don't think wheater should get all the blame for their goal, apparently it was a pretty harsh handball against wheater and just after they scored their penalty Bolton could (should) have had a penalty for handball too

I actually thought midfield and attack let us down in the second half today. I thought we defended well. No doubt Reading were miles better second half but only scored by a dodgy pen. Too many times midfield gave it away and the attackers failed to put pressure on their defence.

No outlet up front when ngog went off who was more or less playing on his own up front.it was more or less playing with 10 men until Beckford came off too. Spearing definitely tired 2nd half. Just felt the whole balance was wrong with pratley on the right and with
Lee tucked inside had no width at all. The only decent
crosses came from mad dog Tierney. Baptiste does not get forward like a full back should maybe he should play cab.

IF your happy with our Midfield you are lost.

WE have about 300 midfielders on our books, and not one of can pass!

The back four isnt as much as an emergency as people make out (yes i know Knight can occasionally be calamitous), our midfield gives the ball away all the time, thats why we concede

It's not ideal, but with Mark Davies and Andre Moritz to come in, spearing and Medo in front of the back four and one of those 2 picking up the ball and playing the football, up to N'Gog or Beckford and wide to Eagles and Chungy, I'm as happy as I could expect to be with the midfield.

All the goals we ever concede seem to be defensive errors though. Wheats shouldn't be handling it in the way he did. Missing the header and it hitting his arm is clumsy at best.

How can anyone moan about Bogdan not saving a penalty after his performance on Saturday? Unreal.

A performance like that is the least he has to do to prove himself to me after the amount of shockers he had last season. And my point about the penalties still stands

Well you wrote, "why does Bogdan never save any [penalties]". I remember him saving one from Rooney at Old Trafford. So I don't think it stands to be honest.

I'd like to see Bogdan save more penalties, who wouldn't? Of course. But I've never heard of a goalkeeper in the history of the game being dropped because they don't save enough penalties.

I can't even agree with your broader point about our defence being poor so far. We've conceded two goals, one was a lucky deflection and the other was a penalty.

We restricted Burnley to three shots on target, the deflected goal and two weak efforts from outside the area.

Reading hit us well on the counter attack in the second half on Saturday and could well have scored, say, two goals from open play. But what happened? Our goalkeeper played well and saved their shots.

So I don't agree thst our defence has been poor so far

LH - Balanced well thought out, and correct again!

He saved one last season aswell. but that really wasnt what i was getting at. The never was an exaggeration. I didn't mention dropping him for it, but the amount of penalties we concede, especially last season, where it was week in week out for a period, I'd expect a better percentage.

Conceding poor quality goals is the hallmark of a bad defence. You look at the best teams and defences, usually they concede good, well played or well struck goals.

The burnley goal may well have been a lucky deflection, but if you're happy with how the whole sequence of play for that goal was defended, then I couldn't agree. Literally school boy defending.

The Reading goal was a penalty, that we gave away. We can't hide behind the fact it was a penalty. And yet we could have easily conceded another penalty.

If Bogdan hadn't had a fantastic game, which he certainly did, we could have conceded a couple more goals. We were opened up fully for that Le Fondre chance, and the lad should have scored, and thy saw a few more very good chances.

My point was that we never look safe from a clumsy error etc. it's easy to look at it on paper and come to the conclusion that we've only conceded 2, but I've watched us for both games, along with most of pre-season and last season and I have formed these opinions.

I have no issue with Bogdans shot stopping. It's his communication to his defence and command of his box that sometimes let's us down. Note I said sometimes!

Even the best goalkeepers fail to save penalties, its why players hate taking a match to a shootout.

You mention the period last season where we conceded alot of goals to penalties. Surely the solution is for our defence to up their game and stop conceding silly penalties in the first place.

Look at Jussi
Many called for him to be replaced admitted he wasn't the younger version we first brought to our old home at Burnden.
Taken out of our team with a poor defence and put into a team down sarf with a better defence and he looks good again.

We just need a defence which is capable and understands their goalkeeper isn't shouting instructions for nothing.

Wanderers Forever.
Yep, that's really what I was getting at with this article. The defence is just clumsy. It's just be a bonus if our keeper could occasionally dig them out the dog...

I don't wanna make this article about the goalkeeper, but there's more spillage in our box since 2012 than a tea party on a trampoline... I actually think all round in most aspects of his game he's a very average keeper.