Abject Royals lose at home

It has been on the cards for some time and true to current form a lacklustre performance resulted in defeat to Bristol City today. Somewhat predictably Coppell kept faith with the same eleven that began the goalless draw against Preston and looked so average. Surely we needed to be more adventurous and far less predictable against a decent passing side like City? Steve didn't think so and to almost nobody's surprise City took the lead with a Dele Adebola header midway through a first half that we were second best in. The goal itself was simple, a hanging cross to a big lad at the far post, it was not really representative of the style with which City played: neat, tidy, easy-on-the-eye stuff. By contrast we looked pretty devoid of attacking ideas save for lumping it up field aimlessly and hoping that something might come of it. Plan A didn't work. Notable absentees from the game were Stephen Hunt (clueless), Jim Harper (ditto), Jimmy Kebe (wretched), but Doobs and Federici looked culpable for their opener...I could go on through the team, but it's far too depressing. With vociferous support behind them the visitors looked well up for it, strangely we looked a little disinterested. Surely Coppell would change things at half time, because it seemed plain for all to see that these players playing like this were not going to get us back into the game. No changes. Two minutes after the break City were two up thanks to a calamitous goal mouth scramble. 'How did that go in?' somebody asked. They wanted it more was the simple answer, or at least it appeared that way.

WIth the game pretty much up Cisse and Harper were replaced by Bryn and Marek, and shock, horror we looked far better. Marek in particular changed the way we played, always looking for the angled pass, the clever little ball, always trying to get us moving forward. He also made more tackles in his 30 minute cameo than Harper and Cisse put together. Whilst we certainly looked better in the final half an hour we never really looked like getting back into the game. City deserved the points and we have some serious questions to answer. Bongo's defeat to Coventry limited the damage somewhat as far as the table is concerned, but we need to bounce back immediately against Forest on Saturday. The home fans deserve better and Coppell cannot possibly consider leaving Matejovsky out, he is quality and the only person doing something different for us right now. Nobody was free from blame for that performance on Saturday. It's time to stand up and be counted and start performing like promotion candidates.

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