strong). Set Juke up with a nice pass, probably won almost 50% of headers, decent shot. Made us more dangerous than McDonald had, but we were in the ascendency at different times all the way through the match.
He went for 5 headers, and lost all of them. He controlled the ball with back to goal 2 or 3 times and did well, Dele style, holding it and laying it off. He is almost certainly not the answer though.
I thought he might have won a couple by default after missing the first three, but bow to your memory. I have a little time for Platt, mainly because he cost £25k rising to £50k on appearances and goals and the fact he is a journeyman playing at his highest level for his biggest club. Everytime he does something good, it is a bonus!
We didn't buy Platt for his aerial presence. I see him playing in the number 10 role as the link man between midfield and attack when his pace starts to go, threading slide rule passes, testing the 'keeper with lobs from the edge of the area, etc...
I agree he isn't the answer, just felt that the neat build up play seemed to amount to more once he came on. To be fair though it could have just been that the game was opening up more anyway. I also noted that he lost most of the headers but by challenging he made their defenders put the ball out of play to give us possesion several times.
Strange isn't it. I'm usually the first to give the team stick but today I thought we were o.k. Yet on other threads I've seen people saying we were poor.
We need to find a balance between the god awful yet sometimes effective AB appraoch and the AT approach which is easy on the eye but often far to over egged on the passing around.
Yeah Platt did enough to justify his appearance, to be fair. He'll never be much more than a sub option, but that's more than we had at the start of the season.
Overall, some good signs, some very worrying signs, bit of a mixed bag. Ultimately it's the result that has me down, alongside the shabby search; I just feel we need to be winning home games against lower-mid table teams, and we are left looking in the mire. It's depressing. Yet Thorrny says "that's one defeat in 7 at the Ricoh, we're turning it into a bit of a fortress". Not really though, is it?
I agree entirely. You have to say that Reading offered little really and sadly I think a better team would have turned us over.
I think the way we play the ball out of defence is better, we knocked it out wide a bit as well. However when it comes to the last third is where I want to see us lump it into the box, play the percentages game. You can't hurt people (well rarely) playing pretty patterns 30 yards out.
In what may well be a relegation battle you have to take 3 points in games like today. What gets me is that until we get to the last third of the pitch we look far from relegation candidates but its alll about goals when push comes to shove
Watching again on TFLS, it was a cracking ball by Platt to Lukas for the penalty. So credit where it is due, he came on as sub and created a goalscoring opportunity.