Portsmouth 4-1 Reading: Tactical Analysis
Despite the scoreline, Saturday’s game at Pompey had some positives from a Reading perspective.
Reading were put to the sword on the south coast on Saturday, shipping four to a clinical but not too dominant Portsmouth. The home side weathered an early Royals storm in the opening half an hour but couldn’t find the back of the net, and it only seemed a matter of time before Pompey stepped up a gear and punished our defensive vulnerabilities brutally, showing why they are six points clear at the top of the table.
Like the reverse fixture back in October, we showed promise early on and, considering our overall performance, if we continue this kind of quality in the next three games, all against relegation-threatened sides, we will surely come away with a few points.
Let’s see what lost Reading the game on Saturday.
We had 16 shots against Pompey, with Paul Mukairu, our on-loan winger, taking three of those. The Nigerian was incredibly inconsistent, often taking a brilliant touch or skipping past his man with an ingenious skill, then spurning a shot wide or a ludicrously misjudged pass.
For example, here Will Norris in goal palms out a Femi Azeez long shot in the direction of Mukairu and, instead of taking a touch, looking up, and picking an option in the box in Azeez or Harvey Knibbs, or waiting a little longer for an arriving player such as Kelvin Ehibhatiomhan or Lewis Wing, Mukairu can only direct the cross right into the ‘keeper’s hands.
An interesting tactic Ruben Selles used in this game was how Michael Craig was deployed as the single pivot in build-up. For me, Tyler Bindon is better at both long passing and dribbling out than Craig, therefore making sense to position him slightly higher and allow the two to rotate on that left-hand side. The screenshot below shows this happening, after Bindon commits his man to press but touches around Colby Bishop into midfield.
Also here, Knibbs is the one to remain as the floater in midfield, while Wing occupies attacking midfield. However, once a defensive mix-up loses us the ball and we give away the throw-in, we do get back well to cover the many advanced players Pompey have in their high press.
In terms of a ball carrier to break lines and quickly launch attacks, the first half against Portsmouth gave me a lot of confidence that Bindon is our man. Amadou Mbengue flicks the ball over Bishop’s press to the Kiwi, setting him free to run away from the striker, and Bindon cuts outside slightly to dummy the pass to the backtracking Clinton Mola. This commits Abu Kamara wide, giving him the space to drive through the centre.
Bindon plays a through ball to Ehibhatiomhan, who makes a brilliant run down the left, but as mentioned earlier, Knibbs and Mukairu are committed wide on the left, giving us no options in the middle.
Ehibhatiomhan slows it down and, by that time, Knibbs and Azeez have made more central runs, but the home side’s defence have too, forcing the striker to take a shot from an impossibly wide angle.
This is by no means a problem to do with the personnel we play up front though, as we’ve encountered a very similar situation with Sam Smith, but this time on the right-hand side. This has happened throughout many games this season, but even happened from the 53rd minute after Smith came on against Portsmouth, as is shown by the positional report during the time he was on the pitch.
Why does this matter? Well, although it’s hard to say Smith isn’t by far and away our best option up top, he has significant weaknesses, most prominently his weaker right foot. There’s been some agonising misses on his right throughout the season - including memorable misses against Portsmouth at home and Stevenage away when he was set through and rounded the ‘keeper on both occasions.
The graphic below shows in which areas he has the best goals to expected goals ratio throughout the 2023/24 season, and from deeper positions he struggles much more on his right.
Continuing to put him on his right side is possibly understandable in build-up given his good technical ability, but when we cross from the right he can’t get on the end of it as he’s less central, and when we cross from the left it’s onto Smith’s weaker side.
Conversely, Ehibhatiomhan is right-footed, and has a better goal-to-expected-goals success rate from his favoured side. Of course, when playing as a left-winger his close finishing ability is of less importance, but we want to have goalscoring wide-men on both sides instead of just Azeez from the right.
When we play with Ehibhatiomhan on the left, whether it’s intentional or not, the shape can easily become the 4-2-2-2 again when he goes narrower and Knibbs goes wide, as shown below, but again this plays out of our hands in terms of putting each striker on their best side.
As we found when regularly playing the 4-2-2-2 at the start of the season, there’s no one to be seen in midfield here either, meaning that, when the ball breaks as we lose possession, Reading are incredibly vulnerable on the counter-attack.
Is a possible solution swapping Ehibhatiomhan and Azeez on the wings? Seeing as Azeez is an inverted winger anyway, and given he is our brightest creative outlet, it could pull Smith further onto his favoured side too, making more effective scoring opportunities.
It’s Port Vale next up for Reading. This is exactly the sort of game we have to win to pull away from relegation, but I’m just glad that we’re the ones looking over our shoulder now instead of desperately chasing survival. It’s easy to forget that a few months ago we were 10 points from 20th in League One; we’ve come so far, and it’s time to push on even further.
Up the Royals.