Mills has been one of the Royals most impressive performers in recent months and has looked every bit the £2 million defender we paid Doncaster for in the summer. He was having a decent game on Tuesday against QPR when he played a succession of long passes to the left wing, aimed at Jimmy Kebe. This was clearly part of the game plan from Brian McDermott but his success rate at finding a man was low and after the 5th or 6th time a number of fans groaned in disappointment, others chose to boo.
The defender then gave a bizarre reaction to the stick he received by shouting in the direction of the East Stand and then giving the ‘finger’. His next few touches of the ball were booed by certain sections of the crowd, whilst the larger majority gave stick to those fans who were booing and chanted Mills name, and applauded his every touch there after.
At the final whistle he stormed straight down the tunnel and didn’t shake hands with anyone, or applaud the fans who had supported him.
Whilst you can’t give that kind of reaction to stick as a professional player, many can relate to why he did it. A long list of players have suffered poor treatment from fickle Reading fans (Andy Hughes and Jim McIntyre are two that spring to mind straight away), and why those fans chose to boo just because he had given the ball, away is beyond me. Its not like we are on a poor run of form or anything!
Hopefully this will all blow over without too much fuss because Mills is a qualilty player and I have no doubt he will be a future RFC captain.
What is your opinion on this though? Let us know in the comments box below….
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Sadly with more fans comes more idiots, I can well believe the Elm Park faithful wouldn’t have given him such a reaction, but those spoiled by Coppell’s successful side are bound to be frustrated because it’s all they know. Mills’ reaction absolutely stunned me, Taarabt merely waved his hand at discontented supporters earlier this season and got absolute dogs abuse – how Mills thinks that is professional behaviour I don’t know – by the letter of the law he should have been booked as well.
From my position in the East Stand I heard no booing or verbal abuse (before the gesture), just louder groans of disappointment when yet another hoofed “pass” missed the target. His decision making was poor (just go for the simple passes!), but he decided that it wasn’t his fault, but the fans. The abuse increased tenfold after the gesture, and rightly so! The apologists seem to want to take this kind of behaviour, but do we want this sort of player in the club not least because he clearly can’t control his emotions which makes him a liability to the club. He needs to grow up and take responsibility, which for me means an unreserved apology, without trying to shift the blame towards perceived “crowd abuse”. That’ll draw a line under the sorry affair and he can start to rebuild his relationship with Reading fans. I will support him if that happens, but it’s up to him now.
Why do people fail to realise that he had been asked by McDermott to hit those long balls, it was part of the game plan, he said so afterwards. It’s all well and good saying he should have passed to our right or left back, but that was exactly what we were doing under Brendan Rodgers and he got abuse for that. Anyway he has made his apology now, hopefully we can forget this storm in a tea cup and move on without abusing our best players any further, or any of our players for that matter.
Matt Mills was very similar with his passing out wide at Donny and regularly made row C rather than find the player. He didn’t get any abuse at Donny because they realised he was a quality defender and he was in the team to stop attackers scoring.
I am not surprised that his defending his now much more his old self, I think he was rushed into the side early season by Brendan Rodgers and nowhere near fully fit after missing the whole of pre season at Donny.
I am sure if he’d have chosen to stay at Donny they would now be safely in the play off positions.
We had a fantastic defensive record last season, we just couldn’t score goals.